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The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 03, January, 1858

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Title: The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 03, January, 1858

Author: Various


        
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Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOLUME 01, NO. 03, JANUARY, 1858 ***




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THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS

VOL. I--JANUARY, 1858.--NO. III.




NOTES ON DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE.

If building many houses could teach us to build them well, surely we
ought to excel in this matter. Never was there such a house-building
people. In other countries the laws interfere,--or customs,
traditions, and circumstances as strong as laws; either capital is
wanting, or the possession of land, or there are already houses
enough. If a man inherit a house, he is not likely to build another,--
nor if he inherit nothing but a place in an inevitable line of
lifelong hand-to-mouth toil. In such countries houses are built
wholesale by capitalists, and only by a small minority for themselves.

And where the man inherits no house, he at least inherits the
traditional pattern of one, or the nature of the soil decides the
main points; as you cannot build of brick where there is no clay,
nor of wood where there are no forests. But here every man builds a
house for himself, and every one freely according to his whims. Many
materials are nearly equally cheap, and all styles and ways of
building equally open to us; at least the general appearance of most
should be known to us, for we have tried nearly all. Our public
opinion is singularly impartial and cosmopolitan, or perhaps we
should rather say knowing and unscrupulous. All that is demanded of
a house is, that it should be of an "improved style," or at least
"something different." Nothing will excuse it, if old-fashioned,--
and hardly anything condemn it, if it have novelty enough.

And this latitude is not confined to the owner's scheme of his house,
but extends also to the executive department. In other countries,
however extravagant your fancy, you are brought within some bounds
when you come to carry it out; for the architect and the builder have
been trained to certain rules and forms, and these will enter into
all they do. But here every man is an architect who can handle a
T-square, and every man a builder who can use a plane or a trowel;
and the chances are that the owner thinks he can do all as well as
either of them. For if every man in England thinks he can write a
leading article, much more every Yankee thinks he can build a house.
Never was such freedom from the rule of tradition. A fair field and
no favor; whatever that can accomplish we shall have.

The result, it must be confessed, is not gratifying. For if you
sometimes find a man who is satisfied with his own house, yet his
neighbors sneer at it, and he at his neighbors' houses. And even with
himself it does not usually wear well. The common case is that even
he accepts it as a confessed failure, or at best a compromise. And
if he does not confess the failure, (for association, pride,
use-and-wont reconcile one to much), the house confesses it. For
what else but self-confessed failures are these thin wooden or cheap
brick walls, temporarily disguised as massive stone,--this roof,
leaking from the snow-bank retained by the Gothic parapet, or the
insufficient slope which the "Italian style" demands?

There is no lack of endeavor to make the house look well. People
will sacrifice almost anything to that. They will strive their
chambers into the roof,--they will have windows where they do not
want them, or leave them out where they do,--in our tropical summers
they will endure the glare and heat of the sun, rather than that
blinds should interfere with the moulded window-caps, or with the
style generally,--they will break up the outline with useless and
expensive irregularity,--they will have brackets that support nothing,
and balconies and look-outs upon which no one ever steps after the
carpenter leaves them,--all for the sake of pleasing the eye. And
all this without any real and lasting success,--with a success,
indeed, that seems often in an inverse ratio to the effort. If a man
have a pig-stye to build, or a log-house in the woods, he may hit
upon an agreeable outline; but let him set out freely and with all
deliberation to build something that shall be beautiful, and he fails.

Not that the failure is peculiar at all to us. In Europe there may,
perhaps, be less bad taste,--though I am not sure of that; but there,
and everywhere, I think, the memorable houses, among those of recent
date, are not those carefully elaborated for effect,--the
premeditated irregularity of the English Gothic, the trig regularity
of the French Pseudo-Classic, or the studied rusticity of Germany,--
but such as seem to have grown of themselves out of the place where
they stand,--Swiss _châlets_, Mexican or Manila plantation-houses,
Italian farm-houses, built, nobody knows when or by whom, and built
without any thought of attracting attention. And here I think we get
a hint as to the reason of their success. For a house is not a
monument, that it should seek to draw attention to itself,--but the
dwelling-place of men upon the earth; and it must show itself to be
wholly secondary to its purpose.

We have had a good deal of exhortation lately, now getting rather
wearisome, about avoiding pretence in architecture, and that we
should let things show for what they are. The avoidance of pretence
should begin farther back. If the house is _all_ pretence, we shall
not help it by "frankness of treatment" in details.

The house is the sign of man's entering into possession of the earth.
A houseless savage, living on wild game and accidental fruits, is an
alien in nature, or a minor not yet come to his estate. As soon as
he begins to cultivate the soil he builds him a house,--no longer a
hut or a cave but the work of his own hands, and as permanent as his
tenure of the cultivated field. If that is to descend to his children,
the house must be so built as to endure accordingly. It is the
material expression of the _status_ of the family,--such people in
such a place. Hence the two-fold requirement of fitness for its use
and of harmony with its surroundings. A log-house is the appropriate
dwelling of the lumberer in the woods; but transplant it to a
suburban lawn and it becomes an absurdity, and a double absurdity.
It is not in harmony with the place, nor fit for the use of the
citizen. Nothing more satisfactory in their place than the old
English parish-churches; but transfer one of them from its natural
atmosphere and surroundings to the midst of one of our raw villages
or bustling cities, exposed to the sudden and violent changes of our
climate,--the open timber roof admitting the heat and the cold, and
the stone walls bedewed with condensed moisture,--and after the first
pleasant impression of the moment is over, there is left only a
painful feeling of mimicry, not to be removed by any precision of
copying, nor by the feeble attempts at ivy in the corners.

This is all evident enough, and in principle generally admitted; but
we dodge the application of the principle, because we are not ready
to admit to ourselves, what history, apart from any reasoning, would
show us, that those importations are failures, and that not
accidentally in these particular cases, leaving the hope of better
success for the next trial, but necessarily, and because they are
importations.

All good architecture must be the gradual growth of its country and
its age,--the accumulation of men's experience, adding and leaving
out from generation to generation. The air of permanence and stability
that we admire in it must be gained by a slow and solid growth.
It is the product, not of any one man's skill, but of a nation's;
and its type, accordingly, must be gradually formed.

But in this, as in everything else, there must be an aim, and one
persisted in, else no experience is gained. A mere succession of
generations will do nothing, if for each of them the whole problem
is changed. The man of to-day cannot profit by his father's
experience in the building of his house, if his culture, his habits,
his associates, are different from his father's,--much less if they
have changed since his own youth, and are changing from year to year.
He will not imitate, he will not forbear to alter. On such shifting
sands no enduring structure is possible, but only a tent for the
night.

We talk of the laws of architecture; but the fundamental law of all,
and one that is sure to be obeyed, is, that the dwelling shall
typify man's appropriation of the earth and its products,--what we
call property. A man's house is naturally just as fixed a quantity
as the kind and the amount of his possessions, and no more so. The
style of it, depending on the inherited ideas of the class to
which he belongs, will be as formed and as fixed as that class.
Then where there is no fixed class, and where the property of
every man is constantly varying, our quantity will be just so
variable, and the true type of our architecture will be the
tent,--of the frame-and-clapboard variety suited to the climate.

For good architecture, then, we need castes in society, and fixed
ways of living. We see the effect in the old parsonages in England,
where from year to year have dwelt men of the same class, education,
income, tastes, and circumstances generally, and so bringing from
generation to generation nearly the same requirements, with the
unessential changes brought in from time to time by new wants or
individual fancies, here and there putting out a bay-window or
adding a wing, but always in the spirit of the original building,
and the whole getting each year more weather-stained and ivy-grown,
and so toned into more complete harmony with the landscape, yet
still living and expansive.

It may be said that the result is here a partly accidental one, and
not a matter of art. But domestic architecture is only half-way a
fine art. It does not aim at a beauty of the monumental kind, as a
statue, a triumphal arch, or even a temple does. Its primary aim is
shelter, to house man in nature,--and it forms, as it were, the
connecting link between him and the outward world. Its results,
therefore, are partly the free artistic production, and partly
retain unmodified their material character. In the image carved by
the sculptor, the stone or wood used derive little of their effect
from the original material; the important character is that imparted
to them by his skill. Still more the canvas and pigments of the
painter. But in architecture the wood and stone still fulfil the
offices of covering, connecting, and supporting, as they did in the
tree and the quarry, and their physical properties play an essential
part in the work. The house, therefore, is a work of art only half
emancipated from nature, and must depend on nature for much of its
beauty also. It must not be isolated, as something merely to be
looked at, apart from its position and its material use.

The common mistake in our houses is, that they are designed, as
inexperienced persons choose their paper-hangings, to be something
of themselves, and not as mere background, as they should be. Thus
it is that people seek to beautify their houses by ornamenting them,
as a vulgar person sticks himself over with jewelry. A man's house
is only a wider kind of dress; and as we do not call a man
well-dressed when we are forced to see his dress before we see him,
so a house cannot be satisfactory when it isolates itself from its
inmates and from the landscape. In such houses, the more _effort_
the worse they are; they may cheat us for the moment, but the oftener
we see them the less we like them. Does not the uncomfortable
sensation with which fine houses so often oppress us arise from the
vague feeling that the owner has built himself out of his house, and
his house out of the landscape?

Hence it is mostly the novices that build the fine houses. A man of
sense, I think, will generally build his second house plainer than
his first. Not that he desires, perhaps, any the less what he
desired before, but he is more alive to the difficulties and to the
cost, and takes refuge in the safety of a lower scale. His
experience has taught him that where he succeeded best he was really
farthest from the end he sought. The fine house requires that its
accessories should be in kind. All things within and without, the
approach, the grounds, the furniture, must be brought up to the same
pitch, and kept there. And when all is done, it is not done, but
forever demands retouching. What is got in this kind cannot be paid
for with money, nor finished once for all, but is a never-sated
absorbent of time, thought, life. And it attacks the owner, too; he
must conform, in his dress, his equipage, and his habits generally;
he must be as fine as his house. The nicer his taste the more any
incongruity will offend him, and the greater the danger of his
becoming more or less an appendage to his house.

Much of that chronic ailment of our society, the "trials of
housekeeping," is traceable to this source. This is a complicated
trouble, and probably other causes have their share in it. But we
cannot fail to recognize in these seemingly accidental obstructions
a stern, but beneficent adjustment of our circumstances to enforce a
simplicity which we should else neglect. One cannot greatly
deprecate the terrors of high rents and long bills, and the
sufferings from clumsy and careless domestics, if they help to keep
down senseless profusion and display.

Our problem is, in truth, one of greater difficulty than at first
appears. For we are each of us striving to do, by the skill and
forethought of one man, what naturally accomplishes itself in a
succession of generations and with the aid of circumstances. It is
from our freedom that the trouble arises. Were our society composed
of few classes, widely and permanently distinct, a fitting style for
each would naturally arise and become established and perfected.
There would be fewer occasions for new houses, and the new house
would be less novel in style, and so two difficulties would be
overcome. For novelty of style is a drawback to effect, as tending
to isolate the house; and a new house is always at a disadvantage.
Nature, in any case, is slow to adopt our handiwork into the
landscape; sometimes the assimilation is so difficult that it must
be ruined for its original purpose before it will be accepted.
Sooner or later, indeed, it will be accepted. For though most of our
buildings seem even in decay to resist the harmonizing hand of Nature,
and to grow only ghastly and not venerable in dilapidation, yet
leave them long enough and what of beauty was possible to them will
appear, though it be only a crumbling heap of bricks where the
chimney stood, or the grassy slope where the cellar-wall has fallen
in.

It is for this reason that persons of taste have taken pains to face
their houses with weather-stained and lichen-crusted stone, or
invent proper names for them, in imitation of the English
manor-houses. But Nature is jealous of this helping, and neither the
lichens nor the names will stick, for the reason that they never
grew there. They cannot be naturalized without naturalizing their
conditions. The gray ancestral houses of England are the beautiful
symbols of the permanence of family and of caste. They are the
embodiments of traditional institutions and culture. When we speak
of the House of Stanley or of Howard, the expression is not wholly
figurative. We do not mean simply the men and women of these families,
but the whole complex of this manifold environment which has
descended to them and in the midst of which they have grown up,--no
more to be separated from it than the polyp from the coral stem.
All this is centralized and has its expression in the House.

Now as these conditions are not our conditions, the attempt to build
fine houses is an attempt to import an effect where the cause has
not existed. Our position is that of a perpetually shifting
population,--the mass shifting and the individuals shifting, in place,
circumstances, requirements. The movement is inevitable, and,
whether desirable or not, we must conform to it. So we naturally
build cheaply and slightly, that the house be not an incumbrance
rather than a furtherance to our life. It is agreeable to the
feelings to be well rooted and established, and the results in
outward appearance are agreeable. But it is not desirable to be so
niched into the rock, that a change of fortune, or even a change in
the direction of a town-road, shall leave us high and dry, like the
fossils of the Norwegian cliffs, but rather, like the shell-fish of
our beaches, free to travel up and down with the tide.

The imitating of foreign examples comes from no real, heart-felt
demand, but only from a fancied or simulated demand,--from tradition,
association; at second-hand in one shape or another. It is at bottom
something of the same flunkeyism that in a more exaggerated form
assumes heraldic bearings and puts its servants into livery.

It may well reconcile us to our deprivation to remember at what cost
these things we admire are established and kept up. The imagination
is pleased with this stability; but it is bought too dear, if
progress is to be sacrificed to it, if the freedom and the true
lives of the members are to be merged in the family, and if they are
to be the stones of which the house is built. It is not desirable to
be _adscriptus glebes_, whether the bonds be physical or only moral
ones. We may well be content to have our limits free, even though
our architecture suffer for it. It is better that houses should
belong to men, and not men to houses.

But whether we are content or not, it is evident that all hope of
improvement lies in the tendency, somewhat noticeable of late, to
the abnegation of exotic styles and graces. We have survived the
Parthenon pattern, and there seems to be a prospect that we shall
outlive the Gothic cottage. Even the Anglo-Italian bracketed villa
has seen its palmiest days apparently, and exhausted most of its
variations. We are in an extremely chaotic state just now; but there
seems to be an inclination towards more rational ways, at least in
the plans and general arrangement of houses.

Of course mere negation cannot carry us far. We sometimes hear it
said that it is as easy for a house to look well as to look ill, and
those who say this seem to think that the failure is due solely to
want of due consideration of the problem on the part of our builders,
and that we have but to leave out their blunders to get at a
satisfactory result. But if we look at the facts of the case, we
find the builders have some reason on their side.

Nothing can be more unsightly than the stalky, staring houses of our
villages, with their plain gable-roofs, of a pitch neither high
enough nor low enough for beauty, and disfigured, moreover, by mere
excrescences of attic windows, and over the whole structure the
awkward angularity, and the look of barren, mindless conformity and
uniformity in the general outlines, and the meagre, frittered effect
inherent in the material. But when we come to build, we find that
the blockheads who invented this style, or no-style, have got at the
cheapest way of supplying the first imperative demands of the people
for whom they build,--namely, to be walled in and roofed
weather-tight, and with a decent neatness, but without much care
that the house should be solid and enduring,--for it cannot well be
so flimsy as not to outlast the owner's needs. He does not look to
it as the habitation of his children,--hardly as his own for his
lifetime,--but as a present shelter, easily and quickly got ready,
and as easily plucked up and carried off again. The common-law of
England looks upon a house as real estate, as part of the soil; but
with us it is hardly a fixture.

Surely nothing can be more simple and common-sense than an ordinary
New England house, but at the same time nothing can be uglier. The
outline, the material, the color and texture of the surface are at
all points opposed to breadth of effect or harmony with the
surroundings. There is neither mass nor elegance; there are no lines
of union with the ground; the meagre monotony of the lines of
shingles and clapboards making subdivisions too small to be
impressive, and too large to be overlooked,--and finally, the paint,
of which the outside really consists, thrusting forward its chalky
blankness, as it were a standing defiance of all possibility of
assimilation,--all combine to form something that shall forever
remain a blot in the landscape.

Evidently it is not merely a more common-sense treatment that we want;
for here is sufficient simplicity, but a simplicity barren of all
satisfaction. And singularly enough, it seems, with all its
meagreness, to pass easily into an ostentatious display. In these
houses there is no thought of "architecture"; that is considered as
something quite apart, and not essential to the well-building of the
house. But for this very reason matters are not much changed when
the owner determines to spend something for looks. The house remains
at bottom the same rude mass, with the "architecture" tacked on. It
is not that the owner has any deeper or different sentiment towards
his dwelling, but merely that he has a desire to make a flourish
before the eyes of beholders. There is no heartfelt interest in all
this on his part; it gives him no pleasure; how, then, should it
please the spectator?

The case is the same, whether it be the coarse ornamentation of the
cheap cottage, or the work of the fashionable architect; we feel
that the decoration is superficial and may be dispensed with, and
then, however skillful, it becomes superfluous. The more elaborate
the worse, for attention is the more drawn to the failure.

What is wanted for any real progress is not so much a greater skill
in our house-builders, as more thoughtful consideration on the part
of the house-owners of what truly interests them in the house. We do
not stop to examine what really weighs with us, but on some fancied
necessity hasten to do superfluous things. What is it that we really
care for in the building of our houses? Is it not, that, like dress,
or manners, they should facilitate, and not impede the business
of life? We do not wish to be compelled to think of them by
themselves either as good or bad, but to get rid of any obstruction
from them. They are to be lived in, not looked at; and their beauty
must grow as naturally from their use as the flower from its stem,
so that it shall not be possible to say where the one ends and
the other begins. Not that beauty will come of itself; there must be
the feeling to be satisfied before any satisfaction will come.
But we shall not help it by pretending the feeling, nor by trying
to persuade others or ourselves that we are pleased with what has
been pleasing to other nations and under other circumstances.
Our poverty, if poverty it be, is not disgraceful, until we attempt
to conceal it by our affectation of foreign airs and graces.




MAYA, THE PRINCESS.

The sea floated its foam-caps upon the gray shore, and murmured its
inarticulate love-stories all day to the dumb rocks above; the blue
sky was bordered with saffron sunrises, pink sunsets, silver
moon-fringes, or spangled with careless stars; the air was full of
south-winds that had fluttered the hearts of a thousand roses and a
million violets with long, deep kisses, and then flung the delicate
odors abroad to tell their exploits, and set the butterflies mad
with jealousy, and the bees crazy with avarice. And all this bloom
was upon the country of Larrièrepensée, when Queen Lura's little
daughter came to life in the Topaz Palace that stood on Sunrise Hills,
and was King Joconde's summer pavilion.

Now there was no searching far and wide for godfathers, godmothers,
and a name, as there is when the princesses of this world are born:
for, in the first place, Larrièrepensée was a country of pious
heathen, and full of fairies; the people worshipped an Idea, and
invited the fairy folk to all their parties, as we who are proper
here invite the clergy; only the fairy folk did not get behind the
door, or leave the room, when dancing commenced.

And the reason why this princess was born to a name, as well as to a
kingdom, was, that, long ago, the people who kept records in
Larrièrepensée were much troubled by the ladies of that land never
growing old: they staid at thirty for ten years; at forty, for twenty;
and all died before fifty, which made much confusion in dates,--
especially when some women were called upon to tell traditions, the
only sort of history endured in that kingdom; because it was against
the law to write either lies or romances, though you might hear and
tell them, if you would, and some people would; although to call a
man a historian there was the same thing as to say, "You lie!" here.

But as I was saying, this evergreen way into which the women fell
caused much trouble, and the Twelve Sages made a law that for six
hundred years every female child born in any month of the
seventy-two hundred following should be named by the name ordained
for that month; and then they made a long list, containing
seventy-two hundred names of women, and locked it up in the box of
Great Designs, which stood always under the king's throne; and
thenceforward, at the beginning of every month, the Twelve Sages
unlocked the box, consulted the paper, and sent a herald through the
town to proclaim the girl-name for that month. So this saved a world
of trouble; for if some wrinkled old maid should say, "And that
happened long ago, some time before I was born," all her gossips
laughed, and cried out, "Ho! ho! there's a historian! do we not all
know you were a born Allia, ten years before that date?"--and then
the old maid was put to shame.

Now it happened well for Queen Lura's lovely daughter, that on her
birth-month was written the gracious name of Maya, for it seemed
well to fit her grace and delicacy, while but few in that country
knew its sad Oriental depth, or that it had any meaning at all.

It was all one flush of dawn upon Sunrise Hills, when the
maids-of-honor, in curls and white frocks, began to strew the great
Hall of Amethyst with geranium leaves, and arrange light tripods of
gold for the fairies, who were that day gathered from all
Larrièrepensée to see and gift the new princess. The Queen had
written notes to them on spicy magnolia-petals, and now the
head-nurse and the grand-equerry wheeled her couch of state into the
Hall of Amethyst, that she might receive the tender wishes of the
good fairies, while yet the sweet languor of her motherhood kept her
from the fresh wind and bright dew out of doors.

The couch of state was fashioned like a great rose of crimson velvet;
only where there should have been the gold anthers of the flower lay
the lovely Queen, wrapped in a mantle of canary-birds' down, and
nested on one arm slept the Child of the Kingdom, Maya. Presently a
cloud of honey-bees swept through the wide windows, and settling
upon the ceiling began a murmurous song, when, one by one, the
flower-fairies entered, and flitting to their tripods, each garlanded
with her own blossom, awaited the coming of their Head,--the Fairy
Cordis.

As the Queen perceived their delay, a sudden pang crossed her pale
and tranquil brow.

"Ah!" said she, to the nurse-in-chief, Mrs. Lita, "my poor baby, Maya!
What have I done? I have neglected to ask the Fairy Anima, and now
she will come in anger, and give my child an evil gift, unless
Cordis hastens!"

"Do not fear, Madam!" said Mrs. Lita, "your nerves are weak,--take a
little cordial."

So she gave the Queen a red glass full of honeybell whiskey; but she
called it a fine name, like Rose-dew, or Tears-of-Flax, and then
Queen Lura drank it down nicely;--so much depends on names, even in
Larrièrepensée!

But as Mrs. Lita set away the glass, the bees upon the ceiling began
to buzz in a most angry manner, and rally about the queen-bee; the
south-wind cried round the palace corner; and a strange light, like
the sun shining when it rains, threw a lurid glow over the graceful
fairy forms. Then the door of the hall flung open, and a beautiful,
wrathful shape crossed the threshold;--it was the Fairy Anima. Where
she gathered the gauzes that made her rainbow vest, or the
water-diamonds that gemmed her night-black hair, or the sun-fringed
cloud of purple that was her robe, no fay or mortal knew; but they
knew well the power of her presence, and grew pale at her anger.

With swift feet she neared the couch of state, but her steps
lingered as she saw within those crimson leaves the delicate,
fear-pale face of the Queen, and her sleeping child.

"Always rose-folded!" she murmured, "and I tread the winds abroad! A
fair bud, and I am but a stately stem! You were foolish and frail,
Queen Lura, that you sent me no word of your harvest-time; now I
come angry. Show me the child!"

Mrs. Lita, with awed steps, drew near, and lifted the baby in her
arms, and the child's soft hazel eyes looked with grave innocence at
Anima. Truly, the Princess was a lovely piece of nature: her hair,
like fine silk, fell in dark, yet gilded tresses from her snow-white
brow; her eyes were thoughtless, tender, serene; her lips red as the
heart of a peach; her skin so fair that it seemed stained with
violets where the blue veins crept lovingly beneath; and her dimpled
cheeks were flushed with sleep like the sunset sky.

Anima looked at the baby.--"Ah! too much, too much!" said she.
"Queen Lura, a butterfly can eat honey only; let us have a higher
life for the Princess of Larrièrepensée. Maya, I give thee for a
birth-gift another crown. Receive the Spark!"

Queen Lura shrieked; but Anima stretching out her wand, a snake of
black diamonds, with a blood-red head, touched the child's eyes, and
from the serpent's rapid tongue a spark of fire darted into either
eye, and sunk deeper and deeper,--for two tears flowed above, and
hung on Maya's silky lashes, as she looked with a preternatural
expression of reproach at the Fairy.

Now all was confusion. Queen Lura tried to faint,--she knew it was
proper,--and the grand-equerry rang all the palace bells in a row.
Anima gave no glance at the little Princess, who still sat upright
in Mrs. Lita's petrified arms, but went proudly from the hall alone.

The flower-fairies dropped their wands with one sonorous clang upon
the floor, and with bitter sighs and wringing hands flitted one
after another to the portal, bewailing, as they went, their wasted
gifts and powers.

"Why should I give her beauty?" cried the Fairy Rose; "all eyes will
be dazzled with the Spark; who will know on what form it shines?"

So the red rose dropped and died.

"Why should I bring her innocence?" said the Fairy Lily; "the Spark
will burn all evil from her, thought and deed!"

Then the white lily dropped and died.

"Is there any use to her in grace?" wept the Fairy Eglantine;
"the Spark will melt away all mortal grossness, till she is light
and graceful as the clouds above."

And the eglantine wreaths dropped and died.

"She will never want humility," said the Fairy Violet; "for she will
find too soon that the Spark is a curse as well as a crown!"

So the violet dropped and died.

Then the Sun-dew denied her pity; the blue Forget-me not, constancy;
the Iris, pride; the Butter-cup, gold; the Passion-flower, love; the
Amaranth, hope: all because the Spark should gift her with every one
of these, and burn the gift in deeply. So they all dropped and died;
and she could never know the flowers of life,--only its fires.

But in the end of all this flight came a ray of consolation, like
the star that heralds dawn, springing upward on the skirt of night's
blackest hour. The raging bees that had swarmed upon the golden
chandelier returned to the ceiling and their song; the scattered
flowers revived and scented the air: for the Fairy Cordis came,--too
late, but welcome; her face bright with flushes of vivid, but
uncertain rose,--her deep gray eyes brimming with motherhood, a
sister's fondness, and the ardor of a child. The tenderest
garden-spider-webs made her a robe, full of little common blue-eyed
flowers, and in her gold-brown hair rested a light circle of such
blooms as beguile the winter days of the poor and the desolate, and
put forth their sweetest buds by the garret window, or the bedside
of a sick man.

Mrs. Lita nearly dropped the baby, in her great relief of mind; but
Cordis caught it, and looked at its brilliant face with tears.

"Ah, Head of the Fairies, help me!" murmured Queen Lura, extending
her arms toward Cordis; for she had kept one eye open wide enough to
see what would happen while she fainted away.

"All I can, I will," said the kindly fairy, speaking in the same key
that a lark sings in. So she sat down upon a white velvet mushroom
and fell to thinking, while Maya, the Princess, looked at her from
the rose where she lay, and the Queen, having pushed her down robe
safely out of the way, leaned her head on her hand, and very
properly cried as much as six tears.

Soon, like a sunbeam, Cordis looked up. "I can give the Princess a
counter-charm, Queen Lura," said she,--"but it is not sure. Look you!
she will have a lonely life,--for the Spark burns, as well as shines,
and the only way to mend that matter is to give the fire better fuel
than herself. For some long years yet, she must keep herself in
peace and the shade; but when she is a woman, and the Spark can no
more be hidden,--since to be a woman is to have power and pain,--
then let her veil herself, and with a staff and scrip go abroad into
the world, for her time is come. Now in this kingdom of
Larrièrepensée there stand many houses, all empty, but swept and
garnished, and a fire laid ready on the hearth for the hand of the
Coming to kindle. But sometimes, nay, often, this fire is a cheat:
for there be men who carve the semblance of it in stone, and are so
content to have the chill for the blaze all their lives; and on some
hearths the logs are green wood, set up before their time; and on
some they are but ashes, for the fire has burned and died, and left
the ghostly shape of boughs behind; and sometimes, again, they are
but icicles clothed in bark, to save the shame of the possessor. But
there are some hearths laid with dry and goodly timber; and if the
Princess Maya does not fail, but chooses a real and honest heap of
wood, and kindles it from the Spark within her, then will she have a
most perfect life; for the fire that consumes her shall leave its
evil work, and make the light and warmth of a household, and rescue
her forever from the accursed crown of the Spark. But I grieve to
tell you, yet one of my name cannot lie--if the Princess mistake the
false for the true, if she flashes her fire upon stone, or ice, or
embers, either the Spark will recoil and burn her to ashes, or it
will die where she placed it and turn her to stone, or--worst fate
of all, yet likeliest to befall the tenderest and best--it will
reenter her at her lips, and turn her whole nature to the bitterness
of gall, so that neither food shall refresh her, sleep rest her,
water quench her thirst, nor fire warm her body. Is it worth the
trial? or shall she live and burn slowly to her death, with the
unquenchable fire of the Spark?"

"Ah! let her, at the least, try for that perfect life," said Queen
Lura.

Then the Fairy Cordis drew from her delicate finger a ring of
twisted gold, in which was set an opal wrought into the shape of a
heart, and in it palpitated, like throbbing blood, one scarlet flash
of flame.

"Let her keep this always on her hand," said Cordis. "It will serve
to test the truth of the fire she strives to kindle; for if it be
not true wood, this heart will grow cold, the throb cease, the glow
become dim. The talisman may, will, save her, unless in the madness
of joy she forget to ask its aid, or the Spark flashing upon its
surface seems to create anew the fire within, and thus deceives her."

So the Fairy put the ring upon Queen Lura's hand, and kissed Maya's
fair brow, already shaded with sleep. The bees upon the ceiling
followed her, dropping honey as they went; the maids-of-honor
wheeled away the couch of state; the castle-maids swept up the fading
leaves and blossoms, drew the tulip-tree curtains down, fastened the
great door with a sandal-wood bar, sprinkled the corridors with
rosewater; and by moonrise, when the nightingales sung loud from the
laurel thickets, all the country slept,--even Maya; but the Spark
burned bright, and she dreamed.

So the night came on, and many another night, and many a new day,--
till Maya, grown a girl, looked onward to the life before her with
strange foreboding, for still the Spark burned.

Hitherto it had been but a glad light on all things, except men and
women; for into their souls the Spark looked too far, and Maya's
open brow was shadowed deeply and often with sorrows not her own,
and her heart ached many a day for pains she could not or dared not
relieve; but if she were left alone, the illumination of the Spark
filled everything about her with glory. The sky's rapturous blue,
the vivid tints of grass and leaves, the dismaying splendor of
blood-red roses, the milky strawberry-flower, the brilliant
whiteness of the lily, the turquoise eyes of water-plants,--all
these gave her a pleasure intense as pain; and the songs of the winds,
the love-whispers of June midnights, the gathering roar of autumn
tempests, the rattle of thunder, the breathless and lurid pause
before a tropic storm,--all these the Spark enhanced and vivified;
till, seeing how blest in herself and the company of Nature the
Child of the Kingdom grew, Queen Lura deliberated silently and long
whether she should return the gift of the Fairy Cordis, and let Maya
live so tranquil and ignorant forever, or whether she should awaken
her from her dreams, and set her on her way through the world.

But now the Princess Maya began to grow pale and listless. Her eyes
shone brighter than ever, but she was consumed with a feverish
longing to see new and strange things. On her knees, and weeping,
she implored her mother to release her from the court routine, and
let her wander in the woods and watch the village children play.

So Queen Lura, having now another little daughter, named Maddala,
who was just like all other children, and a great comfort to her
mother, was the more inclined to grant Maya's prayer. She therefore
told Maya all that was before her, and having put upon her tiny
finger the fairy-ring, bade the tiring-woman take off her velvet robe,
and the gold circlet in her hair, and clothe her in a russet suit of
serge, with a gray kirtle and hood. King Joconde was gone to the wars.
Queen Lura cried a little, the Princess Maddala laughed, and Maya
went out alone,--not lonely, for the Spark burned high and clear,
and showed all the legends written on the world everywhere, and Maya
read them as she went.

Out on the wide plain she passed many little houses; but through all
their low casements the red gleam of a fire shone, and on the
door-steps clustered happy children, or a peasant bride with warm
blushes on her cheek sat spinning, or a young mother with pensive
eyes lulled her baby to its twilight sleep and sheltered it with
still prayers.

One of these kindly cottages harbored Maya for the night; and then
her way at dawn lay through a vast forest, where the dim tree-trunks
stretched far away till they grew undefined as a gray cloud, and
only here and there the sunshine strewed its elf-gold on ferns and
mosses, feathery and soft as strange plumage and costly velvet.
Sometimes a little brook with bubbling laughter crept across her
path and slid over the black rocks, gurgling and dimpling in the
shadow or sparkling in the sun, while fish, red and gold-speckled,
swam noiseless as dreams, and darting water-spiders, poised a moment
on the surface, cast a glittering diamond reflection on the yellow
sand beneath.

The way grew long, and Maya weary. The new leaves of opalescent tint
shed odors of faint and passionate sweetness; the birds sang
love-songs that smote the sense like a caress; a warm wind yearned
and complained in the pine boughs far above her; yet her heart grew
heavy, and her eyes dim; she was sick for home;--not for the palace
and the court; not for her mother and Maddala; but for home;--she
knew her exile, and wept to return.

That night, and for many nights, she slept in the forest; and when
at length she came out upon the plain beyond, she was pale and wan,
her dark eyes drooped, her slender figure was bowed and languid, and
only the mark upon her brow, where the coronet had fretted its
whiteness, betrayed that Maya was a princess born.

And now dwellings began to dot the country: brown cottages, with
clinging vines; villas, aërial and cloud-tinted, with pointed roofs
and capricious windows; huts, in which some poor wretch from his bed
of straw looked out upon the wasteful luxury of his neighbor, and,
loathing his bitter crust and turbid water, saw feasts spread in the
open air, where tropic fruits and beaded wine mocked his feverish
thirst; and palaces of stainless marble, rising tower upon tower, and
turret over turret, like the pearly heaps of cloud before a storm,
while the wind swept from their gilded lattices bursts of festal
music, the chorus that receives a bride, or the triumphal notes of a
warrior's return.

All these Maya passed by, for no door was open, and no fireless
hearth revealed; but before night dropped her starry veil, she had
travelled to a mansion whose door was set wide, and, within, a cold
hearth was piled with boughs of oak and beech. The opal upon Maya's
finger grew dim, but she moved toward the unlit wood, and at her
approach the false pretence betrayed itself; the ice glared before
her, and chilled her to the soul, as its shroud of bark fell off.
She fled over the threshold, and the house-spirit laughed with
bitter mirth; but the Spark was safe.

Now came thronging streets, and many an open portal wooed Maya, but
wooed in vain. Once, upon the steps of a quaint and picturesque
cottage stood an artist, with eyes that flashed heaven's own azure,
and lit his waving curls with a gleam of gold. His pleading look
tempted the Child of the Kingdom with potent affinities of land and
likeness; his fair cottage called her from wall and casement, with
the spiritual eyes of ideal faces looking down upon her, forever
changeless and forever pure; but when, from purest pity, kindness,
and beauty-love, she would have drawn near the hearth, a sigh like
the passing of a soul shivered by her, and before its breath the
shapely embers fell to dust, the hearth beneath was heaped with ashes,
and with tearful lids Maya turned away, and the house-spirit, weeping,
closed the door behind her.

Long days and nights passed ere she essayed again; and then, weary
and faint with home-woe, she lingered on the steps of a lofty house
whose carved door was swung open, whose jasper hearthstone was
heaped with goodly logs, and beside it, on the soft flower-strewn
skin of a panther, slept a youth beautiful as Adonis, and in his
sleep ever murmuring, "Mother!" Maya's heart yearned with a kindred
pang. She, too, was orphaned in her soul, and she would gladly have
lit the fire upon this lonely hearth, and companioned the solitude
of the sleeper; but, alas! the boughs still wore their summer garland,
and from each severed end slow tears of dryad-life distilled
honeyedly upon the stone beneath. Of such withes and saplings comes
no living fire! Maya, smiling, set a kiss upon the boy-sleeper's brow,
but the Spark lay quiet, and the house-spirit flung a blooming
cherry-bough after its departing guest.

The year was now wellnigh run. The Princess Maya despaired of home.
The earth seemed a harsh stepmother, and its children rather stones
than clay. A vague sense of some fearful barrier between herself and
her kind haunted the woman's soul within her, and the unquenchable
flames of the Spark seemed to girdle her with a defence that drove
away even friendly ingress. Night and day she wept, oppressed with
loneliness. She knew not how to speak the tongues of men, though
well she understood their significance. Only little children mated
rightly with her divine infancy; only the mute glories of nature
satisfied for a moment her brooding soul. The celestial impulses
within her beat their wings in futile longing for freedom, and with
inexpressible anguish she uttered her griefs aloud, or sung them to
such plaintive strains that all who heard wept in sympathy. Yet she
had no home.

After many days she came upon a broad, champaign, fertile land, where,
on a gentle knoll, among budding orchards, and fields green with
winter grains, stood a low, wide-eaved house, with gay parterres and
clipped hedges around it, all ordered with artistic harmony, while
over chimney and cornice crept wreaths of glossy ivy, every deep
green leaf veined with streaks of light, and its graceful sprays
clasping and clinging wherever they touched the chiselled stone
beneath. Upon the lawn opened a broad, low door, and the southern sun
streamed inward, showing the carved panels of the fireplace and its
red hearth, where heavy boughs of wood and splinters from the heart
of the pine lay ready for the hand of the Coming to kindle. Upon the
threshold, plucking out the dead leaves of the ivy, stood one from
whose face strength, and beauty, and guile that the guileless knew
not, shone sunlike upon Maya; and as she faltered and paused, he
spoke a welcome to her in her own language, and held toward her the
clasping hand of help. A thrill of mad joy cleft the heart of the
Princess, a glow of incarnate summer dyed with rose her cheek and lip,
the Spark blazed through her brimming eyes, weariness vanished.
"Home! home!" sung her rapt lips; and in the delirious ecstasy of
the hour she pressed toward the hearth, laid down her scrip and
staff upon the heaped wood, flung herself on the red stone, and,
heedless of the opal talisman, flashed outward from her joyful eyes
the Spark,--the Crown, the Curse! So a forked tongue of lightning
speeds from its rain-fringed cloud, and cleaves the oak to its centre;
so the blaze of a meteor rushes through mid-heaven, and--is gone!
The Spark lit, quivered, sunk, and flashed again; but the wood lay
unlighted beneath it. Maya gasped for breath, and with the long
respiration the Spark returned, lit upon her lips, seared them like
a hot iron, and entered into her heart,--the blighting canker of her
fate, a bitterness in flesh and spirit forevermore.

Writhing with anguish and contempt, she turned away from the wrought
stone whose semblance had beguiled her to her mortal loss; and as
she passed from the step, another hand lit a consuming blaze beneath
her staff and scrip, sending a sword of flame after her to the
threshold, and the house-spirit shrieked aloud, "Only stones
together strike fire, Maya!"--while from the casement above looked
forth two faces, false and fair, with eyes of azure ice, and
disdainful smiles, and bound together by a curling serpent, that
ringed itself in portentous symbol about their waists.

With star-like eyes, proud lips, and erect head, Maya went out. Her
laugh rang loud; her song soared in wild and mocking cadence to the
stars; her rigid brow wore scorn like a coronal of flame; and with a
scathed nature she trod the streets of the city, mixed with its
wondering crowds, made the Spark a blaze and a marvel in all lands,--
but hid the opal in her bosom; for its scarlet spot of life-blood
had dropped away, and the jewel was broken across.

So the wide world heard of Maya, the Child of the Kingdom, and from
land to land men carried the stinging arrows of her wit, or
signalled the beacon-fires of her scorn, while seas and shores
unknown echoed her mad and rapt music, or answered the veiled agony
that derided itself with choruses of laughter, from every mystic
whisper of the wave, or roar of falling headlands.

And then she fled away, lest, in the turbulent whirl of life, the
Curse should craze, and not slay her. For sleep had vanished with
wordless moans and frighted aspect from her pillow,--or if it dared,
standing afar off, to cast its pallid shadow there, still there was
neither rest nor refreshing in the troubled spell. Nor could the
thirst that consumed her quench itself with red wine or crystal water,
translucent grapes or the crimson fruits that summer kisses into
sweetness with her heats; forever longing, and forever unsated, it
parched her lips and burnt her gasping mouth, but there was no
draught to allay it. And even so food failed of its office. Kindly
hands brought to her, whose queenliness asserted itself to their
souls with an innocent loftiness, careless of pomp or insignia, all
delicate dates and exquisite viands; but neither the keen and
stimulating odors of savory meat, the crisp whiteness of freshest
bread, nor the slow-dropping gold of honeycomb could tempt her to eat.
The simplest peasant's fare, in measure too scanty for a linnet,
sustained her life; but the Curse lit even upon her food, and those
lips of fire burned all things in their touch to tasteless ashes.

So she fled away; for the forest was cool and lonely, and even as
she learned the lies and treacheries of men, so she longed to leave
them behind her and die in bitterness less bitter for its solitude.
But Maya fled not from herself: the winds wailed like the crying of
despair in her harp-voiced pines; the shining oak-leaves rustled
hisses upon her unstrung ear; the timid forest-creatures, who own no
rule but patient love and caresses, hid from her defiant step and
dazzling eye; and when she knew herself in no wise healed by the
ministries of Nature, in the very apathy of desperation she flung
herself by the clear fountain that had already fallen upon her lips
and cooled them with bitter water, and hiding her head under the
broad, fresh leaves of a calla that bent its marble cups above her
knitted brow and loosened hair, she lay in deathlike trance, till the
Fairy Anima swept her feet with fringed garments, and cast the
serpent wand writhing and glittering upon her breast.

"Wake, Maya!" said the organ-tones of the Spark-Bringer; and Maya
awoke.

"So! the Spark galls thee?" resumed those deep, bitter-sweet tones;
and for answer the Princess Maya held toward her, with accusing eyes,
the broken, bloodless opal.

"Cordis's folly!" retorted Anima. "Thou hadst done best without it,
Maya; the Spark abides no other fate but shining. Yet there is a
little hope for thee. Wilt thou die of the bitter fire, or wilt thou
turn beggar-maid? The sleep that charity lends to its couch shall
rest thee; the draught a child brings shall slake thy thirst; the
food pity offers shall strengthen and renew. But these are not the
gifts a Princess receives; she who gathers them must veil the Crown,
shroud the Spark, conceal the Curse, and in torn robes, with bare
and bleeding feet, beg the crumbs of life from door to door. Wilt
thou take up this trade?"

Maya rose up from the leaves of the cool lily, and put aside the
veiling masses of her hair.

"I will go!" she whispered, flutelike, for hope beat a living pulse
in her brain.

So with scrip and hood she went out of the forest and begged of the
world's bounty such life as a beggar-maid may endure.

Long ago the King and Queen died in Larrièrepensée, and there the
Princess Maddala reigns with a goodly Prince beside her, nor cares
for her lost sister; but songless, discrowned, desolate, Maya walks
the earth.

All ye whose fires burn bright on the hearth, whose dwellings ring
with child-laughter, or are hushed with love-whispers and the peace
of home, pity the Princess Maya! Give her food and shelter; charm
away the bitter flames that consume her life and soul; drop tears
and alms together into the little wasted hand that pleads with dumb
eloquence for its possessor; and even while ye pity and protect,
revere that fretted mark of the Crown that still consecrates to the
awful solitude of sorrow Maya, the Child of the Kingdom!

       *       *       *       *       *




  CATAWBA WINE.

      This song of mine
        Is a Song of the Vine,
  To be sung by the glowing embers
        Of wayside inns,
        When the rain begins
  To darken the drear Novembers.

      It is not a song
        Of the Scuppernong,
  From warm Carolinian valleys,--
        Nor the Isabel
        And the Muscatel
  That bask in our garden alleys,--

      Nor the red Mustang,
      Whose clusters hang
  O'er the waves of the Colorado,
      And the fiery flood
      Of whose purple blood
  Has a dash of Spanish bravado.

      For richest and best
      Is the wine of the West,
  That grows by the Beautiful River;
      Whose sweet perfume
      Fills all the room
  With a benison on the giver.

      And as hollow trees
      Are the haunts of bees
  Forever going and coming,
      So this crystal hive
      Is all alive
  With a swarming and buzzing and humming.

      Very good in their way
      Are the Verzenay,
  And the Sillery soft and creamy;
      But Catawba wine
      Has a taste more divine,
  More dulcet, delicious, and dreamy.

      There grows no vine
      By the haunted Rhine,
  By Danube or Guadalquivir,
      Nor on island or cape,
      That bears such a grape
  As grows by the Beautiful River.

      Drugged is their juice
      For foreign use,
  When shipped o'er the reeling Atlantic,
      To rack our brains
      With the fever pains
  That have driven the Old World frantic.

      To the sewers and sinks
      With all such drinks,
  And after them tumble the mixer!
      For a poison malign
      Is such Borgia wine,
  Or at best but a Devil's Elixir.

      While pure as a spring
      Is the wine I sing,
  And to praise it, one needs but name it;
      For Catawba wine
      Has need of no sign,
  No tavern-bush to proclaim it.

      And this Song of the Vine,
      This greeting of mine,
  The winds and the birds shall deliver
      To the Queen of the West,
      In her garlands dressed,
  On the banks of the Beautiful River.

       *       *       *       *       *




THE WINDS AND THE WEATHER.


  _The Physical Geography of the Sea_. By M. F. MAURY. New York:
    Harper & Brothers. 1857.

  _Climatology of the United States and of the Temperate Latitudes
    of the North American Continent_. By LORIN BLODGET. Philadelphia: J.
    B. Lippincott & Co. 1857.

  _Proceedings of the British Association for the Advancement of
    Science_. 1857.

An eloquent philosopher, depicting the deplorable results that would
follow, if some future materialist were "to succeed in displaying to
us a mechanical system of the human mind, as comprehensive,
intelligible, and satisfactory as the Newtonian mechanism of the
heavens," exclaims, "Fallen from their elevation, Art and Science
and Virtue would no longer be to man the objects of a genuine and
reflective adoration." We are led, in reflecting upon the far more
probable success of the meteorologist, to similar forebodings upon
the dulness and sameness to which social intercourse will be reduced
when the weather philosophers shall succeed in subjecting the changes
of the atmosphere to rules and predictions,--when the rain shall
fall where it is expected, the wind blow no longer "where it listeth,"
and wayward man no longer find his counterpart in nature. But we
console ourselves by contemplating the difficulties of the problem,
and the improbability, that, in our generation at least, we shall be
deprived of these subjects of general news and universal interest.

During the last half-century, the progress of experimental
philosophy in the direction of the weather, though its results are
for the most part of a negative character, has yet been sufficient
to excite the apprehensions of the philanthropist. We have unlearned
many fables and false theories, and have made great advancement in
that knowledge of our ignorance, which is the only true foundation
of positive science.

The moon has been deposed from the executive chair, though she still
has her supporters and advocates; and an innumerable host of minor
causes are found to constitute, upon strictly republican principles,
the ruling power of the winds and the rain. That regularity, however
complicated, which reason still demands, and expects even from the
weather, is not found to be so simple as our rules and signs of the
weather indicate; for the operation of these innumerable causes is
so complicated, that the repetition of similar phenomena or similar
combinations of causes, to any great extent, is the most improbable
of events. Perhaps the meteorologist will ultimately find that
Nature has succeeded, in what seems, indeed, to be her aim, in
completely retracing her steps, and reducing the operation of that
simple and regular system of causes, which she brought out of chaos,
back to a confusion of detail, from which all law and regularity are
obliterated.

Meteorological observations have, however, determined many regular
and constant causes and a few regular phenomena. The method pursued
in these investigations is, for the most part, the elimination, by
general averages, of limited and temporary changes in the elements
of the weather, and the determination of those changes which depend
upon the constant influences of locality, of season, and of constant
or slowly varying causes. These constant influences constitute the
climate; and the study of climates is thus the first step towards
the solution of the problem of the weather. Climates, in their
changes and distribution, are very important elements in the
determination of the movements of the weather, and are to the
meteorologist what the elements of the planetary orbits are to the
astronomer; but, unlike planetary perturbations, the weather makes
the most reckless excursions from its averages, and obscures them by
a most inconsequent and incalculable fickleness.

Whether mechanical science will hereafter succeed in calculating
these perturbations of climate, as we may style the weather, or will
find the problem beyond its capacity, it will yet, doubtless, account
for much that is now obscure, as observation brings the facts more
distinctly to view. We propose to give a brief general survey of the
mechanics of the atmosphere in its present state, and to indicate
the nature and limits of our knowledge on this subject.

Among the first noticed and most remarkable features of regularity
in atmospheric changes are constant, periodic, and prevailing winds.
The most remarkable instances of these are the trade-winds of the
torrid zone, the monsoons of the Indian Ocean, and the prevailing
southwest wind of our northern temperate latitudes. Of these, the
trade-winds are the most important to science, as furnishing the key
to that general explanation of the winds which was first advanced by
the distinguished Halley.

In Halley's celebrated theory, the trade-winds are explained as the
effects of the unequal distribution of the sun's heat in different
latitudes. The air of the equator, heated more than the northern or
southern air, expands more, and overflows, moving in the upper
regions of the atmosphere toward the poles; while the lower, colder
air on both sides moves toward the equator to preserve equilibrium.
Thus an extensive circulation is carried on. The air that moves from
the equator in the upper atmosphere, gradually sinking to the surface
of the earth, finally ceases to move toward the poles, and returns
as an undercurrent to the equator, where it again rises and moves
toward the poles.

Now the air of the equator, moving with the earth's rotary motion,
has a greater velocity than the earth itself at high northern or
southern latitudes, and consequently appears to gain an eastward
motion in its progress toward the poles. Without friction, this
relative eastward motion would increase as the air moves toward the
poles, and diminish at the same rate as the air returns, till at the
equator the velocity of the earth and of the air would again be equal;
but friction reduces the motion of the returning air to that of the
earth, at or near the calms of the tropics; so that the air, passing
the tropics, gains a relative westward motion in its further
progress through the torrid zone. The southwestward motion thus
produced between the tropic of Cancer and the equator is the
well-known trade-wind.

Now, according to this theory, the prevailing winds of our temperate
latitudes ought to have a southeastward motion as far as the calms
of Cancer or "the horse latitudes." Moreover, instead of these calms,
there should still be a southward motion. But observation has shown,
that though the prevailing lower winds of our latitude move eastward,
still their motion is toward the north rather than the south; so
that they appear to contradict the theory by which the trade-winds
are explained.

To account for these anomalies, Lieut. Maury has invented a very
ingenious hypothesis, which is published in his "Physical Geography
of the Sea." He supposes that the air, which passes from the equator
toward the poles in the upper regions of the atmosphere, is brought
down to the surface of the earth beyond the calms of the tropics,
and that it thence proceeds with an increasing eastward motion,
appearing in our northern hemisphere as the prevailing northeastward
winds. Approaching the poles with a spiral motion, the air there
rises, according to this hypothesis, in a vortex, and returns toward
the equator in the upper atmosphere, gradually acquiring a westward
motion; till, returning to the tropics, it is again brought down to
the earth, and thence proceeds, with a still increasing westward
motion, as the trade-winds. At the equator the air rises again, and,
according to Lieut. Maury, crosses to the other side, and proceeds
through a similar course in the other hemisphere.

The rising of the air at the equator is supposed to cause the
equatorial rains; and the drought of the tropics is also explained
by that descent of the air, in these latitudes, which this
hypothesis supposes.

Now although this hypothesis explains the phenomena, it has still
met with great opposition. The motions which Lieut. Maury supposes
can hardly be accounted for without resorting, as is usual in such
cases, to electricity or magnetism,--to some occult cause, or some
occult operation of a known cause. Moreover, it has been difficult
for the mechanical philosopher to understand how the winds manage to
cross each other, as Lieut. Maury supposes them to do, at the
equator and the tropics, without getting into "entangling alliances."
If this hypothesis were advanced, not as a physical explanation of
the phenomena, but, like the epicycles and eccentrics of Ptolemy,
"to save the appearances," its ingenuity would be greatly to its
author's credit; but, like the epicycles and eccentrics, though it
represents the phenomena well enough, it contradicts laws of motion,
now well known, which ought to be familiar to every physical
philosopher. But these speculations of Lieut. Maury will now be
superseded by a new theory of atmospheric movements, an account of
which was presented by its author, Mr. J. Thompson, at the recent
meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. [1]

[Footnote 1: A fuller discussion of this theory the author
reserved for the Royal Society. The _London Athenaeum_ gives a brief
abstract of his paper, in its report of the proceedings of the
Association.]

Mr. Thompson's theory takes account of forces, hitherto unnoticed,
which are generated by the eastward circulation of the atmosphere in
high latitudes. He shows that these forces cause the prevailing
northeastward under-current of our latitudes, while above this, yet
below the highest northeastward current, the air ought still to move
southward according to Halley's theory.

This under-current is not the immediate effect of differences of
temperature, but a secondary effect induced by the friction of the
earth's surface and the continual deflection of the air's eastward
motion from a great circle, (in which the air tends to move,) into
the small circle of the latitude, in which the air actually does move.
The force of this deflection, measured by the centrifugal force of
the air as it circulates around the pole, retards the movement from
the equator, and finally wholly suspends it; so that the upper air
circulates around in the higher latitudes as water may be made to
circulate in a pail; and the air is drawn away from the polar
regions as this circulatory motion is communicated to it, and tends
to accumulate in the middle latitudes, as the circulating water is
heaped up around the sides of the pail. Hence, in the middle
latitudes there is a greater weight of air than at the poles, and
this tends to press the lower air to higher latitudes. Centrifugal
force, however, balances this pressure, so long as the lower air
moves with the velocity of the upper strata; but as the friction of
the earth retards its motion and diminishes its centrifugal force,
it gradually yields to the pressure of the air above it, and moves
toward the poles. Near the polar circles it is again retarded by its
increasing centrifugal force, and it returns through the middle
regions of the atmosphere.

Thus there are two systems of atmospheric circulation in each
hemisphere. The principal one extends from the equator to high
middle latitudes and partly overlies the other, which extends from
the tropical calms to the polar circles. These two circulations move
in opposite directions; like two wheels, when one communicates its
motion to the other by the contact of their circumferences.

In the middle latitudes the lower current of the principal
circulation lies upon the upper current of the secondary circulation,
and both move together toward the equator. This principal lower
current first touches the earth's surface beyond the tropical calms,
and having lost its relative eastward motion and now tending westward,
it appears as the trade-wind, very regular and constant; while the
upper secondary current returns, without reaching the tropics, as an
undercurrent, and in our latitude appears as the prevailing
northeastward wind,--a very feeble motion, usually lost in the
weather winds and other disturbances, and only appearing distinctly
in the general average.

Mr. Thompson illustrates the effect of the friction of the earth's
surface on the eastward circulation of the air by a very simple
experiment with a pail of water. If we put into the pail grains of
any material a little heavier than water, and then give the water a
rotatory motion by stirring it, the grains ought, by the centrifugal
force imparted to them, to collect around the sides of the pail; but,
sinking to the bottom, they do in fact tend to collect at the centre,
carried inward by those currents which the friction of the sides and
bottom indirectly produces.

Thus Mr. Thompson's beautiful and philosophical theory completes
that of Halley, and explains all those apparent anomalies which have
hitherto seemed irreconcilable with the only rational account of the
trade-winds. The rainless calms of the tropics are explained by this
theory without that crossing and interference of winds which Lieut.
Maury supposes; for the secondary circulation returns as an
under-current toward the poles without reaching the tropics, and the
dry lower current of the principal circulation passes over the
tropical latitudes, in its gradual descent, before it reaches the
earth as the trade-winds.

These trade-winds, absorbing moisture from the sea, precipitate it
as they rise again, and produce the constant equatorial rains; and
these rains, doubtless, tend much more powerfully than the mere
unequal distribution of heat to direct the wind toward the equator;
for the fall of rain rapidly diminishes the pressure of the air and
disturbs its equilibrium, so that violent winds are frequently
observed to blow toward rainy districts. Thus, primarily, the unequal
distribution of heat, and, more immediately, the equatorial rains
cause the principal circulation of our atmosphere; and this
indirectly produces the secondary circulation of Mr. Thompson's
theory. Both these regular movements are, however, greatly disturbed,
and especially the latter, by winds which are occasioned by local
and irregular rains.

In these movements and their causes we have the general outline of
our subject, within which we must now sketch the weather. The causes
of atmospheric movement, which we have thus far considered, are the
unequal distribution of the sun's heat, the absorption and
precipitation of moisture, the direct and the inductive action of
the earth's rotation and friction. If to these we should add the
tidal action of the sun's and moon's attractions, we should perhaps
complete the list of _vera causae_ which are certainly known to
exert a more or less general influence upon the atmosphere. But this
short list is long enough, as we shall soon see.

If the earth were wholly covered with water of a uniform depth, its
climates would be distributed with greater regularity, and the
perturbations of climate would be comparatively small and regular;
though even under such circumstances there would still exist a
tendency to discontinuity and complexity of movements from that
influence of rain, the peculiar character of which we shall soon
consider.

The irregular distribution of land and water, and the peculiar
action of each in imparting the heat of the sun to the incumbent air,--
the irregular distribution of plains and mountains, and their various
effects in different positions and at different altitudes,--the
distribution of heat effected by ocean currents,--all these tend to
produce permanent derangements of climate and great irregularities
in the weather. To these we must add what the astronomer calls
disturbing actions of the second order,--effects of the disturbances
themselves upon the action of the disturbing agencies,--effects of
the irregular winds upon the distribution of heat and rain, and upon
the action of lands and seas, mountains and plains. Though such
disturbances are comparatively insignificant in the motions of the
planets, yet in the weather they are often more important than the
primary causes.

The aggregate and permanent effect of all these disturbing causes,
primary and secondary, is seen in that irregular distribution of
climates, which the tortuous isothermal lines and the mottled
raincharts illustrate. The isothermal lines may be regarded as the
topographical delineations of that bed of temperatures down which
the upper atmosphere flows from the equator toward the poles, till
its downward tendency is balanced by the centrifugal force of its
eastward motion. This irregular bed shifts from month to month, from
day to day, and even from hour to hour; and the lines that are drawn
on the maps are only averages for the year or the season.

In the midst of these irregular, but continuous agencies, the rain
introduces a peculiar discontinuity, and turns irregularity into
discord. We have shown that the rain is an immediate cause of wind;
but how is the rain itself produced? For so marked an effect we
naturally seek a special cause; but no adequate single cause has
ever been discovered. The combination of many conditions, probably,
is necessary, such as a peculiar distribution of heat and moisture
and atmospheric movements; though the immediate cause of the fall of
rain is doubtless the rising, and consequent expansion and cooling,
of the saturated air.

The winds that blow hither and thither, vainly striving to restore
equilibrium to the atmosphere, burden themselves with the moisture
they absorb from the seas; and this moisture absorbs their heat,
retards their motion, and slowly modifies the forces which impel them.
Now when the saturated air, extending far above the surface of the
earth, and carried in its movements still higher, is relieved of an
incumbent weight of air, it becomes rarefied, and its temperature
and capacity for moisture are simultaneously diminished; its moisture,
suddenly precipitated, appears as a cloud, the particles of which
collect into rain-drops and fall to the earth. Thus the air suddenly
loses much of its weight, and instead of restoring equilibrium to
the troubled atmosphere, it introduces a new source of disturbance.
Though the weight of the air is diminished by the fall of rain, yet
the bulk is increased by the expansive force of the latent heat
which the condensed vapors set free. Thus the rainy air expands
upwards and flows outwards, and no longer able to balance the
pressure of the surrounding air, it is carried still higher by
inblowing winds, which rise in turn and continue the process, often
extending the storm over vast areas. The force of these movements is
measured partly by the force of latent heat set free, and partly by
the mechanical power of the rain-fall, a very small fraction of
which constitutes the water-power of all our rivers. Such a fruitful
source of disturbance, generated by so slight an accident as the
upward movement of the saturated air, expanded by its own agency to
so great an extent, so sudden and discontinuous in its action, so
obscure in its origin, and so distinct in its effects,--such a
phenomenon defies the powers of mathematical prediction, and rouses
all the winds to sedition.

A storm not only disturbs the lower winds, but its influences reach
even to the upper movements. The sudden expansion and rising of the
rainy air delay these movements, which afterwards react as violent
winds.

The forces stored away by the gradual rise of vapor and its
absorption of heat, and then suddenly exhibited in a mechanical form
by the effects of rain, afford an illustration of that principle of
conservation and economy of power, of which there are so many
examples in modern science. No power is ever destroyed. Whether
exhibited as heat or mechanical force, in the products and forces of
chemical or of vital action, in movement or in altered conditions of
motion,--whether changed by the growth of plants into fuel or into
food, and converted again to heat by combustion or by vital processes,
and brought out as mechanical power in the steam-engine or in the
horse,--it is still the same power, and is measured in each of its
forms by an invariable standard. It first appears as the heat of the
sun, and a portion escapes at once back into space, while the rest
passes first through a series of transformations. A part is changed
into moving winds or into suspended vapor, and a part into fuel or
food. From conditions of motion it is changed into motion; from
motion it is changed by friction or resistance into heat, electric
force, molecular vibrations, or into new conditions of motion, and
passing through its course of changes, it remains embroiled in its
permanent effects or escapes into space as heat.

Though mechanical science will probably never be able to predict the
beginning or duration of storms, it will yet, doubtless, be able to
account for all their general features, and for such distinct local
peculiarities as observation may determine. Great advancement has
already been made in the determination of prevailing winds and in
the study of storms. Two theories have been brought forward upon the
general movements of storms; both have been proved, to the entire
satisfaction of their advocates, by the storms themselves; and
probably both are, with some limitations, true. The first of these
theories we have already described. According to it, the winds move
inward toward the centre of the storm; according to the other theory,
they blow in a circumference around the centre.

Observations upon storms of small extent, such as thunder-storms or
tornadoes, show very clearly that the winds blow toward the stormy
district. But when observations are made upon the winds within the
district of such extensive storms as sometimes visit the United
States, the directions of the wind are found to be so various, that
the advocates of either theory, making due allowance for local
disturbances, can triumphantly refute their adversaries. In such
storms there are doubtless many centres or maxima of rain, and
whether the wind move around or toward these centres, it would
inevitably get confused.

The opinion, that the winds move around the central point or line of
the storm, was strenuously maintained by the late Mr. Redfield,
whose activity in his favorite pursuit has connected his name
inseparably with meteorology. Others have maintained the same opinion,
and the rotatory motion of the tropical hurricanes is offered as a
principal proof. It is obvious from the causes of motion already
considered, that, if the air is carried far, by its tendency toward a
rainy district, it will acquire a secondary relative motion from its
change of latitude; and this, in our hemisphere, if the air move
toward the south, will be westward,--if toward the north, eastward.
Hence the motion of the air from both directions toward a stormy
district is deflected to the right side of the storm; and this gives
rise to that motion from right to left which is observed in the
hurricanes of the northern hemisphere.

To suppose, as many do, that regular winds, arising from constant
and extensive causes, can come into bodily conflict and preserve
their identity and original impetus for days, without immediate and
strongly impelling forces to sustain their motion, implies a
profound ignorance of mechanical science, and is little better than
those ancient superstitions which gave a personal identity to the
winds. The momentum of ordinary winds is a feeble force in
comparison with those forces of pressure and friction which
continually modify it. Hence sudden changes in the direction and
intensity of winds must primarily arise from similar changes in
these forces. But there are no known forces which change so suddenly,
except the pressure and latent heat of suspended vapor; and therefore
the fall of rain is the only adequate known cause of those
storm-winds which, interpolated among the gentler winds, keep the
atmosphere in perpetual commotion.

Storms have, however, certain habits and peculiarities, more or less
regular and distinct, which depend upon locality and season. And
this is what ought to be expected; for, though the storms themselves
are essentially anomalous, yet many of the causes which cooperate to
induce them are constant or periodic, while others are subject to
but slight perturbations. It is obvious that no more moisture can be
precipitated than has been evaporated, and that the winds only gain
suddenly by the fall of rain the forces which they have lost at their
leisure in the absorption of moisture. Thus the rage of the storm is
kept within bounds, and though the exact period at which the winds
are set free cannot be determined, yet their force and frequency
must be subject to certain limitations. The study of the habits and
peculiarities of storms is of the greatest importance to navigation
and agriculture, and these arts have already been benefited by the
labors of the meteorologist.

The lawlessness of the weather, within certain limitations, though
discouraging to the physical philosopher, has yet its bright side
for the student of final causes. The uses of the weather and its
adaptation to organic life are subjects of untiring interest. The
progression of the seasons, varied by differences of latitude, is
also diversified and adapted to a fuller development of organic
variety by irregularities of climate.

The regular alternations of day and night, summer and winter, dry
seasons and wet, are adapted to those alternations of organic
functions which belong to the economy of life. The vital forces of
plants and of the lower orders of animals have not that
self-determining capacity of change which is necessary to the
complete development of life; but they persist in their present mode
of action, and, when they are not modified by outward changes,
reduce life to its simplest phases. Changes of growth are effected
by those apparent hardships to which life is subject; and progression
in new directions is effected by retrogression in previous modes of
growth. The old leaves and branches must fall, the wood must be
frost-bitten or dried, the substance of seeds must wither and then
decay, the action of leaves must every night be reversed, vines and
branches must be shaken by the winds, that the energies and the
materials of new forms of life may be rendered active and available.

Some of the outward changes of nature are regular and periodic, while
others, without law or method, are apparently adapted by their
diversity to draw out the unlimited capacities and varieties of life;
so that as inorganic nature approaches a regulated confusion, the
more it tends to bring forth that perfect order, of which fragments
appear in the incomplete system of actual organic life.

The classification of organic forms presents to the naturalist, not
the structure of a regular though incomplete development, but the
broken and fragmentary form of a ruin. We may suppose, then, with a
recent physiological writer, that the creation of those organic
forms which constitute this fragmentary system was effected in the
midst of an elemental storm, a regulated confusion, uniting all the
external conditions which the highest capacities and the greatest
varieties of organized life require for their fullest development;
and that as the storm subsided into a simpler, but less genial
diversity,--into the weather,--whole orders and genera and species
sank with it from the ranks of possible organic forms. The weather,
fallen from its high estate, no longer able to develope, much less to
create new forms, can only sustain those that are left to its care.

Man finds himself everywhere mirrored in nature. Wayward, inconstant,
always seeking rest, always impelled by new evils, the greatest of
which he himself creates,--protecting and cherishing or blighting and
destroying the fragmentary life of a fallen nature,--incapable
himself of creating new capacities, but nourishing in prosperity and
quickening in adversity those that are left,--he sees the workings of
his own life in the strife of the elements. His powers and activities
are related to his spiritual capacities, as inorganic movements are
related to an organizing life. The resurrection of his higher nature
is like a new creation, secret, sudden, inconsequent. "The wind
bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but
canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth; so is every
one that is born of the Spirit."

       *       *       *       *       *




AKIN BY MARRIAGE [Continued]


CHAPTER IV.

The designs of Mr. Elam Hunt upon the hand of Laura Stebbins have
already been mentioned, in a former chapter of this history, as well
as the fact that his hopes were encouraged by Mrs. Jaynes who
(to make no secret of the matter) had pledged her word to the
enamored Elam, that when he should be settled in a parish of his own,
Laura should be added to complete the sum of his felicity.

To this agreement Laura herself was not a party; nay, her consent
had never been so much as asked; for though Elam knew that marriage
by proxy was impossible, and, indeed, would doubtless have preferred
to be the bridegroom at his own wedding, he had no objection
whatever to a vicarious courtship; for he was not a forward suitor,
delighting to prattle of his pains to his fair tormentor, as the way
of many is. But touching all the terms and conditions of this
contract Laura was informed by Mrs. Jaynes, who, when the other
protested with tears and sobs against this disposition of her person
without even asking her leave thereto, replied, with a quiet voice
and manner, that she had the right to make the promise in Laura's
name, and had done so upon due consideration.

This ominous reserve frightened Laura far more than an angry reply
would have done; for when her sister spoke with such brief decision,
it was a sign that her mind was made up; and Laura knew full well
the resolute purpose with which Mrs. Jaynes was wont to pursue any
design that she had once formed. She distrusted her own ability to
withstand her sister's inflexible will, and felt a secret misgiving,
that, in spite of herself, she would by some means be forced or
persuaded to yield at last. This very lack of faith in her own power
of resistance caused her more distress and terror than all her other
fears. Sometimes she almost fancied a spell of enchantment had been
put upon her, which would render all her efforts to escape her fate
as unavailing as the struggles of a gnat in a spider's web.

A friend in time of trouble is like a staff to one that is lame or
weary. But when Laura, in these straits, leaned upon her dearest
friend, Cornelia, for aid and comfort, she found but a broken reed;
for, instead of words of consolation and encouragement, Cornelia
uttered only dismal prophecies that Laura was surely doomed to be
the young parson's bride.

"If you only had another lover to run away with, now," said she,
"why, then it would be delightful to have your sister act as she does;
but, as it is, I'm sure I don't see any way to avoid it."

"Nor I," cried Laura, sinking still deeper in despair. "Oh, dear!
what shall I do?"

"In novels, you know," pursued Cornelia, "where there's a cruel,
tyrannical father, like your sister, there's always a hero in love
with the heroine----"

"I'm sure I wish there was a hero in love with me," said Laura,
thinking of her own hero in regimentals. "I'd run away with him,"
she added, with animation, "if--if both his legs were shot off,"--not
considering duly, I dare say, how greatly such a dreadful mutilation,
however glorious in itself, would conflict with the rapid locomotion
essential to her plan of elopement.

But when Tira Blake came to be told of Laura's trouble, and the
reasons of it, that sage and prudent friend gave counsel that
cheered her like a cordial, telling her it would be sinful to marry
a man whom she disliked so heartily, and that in such a matter no
one had the right to demand or enforce obedience.

"It's bad enough to be married when you're willin'," said she;
"but when you a'n't willin', there's no law nor no gospel to make you."

"But if Maria should compel me, what should I do?" cried Laura, to
whom her sister's will seemed more mighty than both law and gospel.

"She can't," replied Statira, sententiously; "she can't. Her 'yes,'
in such a case, is only good for herself; it can't make you any
man's wife.--What shall you do? Why, nothin',--nothin' in the world.
If they should bring bridegroom and parson, and stand you up side of
him by main force, (which of course is foolish to think of their
doing so, only I suppose it just to show you what I mean,) even in
such a case you needn't do anything. Keep your mouth shut and your
head from bobbin', and there a'n't lawyers, nor squires, nor parsons,
nor parsons' wives either for that matter, enough in all Connecticut
to marry you to a mouse, let alone a man. Humph!" added Miss Blake,
with scornful accent, "I should like to see 'em set out to marry me
to anybody I didn't want to have!"

There was nothing in all that Tira said which Laura did not know
before; but it was uttered in such a way that it sounded in her ears
like a new revelation, filling her heart with peace and comfort, and
inspiring her with hope and courage. The magic spell that had
enthralled her spirit was broken by the power of a few cheery,
confident, assuring words. A heavy weight seemed lifted from her
heart, and, relieved from the pressure, her spirits rose, joyous and
elastic. The shadow was dispelled which had darkened her future, and
the sun seemed to shine brighter and the birds to sing more sweetly.
She herself was changed,--or at least it was hard to believe she was
the same Laura Stebbins who, the night before, had cried herself to
sleep, and whose doleful visage, that very morning, had looked out
at her from the mirror. She flew at Tira in a transport, and,
without asking her leave, kissed her twenty times in less than a
minute, after a fashion that (I say it with reverence) would have
tantalized even a deacon. She clapped her hands, she laughed, she
danced, she went swaying on tiptoe around the room with a jaunty step,
singing and keeping time to a waltz tune; and finally, pausing near
the window, she doubled a tiny fist, as white as a snowball,
bringing it down into the rosy palm of her other hand with a gesture
of resolute determination, at the same time uttering, through closed
teeth and with compressed and puckered lips, an oft-repeated vow,
that, never, _never_, the longest day she lived, would she marry
Elam Hunt, to please anybody,--as her sister Maria (said she, with a
saucy toss of the head) would find, if she tried to make her!

I doubt greatly, whether, if Laura had known what I am now going to
tell my reader, she would have indulged in such vivacious pranks,
and bold, defiant words: namely, that Mrs. Jaynes was hearing
everything she said, and, in fact, had listened to and taken special
heed of nearly the whole conversation, a part of which has been set
forth above. Coming through the wicket in the garden fence, on an
errand to the Bugbee kitchen, the sound of her own name, in Laura's
excited tones, struck Mrs. Jaynes's ear and excited her curiosity.
Walking nearer to the house, and concealing herself behind a little
thicket of lilac bushes, near the open window of Statira's bedroom,
she was enabled to hear with distinctness almost every word uttered
by the unconscious conspirators, who were plotting against the
fulfilment of her cherished project.

There is good reason for believing that what Mrs. Jaynes overheard,
while lying in ambush, as has been related, excited in her heart
emotions of indignation and resentment. Be that as it may, no trace
of displeasure was visible upon her face or in her voice or manner,
when, a few minutes afterwards, she stood by the side of the
unsuspicious Tira, in the back veranda of the house, holding in her
hand a plate containing a pat of butter she had just borrowed from
the Doctor's housekeeper, while the latter, peeping through the
curtain of vine-leaves, gazed at as pretty a spectacle as just then
could have been seen anywhere in Belfield. On the grassplot, in the
shade of a great cherry-tree, Laura and Helen were playing at graces.
Both were full of frolicsome glee; the former, with spirits in their
first glad rebound from recent despondency, being wild with gayety,
enjoying the sport no less than the merry child, her playmate.
Laura's glowing face was fairly radiant with beauty, and her figure
was unconsciously displayed in such a variety of bewitching
attitudes and dainty postures, that even a pair of frisky kittens,
that had been chasing each other round the grassplot and up and down
the stems of the cherry-trees, ceased their gambols and lay still,
crouching in the grass, and watching her graceful motions, as if
taking heed for future imitation. If Kit and Tabby really did regard
Laura with admiration and complacency, it was more than I can say
for Mrs. Jaynes, in whose heart a secret rage was burning, though
her aspect and demeanor were as placid and demure as if the butter
she held in her hand would not have melted in her pursed-up mouth.

Mrs. Jaynes, for reasons of her own, thought proper to keep
her temper in control, abstaining from any manifestation of
displeasure for a much longer time than while she remained
standing in the back veranda of Doctor Bugbee's house. She did not
think it prudent to apprise Laura that her rebellious conference
with Statira had been discovered, nor to forbid her from holding
further communication with her evil counsellors; but contented
herself, for the present, with keeping a stricter watch over her
sister's conduct, by practising with increased rigor and vigilance
that efficient system of tactics hereinbefore commemorated, by which
the ardor of Laura's chance admirers was repressed and their
advances repelled, and by alluding, from time to time, to Laura's
prospective nuptials, as to an event predestined and inevitable, or,
at least, no less sure to come to pass than if Laura herself had
engaged her hand to Mr. Hunt of her own free will and accord, and
was only waiting to be asked to name the wedding-day.

It was many months after Elam left the shady height of East Windsor
Hill before he received a call to settle; for though he preached in
different parts on trial, before many congregations that were
destitute of pastors, none of these fastidious flocks would listen
to his voice a second time, or agree to choose him for its shepherd.
At last, however, the people of Walbury, a town in Windham County,
lying nearly twenty miles from Belfield, made choice of Mr. Hunt to
be their spiritual guide, and accordingly extended to him an
invitation to be ordained and installed as the settled minister over
their ancient parish. Upon receiving this proposal, Elam at once
despatched a letter to his friend and ally, Mrs. Jaynes, informing
her of his good fortune, and suggesting that Laura should at once
bestir herself in preparations for their wedding, in order that this
blissful event might precede his ordination. Then, after waiting for
the lapse of that period of decorous delay which immemorial usage
has prescribed in such cases, he indited an epistle to the church in
Walbury, stating, in proper and accustomed form, that his native
humility inclined him to refuse their request; but that, after a
wrestle with his inclinations, he had got the better of them, and
had resolved to sacrifice his own wishes and feelings, and to enter
the field of labor to which the Israel in Walbury had invited him.

A year and more had elapsed since Laura, encouraged by Tira Blake's
assuring words, had begun to hope that a better fate was in store
for her than to become the wife of a man she detested. Meanwhile,
Elam had often come to Belfield, sometimes preaching a sermon for
Mr. Jaynes, and going away again, after a brief sojourn, without
having opened his mouth to Laura to speak of love or marriage. At
his later visits it was evident that he was inclined to despond
about his prospects of getting a settlement, and Laura began to
entertain strong hopes that he never would be successful; for she
would have given up all the chances of beholding her military hero
in person, and would have been content to live a maid forever,
continually waiting for Elam, if she could have been assured the
time would never come for him to claim her.

But, one morning, after breakfast, having made her bed and arranged
her chamber, singing blithely all the while, she was just going to
sit down by the window with her sewing, when Mrs. Jaynes came in
with a letter in her hand. Laura guessed at once that the letter was
from Elam, and that it contained the news of which the reader has
been apprised already. Though she did not need to read the letter in
order to inform herself of its contents, she took it in her hand,
when her sister bade her read it, and made a pretence of obedience,
shuddering, meanwhile, with disgust and terror. At last she came to
the conclusion of the epistle, where Elam had mentioned his desire
to be married before being ordained, and had subscribed himself as
united in gospel bonds to the worthy lady to whom the letter was
addressed. Then, folding up the paper with trembling hands, she held
it towards her sister, without daring to look up, or to say a word.

"Now, Laura," asked Mrs. Jaynes, in a quiet tone, "when can you be
ready to be married?"

Laura tried to speak, and looked up, with a pale, frightened face,
into her sister's impassive countenance. Her white lips failed to
form the words she strove to utter.

"When shall the wedding be?" said Mrs. Jaynes, with a smile of
affected sportiveness. "Name the happy day, my love."

"Happy day!" repeated poor Laura. "Oh, Maria!"

"Why, what's the matter, child?" said Mrs. Jaynes; "what are you
crying for?"

"Oh, dear, dear sister!" sobbed Laura, falling on her knees at
Mrs. Jaynes's feet, "do hear me! You are my mother, for you fill her
place."

"I have endeavored to do so," said Mrs. Jaynes.

"Then, for God's sake, don't make me marry this horrid man!" pursued
Laura. "Don't tell me that I must! Don't force me to such a fate!"
And with many passionate words like these, Laura implored her
sister not to lay any command upon her to marry Elam Hunt.

"Hush, Laura! hush, my dear child!" said Mrs. Jaynes, who had
anticipated this scene, and was well prepared with her replies.
"Be calm; you behave absurdly. I have no power to force you to marry
any man. I don't expect to compel you to accept Mr. Hunt for a
husband. For at least two years past I had supposed, however, that
it was your intention to do so. If you have changed your mind, and
if you wish to break an engagement that has subsisted so long,
whether for or without cause, I cannot prevent it. You have read so
many foolish romances, that your head is turned, and you fancy
yourself a heroine in distress. But let me tell you, my dear, that
in real life, here, in New England, a woman cannot be forced to marry.
So calm your transports, wipe your eyes, and get up from your knees.
I'm not to be kneeled to, pray remember."

Laura did as she was told,--so much abashed that she dared not look
up. To increase her confusion, her sister began to laugh.

"I beg your pardon, dear," said she, "but, ha, ha, ha! it was so
funny!--like a scene in a play, I should think."

"I know I've been silly, Maria," said Laura, weeping again,--with
shame, this time.

"Never mind, dear," said her sister, in a kind tone, "we're all
silly sometimes. You'll never be guilty of the folly again, at any
rate, of supposing that girls can be married, in spite of themselves,
by cruel sisters; eh, Laura?"

"Oh, Maria, do forgive me!" cried Laura, blushing crimson. "I was so
very silly!"

"Well, let it all go," said Mrs. Jaynes, kissing her. "Now we'll
talk about this letter. Tell me why you don't wish to marry Mr. Hunt.
If you have any good reason against it, I'm sure I don't desire it;
though, I confess, having supposed so long it was a settled thing, I
had set my heart upon it. Perhaps this disappointment has been sent
to me for some wise purpose," added Mrs. Jaynes, with a pious sigh.

Thus encouraged, Laura opened her heart and began to talk, saying
that she didn't like Mr. Hunt, that she didn't love him, that she
disliked him, and hated him, and that he was hateful, and horrid, and
awful, and dreadful, and so homely, and pale, and pimpled, and, ugh!
she should never like him, nor love him, but always dislike him, and
hate him. And on she went in this manner, till her fervor was cooled,
and she had exhausted, by frequent repetition, every form of speech
capable of expressing her great repugnance to a union with Elam Hunt.
In conclusion, she said she was willing never to marry, but would
remain with her sister and work for her and the children all her life.

"Thank you, dear," said Mrs. Jaynes. "We'll talk of your kind offer
presently; and you will see, I think, that I have no desire that you
should live and die an old maid, even in case you do not marry
Mr. Hunt."

"I'm sure I'd rather than not," said Laura, with a twinge of
conscience at the thought of her hero.

"Have you said all that you've got to say?" asked Mrs. Jaynes, very
quietly.

Laura looked up into her sister's grave, sober face, and felt a
chill of vague apprehension begin to take the place of the hopeful
glow in her heart.

"Eh?" said Mrs. Jaynes, inquiringly.

"Y--yes," faltered Laura, "only this,--I don't like him, and he's
such a horrid, disgusting man,--and--and--that's all, I believe,
except that I don't like him, and think he's so disagreeable,--and--
oh, yes! there's another thing,--he wears blue spectacles,--ugh!
_blue_ spectacles!"

"Is there anything more?" said Mrs. Jaynes, still speaking with the
same even, quiet voice.

"N--no," said Laura, "only I--" and here she paused.

"Don't like him," added Mrs. Jaynes, supplying the words.

"Yes, that's it," said Laura. "I know I'm foolish, but--"

"It's much to confess it," said Mrs. Jaynes. "Now that I've
patiently heard all that you have to say, I wish to be heard a few
words in favor of a dear and worthy friend of mine, against whom you
appear to entertain a groundless antipathy."

"No, not groundless," interposed Laura.

"Well, I'll agree that a pale, studious face and blue spectacles are
good reasons for hating a man. Now let me say a word or two in his
favor, notwithstanding, and also in favor of a plan which I had
supposed was agreed upon, and which I dislike extremely to see
abandoned. You have reasons against it, which you have stated. I
have reasons for it, which I will state. But first answer me two or
three simple questions, 'yes' or 'no,'--will you, dear?"

And Laura assenting, she went on to ask if Mr. Hunt was not good,
and pious, and of blameless life and reputation; extorting from
Laura an affirmative reply to each separate inquiry.

"He's all these good qualities, then, to offset the complexion of
his face and spectacles," resumed Mrs. Jaynes. "Now let us look at
the matter in a worldly point of view. He is able to give you not
only a place, but the very highest position in society; he can offer
you, not wealth, but competence, which is better than either poverty
or riches. Why, my dear, there are a hundred girls in this town,
many of whom excel you in everything which men think desirable in a
wife, except, perhaps, the poor, perishable quality of beauty,--
girls of good family, rich, or likely to be so, intelligent, well
educated, some of them, to say the least, almost as pretty as you,
any one of whom would think herself honored by this offer which you
despise; for most people are aware that to be a minister's wife, in
New England, is, my dear, to occupy, as I have just said, the very
summit of the social structure."

Here Mrs. Jaynes made a period, and watched the effect of her words.
After a pause she resumed by alluding to Laura's offer to remain
with her always, without marrying; and while poor Laura listened
with a feeling as if the very earth was sinking beneath her feet,
Mrs. Jaynes reminded her that she was a penniless orphan, who had
been maintained for years by the bounty of one upon whom she had no
claim, except that she was the sister of his wife.

"I have no right, you know, my dear," continued Mrs. Jaynes,
"to tell you that you may stay here longer. Jabez, doubtless, would
bid you remain and welcome, as he told you to come and welcome. But
young women are usually expected to marry, at or near your age. It
is probable, indeed I know, that, at the time you came, this event
was thought of, and taken into account. Mr. Jaynes is Mr. Hunt's
warm friend and admirer. He expects that you are going to marry this
good friend. What will be his reflections when he learns that you
prefer to remain here, a pensioner upon his income, rather than to
marry such a man as Mr. Hunt, whose only demerits are his blue
spectacles and pale complexion?"

Here Laura turned so white, and looked so woful, that her tormentor
paused, in apprehension that the poor girl was going to swoon.

"Oh, my God! what shall I do?" cried Laura, beating her palms
together, in sore distress.

"You know," resumed Mrs. Jaynes, watching her sister carefully, and
speaking softly, "you know that Mr. Jaynes's salary is not large. It
used to be more than sufficient for our wants, but the children are
getting to be more expensive every year. Their clothes cost more,
and the boys, at least, ought soon to go away to school, and Jabez
has set his heart upon sending Newton to college. If--well, never
mind, dear, I'll say no more; but when I think of this offer of
Mr. Hunt,--such a good offer, especially to one in your circumstances,
from such a worthy, talented, pious young clergyman, whose
preference Julia Bramhall or Cornelia Bugbee, with their thousands,
would be glad to win,--who is going to be settled in a good old
parish, like Walbury, and receive at once a salary almost as large,
I dare say, as Mr. Jaynes's,--I _do_ say, Laura, that you ought to
give better reasons for refusing him, nay, for jilting him, after a
two-years' engagement, than that his cheeks are pale and his
spectacles blue. We love you, Laura, and are willing to give you a
home and the best we can afford to eat and drink and wear, but
Mr. Hunt loves you as well, or better, and offers you more than we
have it in our power to bestow. Take the day for reflection.
To-morrow Mr. Hunt will be here. Think, my child, whether you will
be justified in rejecting this offer. Your refusal, bear in mind,
imposes upon others a sacrifice of something more than childish
whims and silly prejudices. In order that you may have time and
opportunity to give this important matter due consideration, you had
better remain in your chamber. But don't fancy yourself a prisoner.
If you choose to see any one that calls, you can do so. But, my dear,
I cannot permit you to go and seek those who, from spite and malice
against me, would take delight in giving you evil counsel."

With this sharp innuendo against Tira Blake, in which she thought
she might now safely indulge, Mrs. Jaynes concluded her speech and
went out softly, leaving poor Laura in a stupor of despair, sitting
with her hands clasped in her lap and her head drooping on her bosom.

At last, looking up with a glance so woful that one would scarcely
have known her, Laura perceived she was alone. She rose, went to the
door and locked it, standing for a moment trembling, until of a
sudden she fell a-crying piteously, and began to walk to and fro
across her chamber, wringing her hands like one distraught, and
sometimes throwing herself upon the bed, wailing and moaning all the
while as if her heart would break indeed. And, truly, she had some
reason for the violence of her grief. Not being a thoughtful person,
nor given to meditation, she had never before duly considered that
her maintenance was a matter of cost and calculation to those who
provided it, nor reflected that she had no rightful claim upon those
who gave her shelter, food, and clothing. She had been thankful to
her protectors for their kindness, but the sentiment she entertained
for them was more like filial love than gratitude. For the first
time she realized that she was a pensioner on another's bounty, and
felt the sharp sting of conscious dependence.

At length, growing more calm after the first passionate outbreak of
frantic sorrow had subsided, she dried her eyes and sat down on
purpose to think. Poor child! Serious deliberation was a new
exercise to her mind. Besides, her head ached, her brain seemed in a
whirl, and her heart was so full and heavy she wanted to do nothing
but cry with all her might till the burden was gone. But think she
must, and knitting her brows and stilling her sobs, she tried to
think. What could she do? Oh, if she could but ask Tira! But what
good could Tira do? What could she tell her? It was not her sister
that was forcing her, but Fate itself! All that her sister had told
her was true, every word. The tone of her voice, her manner, had
been unusually kind and gentle. There was nothing she had said that
she could be blamed for saying. Tira herself must admit that it was
all true and reasonable,--but, oh, how very dreadful! Then she
conjured up to view the image of Elam Hunt,--his lank, slim figure,
arrayed in sombre black,--his pale, cadaverous visage, spotted with
pimples and blue blotches of close-shaven beard,--his spectral
glance of admiration through those detestable blue spectacles. She
imagined that she felt the clammy touch of his long, skinny fingers,
and cold, flabby palm. She reflected upon the probability, nay, the
certainty, that she must marry this man, for whom she felt such an
invincible repugnance, and in a frenzy of dismay and terror she
screamed aloud and started up as if to fly. Then, recollecting
herself, she sank down moaning.--Oh, heavens! she thought, there was
no escape, no help! How wretched she was! how utterly miserable! all
alone, alone, in such a dreary, lonesome world, with no home, nor
father, nor mother, nor brother,--with only a sister who had a
husband and children, whom she loved, as she ought, far better than
she did her. There was nobody to whom she was the dearest of all,--
nobody, except Elam Hunt, whom she hated and loathed with all her
heart, and the very thought of whose love made her shudder. What
could she do? To stay and be a burden for her friends to support was
worse than anything. That, at least, she was resolved to do no longer.
If she were only strong enough, she would go where nobody knew her
and work at housework, or in a factory, or anywhere. Oh, if she only
knew enough to teach school! She should like that. It would be so
pleasant to have the children love her, and bring her flowers to put
upon her desk! But, oh, dear! she didn't know enough, she feared.
For all that she had graduated at the Academy, she never dared to
write a letter without looking up all the hard words of it in the
dictionary, to see how they were spelt;--and parsing! and doing sums!--
oh, gracious! she never could teach school,--that was out of the
question!

At last, after a long fit of silent musing, during which she had bit
her lips, and frowned, and gazed abstractedly at the wall, a gleam
of hope lit up her face, soon brightening into a smile. She had hit
upon a plan! She could learn the milliner's trade! She had always
been handy with her needle, and liked nothing better than to arrange
laces and ribbons and flowers. She could easily learn to make and
trim a bonnet, she thought; at least, she could try. At first it
would come hard to sit cooped up in those little back shops, sewing
and stitching from morning till night; but it was better than
marrying Elam Hunt, or than eating other people's bread. Then she
began to build castles in the air, as her custom was. She fancied
herself a milliner's apprentice, working away at bonnets and caps,
among a group of other girls,--sometimes rising to attend upon a
customer, or peeping out between the folds of a curtain at people in
the front shop. She wondered whether Cornelia and Helen would be
ashamed of knowing a milliner's apprentice, if they should chance to
see her in Hartford.

What would her schoolmates say? and would her hero despise a girl
that worked for a livelihood? Then she whimpered a little, thinking
how lonesome she would be, for a while, among strangers; but it was
a kind of lamentation that differed widely from the frantic weeping
of the morning. Then, all at once, a doubt began to depress her
new-born hopes. Could she get a place? She was a stranger in Hartford,
and beyond that city she dared not send her thoughts. Could Tira get
a place for her? She feared not, for Tira herself seldom went to the
city. But there was Doctor Bugbee, who knew a great many people there,
and who was so rich and powerful, that even in Hartford, though it
was a city, his word must have great influence. Besides, the firm of
Bugbee Brothers purchased large quantities of goods at some of the
great millinery shops. The Doctor's own private custom was not small,
for Cornelia dressed as became her condition, and even little Helen
scorned to wear a bonnet unless it came from Hartford. Doctor Bugbee
could help her to find a place. Doubtless he would be willing, nay,
even glad, to assist her in her trouble. At any rate, she would ask
him. But how was she to see him? He was not likely to call upon her,
unless she feigned sickness, and sent for him; for her sister would
not permit her to go to his house, where she would be sure to see
Tira. Besides, the Doctor's manner had of late grown so distant and
forbidding, that she was a little fearful of obtruding herself upon
his notice. Though sorry for this change, she had never laid it so
much to heart as to be grieved or affronted; for even his children
complained of his altered behavior, and all his friends had noticed
the gloomy expression which his face sometimes wore. But now she
troubled herself with wondering whether she had given him any cause
to be offended with her. Perhaps her giddy nonsense and thoughtless
gayety, which when he himself was cheerful and happy he had listened
to without displeasure, had vexed and annoyed him in his moods of
sadness and dejection. But what else could she do than solicit his
aid? The favor, though small for him to grant, would be of immense
benefit to her, and the good-hearted Doctor would not be likely to
refuse. She would tell him how friendless she was, and beg him to
help the fatherless in her distress. She knew that he would not turn
her away. At all events, she could try.

Coming at last to this conclusion, and wonderfully cheered and
strengthened by the purpose she had formed, she washed her face,
arranged her dishevelled hair, and smoothed her rumpled dress. Then
sitting down behind the window-curtain, she began to watch for
Cornelia, hoping her friend would not long delay her accustomed
visit to the parsonage. But it happened that Cornelia had that very
day begun a novel, in three volumes, the heroine of which was
represented to be a young lady whose extreme beauty and amiable
temper made her deserving of better treatment than she received at
the hands of the hard-hearted author, who suffered her to be cheated
and bullied by a scheming and brutal guardian, to be slandered by
his envious daughter, persecuted by a dissolute nobleman, haunted by
a spectre, shut up in a tower, exposed to manifold dangers, beset by
robbers, abducted, assaulted, barely rescued, and, finally, even
teased and tormented by the chosen lover of her heart, a
jealous-pated fellow, who was always making her miserable and
himself ridiculous by his absurd suspicions and fractious behavior.

Sympathizing deeply with this distressed young woman, whose
unexampled misfortunes and troubles would have touched the heart of
even a marble statue, Cornelia was weeping dolefully over a page
near the end of the second volume, where the lady's lover, in a fit
of senseless jealousy, tears her miniature from his bosom, renounces
her affection, and leaves her swooning upon the floor. Just then
Helen rushed into her chamber, with a summons from Laura to hasten
at once to her side. For Laura, after long watching, had caught
sight of Helen jumping the rope on the grassplot, and by means of
coughing and waving her handkerchief from the window had attracted
the notice of the child, who, coming to the paling, had received the
message she forthwith bore to Cornelia, adding to it the information
that Laura's eyes appeared to be almost as red as Cornelia's own.

Staying only to finish the volume, Cornelia repaired to comfort and
console her friend, to whose chamber she found ready access in spite
of some vague misgivings in Mrs. Jaynes's mind. But, shrewd as this
lady was by nature, and apprehensive as she felt that some untoward
accident would prevent the accomplishment of her cherished plans, she
never dreamed of the momentous results that were to follow this
interview, apparently so harmless, between Laura and her friend; nor
would it be fitting to suffer an account of so important a conference
to appear at the end of a chapter.

[To be continued in the next Number.]

       *       *       *       *       *




SPARTACUS.

The Romans had many virtues, and conspicuous amongst these was the
virtue of impartiality. They treated everybody with equal inhumanity.
They were as pitiless towards the humble as towards the proud. The
quality of mercy was utterly unknown to them. Their motto,

  "Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos,"

Powell Buxton has happily translated, "They murdered all who
resisted them, and enslaved the rest."

But it was as slaveholders that the Romans most clearly exhibited
their impartiality. They were above those miserable subterfuges that
are so common with Americans. They made slaves of all, of the high
as well as the low,--of Thracians as well as Sardinians, of Greeks
and Syrians as readily as of Scythians and Cappadocians.

The consequence of the modes by which the Romans obtained their
bondmen,--by war, by purchase, and by kidnapping,--affecting as they
did the most cultivated and the bravest races, necessarily made
slavery a very dangerous institution. Greeks and Gauls, Thracians
and Syrians, Germans and Spaniards were not likely to submit their
necks readily to the yoke. They rose several times in great masses,
and contended for years on equal terms with the legions. Some of
their number exhibited the talents of statesmen and soldiers, at the
head of armies more numerous than both those which fought at Cannae.
One of them showed himself to be a born soldier, and caused the
greatest terror to be felt at Rome that had been known there since
that day on which Hannibal rode up to the Colline Gate, and cast his
javelin defiantly into that city which he himself never could enter.

The treatment of their slaves by the Romans was not unlike that
which slaves now experience. Some masters were kind, and there are
many facts which show that the relations between master and slave
were occasionally of the most amiable nature. But these were
exceptional cases, the general rule being cruelty, as it must be
where so much power is lodged in the hands of one class of men, and
the other has only a nominal protection from the law. Even where
cruelty takes no other form than that involved in hard labor, the
slave must experience intolerable oppression. Now the Romans were
the most avaricious people that ever lived. They had a hearty love
of money for money's sake. They would do anything for gold. Such men
were not likely to let their slaves grow fat from light tasks and
abundant food; their food was light, and their tasks were heavy. So
ill-fed were they that they were compelled to rob on the highway,
and were encouraged to do so by their owners. Indeed, much of the
private economy of the Romans was founded on cruelty to their slaves.
Some, who have come down to us as model men, were infamous for their
maltreatment of their bondmen. The life of any foreigner was of but
little account with any Roman, but enslaved foreigners were regarded
as on a level with brutes. Many anecdotes are related of the
ferocious disregard of all humanity which the world's masters
manifested towards the servile classes. There is a story told by
Cicero, in one of the Verrine Orations, which peculiarly illustrates
this feature of the Roman character. The praetorian edicts forbade
slaves to carry arms. There were no exceptions. A boar of great size
was once given to Lucius Domitius, who was a Sicilian Praetor. Its
size caused him to ask by whom it was slain; and on being informed
that the hunter was a shepherd and slave, he sent for him. The slave,
not doubting that he should be rewarded for his bravery, hastened to
present himself before the Praetor, who asked him what he killed the
animal with. "With a spear," was the answer; whereupon the Praetor
ordered that he should be immediately crucified. This was but one of
thousands of similar acts that were perpetrated by Romans through
many generations.

The slaves, as we have remarked, occasionally revolted, and the
efforts that were found necessary to subdue them rose sometimes to
the dignity of wars. The first Servile War of the Romans occurred in
Sicily. There were various reasons why this fine island should
become the scene of servile wars sooner than other portions of the
Roman dominions. Upon the final expulsion of the Carthaginians,
about the middle of the second Punic War, great changes of property
ensued. Speculators from Italy rushed into the island, "who," says
Arnold, "in the general distress of the Sicilians, bought up large
tracts of land at a low price, or became the occupiers of estates
which had belonged to Sicilians of the Carthaginian party, and had
been forfeited to Rome after the execution or flight of their owners.
The Sicilians of the Roman party followed the example, and became
rich out of the distress of their countrymen. Slaves were to be had
cheap; and corn was likely to find a sure market whilst Italy was
suffering from the ravages of war. Accordingly, Sicily was crowded
with slaves, employed to grow corn for the great landed proprietors,
whether Sicilian or Italian, and so ill-fed by their masters that
they soon began to provide for themselves by robbery. The poorer
Sicilians were the sufferers from this evil; and as the masters were
well content that their slaves should be maintained at the expense of
others, they were at no pains to restrain their outrages. Thus,
although nominally at peace, though full of wealthy proprietors, and
though exporting corn largely every year, yet Sicily was teeming with
evils, which, seventy or eighty years after, broke out in the
horrible atrocities of the Servile War." [2]

[Footnote 2: Arnold, _History of Rome_, Vol. III. pp. 317-318,
London edition.]

The Sicilian Servile War began B.C. 133, only a few years after the
destruction of Carthage and Corinth, and when the military power of
the republic was probably at its height, though military discipline
may have been somewhat relaxed from the old standard. It lasted two
or three years. The chief of the slaves had at one time two hundred
thousand followers, inclusive, probably, of women and children. He
was a Syrian of Apamea, named Eunus, and had been a prophet and
conjurer among the slaves. To his prophecies and tricks he owed his
elevation when the rebellion broke out. According to some accounts,
he was rather a cunning than an able man; but it should be
recollected that his enemies only have drawn his portrait. The
victories he so often won over the Roman forces are placed to the
credit of his lieutenant, a Cilician of the name of Cleon; but he
must have been a man of considerable ability to have maintained his
position so long, and to have commanded the services of those said
to have been his superiors. Cleon's superiority was probably only
that of the soldier. He fell in battle, and Eunus was made prisoner,
but died before he could be brought to punishment,--no doubt, to the
vast regret of his savage captors.

In the year B.C. 103, another Servile War broke out in Sicily, and
was not brought to an end until after four years of hard fighting.
The leaders were Salvius, or Tryphon, an Italian, and Athenion, a
Cilician, or Greek. Both showed considerable talent, but owed their
leadership, Salvius to his knowledge of divination, and Athenion to
his pretensions to astrology. They were often successful, and it was
not until a Consul had taken the field against them that the slaves
were subdued, the chiefs having successively fallen, and no one
arising to make their place good.

The next great Servile War was on a grander scale, though briefer,
than either of the Sicilian contests. Its scene was Italy, and it
was conducted, on the part of the rebels, by the profoundest military
genius ever encountered by the Romans, with the exception, perhaps,
of Hannibal. We speak of SPARTACUS, who defeated many Roman armies,
and disputed with the all-conquering republic the dominion of the
Italian Peninsula, and with it that of the civilized world. This war
took place B.C. 73-71, while Rome was engaged in hostilities with
Sertorius and Mithridates; and it was brought to an end only by the
exertions of the ablest generals the republic then had,--the great
Pompeius having been summoned from Spain, and it being in
contemplation to order home Lucullus from the East. In the war with
Hannibal the Romans showed their fearlessness by sending troops to
Spain while the Carthaginian with his army was lying under their
walls; but they called troops and generals from Spain to their
assistance against the Thracian gladiator. He must have been a man
of extraordinary powers to have accomplished so much with the means
at his disposal. It has been regarded as a proof of the astonishing
powers of Hannibal as a commander, that he could keep together, and
in effective condition, an army composed of the outcasts, as it were,
of many nations, and win with it great victories, scattered over a
long period of time; yet this was less than was done by Spartacus.
The Carthaginian, like Alexander, succeeded to an army formed by his
father, next after himself the ablest man of the age. The Thracian,
without country or home, and an outlaw from the beginning of his
enterprise, had to create an army, and that out of the most
heterogeneous and apparently the most unpromising materials. The
palm must be aligned to the latter.

To what race did Spartacus belong? We are told that he was a
Thracian, his family being shepherds. The Thracians were a brave
people, but by no means remarkable for the highest intellectual
superiority; yet Spartacus was eminently a man of mind, with large
views, and an original genius for organization and war. Plutarch
pays him the highest compliment in his power, by admitting that he
deserved to be regarded as belonging to the Hellenic race. He was,
says the old Lifemaker, "a man not only of great courage and strength,
but, in judgment and mildness of character, superior to his condition,
and more like a Greek than one would expect from his nation."
It is not impossible that he had Greek blood in his veins. Thrace
was hard by Greece, had many Greek cities, and its full proportion
of those Greek adventurers, military and civil, who were to be found
in every country and city, from Spain to Persia, from Gades to
Ecbatana. What more probable than that among his ancestors were
Greeks? At the same time it must be admitted that the Thracians
themselves were capable of producing eminent men, being a superior
physical race, and prevented only by the force of circumstances from
attaining to a respectable position. They were renowned for
soldierlike qualities, which caused the Romans to give them the
preference as gladiators,--a dubious honor, to say the best of it.

How, and under what circumstances, Spartacus became a gladiator, is
a point by no means clear. We cannot trust the Roman accounts, as it
was a meritorious thing, in the opinion of a Roman, for a man to lie
for his country, as well as to die for it. Florus states, that he was
first a Thracian mercenary, then a Roman soldier, then a deserter
and robber, and then, because of his strength, a gladiator from
choice. But, to say nothing of the national prejudices of Florus, he
writes like a man who felt it to be a particular grievance that
Romans should have been compelled to fight slaves, and particularly
gladiators. This is in striking contrast with Plutarch, who was a
contemporary of Florus, but whose patriotic pride was not wounded by
the victories which the Thracian gladiator won over Roman generals.
Indeed, as he was willing to admit that Spartacus ought to have been
a Greek, we may suppose that he was pleased to read of his victories,--
a not unnatural thing in a provincial, and particularly in a Greek,
who knew so well what his country had once been. Plutarch says not a
word about the Thracian having been a soldier and a thief, but
introduces him with one of his good stories. "They say," he tells us,
"that when Spartacus was first taken to Rome to be sold, a snake was
seen folded over his face while he was sleeping, and a woman, of the
same tribe with Spartacus, who was skilled in divination, and
possessed by the mysterious rites of Dionysus, declared that this
was a sign of a great and formidable power, which would attend him
to a happy termination." She was the Thracian's wife, or mistress,
being connected with him by some tender tie, and was with him when
he subsequently escaped from Capua. In the bloody drama of the War
of Spartacus hers is the sole relieving figure, and we would fain
know more of her, for it could have been no ordinary woman who was
loved by such a man.

The passion of the Romans for gladiatorial combats is well known.
Not a few persons followed the calling of gladiator-trainers, and
had whole corps of these doomed men, whom they let to those who
wished to get up such shows. There were several schools of gladiators,
the chief of which were at Ravenna and Capua, where garrisons were
maintained to keep the pupils in subjection. According to one account,
Spartacus, while on a predatory incursion, was made prisoner, and
afterwards sold to Cneius Lentulus Batiatus, a trainer of gladiators,
who sent him to his school at Capua. He was to have fought at Rome.
But he had higher thoughts than of submitting to so degrading a
destiny as the being "butchered to make a Roman holiday." Most of
his companions were Gauls and Thracians, the bravest of men, who
bore confinement with small patience. They conspired to make their
escape,--the chief conspirators being Spartacus and two others, who
were subsequently made his lieutenants,--Crixus, a Gaul, and Oenomaus,
a Greek. Some two hundred persons were in the conspiracy, but only a
portion of them succeeded in breaking the school bounds. Florus says
that not more than thirty got out, while Velleius makes the number
to have been sixty-four, and Plutarch seventy-eight. Having armed
themselves with spits, knives, and cleavers, from a cook's shop,
they hastened out of Capua. Passing along the Appian Way, they fell
in with a number of wagons loaded with gladiators' weapons, which
they seized, and were thus placed in good fighting condition.
Shortly after this they encountered a small body of soldiers, whom
they routed, and whose arms they substituted for the gladiatorial,
deeming these no longer worthy of them.

They were now joined by a few others, fugitives and mountaineers,
with whom they took refuge in the crater of Vesuvius, then, as from
time immemorial, and for nearly a century and a half later, inactive.
Thence, under the leadership of Spartacus and his lieutenants, Crixus
and Oedomaus, they ravaged the country; but it is not probable that
they caused much alarm, their number being only two hundred, and
such collections of slaves being by no means uncommon. The Romans
little dreamed that they were on the eve of one of the most terrible
of their many wars. Claudius Pulcher, one of the Praetors, was sent
against the "robbers," as they were considered to be. He found them
so advantageously posted on the mountain, that, though superior to
them in numbers in the ratio of fifteen to one, he resolved to
blockade them, and so compel them to descend to the plain and fight
at disadvantage, or starve. But he was contending with a man of
genius, against whom even Rome's military system could not then
succeed. He despised his enemy,--a sort of gratification which to
those indulging in it generally costs very dear. Spartacus caused
ropes to be made of vine branches, with the aid of which he and his
followers lowered themselves to the base of the mountain, at a point
which had been left unguarded by the Romans because considered
inaccessible by the red-tapist who commanded them, and consequently
affording a capital outlet for bold men under a daring leader. In
the dead of night the gladiators stole round to the rear of the
Roman camp, and assailed it. Taken by surprise and heavy with sleep,
the Romans were routed like sheep, and their arms and baggage passed
into the hands of the despised enemy.

Spartacus saw now that it was time for him and his comrades to
assume a higher character than had hitherto belonged to them.
Instead of a leader of outlaws, he aspired to be the liberator of
the servile population of Italy. He issued a proclamation, in which,
while calling upon his followers to remember the multitudes who
groaned in chains, he urged the slaves to rise, pointing out how
strong they were and how weak were their oppressors, maintaining
that the strength of the masters lay in the blind and disgraceful
submission of the slaves, at the same time declaring that the land
belonged of right to the bravest,--a sentiment as natural and proper
when uttered by a man in his situation as it is base when proceeding
from a modern buccaneer, who has taken up arms, not to obtain his
own freedom, but to enslave others. The whole address is
contemptuous towards the Romans, though somewhat too rhetorical for
a man in the situation of Spartacus. It is the composition of Sallust,
but we may believe that it expresses the sentiments of Spartacus, as
Sallust was not only his contemporary, but was too good an artist to
disregard keeping in what he wrote.

Italy was at this time full of slaves, many of whom must have been
men of quite as much intelligence as the Romans, having been made
captives in war. The free population of the Peninsula had almost
entirely disappeared. Two generations before, Tiberius Gracchus had
pointed to the miserable condition of Italy, and to the fact that
the increase of the slave population had caused the Italian yeomanry
to become almost extinct. In the years that had passed since his
murder the work of extinction had gone on at an accelerated rate,
the Social War and the Wars of Sulla and Marius having aided slavery
to do its perfect work. In this way had perished that splendid rural
population from which the Roman legionary infantry had been
conscribed, and which had enabled the aristocratical republic to
baffle the valor of Samnium, the skill of Pyrrhus, and the genius of
Hannibal. Even so early as in the first of the Eastern wars of the
Romans, immediately after the second defeat of Carthage, there were
indications that the supply of Roman soldiers was giving out. An
anecdote of the younger Scipio shows what must have been the
character of a large part of the Roman population more than sixty
years before the War of Spartacus. When he declared that Tiberius
Gracchus had rightly been put to death, and an angry shout at the
brutal speech came from the people, he turned to them and exclaimed,
"Peace, ye stepsons of Italy! Remember who it was that brought you
in chains to Rome!"

The country being full of slaves and the children of slaves,
Spartacus had little difficulty in obtaining recruits. Apulia was
particularly fruitful of insurgents. In that country the vices of
Roman slavery were displayed in all their naked hideousness, and the
Apulian shepherds and herdsmen had a reputation for lawlessness
that has never been surpassed. Yet this was the consequence, not the
cause, of their bondage. It is related that some of them having
asked their master for clothing, he exclaimed, "What! are there no
travellers with clothes on?" "The atrocious hint," says Liddell,
"was soon taken; the shepherd slaves of Lower Italy became banditti,
and to travel through Apulia without an armed retinue was a perilous
adventure. From assailing travellers, the marauders began to plunder
the smaller country-houses; and all but the rich were obliged
to desert the country, and flock into the towns. So early as the
year 185 B.C., seven thousand slaves in Apulia were condemned for
brigandage by a Praetor sent specially to restore order in that land
of pasturage. When they were not employed upon the hills, they were
shut up in large, prison-like buildings, (_ergastula_) where they
talked over their wrongs, and formed schemes of vengeance." [3] The
century and more between this date and the appearance of Spartacus
had not improved the condition of the Apulian slaves. He found them
ripe for revolt, and was soon joined by thousands of their number,
men whose modes of life rendered them the very best possible
material for soldiers, provided they could be induced to submit to
the restraints of discipline. They were strong, hardy, athletic, and
active, and full of hatred of their masters. It shows the superiority
of the Thracian that he could prevail upon them to act in a regular
manner. He formed them into an army, the chief officers being the
men who had escaped from Capua in his company. This army had some
discipline, which was the more easily acquired because many of the
men were originally soldiers, captives of the Roman sword. But the
hatred of all in it to the Romans, and their knowledge that they had
to choose between victory and the crudest forms of death known to
the crudest of conquerors, made them the most reliable military
force then to be found in the world.

[Footnote 3: Liddell, _History of Rome_, Vol. II, p. 144]

With such an army, thus composed, thus animated, and thus led,
Spartacus commenced that war to which he has given his name.
Bursting upon Lower Italy, the most horrible atrocities were
perpetrated, the rich landholders being subjected to every species
of indignity and cruelty, in accordance with that law of retaliation
which was accepted and recognized by all the ancient world, and
which the modern has not entirely abrogated. Towns were captured and
destroyed, [4] and the slaves everywhere liberated to swell the
conquering force. Spartacus is said to have sought to moderate the
fury of his followers, and we can believe that he did so without
supposing that he was much above his age in humane sentiment. He saw
that excesses were likely to demoralize his army, and so render it
unfit to meet the legions which it must sooner or later encounter.

[Footnote 4: These ravages seem to have made a great impression on
the Romans, and were by them long remembered. Forty years later
Horace alludes to them, in that Ode which he wrote on the return of
Augustus from Spain (Carm. III. xiv. 19). He calls to his young
slave to fetch him a jar of wine that had seen the Marsiaii War,
"If there could be found one that had escaped the vagabond Spartacus."
The manner in which he, the son of a _libertinus_, speaks of
Spartacus, is not only amusing as an instance of foolish pride, but
is curious as illustrating a change in Roman ideas that was working
out more important results than could have followed from all the
acts of the first two Caesars, though, perhaps it was in some sense
connected with, if not dependent upon, their legislation.]

Much as Spartacus had done, and signal as had been his successes, it
was not yet the opinion at Rome that he was a formidable foe. The
government despatched Publius Varinius Glaber to act against him, at
the head of ten thousand men. This seems a small force, yet it was
not much smaller than the army with which, three or four years later,
Lucullus overthrew the whole military power of the Armenian monarchy;
and it was half as large as that with which Caesar changed the fate
of the world at Pharsalia. The Romans probably thought it strong
enough to subdue all the slaves in Italy, and Varinius sufficiently
skilful to defeat their leaders and send them to Rome in chains. But
they were to have a rough awakening from their dreams of
invincibility, though some early successes of Varinius for a time
apparently justified their confidence.

The army of Spartacus numbered forty thousand men, but it was poorly
armed, and its discipline was very imperfect. It still lacked, to
use a modern term, "the baptism of fire,"--never yet having been
matched in the open field against a regular force. Its arms were
chiefly agricultural implements, and wooden pikes that had been made
by hardening the points of stakes with fire. Spartacus resolved upon
retreating into Lucania; but the Gauls in his army, headed by his
lieutenant Crixus, pronounced this decision cowardly, separated
themselves from the main body, attacked the Romans, and were utterly
routed. The retreat to Lucania was then made in perfect safety, and
even with glory, apart from the skill with which it was conducted.
Watching his opportunity, and showing that he understood the military
principle of cutting up an enemy in detail, Spartacus fell upon a
Roman detachment, two thousand strong, and destroyed it. Shortly
after this, the Roman general succeeded, as he thought, in getting
him into a trap. The servile encampment was upon a piece of ground
hemmed in on one side by mountains, on the other by impassable waters,
and the Romans were about to close up the only outlets with some of
those grand works to which they owed so many of their conquests, when,
one night, Spartacus silently retreated, leaving his camp in such a
state as completely deceived the enemy, who did not discover what had
happened until the next morning, when the gladiators were beyond
their reach.

This masterly retreat was followed up by a brilliant surprise of a
division of the Roman army under the command of Cossinius. The night
was just getting in, and the soldiers were resting from their day's
march and from the labors of forming the encampment, when the
Thracian fell upon them. Thus suddenly attacked, they fled, without
making any show of resistance,--abandoning everything to the
assailants. Cossinius himself, who was bathing, had time only to
escape with his life. The Romans rallied, a battle ensued, and they
were routed, Cossinius being among the slain. This action took place
not far from the Aufidus, which had witnessed the slaughter of Cannae.

Spartacus now considered his army fairly "blooded." It had routed a
Roman detachment, and defeated a small army. Two Roman camps had
fallen into its hands, under circumstances that gave indications of
superior generalship, and several towns had been stormed. Though
still deficient in arms, he resolved to attack Varinius. Sallust
represents him as addressing his army before the battle, and telling
them that they were about to enter, not upon a single action, but
upon a long war,--that from success, then, would follow a series of
victories,--and that therein lay their only salvation from a death
at once excruciating and infamous. They must, he said, live upon
victory after victory,--an expression that showed he had a clear
comprehension of the nature of his situation. In the battle that
followed, Varinius was beaten, unhorsed, and compelled to fly for
his life. All his personal goods fell into the hands of Spartacus.
His lictors, with the _fasces_, shared the same fate. Spartacus
assumed the dress of the Roman, and all the ensigns of authority. He
has been censured for this; but a little reflection ought to convince
every one that he did not act from vanity, but from a profound
appreciation of the state of things in Italy. The slaves, of which
his army was composed, were accustomed to see the emblems of
authority with which he was now clothed and surrounded in the
possession of their masters alone; and when they beheld them on and
about their chief, they were not only reminded of the governing power,
but also of the overthrow of those who had therefore monopolized it.
Spartacus was a statesman; and knew how to operate on the minds of
the rude masses who followed him and obeyed his orders.

The defeat of Varinius left the whole of Lower Lucania at the mercy
of the gladiators. Spartacus now established posts at Metapontum and
at Thurii. Here he labored, with unceasing energy and industry, to
organize and discipline his men. Adopting various measures to
prevent them from becoming enervated through the abundance in which
they were revelling, he prohibited the use of money among them, and
gave all that he himself had to relieve those who had suffered from
the war. Some of his officers are said to have followed his example
in making so great a sacrifice for the common good.

Towards the close of the year Varinius had succeeded in getting
another army on foot. With this he resolved to watch the enemy,--
repeated defeats having made the Romans cautious, though they were
not even yet seriously alarmed. He formed and fortified a camp,
whence he kept a look-out. There was some skirmishing, but no
fighting on a large scale. This did not suit Spartacus, who had
become confident in himself and his men. He desired battle, but
wished the Romans should take the initiative, and was convinced that
the near approach of winter would compel them soon to fight or to
retreat. To encourage them, he feigned fear, and commenced a
retrograde movement; but no sooner had the elated Romans advanced in
pursuit than he turned upon them, and they were compelled to fight
under circumstances that made defeat certain. This second rout of
Varinius was total, and we hear no more of him.

Never had there been a more successful campaign than that which
Spartacus had just closed. His force had been increased from less
than one hundred men to nearly one hundred thousand. He had proved
himself more than the equal of the generals who had been sent
against him, both in strategy and in arms. He had fought three great
battles, and numerous lesser actions, and had been uniformly
successful. Like Carnot, he had "organized victory." A large part of
Italy was at his command, and, under any other circumstances than
those which existed, or against any other foe than Rome, he would
probably have found little difficulty in establishing a powerful
state, the origin of which would have been far more respectable than
of that with which he was contending. But he was a statesman, and
knew, that, brilliant as were his successes, he had no chance of
accomplishing anything permanent within the Peninsula. He was
fighting, too, for freedom, not for dominion. His plan was to get
out of Italy. Two courses were open to him. He might retreat to the
extremity of the Peninsula, cross the strait that separates it from
Sicily, and renew the servile wars of that island; or he might march
north, force his way out of Italy, and so with most of his followers
reach their homes in Gaul and Thrace. The latter course was
determined upon; but the more hot-headed portion of his men, the
Gauls, were opposed to it, and resolved to march upon Rome. A
division of the victorious army ensued. The larger number, under
Spartacus, proceeded to carry out the wise plan of their leader, but
the minority refused to obey him. We have seen, that, at the very
outset of his enterprise, Spartacus encountered opposition from the
Gauls in his army, who were ever for rash measures, and that,
separating themselves from their associates, under the lead of Crixus,
they had been defeated. Crixus rejoined his old chieftain, and did
good service; but he and his countrymen, untaught by experience, and
inflated with a notion of invincibility,--on what founded, it would
be hard to say,--would not aid Spartacus in his prudent attempt to
lead his followers out of Italy. Rome was their object, and, to the
number of thirty thousand, they separated themselves from the main
army. At first, the event seemed to justify their decision. Meeting
a Roman army, commanded by the Prætor Arrius, on the borders of
Samnium, the Gauls put it to rout, and the victory of Crixus was not
less decisive than any of those which had been won by Spartacus. But
this splendid dawn was soon overcast. Crixus was a drunkard, and,
while sleeping off one of his fits of intoxication, he was set upon
by a Roman army under the Consul Gellius. He was killed, and his
followers either shared his fate or were totally dispersed. This was
the first great victory won by the Romans in the war.

The defeat of Varinius aroused the Roman government to see that their
enemy was not to be despised, and, revolted slave though he was,
they were compelled to pay him the respect of making prodigious
efforts to effect his destruction. The Consuls Gellius and Lentulus
were charged with the conduct of the war. The former overthrew the
Gauls. The latter followed Spartacus, and came up with him in Etruria.
Here a contest of pure generalship took place. Lentulus was
determined not to fight until Gellius--whose victory he knew of--
should have come up; and Spartacus was equally determined that fight
he should before the junction could be effected. He succeeded in
blocking up the road by which Gellius was advancing, unknown to
Lentulus, and then offered the latter battle. Supposing that his
colleague would join him in the course of the action, the Roman
accepted the challenge and was beaten. The victors then marched to
meet Gellius, who was served after the same manner as Lentulus.
Spartacus was the only general who ever defeated two great Roman
armies, each headed by a Consul, on the same day, and in different
battles. Hannibal's Austerlitz, Cannae, approaches nearest to this
exploit of the Thracian; but on that field the two consular armies
were united under the command of Varro.

These great successes were soon followed by the defeat of two lesser
Roman armies, combined under the lead of the Praetor Manlius and the
Proconsul Cassius. This last victory not only left the whole open
country at the command of Spartacus, but also the road to Rome, upon
which city he now resolved to march. It would have been wiser, had
he persevered in his original plan, the execution of which his
victories must have made it easy to carry out. But perhaps success
had its usual effect, even on his mind, and blinded him to the
impossibility of permanent triumph in Italy. He winnowed his army,
dismissing all his soldiers except such as were distinguished by
their bravery, their strength, and their intelligence. In order that
his march might be swift, he caused all the superfluous baggage to be
destroyed. Every beast of burden that could be dispensed with was
slain. His prisoners were disposed of after the same fashion. In a
modern general such an act would be utterly without excuse. But it
was strictly in accordance with the laws of ancient warfare, and
Spartacus probably felt far more regret at sacrificing his beasts of
burden than he experienced in consenting to, if he did not order,
the butchery of some thousands of men whom he must have looked upon
as so many brutes.

Proceeding to the south, Spartacus fell in with a great Roman army
led by Arrius, and a battle was fought near Ancona, in which victory
was true to the gladiator. The Romans were not only beaten, their
army was utterly destroyed; a result which they seem to have felt to
be so shameful, that they made no apologies for it. Why, after this
signal victory, Spartacus did not forthwith carry out his grand
design of attacking Rome,--a design every way so worthy of his
genius, and which alone could give him a chance of achieving
permanent success after he had abandoned the idea of forcing his way
out of Italy by a northern march,--can never be known. It is
supposed to have been in consequence of information that
circumstances had now placed it in his power to effect a passage
into Sicily, a project which he had regarded with favor at an
earlier period.

At this time the Cilician pirates had the command of the
Mediterranean, which they held until they were conquered, some years
later, by Pompeius. It was by the aid of these men that Spartacus
expected to carry his army into Sicily. They had shipping in
abundance, and in a few days they could have conveyed a hundred
thousand men across the narrow strait that separates Sicily from
Italy. This they agreed to do, and were paid in advance by Spartacus,
though it is probable that he relied less upon that payment for
their assistance than upon the palpable fact that their interests
were the same as his own. The pirates were on the sea what the
gladiatorial army was on land. They were the victims of Roman
oppression, and had become outlaws because the world's law was
against them. A union of their fleets, which numbered more than a
thousand vessels, with the army of Spartacus, in the harbors and on
the fields of Sicily, would perhaps have been more than a match for
the whole power of Rome, contending as the republic then was with
Mithridates, and bleeding still from the wounds inflicted by Marius
and Sulla, as well as from the blows of Spartacus. Sicily, too, was
then in a state which promised well for the design of the Thracian.
Verres was ruling over the island,--and how he ruled it Cicero has
told us. Had the victorious Thracian entered the island, both the
free population and the slaves would have risen against the Romans.
A new state might have been formed, strong both in fleets and in
armies, and compelled from the very nature of its origin to contend
to the death with its old oppressors. Whatever the result, it is
certain that a long Sicilian war, like that which the Romans had
been compelled to wage with the Carthaginians, would have changed
the course of history, by directing the attention and the energies
of such men as Crassus, Pompeius, and Caesar to very different fields
from those on which their fame and power were won.

But it was not to be. There was work for Rome to do, which could be
done by no other nation. The power that had been found superior to
Hannibal was not to fall before Spartacus, or even to have its
course stayed materially by his victories. He marched to the foot of
Italy, on the shore of the strait, where he expected to find his
supposed naval allies. He was disappointed. They, impolitic no less
than faithless, broke their engagement after they had pocketed the
sum agreed upon for their services. It was impossible for Spartacus
to carry out his design; for not only had he no vessels, but his
followers were, it is altogether probable, incapable of building them.
The Romans, too, must have had ships in the strait, and a very few
would have been found enough to keep it clear of the unskilful
gladiators, even had the latter had the time and the means to
construct boats.

After the defeat of the Romans under Arrius, the Senate had called
Crassus to the chief command, resolving to make an herculean effort
to destroy their terrible enemy. The accounts are somewhat confused,
but, according to Plutarch, Crassus commenced operations against
Spartacus before the latter marched for Sicily. He sent one of his
lieutenants, Mummius, to follow and harass the gladiators, but with
orders to avoid a general engagement. The lieutenant disobeyed his
orders, fought a battle, and was defeated. Not a few of his men threw
away their arms, and fled,--an uncommon thing with a Roman army. The
victors continued their march, but, as we have seen, failed in their
main object. Spartacus then took up a position in the territory of
Rhegium, which is over against Sicily. He must have been convinced
by this time that the crisis of his fortune had arrived, and though
he would not even then entirely give up all idea of crossing over
into the island that lay within sight of his camp, he prepared to
meet the coming storm, which had been for some time gathering in his
rear. Accordingly he faced about, and commenced a game of
generalship with Crassus, who was now in person at the head of the
Roman army. [5]

[Footnote 5: It is probable that justice has never been done to
Crassus as a military man. Roman writers were not likely to deal
fairly with a man who closed his career so fatally to himself, and
so disgracefully in every way to his country. It was his misfortune--
a misfortune of his own creating--to lead the finest Roman army that
had ever been seen in the East to destruction, in an unjust attack on
the Parthians. Had he succeeded, the injustice of his course would
have been overlooked by his countrymen; but they never could forgive
his defeat. Yet it is certain that this man, who has come down to us
as a contemptible creature, having small claim to consideration
beyond what he derived from his enormous possessions, not only
exhibited eminent military ability in the War of Spartacus, but,
when a young man, won that great battle which takes its name from
the Colline Gate, and which laid the Roman world at the feet of Sulla.
Pontius Telesious had marched upon Rome, with the intention of
"destroying the den of the wolves of Italy," and Sulla arrived to
the city's rescue but just in time. In the battle that immediately
followed, Sulla, at the head of the left wing of his army, was
completely defeated, while the right wing, commanded by Crassus, was
as completely victorious. Talent must have had something to do with
Crassus's success, which enabled Sulla to retrieve his fortunes, and
to triumph over the Marius party. One hundred thousand men are said
to have fallen in this battle. The avarice of Crassus and his want
of popular manners were fatal to him in life, and his defeat left
him no friends in death.]

Of all men then living, Crassus was best entitled to command an army
employed in fighting revolted slaves. If not the greatest
slaveholder in Rome, he was the most systematic of the class of
owners, and knew best how to turn the industry of slaves to account.
He was the wealthiest citizen of the republic. One can understand
how indignant such a person must have felt at the audacity of the
gladiator and his followers. As a slaveholder, as a man of property,
as a lover of law and order, he was concerned at so very disorderly
a spectacle as that of slaves subverting all the laws of the republic;
as a Roman, he felt that abhorrence for slaves which was common to
the character. Here were motives enough to bring out the powers of
any man, if powers he had in him; and it does not follow that
because Crassus was very rich he was therefore a fool. He was a man
of consummate talents, and at this particular time was probably the
most influential citizen of Rome. The Romans had confidence in him,
as the embodiment of the spirit of supremacy by which they were so
completely animated. The event showed that their confidence was not
misplaced.

The army of Crassus was two hundred thousand strong, and having
restored its discipline by examples of great severity, he marched to
meet Spartacus; but on arriving in front of the latter's position,
he would not attack it, while Spartacus showed an equal
unwillingness to fight. The Roman determined to blockade the enemy.
As they had the sea on one side, and that was held by a fleet, he
commenced a line of works, the completion of which would have
rendered it impossible for the gladiators to escape. These works
were on the usual Roman scale, and consisted principally of walls and
ditches, a hundred thousand men being employed in their construction.
So cleverly did Crassus conceal what he was about, that it was not
until he had almost accomplished his design that Spartacus
discovered the intention of his foe. The emergency was suited to his
genius, and he was not unequal to it. He began a series of attacks
on the Romans, harassing them perpetually, retarding their labors,
and drawing their attention from that point of their line by which he
purposed to extricate his army. At last, on a night when a terrible
snow-storm was raging, he led his men to a place where the Roman
works were yet incomplete, the snow enabling them to march
noiselessly. When they reached the line, the immense ditches seemed
to bar their further advance; but they set resolutely at work to
fill them. Earth, snow, fagots, and dead bodies of men and beasts
were hastily thrown into them; and across this singular bridge the
whole army poured into the country, leaving the Roman camp behind,
and having rendered nugatory all the laborious digging and
trenching of the legions.

It was not until the next morning that Crassus discovered what had
been done, and how thoroughly he had been out-generalled by Spartacus.
But he had no room for vexation in his mind. He was so frightened as
a Roman citizen, that he could not feel mortified as a Roman soldier.
He took counsel of his fears, and did that which he had cause both
to be ashamed of and to regret in after days. He wrote to the Senate,
stating that in his opinion not only should Pompeius be summoned home
from Spain, but Lucullus also from the East, to aid in putting down
an enemy who was unconquerable by ordinary means. A short time
sufficed to show how indiscreetly for his own fame he had acted; for
Spartacus was unable to follow up his success, in consequence of
mutinies in his army. The Gauls again rebelled against his authority,
and left him. Crassus concentrated his whole force in an attack on
the seceders, and a battle followed which Plutarch says was the most
severely contested of the war. The Romans remained masters of the
field, more than twelve thousand of the Gauls being slain, of whom
only two were wounded in the back, the rest falling in the ranks.
Spartacus retreated to the mountains of Petelia, closely followed by
Roman detachments. Turning upon them, he drove them back; but this
last gleam of success led to his destruction. His policy was to
avoid a battle, but his men would not listen to his prudent counsels,
and compelled him to face about and march against Crassus. This was
what the Roman desired; for Pompeius was bringing up an army from
Spain, and would be sure to reap all the honors of the war, were it
to be prolonged.

Some accounts represent Spartacus as anxious for battle. Whether he
was so or not, he made every preparation that became a good general.
The armies met on the Silarus, in the northern part of Lucania; and
the battle which followed, and which was to finish this remarkable
war, was fought not far from where the traveller now sees the noble
ruins of Paestum. Spartacus made his last speech to his soldiers,
warning them of what they would have to expect, if they should fall
alive into the hands of their old masters. By way of practical
commentary on his text, he caused a cross to be erected on a height,
and to that cross was nailed a living Roman, whose agonies were
visible to the whole army. Spartacus then ordered his horse to be
brought to him in front of the army, and slew the animal with his own
hands. "I am determined," he said to his men, "to share all your
dangers. Our positions shall be the same. If we are victorious, I
shall get horses enough from the foe. If we are beaten, I shall need
a horse no more." [6]

[Footnote 6: When the Earl of Warwick, the King-maker, killed his
horse in front of the Yorkist army, at the battle of Towton,
(fought on Palm Sunday, 1461,) he little knew that he was imitating
the action of a general of revolted slaves, more than fifteen
centuries earlier. Warwick is said to have done the same thing at
the battle of Barnet, the last of his fields, where he was defeated
and slain, fighting for the House of Lancaster.]

The battle that followed was the most severely contested action of
that warlike period, which, extending through two generations, saw
the victories of Marius over the Northern barbarians at its
commencement, and Pharsalia and Munda and Philippi at its close. The
insurgents attacked with great fury, but with method, Spartacus
leading the way at the head of a band of select followers, thus
acting the part of a soldier as well as of a general. The Romans
steadily resisted,--and the slaughter was great on both sides. At
last, victory began to incline towards the gladiators, when
Spartacus fell, and the fortune of the day was changed. He had made a
fierce charge on the Romans, with the intention of cutting his way
to Crassus. Two centurions had fallen by his sword, and a number of
inferior men, when he was himself wounded in one of his thighs.
Falling upon one knee, he still continued to fight, until he was
overpowered and slain. The battle was maintained for some time longer,
and ended only with the destruction of the insurgents, thirty
thousand of whom were killed;--Livy puts their killed at forty
thousand. The Roman slain numbered twenty thousand, and they had as
many more wounded. Only six thousand prisoners fell into the hands
of Crassus, who caused the whole of them to be crucified,--the
crosses being placed at intervals on both sides of the Appian Way,
between Capua and Rome, and the whole Roman army being marched
through the horrible lines. A body of five thousand fugitives, who
sought refuge in the north, were intercepted by Pompeius on his
homeward march from Spain, and slaughtered to a man.

Thus fell Spartacus, and far more nobly than either of the great
republican chiefs whose deaths were so soon to follow. Pompeius, who
boasted that he had cut up the war by the roots, ran away from
Pharsalia, without an effort to retrieve his fortunes, though the
force opposed to him in the battle was only half as large as his own,
and he had still abundant resources for future operations. Crassus,
who claimed to have conquered Spartacus, and who not unreasonably
resented the pretensions of Pompeius, fell miserably in Parthia,
after having led the Romans to the most fatal of their fields except
Cannae. Wanting the nerve to die sword in hand in the midst of his
foes, like Spartacus, he consented to adorn the triumph of those foes,
and perished as ignominiously as the great gladiator gloriously.

       *       *       *       *       *




WHO PAID FOR THE PRIMA DONNA?


I.

"If anything could make a man forgive himself for being sixty years
old," said the Consul, holding up his wine-glass between his eye and
the setting sun,--for it was summer-time, "it would be that he can
remember M. ---- in her divine sixteenity at the Park Theatre, thirty
odd years ago. Egad, Sir, one couldn't help making great allowances
for _Don Giovanni_, after seeing her in _Zerlina_. She was beyond
imagination _piquante_ and delicious."

The Consul, as my readers may have partly inferred, was not a Roman
Consul, nor yet a French one. He had had the honor of representing
this great republic at one of the Hanse Towns,--I forget which,--in
President Monroe's time. I don't recollect how long he held the
office, but it was long enough to make the title stick to him for
the rest of his life with the tenacity of a militia colonelcy or
village diaconate. The country people round about used to call him
"the _Counsel_" which, I believe,--for I am not very fresh from my
school-books,--was etymologically correct enough, however
orthoepically erroneous. He had not limited his European life,
however, within the precinct of his Hanseatic consulship, but had
dispersed himself very promiscuously over the Continent, and had
seen many cities, and the manners of many men--and of some women,--
singing-women, I mean, in their public character; for the Consul,
correct of life as of ear, never sought to undeify his divinities by
pursuing them from the heaven of the stage to the purgatorial
intermediacy of the _coulisses_, still less to the lower depth of
disenchantment into which too many of them sunk in their private life.

"Yes, Sir," he went on, "I have seen and heard them all,--Catalani,
Pasta, Pezzaroni, Grisi, and all the rest of them, even Sonntag,--
though not in her very best estate; but I give you my word there is
none that has taken lodgings here," tapping his forehead, "so
permanently as the Signorina G----, or that I can see and hear so
distinctly, when I am in the mood of it, by myself. _Rosina,
Desdemona, Cinderella_, and, as I said just now, _Zerlina_,--she is
as fresh in them all to my mind's eye and ear, as if the Park
Theatre had not given way to a cursed shoe-shop, and I had been
hearing her there only last night. Let's drink her memory," the
Consul added, half in mirth and half in melancholy,--a mood to which
he was not unused, and which did not ill become him.

Now no intelligent person, who knew the excellence of the Consul's
wine, could refuse to pay this posthumous honor to the harmonious
shade of the lost Muse. The Consul was an old-fashioned man in his
tastes, to be sure, and held to the old religion of Madeira which
divided the faith of our fathers with the Cambridge Platform, and
had never given in to the later heresies which have crept into the
communion of good-fellowship from the South of France and the Rhine.

"A glass of Champagne," he would say, "is all well enough at the end
of dinner, just to take the grease out of one's throat, and get the
palate ready for the more serious vintages ordained for the solemn
and deliberate drinking by which man justifies his creation; but
Madeira, Sir, Madeira is the only stand-by that never fails a man
and can always be depended upon as something sure and steadfast."

I confess to having fallen away myself from the gracious doctrine
and works to which he had held so fast; but I am no bigot,--which
for a heretic is something remarkable,--and had no scruple about
uniting with him in the service he proposed, without demur or
protestation as to form or substance. Indeed, he disarmed fanaticism
by the curious care he bestowed on making his works conformable to
the faith that was in him; for, partly by inheritance and partly by
industrious pains, his old house was undermined by a cellar of wine
such as is seldom seen in these days of modern degeneracy. He is the
last gentleman, that I know of, of that old school that used to
import their own wine and lay it down annually themselves,--their
bins forming a kind of vinous calendar suggestive of great events.
Their degenerate sons are content to be furnished, as they want it,
from the dubious stores of the vintner, by retail.

"I suppose it was her youth and beauty, Sir," I suggested, "that
made her so rememberable to you. You know she was barely turned
seventeen when she sung in this country."

"Partly that, no doubt," replied the Consul, "but not altogether,
nor chiefly. No, Sir, it was her genius which made her beauty so
glorious. She was wonderfully handsome, though. She was a phantom of
delight, as that Lake fellow says,"--it was thus profanely that the
Consul designated the poet Wordsworth, whom he could not abide,--
"and the best thing he ever said, by Jove!"

"And did you never see her again?" I inquired.

"Once, only," he answered,--"eight or nine years afterwards, a year
or two before she died. It was at Venice, and in _Norma_. She was
different, and yet not changed for the worse. There was an
indescribable look of sadness out of her eyes, that touched one
oddly and fixed itself in the memory. But she was something apart
and by herself, and stamped herself on one's mind as Rachel did in
_Camille_ or _Phèdre_. It was true genius, and no imitation, that
made both of them what they were. But she actually had the physical
beauty which Rachel only compelled you to think she had by the force
of her genius and consummate dramatic skill, while she was on the
scene before you."

"But do you rank M. ---- with Rachel as a dramatic artist?" I asked.

"I cannot tell," he answered; "but if she had not the studied
perfection of Rachel, which was always the same and could not be
altered without harm, she had at least a capacity of impulsive
self-adaptation about her which made her for the time the character
she personated,--not always the same, but such as the woman she
represented might have been in the shifting phases of the passion
that possessed her. And to think that she died at eight-and-twenty!
What might not ten years more have made her!"

"It is odd," I observed, "that her fame should be forever connected
with the name she got by her first unlucky marriage in New York. For
it was unlucky enough, I believe,--was it not?"

"You may say that," responded the Consul, "without fear of denial or
qualification. It was disgraceful in its beginning and in its ending.
It was a swindle on a large scale; and poor Maria G---- was the one
who suffered the most by the operation."

"I have always heard," said I, "that old G---- was cheated out of
the price for which he had sold his daughter, and that M. M. ----
got his wife on false pretences."

"Not altogether so," returned the Consul. "I happen to know all
about that matter from the best authority. She was obtained on false
pretences, to be sure, but it was not G---- that suffered by them.
M. M. ----, moreover, never paid the price agreed upon, and yet G----
got it for all that."

"Indeed!" I exclaimed, "it must have been a neat operation. I cannot
exactly see how the thing was done; but I have no doubt a tale hangs
thereby, and a good one. Is it tellable?"

"I see no reason why not," said the Consul; "the sufferer made no
secret of it, and I know of no reason why I should. Mynheer Van
Holland told me the story himself, in Amsterdam, in the year
'Thirty-five."

"And who was he?" I inquired, "and what had he to do with it?"

"I'll tell you," responded the Consul, filling his glass and passing
the bottle, "if you will have the goodness to shut the window behind
you and ring for candles; for it gets chilly here among the
mountains as soon as the sun is down."

I beg your pardon,--did you make a remark?--Oh, _what mountains_? You
must really pardon me; I cannot give you such a clue as that to the
identity of my dear Consul, just now, for excellent and sufficient
reasons. But if you have paid your money for the sight of this Number,
you may take your choice of all the mountain ranges on the continent,
from the Rocky to the White, and settle him just where you like. Only
you must leave a gap to the westward, through which the river--also
anonymous for the present distress--breaks its way, and which gives
him half an hour's more sunshine than he would otherwise be entitled
to, and slope the fields down to its margin near a mile off, with
their native timber thinned so skilfully as to have the effect of
the best landscape-gardening. It is a grand and lovely scene; and
when I look at it, I do not wonder at one of the Consul's apophthegms,
namely, that the chief advantage of foreign travel is, that it
teaches you that one place is just as good to live in as another.
Imagine that the one place he had in his mind at the time was just
this one. But that is neither here nor there. When candles came, we
drew our chairs together, and he told me in substance the following
story. I will tell it in my own words,--not that they are so good as
his, but because they come more readily to the nib of my pen.


II.

New York has grown considerably since she was New Amsterdam, and has
almost forgotten her whilom dependence on her first godmother. Indeed,
had it not been for the historic industry of the erudite Diedrich
Knickerbocker, very few of her sons would know much about the
obligations of their nursing mother to their old grandame beyond sea,
in the days of the Dutch dynasty. Still, though the old monopoly has
been dead these two hundred years, or thereabout, there is I know
not how many fold more traffic with her than in the days when it was
in full life and force. Doth not that benefactor of his species,
Mr. Udolpho Wolfe, derive thence his immortal, or immortalizing,
Schiedam Schnapps, the virtues whereof, according to his
advertisements, are fast transferring dram-drinking from the domain
of pleasure to that of positive duty? Tobacco-pipes, too, and toys,
such as the friendly saint, whom Protestant children have been
taught by Dutch tradition to invoke, delights to drop into the
votive stocking,--they come from the mother city, where she sits
upon the waters, quite as much a Sea-Cybele as Venice herself. And
linens, too, fair and fresh and pure as the maidens that weave them,
come forth from Dutch looms ready to grace our tables or to deck our
beds. And the mention of these brings me back to my story,--though
the immediate connection between Holland linen and M. ----'s marriage
may not at first view be palpable to sight. Still, it is a fact that
the web of this part of her variegated destiny was spun and woven
out of threads of flax that took the substantial shape of fine
Hollands;--and this is the way in which it came to pass.

Mynheer Van Holland, of whom the Consul spoke just now, you must
understand to have been one of the chief merchants of Amsterdam, a
city whose merchants are princes and have been kings. His
transactions extended to all parts of the Old World and did not skip
over the New. His ships visited the harbor of New York as well as of
London; and as he died two or three years ago a very rich man, his
adventures in general must have been more remunerative than the one
I am going to relate. In the autumn of the year 1825, it seemed good
to this worthy merchant to despatch a vessel with a cargo chiefly
made up of linens to the market of New York. The honest man little
dreamed with what a fate his ship was fraught, wrapped up in those
flaxen folds. He happened to be in London the Winter before, and was
present at the _début_ of Maria G---- at the King's Theatre. He must
have admired the beauty, grace, and promise of the youthful _Rosina_,
had he been ten times a Dutchman; and if he heard of her intended
emigration to America, as he possibly might have done, it most likely
excited no particular emotion in his phlegmatic bosom. He could not
have imagined that the exportation of a little singing-girl to New
York should interfere with a potential venture of his own in fair
linen. The gods kindly hid the future from his eyes, so that he might
enjoy the comic vexation her lively sallies caused to _Doctor Bartolo_
in the play, unknowing that she would be the innocent cause of a
more serious provocation to himself, in downright earnest. He
thought of this, himself, after it had all happened.

Well, the good ship _Steenbok_ had prosperous gales and fair weather
across the ocean, and dropped anchor off the Battery with some days
to spare from the amount due to the voyage. The consignee came off
and took possession of the cargo, and duly transferred it to his own
warehouse. Though the advantages of advertising were not as fully
understood in those days of comparative ignorance as they have been
since, he duly announced the goods which he had received, and waited
for a customer. He did not have to wait long. It was but a day or
two after the appearance of the advertisement in the newspapers that
he had prime Holland linens on hand, just received from Amsterdam,
when he was waited upon by a gentleman of good address and evidently
of French extraction, who inquired of the consignee, whom we will
call Mr. Schulemberg for the nonce, "whether he had the linens he
had advertised yet on hand."

"They are still on hand and on sale," said Mr. Schulemberg.

"What is the price of the entire consignment?" inquired the customer.

"Fifty thousand dollars," responded Mr. Schulemberg.

"And the terms?"

"Cash, on delivery."

"Very good," replied the obliging buyer, "if they be of the quality
you describe in your advertisement, I will take them on those terms.
Send them down to my warehouse, No. 118 Pearl Street, tomorrow
morning, and I will send you the money."

"And your name?" inquired Mr. Schulemberg.

"Is M. ----," responded the courteous purchaser.

The two merchants bowed politely, the one to the other, mutually
well pleased with the morning's work, and bade each other good day.

Mr. Schulemberg knew but little, if anything, about his new customer;
but as the transaction was to be a cash one, he did not mind that.
He calculated his commissions, gave orders to his head clerk to see
the goods duly delivered the next morning, and went on change and
thence to dinner in the enjoyment of a complacent mind and a good
appetite.

It is to be supposed that M. M. ---- did the same. At any rate, he
had the most reason,--at least, according to his probable notions of
mercantile morality and success.


III.

The next day came, and with it came, betimes, the packages of linens
to M. M. ----'s warehouse in Pearl Street; but the price for the
same did not come as punctually to Mr. Schulemberg's counting-room,
according to the contract under which they were delivered. In point
of fact, M. M. ---- was not in at the time; but there was no doubt
that he would attend to the matter without delay, as soon as he came
in. A cash transaction does not necessarily imply so much the instant
presence of coin as the unequivocal absence of credit. A day or two
more or less is of no material consequence, only there is to be no
delay for sales and returns before payment. So Mr. Schulemberg gave
himself no uneasiness about the matter when two, three, and even five
and six days had slid away without producing the apparition of the
current money of the merchant. A man who transacted affairs on so
large a scale as M. M. ----, and conducted them on the sound basis
of ready money, might safely be trusted for so short a time. But when
a week had elapsed and no tidings had been received either of
purchaser or purchase-money, Mr. Schulemberg thought it time for
himself to interfere in his own proper person. Accordingly, he
incontinently proceeded to the counting-house of M. M. ---- to
receive the promised price or to know the reason why. If he failed
to obtain the one satisfaction, he at least could not complain of
being disappointed of the other. Matters seemed to be in some
little unbusiness-like confusion, and the clerks in a high state
of gleeful excitement. Addressing himself to the chief among them,
Mr. Schulemberg asked the pertinent question,--

"Is M. M. ---- in?"

"No, Sir," was the answer, "he is not; and he will not be just at
present."

"But when will he be in? for I must see him on some pressing
business of importance."

"Not to-day, Sir," replied the clerk, smiling expressively;
"he cannot be interrupted to-day on any business of any kind whatever."

"The deuce he can't!" returned Mr. Schulemberg. "I'll see about that
very soon, I can tell you. He promised to pay me cash for fifty
thousand dollars' worth of Holland linens a week ago; I have not
seen the color of his money yet, and I mean to wait no longer. Where
does he live? for if he be alive, I will see him and hear what he
has to say for himself, and that speedily."

"Indeed, Sir," pleasantly expostulated the clerk, "I think when you
understand the circumstances of the case, you will forbear
disturbing M. M. ---- this day of all others in his life."

"Why, what the devil ails this day above all others," said
Mr. Schulemberg, somewhat testily, "that he can't see his
creditors and pay his debts on it?"

"Why, Sir, the fact is," the clerk replied, with an air of interest
and importance, "it is M. M. ----'s wedding-day. He marries this
morning the Signorina G----, and I am sure you would not molest him
with business on such an occasion as that."

"But my fifty thousand dollars!" persisted the consignee, "and why
have they not been paid?"

"Oh, give yourself no uneasiness at all about that, Sir," replied
the clerk, with the air of one to whom the handling of such trifles
was a daily occurrence; "M. M. ---- will, of course, attend to that
matter the moment he is a little at leisure. In fact, I imagine, that,
in the hurry and bustle inseparable from an event of this nature,
the circumstance has entirely escaped his mind; but as soon as he
returns to business again, I will recall it to his recollection, and
you will hear from him without delay."

The clerk was right in his augury as to the effect his intelligence
would have upon the creditor. It was not a clerical error on his
part when he supposed that Mr. Schulemberg would not choose to enact
the part of skeleton at the wedding breakfast of the young _Prima
Donna_. There is something about the great events of life, which
cannot happen a great many times to anybody,--

  "A wedding or a funeral,
  A mourning or a festival,--"

that touches the strings of the one human heart of us all and makes
it return no uncertain sound. _Shylock_ himself would hardly have
demanded his pound of flesh on the wedding-day, had it been _Antonio_
that was to espouse the fair _Portia_. Even he would have allowed
three days of grace before demanding the specific performance of his
bond. Now Mr. Schulemberg was very far from being a Shylock, and he
was also a constant attendant upon the opera, and a devoted admirer
of the lovely G----. So he could not wonder that a man on the eve of
marriage with that divine creature should forget every other
consideration in the immediate contemplation of his happiness,--even
if it were the consideration for a cargo of prime linens, and one to
the tune of fifty thousand dollars. And it is altogether likely that
the mundane reflection occurred to him, and made him easier in his
mind under the delay, that old G---- was by no means the kind of man
to give away a daughter who dropped gold and silver from her sweet
lips whenever she opened them in public, as the princess in the
fairy-tale did pearls and diamonds, to any man who could not give
him a solid equivalent in return. So that, in fact, he regarded the
notes of the Signorina G---- as so much collateral security for his
debt.

So Mr. Schulemberg was content to bide his reasonable time for the
discharge of M. M. ----'s indebtedness to his principal. He had
advised Mynheer Van Holland of the speedy sale of his consignment,
and given him hopes of a quick return of the proceeds. But as days
wore away, it seemed to him that the time he was called on to bide
was growing into an unreasonable one. I cannot state with precision
exactly how long he waited. Whether he disturbed the sweet
influences of the honey-moon by his intrusive presence, or permitted
that nectareous satellite to fill her horns and wax and wane in
peace before he sought to bring the bridegroom down to the things of
earth, are questions which I must leave to the discretion of my
readers to settle, each for himself or herself, according to their
own notions of the proprieties of the case. But at the proper time,
after patience had thrown up in disgust the office of a virtue, he
took his hat and cane one fine morning and walked down to No. 118,
Pearl Street, for the double purpose of wishing M. M. ---- joy of
his marriage and of receiving the price, promised long and long
withheld, of the linens which form the tissue of my story.

  "The gods gave ear and granted half his prayer;
  The rest the winds dispersed in empty air."

There was not the slightest difficulty about his imparting
his epithalamic congratulation,--but as to his receiving the
numismatic consideration for which he hoped in return, that was
an entirely different affair. He found matters in the Pearl-Street
counting-house again apparently something out of joint, but with a
less smiling and sunny atmosphere pervading them than he had remarked
on his last visit. He was received by M. M. ---- with courtesy, a
little over-strained, perhaps, and not as flowing and gracious as at
their first interview. Preliminaries over, Mr. Schulemberg, plunging
with epic energy into the midst of things, said, "I have called,
M. M. ----, to receive the fifty thousand dollars, which, you will
remember, you engaged to pay down for the linens I sold you on such
a day. I can make allowance for the interruption which has prevented
your attending to this business sooner, but it is now high time that
it were settled."

"I consent to it all, Monsieur," replied M. M. ----, with a
deprecatory gesture; "you have reason, and I am desolated that it is
the impossible that you ask of me to do."

"How, Sir!" demanded the creditor; "what do you mean by the
impossible? You do not mean to deny that you agreed to pay cash for
the goods?"

"My faith, no, Monsieur," shruggingly responded M. M. ----;
"I avow it; you have reason; I promised to pay the money, as you say
it; but if I have not the money to pay you, how can I pay you the
money? What to do?"

"I don't understand you, Sir," returned Mr. Schulemberg. "You have
not the money? And you do not mean to pay me according to agreement?"

"But, Monsieur, how can I when I have not money? Have you not heard
that I have made--what you call it?--failure, yesterday? I am
grieved of it, thrice sensibly; but if it went of my life, I could
not pay you for your fine linens, which were of a good market at the
price."

"Indeed, sir," replied Mr. Schulemberg, "I had not heard of your
misfortunes; and I am heartily sorry for them, on my own account and
yours, but still more on account of your charming wife. But there is
no great harm done, after all. Send the linens back to me and
accounts shall be square between us, and I will submit to the loss
of the interest."

"Ah, but, Monsieur, you are too good, and Madame will be recognizant
to you forever for your gracious politeness. But, my God, it is
impossible that I return to you the linen. I have sold it, Monsieur,
I have sold it all!"

"Sold it?" reiterated Mr. Schulemberg, regardless of the rules of
etiquette, "Sold it? And to whom, pray? And when?"

"To M. G----, my father-in-the-law," answered the catechumen, blandly;
"and it is a week that he has received it."

"Then I must bid you a good morning, Sir," said Mr. Schulemberg,
rising hastily and collecting his hat and gloves, "for I must lose
no time in taking measures to recover the goods before they have
changed hands again."

"Pardon, Monsieur," interrupted the poor, but honest M. ----,
"but it is too late! One cannot regain them. M. G---- embarked
himself for Mexico yesterday morning, and carried them all with him!"

Imagine the consternation and rage of poor Mr. Schulemberg at
finding that he was sold, though the goods were not! I decline
reporting the conversation any farther, lest its strength of
expression and force of expletive might be too much for the more
queasy of my readers. Suffice it to say, that the _swindlee_, if I
may be allowed the royalty of coining a word, at once freed his own
mind and imprisoned the body of M. M. ----; for in those days
imprisonment for debt was a recognized institution, and I think few
of its strongest opponents will deny that this was a case to which
it was no abuse to apply it.


IV.

I regret that I am compelled to leave this exemplary merchant in
captivity; but the exigencies of my story, the moral of which
beckons me away to the distant coast of Mexico, require it at my
hands. The reader may be consoled, however, by the knowledge that he
obtained his liberation in due time, his Dutch creditor being
entirely satisfied that nothing whatsoever could be squeezed out of
him by passing him between the bars of the debtor's prison, though
that was all the satisfaction he ever did get. How he accompanied his
young wife to Europe and there lived by the coining of her voice
into drachmas, as her father had done before him, needs not to be
told here; nor yet how she was divorced from him, and made another
matrimonial venture in partnership with De B----. I have nothing to
do with him or her, after the bargain and sale of which she was the
object, and the consequences which immediately resulted from it; and
here, accordingly, I take my leave of them. But my story is not
quite done yet; it must now pursue the fortunes of the enterprising
_impresario_, Signor G----, who had so deftly turned his daughter
into a ship-load of fine linens.

This excellent person sailed, as M. M. ---- told Mr. Schulemberg, for
Vera Cruz, with an assorted cargo, consisting of singers, fiddlers,
and, as aforesaid, of Mynheer Van Holland's fine linens. The voyage
was as prosperous as was due to such an argosy. If a single Amphion
could not be drowned by the utmost malice of gods and men, so long as
he kept his voice in order, what possible mishap could befall a
whole ship-load of them? The vessel arrived safely under the shadow
of San Juan de Ulua, and her precious freight in all its varieties
was welcomed with a tropical enthusiasm. The market was bare of
linen and of song, and it was hard to say which found the readiest
sale. Competition raised the price of both articles to a fabulous
height. So the good G---- had the benevolent satisfaction of clothing
the naked and making the ears that heard him to bless him at the
same time. After selling his linens at a great advance on the cost
price, considering he had only paid his daughter for them, and
having given a series of the most successful concerts ever known in
those latitudes, Signor G---- set forth for the Aztec City. As the
relations of _meum_ and _tuum_ were not upon the most satisfactory
footing just then at Vera Cruz, he thought it most prudent to carry
his well-won treasure with him to the capital. His progress thither
was a triumphal procession. Not Cortés, not General Scott, himself,
marched more gloriously along the steep and rugged road that leads
from the sea-coast to the table-land, than did this son of song.
Every city on his line of march was the monument of a victory, and
from each one he levied tribute and bore spoils away. And the
vanquished thanked him for this spoiling of their goods.

Arrived at the splendid city, at that time the largest and most
populous on the North American continent, he speedily made himself
master of it, a welcome conqueror. The Mexicans, with the genuine
love for song of their Southern ancestors, had had but few
opportunities for gratifying it such as that now offered to them. G----
was a tenor of great compass, and a most skilful and accomplished
singer. The artists who accompanied him were of a high order of merit,
if not of the very first class. Mexico had never heard the like, and,
though a hard-money country, was glad to take their notes and give
them gold in return. They were feasted and flattered in the
intervals of the concerts, and the bright eyes of Señoras and
Señoritas rained influence upon them on the off nights, as their
fair hands rained flowers upon the _on_ ones. And they have a very
pleasant way, in those golden realms, of giving ornaments of diamonds
and other precious stones to virtuous singers, as we give
pencil-cases and gold watches to meritorious railway conductors and
hotel clerks, as a testimonial of the sense we entertain of their
private characters and public services. The gorgeous East herself
never showered on her kings barbaric pearl and gold with a richer
hand than the city of Mexico poured out the glittering rain over the
portly person of the happy G----. Saturated at length with the
golden flood and its foam of pearl and diamond,--if, indeed, singer
were ever capable of such saturation, and were not rather permeable
forever like a sieve of the Danaides,--saturated, or satisfied that
it was all run out, he prepared to take up his line of march back
again to the City of the True Cross. Mexico mourned over his going,
and sent him forth upon his way with blessings and prayers for his
safe return.

But, alas! the blessings and the prayers were alike vain. The saints
were either deaf or busy, or had gone a journey, and either did not
hear or did not mind the vows that were sent up to them. At any rate,
they did not take that care of the worthy G---- which their devotees
had a right to expect of them. Turning his back on the Halls of the
Montezumas, where he had revelled so sumptuously, he proceeded on
his way towards the Atlantic coast, as fast as his mules thought fit
to carry him and his beloved treasure. With the proceeds of his
linens and his lungs, he was rich enough to retire from the
vicissitudes of operatic life, to some safe retreat in his native
Spain or his adoptive Italy. Filled with happy imaginings, he fared
onward, the bells of his mules keeping time with the melodious joy
of his heart, until he had descended from the _tierra caliente_ to
the wilder region on the hither side of Jalapa. As the narrow road
turned sharply, at the foot of a steeper descent than common, into a
dreary valley, made yet more gloomy by the shadow of the hill behind
intercepting the sun, though the afternoon was not far advanced, the
_impresario_ was made unpleasantly aware of the transitory nature
of man's hopes and the vanity of his joys. When his train wound into
the rough open space, it found itself surrounded by a troop of men
whose looks and gestures bespoke their function without the
intermediation of an interpreter. But no interpreter was needed in
this case, as Signor G---- was a Spaniard by birth, and their
expressive pantomime was a sufficiently eloquent substitute for
speech. In plain English, he had fallen among thieves, with very
little chance of any good Samaritan coming by to help him.

Now Signor G---- had had dealings with brigands and banditti all his
operatic life. Indeed, he had often drilled them till they were
perfect in their exercises, and got them up regardless of expense.
Under his direction they had often rushed forward to the footlights,
pouring into the helpless mass before them repeated volleys of
explosive crotchets. But this was a very different chorus that now
saluted his eyes. It was the real thing, instead of the make-believe,
and, in the opinion of Signor G----, at least, very much inferior to
it. Instead of the steeple-crowned hat, jauntily feathered and looped,
these irregulars wore huge _sombreros_, much the worse for time and
weather, flapped over their faces. For the velvet jacket with the
two-inch tail, which had nearly broken up the friendship between
Mr. Pickwick and Mr. Tupman, when the latter gentleman proposed
induing himself with one, on the occasion of Mrs. Leo Hunter's
fancy-dress breakfast,--for this integument, I say, these minions of
the moon had blankets round their shoulders, thrown back in
preparation for actual service. Instead of those authentic
cross-garterings in which your true bandit rejoices, like a new
Malvolio, to tie up his legs, perhaps to keep them from running away,
these false knaves wore, some of them, ragged boots up to their
thighs, while others had no crural coverings at all, and only rough
sandals, such as the Indians there use, between their feet and the
ground. They were picturesque, perhaps, but not attractive to wealthy
travellers. But the wealthy travellers were attractive to them; so
they came together, all the same. Such as they were, however, there
they were, fierce, sad, and sallow, with vicious-looking knives in
their belts, and guns of various parentage in their hands, while
their Captain bade our good man stand and deliver.

There was no room for choice. He had an escort, to be sure; but it
was entirely unequal to the emergency,--even if it were not, as was
afterwards shrewdly suspected, in league with the robbers. The enemy
had the advantage of arms, position, and numbers; and there was
nothing for him to do but to disgorge his hoarded gains at once, or
to have his breath stripped first and his estate summarily
administered upon afterwards by these his casual heirs,--as the King
of France, by virtue of his _Droit d'Aubaine_, would have
confiscated Yorick's six shirts and pair of black silk breeches, in
spite of his eloquent protest against such injustice, had he chanced
to die in his Most Christian Majesty's dominions. As Signor G----
had an estate in his breath, from which he could draw a larger yearly
rent than the rolls of many a Spanish grandee could boast, he wisely
chose the part of discretion and surrendered at the same. His new
acquaintances showed themselves expert pr

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