CHAPTER I.

[Illustration: GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

1850.

GEO. R. GRAHAM, EDITOR.

_Devereux, del._ _Hogan and Thompson, pr._

_Lake of Como._]

GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

Vol. XXXVII. July, 1850. No. 1.

Table of Contents

Fiction, Literature and Articles

The Vital and the Mechanical

For’ard and Aft

Jenny Lind

The Bride of the Battle

Stories from the Old Dramatists

Lucy Leyton

George R. Graham

The Genius of Burns

The Gambler’s Daughter

Woodcock and Woodcock Shooting

The Shark

Review of New Books

Editor’s Table

Poetry, Music, and Fashion

Sonnets

Dara

A Legend of Tyrol

The Lady of Castle Windeck

The Young Mother’s Lament

The Poet’s Prayer

Implora Pace:—A Version

The Fall of the Fairies

The Spirit Lovers and the Spirit Bridal

Lines Written at Night in Cave Hill Cemetery

A Song for a Down-Trodden Land

To Jenny Lind

A Requiem by the Sea

Jenny Lind’s American Polka

Details of the New Fashions in Sacques and

Mantelets

Le Follet

Transcriber’s Notes can be found at the end of this eBook.

CONTENTS

OF THE

THIRTY-SEVENTH VOLUME.

JUNE, 1850, TO JANUARY, 1851.

A Romance of True Love. By Caroline H. Butler, 100

A Visit to Staten Island. By Mrs. Lydia H. 149

Sigourney,

Bridget Kerevan. By Enna Duval, 116

Bay Snipe Shooting. By Frank Forester, 126

Blanche of Bourbon. By Walter Brooke, 348

Coquet _versus_ Coquette. By Caroline H. Butler, 177

Chateaubriand and His Career. By Fayette Robinson, 356

Doctrine of Form. By E. 170

Edda Murray. By Enna Duval, 238

Early English Poets. By James W. Wall, 250

Enchanted Beauty. By E. 265

For’ard and Aft. By S. A Godman, 8

Familiar Quotations from Unfamiliar Sources. By A 312

Student,

George R. Graham. By C. J. Peterson, 43

Jenny Lind. By Henry T. Tuckerman, 15

Lucy Leighton. By Caroline H. Butler, 37

Music and Musical Composers. By R. J. De Cordova, 73

Mandan Indians, 195

Music. By Henry Giles, 223

Minnie De La Croix. By Angele De V. Hull, 294, 339

Nettles on the Grave. By R. Penn Smith, 311

Of and Concerning the Moon. By Calvin W. Philleo, 329

Pedro de Padilh. By J. M. Legare, 92, 144, 231,

305, 372

Quail and Quail Shooting. By Henry Wm. Herbert, 317

Rail and Rail Shooting. By H. W. Herbert, 190

Ruffed Grouse Shooting. By H. W. Herbert, 382

Stories from the Old Dramatists. By Enna Duval, 31

Shakspeare. By Henry C. Moorhead, 137

The Vital and the Mechanical. By P. 1

The Bride of the Battle. By Wm. Gilmore Simms, 23, 84, 163

The Genius of Burns. By Henry Giles, 45

The Gambler’s Daughter. By Henry C. Moorhead, 53

The Shark. By L. A. Wilmer, 64

The Chase. By Charles J. Peterson, 79

The Fine Arts, 132

The Genius of Byron. By Rev. J. N. Danforth, 185

The Fine Arts, 193

The Slave of the Pacha. From Santaine, 201

Thomas Johnson. By Thomas Wyatt, A. M. 245

Teal and Teal Shooting. By H. W. Herbert, 256

The Fine Arts, 259

The Vision of Mariotdale. By H. Hastings Weld, 273

Tamaque. By Henry C. Moorhead, 277

The Sunflower. By Major Richardson, 285

Two Crayon Sketches. By Enna Duval, 314

Thistle-Down. By Caroline Chesebro’, 361

The Comus of Milton. By Rev. J. N. Danforth, 367

Woodcock and Woodcock Shooting. By H. W. Herbert, 61

Wordsworth. By P. 106

What Katy Did. By Caroline Chesebro’, 121

Woodlawn. By F. E. F. 152

“What Can Woman Do?” By Alice B. Neal, 158

POETRY.

A Legend of Tyrol. By J. T. Fields, 7

A Song for a Down-Trodden Land. By Wm. P. 36

Mulchinock,

A Requiem by the Sea. By Helen Irving, 60

A Health to My Brother. By R. Penn Smith, 157

A Sea-Side Reverie. By Enna Duval, 162

Audubon’s Blindness. By Park Benjamin, 169

A Night at the Black Sign. By T. B. Read, 220

Alone—Alone! By Mrs. I. W. Mercur, 230

Charlotte Corday. By Mrs. E. J. Eames, 310

Dara. By James R. Lowell, 7

Hylas. By Bayard Taylor, 271

Implora Pace. By Elizabeth J. Eames, 20

Impulse and Principle. By A. B. Street, 105

Inspiration. By Wm. P. Brannan, 237

I Dreamed. By Wm. M. Briggs, 293

I Think of Thee. By Geo. D. Prentice, 381

Lines Written at Night in Cave Hill Cemetery.

By Geo. D. Prentice, 35

Lines in Memory of My Lost Child. By Geo. D. 143

Prentice,

Lines to a Bird. By T. Buchanan Read, 355

Manuella. By Bayard Taylor, 78

Memories. By Geo. D. Prentice, 83

Moral Strength. By Mrs. E. C. Kinney, 276

Ode. By R. H. Stoddard, 142

On a Portrait of Cromwell. By J. T. Fields, 162

On the Death of General Taylor. By Robert T. Conrad, 175

Outward Bound. By T. Buchanan Read, 189

On San Francisco’s Splendid Bay. By T. G. Spear, 370

“Psyche Loves Me.” By T. Dunn English, 176

Picture of Childhood. By Wm. Alexander, 338

Red Jacket. By W. H. C. Hosmer, 91

Riverside. By Geo. Canning Hill, 129

Sonnets. By Alfred B. Street, 6

Sonnets. By Mary Spenser Pease, 169

Sonnets. By Miss A. D. Woodbridge, 221

Spring Lilies. By Mrs. Mary G. Horsford, 229

Sonnet. By Wm. Alexander, 236

Sin No More. By R. T. Conrad, 237

Sonnets. By Mrs. E. J. Eames, 244

Sorrow. By Alfred B. Street, 276

Sonnet. By R. T. Conrad, 310

The Lady of Castle Windeck. By William Cullen 14

Bryant,

The Young Mother’s Lament. By Mrs. E. C. Kinney, 14

The Poet’s Prayer. By Emma C. Embury, 20

The Fall of the Fairies. By Henry B. Hirst, 21

The Spirit Lovers. By Miss L. V. Smith, 29

To Jenny Lind. By J. R. Fry, 42

The Mariner’s Tale, By R. Penn Smith, 97

The Wasted Heart. By L. Virginia Smith, 156

To the Lost One. By Duncan Moore, 176

The Bright New Moon of Love. By T. H. Chivres, M. D. 195

To a Friend. By Miss L. Virginia Smith, 222

The Earth. By R. H. Stoddard, 230

The Name of Wife. By Mrs. A. M. F. Annan, 236

Thinking of Minna. By Ellis Martyn, 244

The Maiden’s Lament for her Shipwrecked Lover. 249

By Wm. Albert Sutliffe,

The Gift of a Rose. By Geo. D. Prentice, 253

The Reconciliation. By L. Virginia Smith, 283

The Wife’s Last Gift. By Julia C. Dorr, 293

Theodora. By Geo. Canning Hill, 304

The Spectre Knight and His Ladye Bride. By Fanny 320

Fielding,

To L——. By Grace Greenwood, 321

To Miss Martha Griffith. By Grant Danby Polworth, 338

To a Celebrated Singer. By R. H. Stoddard, 347

To J. F. H. By J. R. Lowell, 360

To a Summer Haunt. By H. T. Tuckerman, 360

The Death of Wordsworth. By Wm. Sydney Thayer, 366

The Grave’s Pale Roses. By C. F. Orne, 370

The Quiet Arbor. By Wm. H. C. Hosmer, 371

Unhappy Love. By Geo. D. Prentice, 284

Wood Violets. By Alice B. Neal, 83

Wordsworth. By James T. Fields, 237

Wordsworth. By Wm. Alexander, 321

REVIEWS.

The Life and Correspondence of R. Southey.

Edited by his son, Rev. C. C. Southey, 65

Historic View of the Languages and Literature

of the Sclavic Nations. By Talvi, 66

Indiana. By George Sand, 67

Latter-Day Pamphlets. By Thomas Carlyle, 133

Webster’s Dictionary, 133

Eldorado. By Bayard Taylor, 134

In Memoriam, 198

Chronicles and Characters of the Stock Exchange.

By John Francis, 199

Evangeline. By Henry W. Longfellow, 199

Elementary Sketches of Moral Philosophy.

By Rev. Sidney Smith, A. M. 261

Confessions of an English Opium Eater. By

Thomas De Quincy, 262

Life and Letters of Thomas Campbell.

Edited by William Beattie, M. D. 263

The Prelude. By William Wordsworth, 322

Christian Thought on Life. By Henry Giles, 323

Specimens of Newspaper Literature. By J. T. 324

Buckingham,

Songs of Labor and Other Poems. By J. G. Whittier, 324

Memoirs of the Life of Anne Boleyn. By Miss Benger, 326

Lynch’s Dead Sea Expedition, 326

Astræa. By Oliver Wendall Holmes, 385

Five Years of a Hunter’s Life in the Far Interior

of South Africa. By R. G. Cumming, 387

MUSIC.

Jenny Lind’s American Polka, 68

Chant of the Nereides, 130

Barcarole, 196

Ah, Do Not Speak so Coldly, 254

Come Touch the Harp, My Gentle One, 388

ENGRAVINGS.

Portrait of Jenny Lind, engraved by Mote, London.

Paris Fashions, from Le Follet.

Portrait of the Editor, engraved by Armstrong.

Lake of Como, executed in colors by Devereux.

Woodcock Shooting, engraved by Brightly.

Designs for Mantelets, engraved by Brightly, Thomas,

and Talfer.

The Shark, engraved by Brightly.

The Origin of Music, engraved by Tucker.

Paris Fashions, from Le Follet.

The Sisters, engraved by Thomas B. Welch.

He Comes Not, engraved by Holl.

Paris Fashions, from Le Follet.

Dance of the Mandan Indians, engraved by Rawdon,

Wright & Hatch.

Rail Shooting, engraved by Brightly.

The Slave of the Pacha, engraved by J. Brown.

The Way to Church, engraved by T. McGoffin.

Paris Fashions, from Le Follet.

Portrait of Thomas Johnson, engraved by Brightly.

Teal Shooting, engraved by Brightly.

The Highland Chase, engraved by T. B. Welch.

The Angel’s Whisper, engraved by T. Illman & Son.

Paris Fashions, from Le Follet.

American Quail, engraved by Brightly.

Catskill Mountain House, engraved by Smillie.

The Home of Milton, engraved by W. E. Tucker.

Mariner’s Beacon, engraved by H. Smith.

Paris Fashions, engraved by David.

Ruffed Grouse, engraved by Brightly.

* * * * *

GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

Vol. XXXVII. PHILADELPHIA, JULY, 1850. No. 1.

* * * * *

THE VITAL AND THE MECHANICAL.

It may be universally affirmed that every thing having shape either

grows or is put together, is a living organism or a contrived machine;

and the radical distinction between minds in all the modes of their

operation, and between things in all the forms of their manifestation,

is expressed in the antithesis of vitality and mechanism. To suggest, in

a manner necessarily imperfect and rambling, some of the important

consequences involved in this distinction, is the object of the present

essay.

And first, in regard to minds, it may be asked, to what faculties and

operations of the intelligence do you apply the term vital, as

distinguished from other faculties and operations indicated as

mechanical? The answer to this question may be spiritually true without

being metaphysically exact, and we shall hazard a brief one. The soul of

man in its essential nature is a vital unit and person, capable of

growth through an assimilation of external objects; and its faculties

and acquirements are all related to its primitive personality, as the

leaves, branches, and trunk of a tree to its root. In the tree there are

sometimes dead branches and withered leaves, which constitute a part of

the tree’s external form without participating in the tree’s internal

life. The same thing occurs in the human mind. Faculties, originally

springing from the soul’s vital principle, become disconnected from it,

lose all the sap and juice of life, and dwindle from vital into

mechanical powers. The customary vocabulary of metaphysics evinces the

extent of this decay in its division of the mind into parts, each part

with a separate name and performing a different office. It is plain that

no organism, vegetable, animal, or human, admits of such a

classification of parts, for the fundamental principle of organisms is

unity in variety, each part implying the whole, growing out of a common

centre and source, and dying the moment it is separated. When,

therefore, we say that the mind has faculties which are not vitally

related to each other, that the whole mind is not present in every act,

that there are processes of thought in which a particular faculty

operates on its own account, we assert the existence of death in the

mind; what is worse, the assertion is true; and, what is still worse,

this mental death often passes for wisdom and common sense, and mental

life is stigmatized as fanaticism.

Now, this antithesis of life and death, vitality and mechanism, the

conception of the spirit of things, and the perception of the forms of

things, is a distinction available in every department of human thought

and action, and divides minds into two distinct classes, the living and

the lifeless. The test of the live mind is, that it communicates life.

The only sign here of possession is communication; and life it cannot

possess unless life it communicates. Spiritual life implies a

combination of force and insight, an indissoluble union of will and

intelligence, in which will sees and intelligence acts. A mental

operation, in the true meaning of the phrase, is a vital _movement_ of

the mind; and although this movement is called a conception or an act

according as it refers to meditation or practice, it cannot in either

case be a conception without being an act, or an act without being a

conception. Conception, in the last analysis, is as truly an act of the

mind as volition; both are expressions of one undivided unit and person;

and the only limit of conception, the limit which prevented Kepler from

conceiving the law of gravitation, and Ben Jonson from conceiving the

character of Falstaff, is a limitation of will, of personality, of

individual power, of that innate force which is always the condition and

the companion of insight. All the vital movements of the mind are acts

whether the product be a book or a battle; and that is a singular

philosophy of the will which calls Condé’s charge at Rocroi an act, and

withholds the name from Shakspeare’s conception of Othello.

As this spiritual force is ever the characteristic of vital thought,

such thought is both light and heat, kindles as well as informs, and

acts potently on other minds by imparting life as well as knowledge.

There are many books which contain more information than Paradise Lost,

but Paradise Lost stimulates, dilates and enriches our minds by

communicating to them the very substance of thought, while the other

books may leave us as poor and weak as they found us, with the addition

only of some names and forms of things which we did not know before. The

great difference, therefore, between a vital and mechanical mind is

this, that from one you obtain the realities of things, and from the

other the mere appearances; one influences, the other only informs; one

increases our power, the other does little more than increase our words.

The action of a live mind upon other minds is chiefly an influence, and

the true significance of influence is that it pierces through all the

formal frippery of opinion and speculation lying on the surface of

consciousness, and touches the tingling and throbbing nerve at its

centre and soul; rousing the mind’s dormant activity, breathing into it

a new motive and fresh vigor, and making it strong as well as wise. As

regards the common affairs of the world, this influence is as the blast

of an archangel’s trumpet, waking us from the death of sloth and custom.

In the fire of our newly kindled energies the mean and petty interests

in which our thoughts are ensnared wither and consume; and, discerning

vitalities where before we only perceived semblances, a strangeness

comes over the trite, a new meaning gleams through old appearances, and

the forms of common objects are transfigured, as viewed in the vivid

vision of that rapturous life. Then, and only then, do we realize how

awful and how bright is the consciousness of a living soul; then

immortality becomes a faith, and death a delusion; then magnanimous

resolves in the heart send generous blood mantling in the cheek, and

virtue, knowledge, genius, heroism, appear possibilities to the lazy

coward who, an hour before, whined about his destiny in the hopeless

imbecility of weakness. Although this still and deep ecstasy, this

feeling of power and awe, is to most minds only a transient elevation,

it is still a revelation of the vital within them, which should at least

keep alive a sublime discontent with the sluggish apathy of their common

existence. “Show me,” says Burke, “a contented slave and I will show you

a degraded man,”—a sentence right from the hot heart of an illustrious

man, whose own mind glowed with life and energy to the verge of the

tomb, and who never knew the slavery of that sleep of mental death,

which withers and dries up the very fountains of life in the soul.

The usual phrases by which criticism discriminates vital from mechanical

minds, are impassioned imagination and logical understanding. This

vocabulary, though open to objections, as not going to the root of the

matter, is still available for our purpose. It draws a definite line

between genius and talent. The man of impassioned imagination is vital

in every part. The primitive spiritual energy at the centre of his

personality permeates, as with warm life-blood, the whole of his being,

vivifying, connecting, fusing into unity, all his faculties, so that his

thought comes from him as an act, and is endowed with a penetrating and

animating as well as enlightening power. The thoughts of Plato, Dante,

Bacon, Shakspeare, Newton, Milton, Burke, not to mention others, are

actors in the world—communicating life, forming character, revealing

truth, generating energy in recipient minds. These men possess

understanding as far as that term expresses an operation of the mind,

but understanding with them is in living connection with imagination and

emotion; they never use it as an exclusive power in themselves, they

never address it as an exclusive power in others. To understand a thing

in its external qualities and internal spirit, requires the joint

operation of all the faculties; and no fact is ever thoroughly

understood by the understanding, for it is the person that understands

not the faculty, and the person understands only by the exercise of his

whole force and insight. The man of understanding, so called, simply

perceives the forms of things and their relations; the man of

impassioned imagination perceiving forms and divining spirit, conceives

the life of things and their relations. The antithesis runs through the

whole realm of thought and fact. The man of understanding, when he rises

out of sensations, simply reaches abstractions; and in the abstract

there is no life. Ideas and principles belong as much to the concrete,

to substantial existence, as the facts of sensation; the law of

gravitation is a reality no less than the planet Jupiter; but to the man

of mechanical understanding, ideas subside into mere opinions, and

principles into generalities; and as by the very process of his thinking

he disconnects, and deadens by disconnection, the powers by which he

thinks, he cannot exercise, conceive or communicate life, cannot invent,

discover, create, combine. This is evident from the nature of the mind,

and it is proved by history. In art, religion, science, philosophy,

politics, the minds that organize are organic minds, not mechanical

understandings.

The principle we have indicated, applies to all matters of human

concern, the simplest as well as the most complicated. Let us first take

a familiar instance from ordinary life. In the common intercourse of

society we are all painfully conscious of the dominion of the

mechanical, prescribing manner, proscribing nature. In the Siberian

atmosphere of most social assemblies the soul congeals. The tendency to

isolation of mind from mind, and heart from heart, is most apparent in

the contrivances by which society brings its members bodily

together—the formal politeness excluding the courtesy it mimics.

Hypocrisy, artifice, non-expression of the reality in persons—these are

apt to be the characteristics of that dreary solitude which passes under

the exquisitely ironical appellation of “good society.” The universal

destiny of men and women who engage in this game of fashion as the

business of life, is frivolity or ennui. They either fritter to pieces

or are bored to death. Nothing so completely wastes away the vitality of

the mind, and converts a person into a puppet, as this substitution of

the verb “to appear,” for the verb “to be.” Whatever is graceful in

manner, carriage and conversation, is natural; but the art of

politeness, as commonly practiced, is employed to deaden rather than

develop nature, from its ambition to reduce the finer instincts to

mechanical forms. In the very term of gentleman there is something

exceedingly winning and beautiful, expressing as it does a fine union of

intelligence and courtesy; but in genteel society the word too often

means nothing more than foppish emptiness, and Sir Philip Sidney gives

way to Beau Nash.

Even here, however, the moment a person with a genius for society

appears, it is curious to see how quickly the different elements are

fused together, by a few flashes of genuine social inspiration.

Convention is at once abolished, each heart finds a tongue, giggling

turns into merriment, conversation occurs and prattle ceases, and a

party is really organized. A little sincerity of this sort in social

intercourse would infinitely beautify life.

In one of the most important matters connected with the welfare of men,

that of practical ethics, we have another example of the despotism of

the mechanical and disregard of the vital, in human life. A true writer

on morals should understand two things, morality and immorality; but a

mechanical mind can do neither. He neither communicates the life of

moral ideas, nor discerns the life of vicious ideas, but simply has

opinions on morals, and opinions on vice. The consequence is that most

of the “do-me-good” books are lifeless as regards effect—are

contemptuously abandoned by men to children, and by children are learned

only to be violated. At last it becomes the sign of green juvenility to

quote an abstract truism against a concrete vice, and no person in

active life considers himself at all bound to accommodate his conduct to

axioms. Indeed, common writers on ethics have become unenviably

notorious for expending the full force of their feebleness in statements

of generalities, which are universally assented to, and almost as

universally disregarded. Complacently perched on the chill summits of

abstract principles, these gentlemen appear to experience a grim

satisfaction in sending down into the warm and living concrete a storm

of axiomatic snow and sleet. Having no practical grasp of things, they

emphasize duties without possessing any clear insight of practices, and

accordingly their indignant blast of truism whistles shrilly over the

heads of the sinners it should lay prostrate. Wanting the power to pass

into the substance and soul of existing objects and living men, they

content themselves with applying external rules to external appearances,

glory in the gift of invective as divorced from the secret of

interpretation, and being thus shrews rather than seers, they do that

worst of injuries to the cause of morality which results from denouncing

the devil without understanding his deviltry. In the republic of

delusion and democracy of transgression there are certain errors

deserving the name of “popular,” errors which mislead three quarters of

the human race; and the analysis and exhibition of these should be a

leading object of practical morality. Thoroughly to comprehend one of

these impish emissaries of Satan, and clearly to demonstrate that the

rainbow bubbles he sports in the sun are begotten by froth on emptiness,

might not be so grand a thing as to strut about in the worn-out frippery

of moral commonplaces, but it would expose one fatal fallacy which

assists in misguiding public sentiment, distorting human character, and

impelling reasonable men into those expeditions after the unreal, which

are every day wrecked on the rocks of nonsense or crime. But to do this

requires a vital mind, and in matters of morals society is very well

content not to be pricked and probed in conscience by the sharp

benevolence of truth. The mechanical moralists disturb no robber or

murderer, no cheat or miser, no spendthrift or profligate, no man who

wishes to get what he is pleased to call a living by preying on his

neighbors. They neither expose nor reform wickedness, but simply toss

words at it, for a consideration. Yet from such moral machines it is

supposed that, in the course of education, ingenuous youth can get moral

life; and real surprise is often expressed by parents, when their

children return from academies or colleges, that the only vital

knowledge, in form and in essence, that the dear boys have mastered,

relates to sin and the devil.

If the mechanical moralists are to be judged by their effects—by their

capacity to do the thing they attempt—and thus judged, have terrible

sins of omission resting on their work, what shall we say of the

mechanical theologians?—There is against each of three liberal

professions a time-honored jest, adopted by “gentle dullness,” all over

the world, and from its universality almost worthy of a place in Dugald

Stewart’s “fundamental principles of human belief.” The point of these

venerable facetiæ consists in associating law with chicane, medicine

with homicide, and preaching with Dr. Young’s “tired nature’s sweet

restorer, balmy sleep.” A joke which seems to be thus endorsed by the

human race carries with it some authority, and it would be presumptuous

to touch never so gently the subject of theology, without a preliminary

remark on this question of dullness. Sin is sarcastic, sin is

impassioned, sin is sentimental, sin is fascinating, sin swaggers in

rhetoric’s most gorgeous trappings and revels in fancy’s most enticing

images, and why should piety alone have the reputation of being feeble

and dull? The charge itself, while it closes to the general reader

Jeremy Taylor’s wilderness of sweets equally with Dr. Owen’s “continent

of mud,” is not without its benumbing effect upon the preacher, for

bodies of men commonly understand the art of adapting their conduct to

the public impression of their character, and are not apt to provide

stimulants when readers only expect soporifics. The truth is that

sermons are never dull as sermons, but because the sermonizer is weak in

soul. No man with a vision of the interior beauty and power of spiritual

truths, no man whom those truths kindle and animate, no man who is truly

alive in heart and brain, and speaks of what he has vitally conceived,

can ever be dull in the expression of what is the very substance and

doctrine of life. The difficulty is that clergymen are apt to fall into

mechanical habits of thinking; then ideas gradually fade into opinions;

truths dwindle into truisms; a fine dust is subtly insinuated into the

vitalities of their being; the holy passion with which their thoughts

once gushed out subsides, and “good common sense” succeeds to rapture;

and thus many an inspiring teacher, originally a conductor of heaven’s

lightning, and exulting in the consciousness of the immortal life

beating and burning within him, has lapsed into a theological drudge,

dull in his sermons because dull in his conceptions, neither alive

himself nor imparting life to others. This decay often occurs in

conscientious and religious men, who sufficiently bewail the torpor of

soul which compels them to substitute phrases for realities, and to whom

this mental death, as they feel it stealing over them, is at once a

spell and a torment. The clergyman, who does not keep his mind bright

and keen by constant communion with religious ideas, is sure to die of

utter weariness of existence. He has once caught a view of the promised

land from the Pisgah height of contemplation—wo unto him if it “fades

into the light of common day.”

But leaving such perilous topics as ethics and divinity to wiser heads,

and passing on to the subjects of philosophy and science, it may be

asked—does not the mechanical understanding hold undisputed sway in

these? Has impassioned imagination any thing to do with metaphysics,

mathematics, natural philosophy, with the observation and the reasoning

of the philosopher who deals with facts and laws? The answer to this

question is an emphatic yes. That roused, energetic and energizing state

of mind which we have designated as impassioned imagination, is as much

the characteristic of Newton as of Homer. The facts, direction and

object are different, but the faculty is the same. A man of science

without a scientific imagination, vital and creative like the poetical

imagination, belongs to the second or third class of scientific men, the

Hayleys and Haynes Baileys of science. Men of mechanical understandings

never discover laws and principles, but simply repeat and apply the

discoveries of their betters. Nothing but the fresh and vigorous

inspiration which comes from the grasp of ideas, could carry such men as

Kepler and Newton through the prodigious mass of drudgery, through which

ran the path which led to their objects; for genius alone is really

victorious over drudgery, and refuses to submit to the weariness and

deferred hope which attend upon vast designs. Indeed, in following the

processes of scientific reasoning, whether inductive or deductive, we

are always conscious of an element of beauty in the impression left on

the mind, an element which we never experience in following the steps of

the merely formal logician. Take the discussion, for instance, between

Butler and Clarke on the à priori argument for the existence of God, and

no reader who attends to the progress of the reasoning can fail to feel

the same inner sense touched which is more palpably addressed by the

poet. All the great thinkers, indeed, in all the branches of speculative

and physical science, are vital thinkers, and their thoughts are never

abstract generalities, but always concrete conceptions, endowed with the

power to work on other minds, and to generate new thought. Bacon, the

greatest name in the philosophy of science, was so jealous of the

benumbing and deadening effect of all formal and mechanical arrangement

of scientific truth, that he repeatedly opposes all systematization of

science, and in his Natural Philosophy followed his own precepts. In the

Advancement of Learning he says: “As young men, when they knit and shape

perfectly do seldom grow to a further stature, so knowledge, while it is

in aphorisms and observations, it is in growth; but when it is once

comprehended in exact methods, it may perchance be further polished and

illustrated, and accommodated for use and practice; but it increases no

more in bulk and substance.” And again he remarks: “The worst and most

absurd sort of triflers are those who have pent the whole art in strict

methods and narrow systems, which men commonly cry up for their

regularity and style.” In illustration of this we may adduce Whewell’s

celebrated works, The History and Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences.

Here are great learning, logical arrangement, a complete superficial

comprehension of the whole subject; but life is wanting. Most of the

great discoveries and inventions with which such a book would naturally

deal have been made since the publication of Bacon’s Novum Organon; but

more mental nutriment and inspiration, more to advance the cause of

science, can be found in one page of the Novum Organon than in Whewell’s

whole five volumes. Such is the difference between a vital and

mechanical mind in the history and philosophy of science; and the

difference is more observable still when we come to consider the deep

and constant enthusiasm, the persisting, penetrating genius of the

practical discoverer, as contrasted with the cold and uncreative

memory-monger and reasoning machine, who too often passes himself off as

the real _savant_. The only great man of science who has detailed his

processes in connection with his emotions is Kepler, and everybody has

heard of the “sacred fury” with which he assaulted the fortresses in

which nature long concealed her laws. His page flames with images and

exclamations. His operations to conquer the mystery in the motions of

the planet Mars are military. His object is as, he says, “to triumph

over Mars, and to prepare for him, as one altogether vanquished, tabular

prisons and equated eccentric fetters.” When “the enemy left at home a

despised captive, had burst all the chains of the equations, and broken

forth of the prisons of the tables,” and it was “buzzed here and there

that the victory is vain,” the war rages “anew as violently as before,”

and he “suddenly brings into the field a new reserve of physical

reasonings on the rout and dispersion of the veterans.” A poet can thus

vitalize mathematics, and “create a soul under the ribs” of physical

death.

In politics and government, the most practical objects of human

interest, the men who organize institutions and wisely conduct affairs,

are men of vital minds; while the whole brood of ignorant and scampish

politicians, whose vulgar tact is but a caricature of insight, and who

are as great proficients in ruining nations as statesmen are in

advancing them, are men of mechanical minds. In politics, perhaps, more

practical injury has resulted from the dominion of formal dunces, than

in any other department of human affairs—politics being the great field

of action for all speculators in public nonsense, for all men whose

incompetency to handle things would be quickly discovered in any other

profession. But a great statesman, no less than a great poet, discerns

the life of things in virtue of having himself a live mind, and, not

content with observing men and events, divines events in their

principles, and thus reads the future. When he proposes a scheme of

legislation, all its results exist in his mind as possibilities, and if

an effect is produced not calculated in the conception, he is so far to

be accounted a blunderer, not a statesman. Perhaps of all the statesmen

that ever lived, Edmund Burke had this power of reading events in

principles in the greatest perfection; and certainly there are few

English poets who can be said to equal him in impassioned imagination.

This imagination was not, as is commonly asserted, a companion and

illustrator of his understanding, appending pretty images to strong

arguments, but it included understanding in itself, and was both impetus

and insight to his grandly comprehensive and grandly energetic mind.

Fox, Pitt, and all the politicians of his time, were, in comparison with

him, men of mechanical intellects, constantly misconceiving events; mere

experimenters, surprised at results which they should have predicted.

There is something mortifying in the reflection that, in free countries,

the people have not yet arrived at the truth, that great criminality as

well as great impudence are involved in the exercise of political power

without political capacity. A politician in high station, without

insight and foresight, and thus blind in both eyes, is an impostor of

the worst kind, and should be dealt with as such.

In art and literature the doctrine of vital powers lies at the base of

all criticism which is not mere gibberish. It is now commonly understood

that the creative precedes the critical; that critical laws were

originally generalized from poetic works; and that a poem is to be

judged by the living law or central idea by which it is organized, which

law or idea is as the acorn to the oak, and determines the form of the

poem. The power and reach of the poet’s mind is measured by his

conception of organic ideas, of ideas which, when once grasped, are

principles whence poems necessarily grow, and are eventually realized in

works. The universality of Shakspeare is but a power of vital

conception, not limited to one or two ideas, but ranging victoriously

over the world of ideas. These celestial seeds, once planted in a poetic

nature, germinate and grow into forms of individual being, whose

loveliness and power shame our actual men and actual society by a

revelation of the real and the permanent. Chaucer, Shakspeare, Spenser,

Milton, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, in virtue of their power to

realize and localize the ideal, give us “poor humans” a kind of

spiritual world on earth.

The schoolmasters of letters, those gentlemen who frame laws of taste,

and manufacture cultivated men, commonly display a notable oversight

instead of insight of the distinction between vital and mechanical

minds, between authors who impart power and authors who impart

information. They judge the value of a book by its external form instead

of internal substance, and altogether overlook the only important office

of reading and study, which plainly is the acceleration of our faculties

through an increase of mind. Mind is increased by receiving the mental

life of a book, and assimilating it with our own nature, not by hoarding

up information in the memory. Books thus read enrich and enlarge the

mind, stimulating, inflaming, concentrating its activity; and though

without this reception of external life a man may be odd, he cannot be

original. The greatest genius is he who consumes the most knowledge, and

converts it into mind. But a mechanical intellect merely attaches the

husks of things to his memory, and eats nothing. It is for this reason

that heavy heads, laden with unfertilizing opinions and dead facts which

never pass down into the vitalities of their being, are such terrific

bores. Considering literature not as food but as luggage, they cram

their brains to starve their intelligence—and wo to the youth whom they

pretend to instruct and _in_form! A true teacher should penetrate to

whatever is vital in his pupil, and develop that by the light and heat

of his own intelligence—like the inspiring master described by Barry

Cornwall’s enthusiast:—

He was like the sun, giving me light;

Pouring into the caves of my young brain

Knowledge from his bright fountains.

A man who reads live books keeps himself alive, has a constant sense of

what life means and what mind is. In reading Milton, a power is

communicated to us, which, for the time, gives us the feeling of a

capacity for doing any thing, from writing a Hamlet to whipping Tom

Hyer. “My ——, sir,” said the artist who had been devouring Chapman’s

Homer, “when I went into the street, after reading that book, men seemed

to be ten feet high.” This exaltation of intelligence is simply a

movement of our consciousness from the mechanical to the vital state,

and to those whose common existence is in commonplaces such an

exaltation occasions a shock of surprise akin to fear.

In an art very closely connected with one of the highest forms of

literature, the art of acting, we have another illustration of the

fundamental antithesis, in processes and in results, between vitality

and mechanism. Few, even among noted performers, have minds to conceive

the characters they play; and it consequently is a rare thing to see a

character really embodied and ensouled on the stage. The usual method is

to give it piece by piece, and part by part, and the impression left on

the audience is not the idea of a person, but an aggregation of personal

peculiarities. Mr. Macready, for instance, has voice, action,

understanding, grace of manner, felicity in points: but each is

mechanical. His mind is hard and unfusible, never melts and runs into

the mould of the individuality he personates, never imparts to the

audience the peculiar life and meaning embodied by his author. His

energy is not vital but nervous; his mode of arriving at character is

rather logical than imaginative. He studies the text of Hamlet, infers

with great precision of argument the character from the text, and plays

the inference. Booth, on the contrary, who of all living actors has the

most force and refinement of imagination, _conceives_ Hamlet as a

person, preserves the unity of the person through all the variety in

which it is manifested, and seems really to pass out of himself into the

character. Macready leaves the impression of variety, but of a variety

not drawn out of one fertile and comprehensive individuality: Booth

gives the individuality with such power that we can easily conceive of

even a greater variety in its expression without danger to its unity.

The impression which Macready’s Hamlet leaves on the mind is an

impression of Mr. Macready’s brilliant and versatile acting; the

impression which Booth stamps on the imagination is the profound

melancholy of Hamlet, underlying all his brilliancy and versatility. A

man can witness Booth’s personation of Macbeth, Hamlet, Lear and

Othello, with great delight, and with great accession of knowledge,

after reading the deep Shakspearian criticism of Goethe, Schlegel and

Coleridge: but every one feels it would be unjust to bring Macready to

the test of such exacting principles.

In these desultory remarks on a variety of suggested topics, we have

attempted to illustrate the radical distinction between vitality and

mechanism, impassioned imagination and logical understanding, the

communication of mental life and the imparting of lifeless information,

as that distinction applies to all things which occupy human attention

and stimulate human effort. We have indicated, in a gossiping way, the

dangerous ease with which the mechanical supersedes the vital in those

departments of knowledge and affairs which originated in the mind’s

creative and organizing energy; in society, in governments, in laws,

literature and institutions, in ethical, mental and physical science;

and have tried to show that such an usurpation of torpor over activity

dulls and deadens the soul, makes existence a weakness and weariness,

and mocks our eyes with nothing but the show and semblance of power. A

man of mechanical understanding can but exist his four-score years and

ten, and a dreary time he has of it at that, bored and boring all his

few and tiresome years; but a live mind has the power of wonderfully

condensing time, and lives a hundred common years in one. From the

phenomena presented by men of genius we can affirm the soul’s

immortality, because they give some evidence of the joy, the ecstasy,

involved in the idea of life; but to a mechanical being, endowed with a

spark of vitality sufficient only to sting him with rebuking

possibilities, an endless existence would be but an endless ennui. The

ground for hope is, that man, using as he may all the resource of stupid

cunning, cannot kill the germ of life which lies buried in him; hatred

and pride, the sins of the heart, may eat into it, and his “pernicious

soul” seem, like Iago’s, to “rot half a grain a day;” mechanism, the sin

of the head, may withdraw itself into “good common sense,” and

contentedly despise the joyous power of vital action; but still the

immortal principle constituting the Person survives—patient, watchful,

persistent, unconquerable, refusing to capitulate, refusing to die.

P.

* * * * *

SONNETS.

BY ALFRED B. STREET.

I.—CELINE.

Those deep, delicious, heavy-lidded eyes

Oh, I could bask forever in their light!

What raptures, sweet, heart-thrilling raptures, rise

Whene’er I pierce their depths with eager sight!

The profile pure and soft—the bright full face—

The cupid mouth with rows of flashing pearls—

The waist so dainty—step of gliding grace—

White brow—curved hair, more beautiful than curls,

All make her sweetest, loveliest of girls.

Her breath is balmier than May’s downiest breeze;

Rosier than rose-buds are her moist, plump lips;

Than the pure nectar there, no purer sips

The clinging bee—all beauty’s harmonies

Are in her sweetly blent—all hearts her graces seize.

II.—THE LESSONS OF NATURE.

Nature in outward seeming takes the hue

Of our chance mood; if sad, her tones and looks

Are full of grief; if glad, her winds and brooks

Are full of merriment. But piercing through

Her outward garb, her sadness whispers “Peace—

Peace to thee, mourner! day succeeds to night,

Sunshine to storm!” Her brightest mirth says “Cease

This thoughtless rapture! flowers must suffer blight,

Change is my law of order.” Then a voice

Swells from her deep and solemn heart, “Rejoice

With purer joy, ye mirthful! and be glad

With a sustaining, steadfast faith, ye sad!

In this swift, changeful life, whate’er befall

(Blest truth) a watchful God of love is over all!”

* * * * *

DARA.

BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

When Persia’s sceptre trembled in a hand

Wilted by harem-heats, and all the land

Was hovered over by those vulture ills

That snuff decaying empire from afar,

Then, with a nature balanced as a star,

Dara arose, a shepherd of the hills.

He, who had governed fleecy subjects well,

Made his own village, by the self-same spell,

Secure and peaceful as a guarded fold,

Till, gathering strength by slow and wise degrees,

Under his sway, to neighbor villages

Order returned, and faith and justice old.

Now when it fortuned that a king more wise

Endued the realm with brain and hands and eyes,

He sought on every side men brave and just,

And, having heard the mountain-shepherd’s praise,

How he renewed the mould of elder days,

To Dara gave a satrapy in trust.

So Dara shepherded a province wide,

Nor in his viceroy’s sceptre took more pride

Than in his crook before; but Envy finds

More soil in cities than on mountains bare,

And the frank sun of spirits clear and rare

Breeds poisonous fogs in low and marish minds.

Soon it was whispered at the royal ear

That, though wise Dara’s province, year by year,

Like a great spunge, drew wealth and plenty up,

Yet, when he squeezed it at the king’s behest,

Some golden drops, more rich than all the rest,

Went to the filling of his private cup.

For proof, they said that wheresoe’er he went

A chest, beneath whose weight the camel bent,

Went guarded, and no other eye had seen

What was therein, save only Dara’s own,

Yet, when ’twas opened, all his tent was known

To glow and lighten with heapt jewels’ sheen.

The king set forth for Dara’s province straight,

Where, as was fit, outside his city’s gate

The viceroy met him with a stately train;

And there, with archers circled, close at hand,

A camel with the chest was seen to stand;

The king grew red, for thus the guilt was plain.

“Open me now,” he cried, “you treasure-chest!”

’Twas done, and only a worn shepherd’s vest

Was found within; some blushed and hung the head,

Not Dara; open as the sky’s blue roof

He stood, and “O, my lord, behold the proof

That I was worthy of my trust!” he said.

“For ruling men, lo! all the charm I had;

My soul, in those coarse vestments ever clad,

Still to the unstained past kept true and leal,

Still on these plains could breathe her mountain air,

And Fortune’s heaviest gifts serenely bear,

Which bend men from the truth, and make them reel.

“To govern wisely I had shown small skill

Were I not lord of simple Dara still;

That sceptre kept, I cannot lose my way!”

Strange dew in royal eyes grew round and bright,

And thrilled the trembling lids; before ’twas night

Two added provinces blessed Dara’s sway.

* * * * *

A LEGEND OF TYROL.

BY JAMES T. FIELDS.

In a green sheltered nook, where a mountain

Stood guarding the peace-haunted ground,

Lived a maiden whose smile was the sunlight

That gladdened the hill-sides around.

Her voice seemed a musical echo,

Whose notes wandered down from above,

And wherever she walked in her beauty

Sprang blossoms of joy and of love.

As she stood at her door in the morning,

The hunter below, riding by,

Cried out to his comrades, “we’re early!

For look, there’s a star in the sky!”

At the chapel, when good men were praying

That angels of God would appear,

Every heart turned to her, lowly kneeling,

And felt that an angel was near.

Thus radiant and pure in her presence,

A blessing she moved, day by day,

Till a proud lord beheld her, and loved her,

And lured her forever away.

He bore this bright bird of the mountain,

Watched over and shielded the best,

From the home of her youth and her kindred,

Away to his own haughty nest.

And lo! the grim idols in waiting

Beset her for worship, and won;

And the light of her beautiful childhood

Went down like the swift-fading sun.

And sudden as rises the black cloud,

When tempests the thunder-gods start,

Strange wishes encircled her bosom,

And Pride swept the halls of her heart.

And once, when o’ermastered by anger,

Her golden-haired boy sought her side,

In her fury she smote down her first born,

And he fell like a lily and died.

There were tears, burning tears, to recall him,

And anguish that scorches the brain,

But the harp-strings of life never answered

The touch that would tune them again!

She sleeps in a dark mausoleum,

And ages have rolled o’er her head,

But her name is remembered in Tyrol

As when she was laid with the dead.

And to-day, as the traveler sits weary,

And drinks from the rude fountain-bowl,

They tell the sad story, and whisper

The warning that speaks to your soul.

* * * * *

FOR’ARD AND AFT;

OR THE CAPTAIN’S SON AND THE SAILOR BOY.

A SEA STORY.

BY S. A. GODMAN.

CHAPTER I.

Fortune, the great commandress of the world,

Hath divers ways to enrich her followers:

To some, she honor gives without deserving;

To other some, deserving without honor;

Some wit—some wealth—and some wit without wealth;

Some, wealth without wit—some, nor wit nor wealth.

Chapman.

“Rouse up, rouse up, my hearty! Bear a hand and be lively for that

little devil-skin abaft, has been hailing for you this five minutes.”

Thus spoke, with a rough voice, but in a kind tone, a tall and

powerfully built sailor, as he descended the forecastle-ladder, to a boy

of some ten years of age, who, lying stretched upon his back on a

mess-chest, was fast asleep. Loud as were the tones of the speaker, they

made no impression upon the boy. Wrapped in the deep, sweet slumber of

childhood, his body fatigued, his conscience clear, and his mind at

ease, he was enjoying one of those refreshing rests that are only

permitted to the young and contented—the sleep that manhood longs after

but seldom experiences.

A beautiful picture would that forecastle and its inmates have made,

could they have been transferred to canvas. The boy, a noble one, as he

reposed with closed eye-lids and upturned face, over which bright smiles

were flitting—the reflection of pleasant, hopeful dreams—seemed an

embodiment of intelligence and innocence; notwithstanding the coarse

canvas trowsers and striped cotton-shirt which formed his only attire.

The man, with his muscular and strongly-knit figure, his bronzed cheeks,

huge whiskers, brightly gleaming eyes and determined expression of

countenance, was the personification of bodily strength, physical

perfection and perfect self-reliance. The one looked as if he were a

spirit from a higher sphere, who had by chance become an inmate of that

dark, confined, triangular-shaped and murky apartment; and appeared all

out of place amidst its mess-chests, bedding, and other nautical

dunnage, and its atmosphere reeking with the odors of bilge-water, tar,

and lamp-smoke. The other was in keeping with the surrounding objects;

his bright red flannel shirt, his horny hands, his very attitude showed

him one to ease and comfort unaccustomed, whose only home was a

forecastle, his abiding-place the heaving ocean.

Wearied with awaiting the result of his verbal summons, the seaman

reached down to awaken his companion with a shake; and as he did, a beam

of affection so softened the expression of his countenance, and lent so

much tenderness to his eye, that with all his roughness and uncouthness,

the weather-beaten tar became really handsome; for, than love, there is

no more certain beautifier. Though undisturbed by noise, no sooner was

the sailor-boy touched, than, true to the instinct of his calling, he

sprung from his resting-place, as wide awake, and with his faculties as

much about him, as if he had always been to sleep a stranger—and

exclaimed,

“Is it eight bells already, Frank? I thought I had just closed my

peepers.”

“Just closed your peepers, my little lark! I began to think your

eye-lids were battened down, it seemed such a hard pull for you to heave

them up. You haven’t had much of a snooze though, for it’s only four

bells; but that young scaramouch astern wants you to take him in tow. So

you had better up-anchor and make sail, Tom, for the cabin, or the

she-commodore will be sending the boatswain after you with the colt.”[1]

Scarcely waiting to hear the completion of the sentence, the lad hurried

up the ladder to the deck, and in a few seconds was at the door of the

cabin. Standing just inside the entrance, a drizzling rain preventing

him from coming further, stood the youth to whom Frank had referred, by

the not very flattering appellations of devil-skin and scaramouch. There

was but little difference in the age of the two boys. Not the slightest

resemblance or similarity, however, existed between them in any other

respect.

The sailor-boy was large for his years—with a figure that gave promise

of symmetry, grace, and an early maturity; his head was in keeping with

his body—admirably developed, well balanced, and covered with a

profusion of rich, dark brown hair; his forehead, broad and

intellectual, lent additional beauty to his full, deep-blue eyes; and

with his ruddy cheeks, giving evidence of vigorous health, he was just

such a boy as a prince might desire his only son and heir to be.

The captain’s son was slight and rather under-sized, with a sickly look,

produced apparently more by improper indulgences than natural infirmity;

sparkling black eyes, black hair, and regular features, added to a

well-shaped head and fine brow, would have rendered him good-looking in

spite of his sallow complexion, had it not been for a peevish,

discontented and rather malignant expression, that was habitual to him.

The _physique_ of the lads did not differ more than their dress. The one

was clothed in a suit of the most costly broadcloth, elegantly made,

with boots upon his feet, and a gold chain around his neck to support

the gold watch in his pocket. The other, bare-footed, bare-necked,

jacketless, was under no obligations to the tailor for adding to the

gentility of his appearance. Yet any person, even a blind man, could he

have heard their voices, would at once have acknowledged that the

roughest clad bore indellibly impressed upon him the insignia of

nature’s nobility.

No sooner did the captain’s son see the boy of the forecastle, than he

addressed him in a tone and style that harmonized with the sneering

expression of his face:

“So, you good-for-nothing, lazy fellow, you’ve made me stand here

bawling for you this half hour. What’s the reason you did not come when

I first called?”

“Why, Master Charles, I would not have kept you waiting if I had known

you wanted me; but I was asleep in the forecastle, sir. Frank Adams woke

me up—and I’ve come as quick as I could.”

“Asleep this time in the afternoon! Why don’t you sleep at night? I

never sleep in the afternoons. But you had better not make me stand and

wait so long for you another time, or I’ll tell my mamma, and she’ll get

father to whip you.”

At this threat a bright flush overspread the face and neck of the

sailor-boy, and for an instant his eye assumed a fierce expression that

was unusual to it; but suppressing his feelings, he replied in his

accustomed tone,

“I was up all night, Master Charles, helping to reef top-sails, and

lending a hand to get up the new fore-sail in place of the old one that

was blown out of the bolt-ropes in the mid-watch. This morning I could

not sleep, for you know I was playing with you until mess-time.”

“Well, Tom, come into the cabin and let’s play, and I wont say any thing

about it this time,” said Charles, as he walked in, followed by his

companion.

What a difference there was between the apartment in which the lads now

were, and the one which Tom had left but a few moments before. It was

the difference between wealth and poverty.

The vessel, on board of which our scene is laid, was a new and

magnificently-finished barque of seven hundred and fifty tons, named the

Josephine. The craft had been built to order, and was owned and

commanded by Lewis Barney Andrews—a gentleman of education and

extensive fortune, who had been for many years an officer in the United

States navy. Getting married, however, and his wife’s objecting to the

long cruises he was obliged to take in the service, whilst she was

compelled to remain at home, he effected a compromise between his better

half’s desire that he should relinquish his profession, and his own

disinclination to give up going to sea entirely, by resigning his

commission in the navy, and purchasing a ship for himself. The Josephine

belonged to Baltimore—of which city Captain A. was a native, and was

bound to the East Indies. She was freighted with a valuable cargo, which

also belonged to the captain, and had on board besides the captain, his

wife, son and servant-girl, a crew consisting of two mates, and a

boatswain, fourteen seamen, a cook, steward, and one boy.

Her cabin—a poop one—was fitted up in the most luxurious style. Every

thing that the skill of the upholsterer and the art of the painter,

aided by the taste and experience of the captain, could do to make it

elegant, beautiful and comfortable, had been done. Extending nearly to

the main-mast the distance from the cabin-door to the transom was full

fifty feet. This space was divided into two apartments of unequal size,

one of twenty, the other thirty feet, by a sliding bulkhead of highly

polished rosewood and superbly-stained glass.

The after-cabin was fitted up as a sleeping-room, with two mahogany

bedsteads and all the appurtenances found in the chambers of the wealthy

on shore. The forward-cabin was used as a sitting and eating-room. On

the floor was a carpet, of whose fabric the looms of Persia might be

proud—so rich, so thick, so magnificent was it, and deep-cushioned

ottomans, lounges and rocking-chairs were scattered along the sides and

were placed in the corners of the apartment.

Not far from the door, reclining on a lounge, with a book in her hand,

was the wife of the captain, and the mother of Master Charles. She was a

handsome woman, but one who had ever permitted her fancies and her

feelings to be the guides of her actions. Consequently her heart, which

by nature was a kind one, was often severely wrung by the pangs of

remorse, caused by the recollection of deeds committed from impulse,

which her pride would not permit her to apologize or atone for, even

after she was convinced of her error.

As the two boys entered the cabin she looked at them, but without making

any remark, continued the perusal of her book, whilst they proceeded to

the after-cabin, and getting behind the bulkhead were out of her sight.

For some fifteen minutes the stillness of the cabin was undisturbed; but

then, the mother’s attention was attracted by the loud, angry tones of

her son’s voice, abusing apparently his play-fellow. Hardly had she

commenced listening, to ascertain what was the matter, ere the sound of

a blow, followed by a shriek, and the fall of something heavy upon the

floor, reached her ear. Alarmed, she rushed into the after-cabin, and

there, upon the floor, his face covered with blood, she saw the idol of

her heart, the one absorbing object of her affection, her only son, and

standing over him, with flashing eyes, swelling chest, and clenched

fists, the sailor-boy.

So strong was the struggle between the emotions of love and revenge—a

desire to assist her child, a disposition to punish his antagonist—that

the mother for a moment stood as if paralyzed. Love, however, assumed

the mastery; and raising her son and pressing him to her bosom, she

asked in most tender tones, “Where he was hurt?”

“I ain’t hurt, only my nose is bleeding because Tom knocked me down,

just for nothing at all,” blubbered out Charles.

The mother’s anxiety for her son relieved, the tiger in her disposition

resumed the sway; letting go of Charles, she caught hold of Tom, and

shaking him violently, demanded, in shrill, fierce tones, how he, the

outcast, dared to strike her child!

Unabashed and unterrified, the sailor-boy looked in the angry woman’s

face without replying.

“Why don’t you answer me, you cub! you wretch! you little

pirate!—speak! speak! or I’ll shake you to death!” continued the lady,

incensed more than ever by the boy’s silence.

“I struck him because he called my mother a hussy, if you will make me

tell you,” replied Tom, in a quiet voice, though his eye was bright with

anger and insulted pride.

“Your mother a hussy! Well, what else was she? But you shall be taught

how to strike your master for speaking the truth to you, you good for

nothing vagabond. Run and call your father,” she continued, turning to

Charles, “and I’ll have this impertinent little rascal whipped until he

can’t stand.”

In a moment Captain Andrews entered; and being as much incensed as his

wife, that a sailor-boy, a thing he had always looked upon as little

better than a block or rope’s end, had had the audacity to strike his

son, he was furious. Taking hold of Tom with a rough grasp, he pushed

him out on deck, and called for the boatswain. That functionary,

however, was slow in making his appearance; and again, in louder and

more angry tones, the captain called for him. Still he came not; and,

spite of his passion, the captain could but gather from the lowering

expressions of the sailors’ countenances, that he was at the

commencement of an _emeute_.

-----

[1] Colt.—A rope with a knot on the end. Used as an instrument of

punishment in place of the cat-o’-nine-tails.

CHAPTER II.

The deepest ice that ever froze

Can only o’er the surface close;

The living stream lies quick below,

And flows, and cannot cease to flow.

Byron.

Accustomed to have his commands always promptly obeyed, the wrath of

Captain Andrews waxed high and furious at the dilatoriness of the

boatswain. Without any other exciting cause, this apparent

insubordination on the part of one of his officers, was enough to arouse

all the evil passions of his heart. Educated under the strict discipline

of the United States service, he had been taught that the first and most

important duty of a seaman was obedience. “Obey orders, if you break

owners,” was the doctrine he inculcated; and to be thus, as it were,

bearded on his own quarter-deck, by one of his own men, was something

entirely new, and most insulting to his pride. Three times had he called

for the boatswain without receiving any reply, or causing that

functionary to appear.

When the captain first came out of the cabin, his only thought was to

punish the sailor-boy for striking his son; but his anger now took

another course, and his desire to visit the boatswain’s contumacy with a

heavy penalty was so great, that he forgot entirely the object for which

he had first wished him. Relinquishing his hold on Tom’s shoulder, the

captain hailed his first officer in a quick, stern voice,

“Mr. Hart, bring aft Mr. Wilson, the boatswain.”

“Ay, ay, sir,” responded the mate, as he started toward the

forecastle-scuttle to hunt up the delinquent. “Hillo, below there!” he

hailed, when he reached the scuttle, “You’re wanted on deck, Mr.

Wilson!”

“Who wants me?” was the reply that resounded, seemingly, from one of the

bunks close up the ship’s eyes.

“Captain Andrews is waiting for you on the quarter-deck; and if you are

not fond of tornadoes, you had better be in a hurry,” answered the mate.

Notwithstanding the chief dickey’s hint, the boatswain seemed to

entertain no apprehensions about the reception he would meet at the

hands of the enraged skipper; for several minutes elapsed before he made

himself visible on deck.

As soon as the captain saw the boatswain, his anger increased, and he

became deadly pale from excess of passion. Waiting until Wilson came

within a few feet of him, he addressed him in that low, husky voice,

that more than any other proves the depth of a person’s feeling, with,

“Why have you so long delayed obeying my summons, Mr. Wilson?”

“I was asleep in the forecastle, sir, and came as soon as I heard Mr.

Hart call,” replied Wilson.

But the tone in which he spoke, the look of his eye, the expression of

his countenance, would at once have convinced a less observant person

than Captain Andrews, that the excuse offered was one vamped up for the

occasion, and not the real cause of the man’s delay.

“Asleep, sir! Attend now to the duty I wish you to perform—and be

awake, sir, about it! And you may, perhaps, get off easier for your own

dereliction afterward—for your conduct shall not remain unpunished,”

answered the captain.

“Captain Andrews, boy and man, I have been going to sea now these

twenty-five years, and no one ever charged Bob Wilson with not knowing

or not doing his duty before, sir!” rejoined the boatswain, evidently

laboring under as much mental excitement as the captain.

“None of your impertinence, sir! Not a word more, or I will learn you a

lesson of duty you ought to have been taught when a boy. Where’s your

cat,[2] sir?” continued the captain.

“In the razor-bag,”[3] replied the boatswain.

“Curse you!” ejaculated the captain, almost beside himself at this

reply, yet striving to maintain his self-possession; “one more insolent

word, and I will have you triced up. Strip that boy and make a

spread-eagle of him; then get your cat and give him forty.”

During this conversation between the captain and the boatswain, the crew

had been quietly gathering on the lee-side of the quarter-deck, until at

this juncture every seaman in the ship, except the man at the wheel, was

within twenty feet of the excited speakers. Not a word had been spoken

amongst them; but it was evident from the determination imprinted upon

their countenances, from their attitudes, and from the extraordinary

interest they took in the scene then transpiring, that there was

something more in the boatswain’s insubordination than appeared on the

surface; and whatever it was, the crew were all under the influence of

the same motive.

Mr. Wilson, the boatswain of the Josephine, was a first-rate and

thorough-bred seaman. No part of his duty was unfamiliar to him; and

never did he shrink from performing any portion of it on account of

danger or fatigue. Like many other simple-minded, honest-hearted sons of

Neptune, he troubled himself but little about abstruse questions on

morals; but he abhorred a liar, despised a thief, and perfectly detested

a tyrant. And though he could bear a goodly quantity of tyrannical

treatment himself, without heeding it, it made his blood boil, and his

hand clench, to see a helpless object maltreated.

Ever since the Josephine had left port, there had been growing amongst

the crew a disposition to prevent their favorite, Tom, the sailor-boy,

from being imposed upon and punished, as he had been, for no other

reason than the willfulness of the captain’s son, and the caprice of the

captain’s wife. Not a man on board liked the spoiled child of the cabin.

No fancy, either, had they for his mother; because, right or wrong, she

always took her son’s part, and oftentimes brought the sailors into

trouble. The last time Tom had been punished a grand consultation had

been held in the forecastle, at which the boatswain presided; and he,

with the rest of the crew, had solemnly pledged themselves not to let

their little messmate be whipped again unless, in their opinion, he

deserved it.

This was the reason why the boatswain, one of the best men in the ship,

had skulked when he heard the captain’s call: he had seen him come out

of the cabin with Tom, and rightly anticipated the duty he was expected

to perform. Such great control does the habit of obedience exercise over

seamen, that although he was resolved to die before he would suffer Tom

to be whipped for nothing, much less inflict the punishment himself, the

boatswain felt a great disinclination to have an open rupture with his

commanding officer. The peremptory order last issued by the captain,

however, brought affairs to a crisis there was no avoiding; he either

had to fly in the face of quarter-deck authority, or break his pledge to

his messmates and his conscience. This, Wilson could not think of doing;

and looking his captain straight in the face, in a quiet tone, and with

a civil manner, he thus addressed his superior:

“It does not become me, Captain Andrews, so be as how, for to go, for to

teach my betters—and—and—” here the worthy boatswain broke down, in

what he designed should be a speech, intended to convince the captain of

his error; but feeling unable to continue, he ended abruptly, changing

his voice and manner, with “Blast my eyes! if you want the boy whipped,

you can do it yourself.”

Hardly had the words escaped the speaker’s lips, before the captain,

snatching up an iron belaying-pin, rushed at the boatswain, intending to

knock him down; but Wilson nimbly leaped aside, and the captain’s foot

catching in a rope, he came down sprawling on the deck. Instantly

regaining his feet, he rushed toward the cabin, wild with rage, for the

purpose of obtaining his pistols. Several minutes elapsed before he

returned on deck; when he did he was much more calm, although in each

hand he held a cocked pistol.

The quarter deck he found bare; the crew, with little Tom in their

midst, having retired to the forecastle, where they were engaged in

earnest conversation. The second mate was at the wheel, the seaman who

had been at the helm having joined his comrades, so that the only

disposable force at the captain’s command was the chief mate, the

steward and himself, the cook being fastened up in his galley by the

seamen. On the forecastle were fifteen men. The odds were great; but

Captain Andrews did not pause to calculate chances—his only thought was

to punish the mutinous conduct of his crew, never thinking of the

possibility of failure.

Giving one of his pistols to Mr. Hart, and telling the steward to take a

capstan bar, the captain and his two assistants boldly advanced to

compel fifteen sailors to return to their duty.

-----

[2] An instrument used for punishment.

[3] The technical name of the bag in which the cats are kept.

CHAPTER III.

They were met, as the rock meets the wave,

And dashes its fury to air;

They were met, as the foe should be met by the brave,

With hearts for the conflict, but not for despair.

Whilst the captain, mate and steward, were making their brief

preparation for a most hazardous undertaking, the men of the Josephine,

with that promptness and resolution so common amongst seamen when they

think at all, had determined upon the course they would adopt in the

impending struggle.

Although the numerical discrepancy between the two parties seemed so

great, the actual difference in their relative strength was not so

considerable as it appeared. The sailors, it is true, had the physical

force—they were five to one; but the captain’s small band felt more

confidence from the moral influence that they knew was on their side,

than if their numbers had been trebled, without it.

Habit ever exercises a controlling influence, unless overcome by some

powerful exciting principle, and men never fly in the face of authority

to which they have always been accustomed to yield implicit obedience,

but from one of two causes—either a hasty impulse, conceived in a

moment, and abandoned by actors frightened at their own audacity; or, a

sense of wrong and injustice so keen and poignant, as to make death

preferable to further submission.

Aware of custom’s nearly invincible power, having often seen seamen

rebel, and then at the first warning gladly skulk back to their duty,

the captain unhesitatingly advanced up the weather-gangway to the break

of the forecastle, and confronted his mutinous crew. The men, who were

huddled around the end of the windlass, some sitting, others standing,

talking together in low tones, only showed they were aware of the

captain’s presence by suddenly ceasing their conversation—but not a man

of them moved.

Captain Andrews, though quick tempered, was a man of judgment and

experience; and he saw by the calmness and quietness of his men, that

their insubordination was the result of premeditation—a thing he had

not before thought—and he became aware of the difficulties of his

position. He could not, for his life, think of yielding; to give up to a

sailor would, in his estimation, be the deepest degradation. And moral

influence was all he could rely upon with which to compel

obedience—feeling that if an actual strife commenced, it could but

result in his discomfiture. His tone, therefore, was low and determined,

as with cocked pistol in hand he addressed his crew:

“Men, do you know that you are, every one of you, guilty of mutiny? Do

you know that the punishment for mutiny on the high seas is death? Do

you know this? Have you thought of it?” Here the captain paused for an

instant, as if waiting for a reply; and a voice from the group around

the windlass answered—

“We have!”

Rather surprised at the boldness of the reply, but still retaining his

presence of mind, the captain continued:

“What is it then that has induced you to brave this penalty? Have you

been maltreated? Do you not have plenty of provisions? Your regular

watches below? Step out, one of you, and state your grievances. You know

I am not a tyrant, and I wish from you nothing more than you promised in

the shipping articles!”

At this call, the eyes of the men were all turned toward Wilson, the

boatswain, who, seeing it was expected from him, stepped out to act as

spokesman. Respectfully touching his tarpaulin, he waited for the

captain to question him. Observing this, the captain said,

“Well, Wilson, your messmates have put you forth as their speaker; and

it strikes me that you are the ringleader of this misguided movement. I

am certain you have sense enough to understand the risk you are running,

and desire you to inform me what great wrong it is that you complain of.

For assuredly you must feel grievously imposed upon, to make you all so

far forget what is due to yourselves as seamen, to me as your captain,

and to the laws of your country!”

“I ain’t much of a yarn-spinner, Captain Andrews, and I can turn in the

plies of a splice smoother and more ship-shape than the ends of a

speech; and it may be as how I’ll ruffle your temper more nor it is now,

by what I have to say—” commenced the boatswain.

“Never mind my temper, sir,” interrupted the captain, “proceed!”

“We all get plenty of grub, Captain Andrews, and that of the best,”

continued Wilson; his equanimity not in the least disturbed by the

skipper’s interruption. “We have our regular watches, and don’t complain

of our work, for we shipped as seamen, and can all do seamen’s duty. But

sailors have feelings, Captain Andrews, though they are not often

treated as if they had; and it hurts us worse to see those worked

double-tides who can’t take their own part, than if we were mistreated

ourselves; and to come to the short of it, all this row’s about little

Tom, there, and nothing else.”

“Is he not treated just as well as the rest of you? Has he not the same

quarters, and the same rations, that the men are content with? Who works

him double-tides?” answered the captain, his anger evidently increasing

at the mention of Tom’s name; and the effort to restrain himself, being

almost too great for the choleric officer to compass.

“You can’t beat to wind’ard against a head-sea, Captain Andrews, without

a ship’s pitching, no more than you can reef a to’s-sail without going

aloft.” Wilson went on without change in manner, though his voice became

more concise and firm in its tone. “And I can’t tell you, like some of

them shore chaps, what you don’t want to hear, without heaving you

aback. We ain’t got any thing agin you, if you was let alone; all we

wants is for you to give your own orders, and to keep Mrs. Andrews from

bedeviling Tom. The boy’s as good a boy as ever furled a royal, and

never skulks below when he’s wanted on deck; but he stands his regular

watches, and then, when he ought to sleep, he’s everlastingly kept in

the cabin, and whipped and knocked about for the amusement of young

master, and that’s just the whole of it. We’ve stood it long enough, and

wont return to duty until you promise—”

“Silence, sir!” roared the captain, perfectly furious, and unable longer

to remain quiet. “Not another word! I’ve listened to insolence too long

by half, already! Now, sir, I have a word to say to you, and mind you

heed it. Walk aft to the quarter-deck!”

The boatswain, though he heard the order plainly, and understood it

clearly, paid no attention to it.

“Do you hear me, sir?” asked the captain. “I give you whilst I count

ten, to start. I do not wish to shoot you, Wilson; but if you do not

move before I count ten, I’ll drive this ball through you—as I hope to

reach port, I will!”

Raising his pistol until it covered the boatswain’s breast, the captain

commenced counting in a clear and audible tone. Intense excitement was

depicted on the faces of the men; and some anxiety was shown by the

quick glances cast by the chief mate and steward, first at the captain,

and then at the crew. Wilson, with his eyes fixed in the captain’s face,

and his arms loosely folded across his breast, stood perfectly quiet, as

if he were an indifferent spectator.

“Eight! Nine!” said the captain, “there is but one left, Wilson; with it

I fire if you do not start.”

The boatswain remained motionless. “Te—” escaped the commander’s lips;

and as it did, the sharp edge of Wilson’s heavy tarpaulin hat struck him

a severe blow in the face. This was so entirely unexpected, that the

captain involuntarily threw back his head, and by the same motion,

without intending it, threw up his arm and clenched his hand enough to

fire off the pistol held in it; the ball from which went through the

flying-jib, full twenty feet above Wilson’s head.

The charm that had held the men in check, was broken by the first

movement toward action, and they made a rush toward the captain and his

two supporters. Bravely, though, they stood their ground; and Frank

Adams, the sailor introduced with Tom in the forecastle, received the

ball from the mate’s pistol in the fleshy part of his shoulder, as he

was about to strike that worthy with a handspike. Gallantly assisted by

the steward, the captain and mate made as much resistance as three men

could against fifteen. The odds were, however, too great; spite of their

bravery, the three were soon overpowered and the contest was nearly

ended, when a temporary change was made in favor of the weaker party by

the appearance in the fray of the second mate. He, during the whole

colloquy, had been at the wheel, forgotten by both parties. His sudden

arrival, therefore, as with lusty blows he laid about him, astonished

the seamen, who gave back for an instant, and allowed their opponents to

regain their feet. They did not allow them much time, however, to profit

by this respite, for in a few seconds, understanding the source from

whence assistance had come, they renewed the attack with increased

vigor, and soon again obtained the mastery. But it was no easy matter to

confine the three officers and the steward, who resisted with their

every power, particularly as the men were anxious to do them no more

bodily injury than they were compelled to, in effecting their purpose.

So absorbed were all hands in the strife in which they were engaged,

that not one of them noticed the fact that what had been the

weather-side of the barque at the commencement of the affray, was now

the lee; nor did any of the men—all seamen as they were—observe that

the vessel was heeling over tremendously, her lee-scuppers nearly level

with the water. A report, loud as a cannon, high in the air, first

startled the combatants; then, with a rushing sound, three large, heavy

bodies, fell from aloft, one of which striking the deck near the

combatants, threatened all with instant destruction, whilst the other

two fell with a loud splash into the sea to leeward.

In the new danger, both the victors and vanquished were equally

interested, and at the same instant looked aloft to discover the cause.

The first glance convinced every one of the necessity for prompt and

vigorous action. Their position was, indeed, one fraught with imminent

danger. Left without a helmsman, by the second mate going to the

assistance of the captain, the barque, close-hauled with a stiff breeze

blowing, had come up in the wind, and was now flat aback; that is, the

wind, instead of blowing against the sails from behind, was before them.

The fore and main-royal, and top-gallant masts, with all their gear, had

been carried away; and the ship was gathering stern-way at a rate that

would soon run her under.

The natural desire for self-preservation, combined with the instincts

and habits of both officers and men to cause them entirely to forget the

fierce contest in which they had just been engaged—their thoughts were

changed from each other, to the ship and its situation—and the officers

were at once permitted to regain their feet.

No sooner did Captain Andrews find himself at liberty, than he at once

assumed command, and issued his orders as loud and clear as if nothing

had interrupted his authority.

“To the wheel! to the wheel! Mr. Hart! All hands ware ship!” were his

first words; and the men with alacrity hurried to their stations, whilst

the mate ran to the helm.

The captain’s wife and son had been in the cabin, anxiously awaiting the

result of the controversy on the forecastle, but alarmed by the failing

spars, they had hurried on deck and were now on the poop. In the hurry

and confusion consequent upon the ship’s hazardous position, all hands

were so busy that no one paid attention to Charles and Mrs. Andrews; and

they were too much alarmed to take due care of themselves, else would

they have sought a less exposed situation. As the spanker jibed, Charles

was standing nearly amidships on the deck, and before he even had time

to shriek, the boom struck him and hurled him over the monkey-rail into

the sea. His mother, who was close to the mizzen-mast, saw him just as

he went over, and terror-stricken, sunk to the deck in a swoon, without

uttering a sound. Unable to swim, a puny child in the angry waves of the

rough Atlantic, the case of Charles seemed a hopeless one; but rescue

came from a source he could have least expected. Tom, the sailor-boy,

who was on the tafferel belaying the spanker-sheet to windward,

recognized the captain’s son as he floated clear of the stern; and

actuated by that generous, gallant spirit that had so endeared him to

his messmates, he shouted to the mate that Charles was over-board! and

fearlessly sprang into the sea to his assistance. Tom was an excellent

swimmer, and he found no difficulty in supporting Charles’ delicate form

until the barque hove round, when they were both picked up and taken on

board.

The joy of the mother at having restored to her the idol of her heart;

the grateful feelings she and the father felt toward the deliverer of

their child, we will not attempt to describe; only the results will we

give of this heroic action. Tom was treated by the captain as a son; the

crew were forgiven for their mutinous conduct, and cheerfully returned

to duty; and Tom, now a distinguished naval officer, dates his first

step upon the ladder that leads to eminence, from the day he so narrowly

escaped a severe whipping.

_Laurensville, South Carolina._

* * * * *

THE LADY OF CASTLE WINDECK.

(FROM THE GERMAN OF CHAMISSO.)

BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

Rein in thy snorting charger!

That stag but cheats thy sight;

He is luring thee on to Windeck,

With his seeming fear and flight.

Now, where the mouldering turrets

Of the outer gate arise,

The knight gazed over the ruins

Where the stag was lost to his eyes.

The sun shone hot above him;

The castle was still as death;

He wiped the sweat from his forehead,

With a deep and weary breath.

“Who now will bring me a beaker

Of the rich old wine that here,

In the choked up vaults of Windeck,

Has lain for many a year?”

The careless words had scarcely

Time from his lips to fall,

When the Lady of Castle Windeck

Come round the ivy-wall.

He saw the glorious maiden

In her snow-white drapery stand,

The bunch of keys at her girdle,

The beaker high in her hand.

He quaffed that rich old vintage;

With an eager lip he quaffed;

But he took into his bosom

A fire with the grateful draught.

Her eyes unfathomed brightness!

The flowing gold of her hair!

He folded his hands in homage,

And murmured a lover’s prayer.

She gave him a look of pity,

A gentle look of pain;

And quickly as he had seen her

She passed from his sight again.

And ever, from that moment,

He haunted the ruins there,

A sleepless, restless wanderer,

A watcher with despair.

Ghost-like and pale he wandered,

With a dreamy, haggard eye;

He seemed not one of the living,

And yet he could not die.

’Tis said that the lady met him,

When many years had past,

And kissing his lips, released him

From the burden of life at last.

* * * * *

THE YOUNG MOTHER’S LAMENT.

BY MRS. E. C. KINNEY.

Oh, what is all this world to me,

Now that my babe is gone—

From every thing I hear, or see,

The light of life has flown!

It is not summer to my eyes,

For summer’s sun is hid—

He, who made fair the earth and skies,

Sleeps ’neath a coffin-lid.

There is no verdure to be seen—

No flowers upon the lea;

For he, whose smile made all things green,

Hath no more smiles for me.

Now all things wear the sickly-hue

Of my own spirit sad,

And nothing can that charm renew

Which made the earth look glad.

Oh, he was such a lovely boy—

So innocent, so fair;

His every look so full of joy—

Such sunlight in his hair!

That when he nestled to my breast,

And looked up lovingly,

I thought no mother half so blest

In all the world as I.

But now, alas! since he has died,

All day and night I pine,

And never was a heart beside

So desolate as mine.

Here are the toys his little hands

So sportively did use,

And here his empty cradle stands,

And here his tiny shoes:

Oh, take them, take them from my sight!

Each sends a cruel dart—

Sharpened by fatal memories bright—

Into my bleeding heart.

Take all away, since _he_ is gone—

Save one of his fair curls,

And that shall on my breast be worn,

Set round with costly pearls.

But, like the diamond glistening bright

Upon a withered wreath,

’Twill make more dreary by its light

The wasted heart beneath.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Jenny Lind_

(IN LA SONNAMBULA)

Engraved in London for Graham’s Magazine by W. H. Mote after the original

Painting by J. W. Wright]

* * * * *

JENNY LIND.

BY HENRY T. TUCKERMAN.

[WITH A PORTRAIT.]

Sure something holy lodges in that breast,

And with mere rapture moves the vocal air,

To testify its hidden residence.

How sweetly did they float upon the wings

Of Silence, through the empty-vaulted night,

At every fall smoothing the raven down

Of darkness till it smiled. Comus.

The Life of the North is to us a fresh revelation; and, by a striking

coincidence, one after another of its phases have come upon our

transatlantic vision, in rapid succession. To many Americans Thorwaldsen

was the only name associated with art, but a few years since; and to

those who had visited Rome, the benign and venerable man was a vivid and

pleasing reminiscence, appropriate to the idea of his grand apostolic

figures, and the affectionate honor in which his native Denmark held

their noble sculptor. But with Ole Bull fairly commenced our knowledge

of the genius of Northern Europe. The play of the wind through her

forests of pines, the glint of her frozen streams, the tenderness of her

households, and the solemnity of her faith, seemed to breathe in the

wizard tones of his violin; while her integrity was written in the form,

the manners, and the very smile of the musician. Then the spirit of her

literature began slowly to win its gentle but impressive way to the

American heart. Longfellow’s translation of Bishof’s Tegnér’s Children

of the Lord’s Supper, with the graphic introduction descriptive of moral

life in Sweden, touched the same chord in New England breasts, that had

vibrated to the religious pathos of Bryant, Dana, and Hawthorne; while

not a few readers became simultaneously aware of a brave Danish poet

recently followed to the tomb by the people of Copenhagen, with every

token of national grief. The dramas of Œhlenschläger, from their union

of familiar expression with the richest feeling, though but partially

known in this country, awakened both curiosity and interest. Then, too,

came to us the domestic novels of Miss Bremer, portraying so heartily

the life of home in Sweden, and appealing to the most universal

sympathies of our people. Finally, Hans Andersen’s delicious story-books

veiling such fine imaginative powers under the guise of the utmost

simplicity, raised up for him scores of juvenile admirers, while

children of a larger growth enjoyed the originality of his fictions with

equal zest, as the offspring of rare human sympathy and original

invention. The pictures wafted to our shores by the late revolutionary

exigencies of the Continent, have often yielded glimpses of northern

scenery. Norwegian forests, skies and mountains, attracted the eye at

the Dusseldorf gallery; and thus through both art and literature, the

simple, earnest, and poetic features of life in the north, were brought

within the range of our consciousness. It developed unimagined

affinities with our own; and now, as it were, to complete and consecrate

the revelation, we are to hear the vocal genius of Northern Europe—the

Swedish nightingale, Jenny Lind, is coming!

From an unpretending edifice in one of the by-streets of the city of

Stockholm in Sweden, a quarter of a century ago, a troop of children

might have been seen to emerge, at noon, and break the silence that at

other hours invested the place, with the lively chat and quick laughter

natural to emancipated scholars. In a few moments they dispersed to

their several homes, and early the next day were again visible, one by

one, disappearing, with a more subdued bearing, within the portal of the

humble domicil.

Stockholm is justly regarded as the most elegant city of Northern

Europe. It is situated at the junction of the lake Mälar with an inlet

of the Baltic. Although usually described as founded on seven isles, it

is, in point of fact, mainly situated on three; the smallest and most

central having been the original site, and still constituting the most

populous and active section. The irregularity of its form, and the

blending of land and water, renders the appearance of the city

remarkably picturesque. From the elevated points, besides the various

buildings, craft of all kinds in motion and at anchor, numerous bridges

and a fine back-ground of mountains are discernible, and combine to form

a beautiful panorama. The royal palace is exceeded in magnificence only

by that of Versailles. Through this busy and varied scene, on a pleasant

day, there moved rapidly the carriage of one of those useful, though

unrecognized beings, who seem born to appreciate the gifts which God so

liberally dispenses, but whom the insensibility and selfishness of

mankind, in general, permit to languish in obscurity until a fortunate

circumstance brings them to light. Some time previous, the good lady, in

passing the seminary to which we have alluded, had been struck with the

beauty of a child’s voice that rose blithely from the dwelling. She was

induced to alight and enter; and her astonishment was only increased

upon discovering that this cheerful song came from a diminutive girl,

busied in arranging the school-room, during a temporary recess. She

learned that this maiden was the daughter of the school-mistress; and

the somewhat restricted air of homely comfort visible in the

establishment, and the tinge of severity in the manners of the mother,

contrasted forcibly in the lady’s imagination with the apparently

instinctive soaring of the child’s spirit into the atmosphere of song,

from her dim and formal surroundings, as the sky-lark lifts itself from

a lowly nest among the dark weeds up to the crystal heavens. It was a

sweet illustration of the law of compensation.

The air the child was singing, as she busied herself about the room, was

a simple, native strain, quite familiar and by no means difficult of

execution; it was the quality of the voice, the natural flow of the

notes, the apparent ease, grace and earnest sweetness of the little

songstress, that gained the visiter’s ear and heart; and now she had

come to urge upon the parents the duty of affording every encouragement

to develop a gift so rare and beautiful; she expressed her conviction

that the child was born for a musical artist, and destined not only to

redeem her parents from want, but to do honor to her country. This

impression was deepened when she learned that this musical tendency

manifested itself as early as the age of three, and that the little girl

had long awakened the wonder of the family by repeating accurately even

intricate airs, after having heard them but once; that she had thus sung

habitually, spontaneously, and seemed to find of her own volition, a

peculiar consolation in the act for the dry routine of her life, though

from without, not a single circumstance gave any impulse or direction to

this vocal endowment.

She exhibited also to the just perception of Madame Lundberg, herself a

celebrated Swedish actress, as well as a benevolent woman, the usual

conditions of genius, in backward physical growth, precocious mental

vigor, and mature sensibilities. The latter, indeed, were so active,

that her mother, and even her kind adviser doubted if she possessed

sufficient energy of character for so trying a profession as that of an

artist; and this consideration added to the prejudice of the parents

against a public, and especially a theatrical career, for a time,

chilled the hopes of the enthusiastic patroness. At length, however,

their consent was obtained that the experiment should be tried, and the

diffident little girl, only accustomed to domestic privacy, but with a

new and strange hope wildly fluttering in her bosom, was taken to

Croelius—a veteran music-master of Stockholm; who was so delighted with

her rare promise that one day he led her to the house of Count Pucke,

then director of the court theatre. Her reception, however, did not

correspond with the old man’s desires; for the nobleman coldly inquired

what he was expected to do with such a child? It must be confessed that

the absence of beauty and size did not, at the first glance, create any

high anticipations in behalf of the demure maiden. Croelius, though

disappointed, was quite undismayed; he entreated the director to hear

her sing, and declared his purpose to teach her gratuitously, if he

could in no other way secure the cultivation of her voice and talents.

This earnestness induced the count to listen with attention and candor;

and the instant she had finished, he exclaimed, “She shall have all the

advantages of the Stockholm Academy!” Such was Jenny Lind’s initiation

into the life of an artist.

She now began regularly to appear on the stage, and was soon an adept in

juvenile parts. She proved widely attractive in vaudevilles, which were

written expressly for her; and it is remarkable that the charm did not

lie so much in the precocious intelligence, as in the singular geniality

of the little actress. Nature thus early asserted her dominion. There

was an indefinable human interest, a certain original vein that

universally surprised and fascinated, while it took from the child the

_eclat_ of a mere infant phenomenon, by bringing her from the domain of

vulgar wonder into the range of that refined sympathy one touch of which

“makes the whole world kin.” In a year Croelius reluctantly gave up his

pupil to Berg, who to kindred zeal united far more energy; and by him

she was inducted thoroughly into the elements of her art.

Probation is quite as essential to the true development of art as

encouragement. The eager, impassioned, excitable temperament needs to be

chastened, the recklessness of self-confidence awed, and that sublime

patience induced through which reliable and tranquil energy takes the

place of casual and unsustained activity. By nature Jenny Lind was

thoughtful and earnest, disposed to silence, and instinctively reserved;

while the influence of her early home was to subdue far more than to

exhilarate. The change in her mode of life and prospects was so

unexpected, her success as a juvenile prodigy so brilliant, and the

universal social favor she enjoyed, on account of the winsome amiability

of her character, so fitted to elate a youthful heart, that we cannot

but regard it as one of the many providential events of her career, that

just at the critical moment when the child was losing herself in the

maiden, and nature and education were ultimately shaping her artistic

powers, an unexpected impediment was allowed to check her already too

rapid advancement; and a pause, sad enough at the time, but fraught with

enduring benefit, gave her occasion to discipline and elevate her soul,

renew her overtasked energies, and plume her wings while thus aware of

the utility of her trial, we can easily imagine its bitterness. The loss

of a gift of nature through which a human being has learned to find both

the solace and the inspiration of existence, upon which the dearest

hopes were founded, and by which the most glorious triumphs were

achieved, is one of those griefs few can realize. Raphael’s gentle heart

bled when feebleness unnerved the hand that guided the pencil to such

lovely issues, and big tears rolled down Scott’s manly cheek when he

strove in vain to go on with his latest composition. How desolate then

must that young aspirant for the honor, and the delights of the vocal

art, have felt when suddenly deprived of her voice! The dream of her

youth was broken in a moment. The charm of her being faded like a mist;

and the star of hope that had thus far beamed serenely on her path, grew

dim in the cold twilight of disappointment—keen, entire and apparently

irremediable. This painful condition was aggravated by the fact that her

age now rendered it out of the question to perform childish parts, while

it did not authorize those of a mature character. The circumstances,

too, of her failure were singularly trying. She was announced to appear

as Agatha in Weber’s Frieschutz—a character she had long regarded as

that in which her ability would be genially tested. To it her young

ambition had long pointed, and with it her artistic sympathies were

familiarly identified. The hour came, and that wonderful and delicate

instrument—that as a child she had governed so adroitly, that it seemed

the echo of her mind;—that subtle medium through which her feelings had

been wont to find such ready and full vent, refused to obey her will,

yielded not to the pleadings of love or ambition; was hushed as by some

cruel magic—and Jenny Lind was mute, with anguish in her bosom; her

friends looking on in tearful regret, and her maestro chagrined beyond

description! Where had those silvery tones fled? What catastrophe had

all at once loosened those invisible harp strings? The splendid vision

of fame, of bounteous pleasure, of world-excited sympathy, and of

triumphant art, disappeared like the gorgeous cities seen by the

traveler, from the Straits of Messina, painted in tinted vapor on the

horizon. Jenny Lind ceased to sing, but her love of art was deepened,

her trust in nature unshaken, her simplicity and kindliness as real as

before. Four long years she lived without the rich promise that had

invested her childhood; but, with undiminished force of purpose, she

studied the art for which she felt herself born, with patient, acute,

earnest assiduity, and then another and blissful episode rewarded her

quiet heroism. The fourth act of Robert le Diable had been announced for

a special occasion; and it so happened that in consequence of the

insignificant _role_ of Alice, consisting of a single solo, no one of

the regular singers was disposed to adopt the character. In this

emergency, Berg was reminded of his unfortunate pupil. She meekly

consented to appear, pleased with an opportunity to be useful, and

oblige her kind maestro. While practicing this solo, to the delight and

astonishment of both teacher and pupil, the long-lost voice suddenly

re-appeared. It seemed as if Nature had only withdrawn the gift for a

season, that her child might gather strength and wisdom to use it

efficiently, and in an unselfish spirit; and then restored it as a

deserved recompense for the resignation and truth with which the

deprivation had been borne. We can fancy the rapturous emotions of the

gentle votary that night, when she retired from the scene of her new and

unanticipated triumph. The occasion has been aptly compared to the

memorable third act of the Merchant of Venice on the evening of Kean’s

_debut_ at Drury Lane. Jenny Lind immediately reverted to her cherished

ideal part—that of Agatha. She was now sixteen years of age—her

character rendered firm by discipline, her love of music deepened by

more comprehensive views and a better insight, and her whole nature

warmed and softened by the realization of the fondest and earliest

hopes, long baffled, yet consistently cherished. The most experienced

actors were struck with wonder at the facility and perfection of her

dramatic style; in this, as in her vocalism, was, at once, recognized

that peculiar truth to nature which constitutes the perfection of

art—that unconsciousness of self and circumstance, and that fresh idea

of character, at once so uncommon and so delightful. She drew the

orchestra after her by her bold yet true execution; and seemed possessed

with the genius of the composer as well as with the idiosyncrasies of

the character she sung, so complete and individual was the result.

Already the idol of her native city, and the hope of the Swedish stage,

her own ideas of art and aims as an artist remained unchanged. Her first

desire was to seek the instruction of Garcia, with a view to perfect her

method and subdue some vocal difficulties. She gracefully acknowledged

the social homage and theatrical distinction awarded her; but these were

but incidental to a great purpose. She had a nobler ambition to satisfy,

a higher ideal to realize, and pressed on her still obstructed way,

unallured by the pleasures of the moment and undismayed by the distance

of the goal. In order to obtain the requisite means for a sojourn at

Paris, she made excursions through Norway and Sweden, with her father,

during the vacations of the theatre, to give concerts, and when

sufficient had thus been acquired, she obtained leave of absence from

the Stockholm director, and left home for Paris, notwithstanding the

dissuasion of her parents. They confided, however, as before, in her own

sense of right; and she hastened to place herself under the instruction

of Garcia. Here another keen disappointment subdued her reviving hopes.

At the first trial, her new teacher said: “My child, you have no voice;

do not sing a note for three months, and then come and resume again.”

Once more she wrapt herself in the mantle of patience, went into

studious retirement, and, at the prescribed time, again returned to

Garcia, whose cheering words now were, “My child, you can begin your

lessons immediately.” Simple words, indeed, but more welcome to that

ardent child of song, intent on progress in the art she loved, than the

wildest plaudits. She returned with an elastic step, and entered with

joyful enthusiasm upon her artistic career. Meyerbeer immediately

offered her an engagement at Berlin. The consummate skill of her

teacher, and her own enlarged experience and high resolves, made her

advancement rapid and genuine. Thenceforth a series of musical triumphs

unexcelled in the history of the lyrical drama, attended the life of

Jenny Lind. We might repeat countless anecdotes of the universal

admiration and profound sympathy she excited at Berlin, Vienna, Dresden,

Bremen, Munich, Aix la Chapelle, and, indeed, wherever her voice was

heard on the stage and at concerts. The testimonies of the highest

private regard, and public appreciation, were lavished upon her in the

shape of costly gifts, wreaths of silver, poetic tributes, philosophical

criticisms, the breathless silence or overwhelming applause of entranced

multitudes, and all the signs of enthusiastic delight at the advent of a

true child of nature and of song. To us the record of her two visits to

England are yet vivid, and it is needless to reiterate the extraordinary

demonstrations which there attested her singular merits, and unequalled

attractiveness. The population of Berlin and Vienna assembled at

midnight to bid her adieu; and when she last left her native city, every

ship in the harbor was manned and every quay crowded to see her embark

in the presence of the queen. Nor are these spontaneous tributes to be

exclusively ascribed to the love of novelty and the excitement of

renown. Heroes and heroines the world cannot do without, unless it

lapses into frigid and selfish materialism; admiration for talent and

sympathy with genius are but human instincts. It is seldom, however,

that these sentiments are upheld and sanctioned by reverence for worth.

Therefore is it beautiful to witness the voluntary oblations which

attend the great artist whose expression, however eloquent, is the true

manifestation of a pure, noble and disinterested spirit. It is not Jenny

Lind in her personality, but as a priestess of art, an interpreter of

humanity, a gifted and loyal expositer of feelings, that lend grace to

life and elevation to the soul, that draws the common heart toward her

with such frank and ardent gratulation. Her well-known and

unostentatious charities, her simplicity of life, her sympathy with her

fellow-creatures, and unaffected manners, so accord with the glorious

art she so rarely illustrates as to justify to reflection the impulsive

admiration she excites.

It is not in sublimity that Jenny Lind excels; and whatever excellence

her Norma may possess, it is not of that characteristic species which

renders her impersonations of _La Figlia del Regimento_, of _Alice_, of

_Lucia_, and of _Amina_, so memorable. In the former character she makes

innocence play through the rude habits acquired in the camp, in a way so

exquisite as to enchant as by the spell of reality. In the Bride of

Lammermoor, there is a melancholy beauty which haunts the listener. It

is her greatest tragic part. The pathos of the third act seems

re-produced from the very genius which created the romance. Her Amina is

Bellini’s; and this is saying all that praise can utter. We may realize

her versatility by comparing the comic jealousy so archly displayed in

the _Noces de Figaro_, with the tenderness of the sleep-walking scene in

_La Somnambula_. It has been well observed of her that, in the former

opera, “she adheres to the genius of Mozart with a modest appreciation

of the genius of that master”—a commendation as high as it is rare. One

of the most remarkable traits of her artistic skill is its exquisite and

wonderful discrimination—a quality no description can make obvious.

The peculiar charm of Jenny Lind, as an artist, is her unconsciousness.

We are disposed to regard this as one of the most reliable tests of

superior gifts. It at least proves the absorption of self in what is

dearer—a condition essential to all true greatness. The most acute

observers of this beautiful vocalist fail to detect the slightest

reference either to her audience or herself while engaged in a part. For

the time being her very existence seems identified with the character

she represents; it is the after-thought, not the impression of the

moment that brings us to the artist; infected by the complete

realization of the scene, we think of it alone; and only when it has

passed away do we become aware that the genius of another has, as it

were, incarnated a story or a sentiment before us, through will,

sympathy and talent. The process is quite as unthought of as that by

which a masterpiece of painting or sculpture has been executed, when we

stand before it rapt in that harmonious spell that permits no analysis

and suggests no task-work, any more than the landscape of summer, or the

effulgence of a star. We feel only the presence of the beautiful, the

advent of a new creation, the irresistible appeal to the highest

instincts of the soul. Carlyle says “the unconscious is the alone

complete”—an aphorism which Jenny Lind robs of all mystery; for her

superiority consists in the wholeness and unity of her effects, and this

is produced by a kind of self-surrender, such as we rarely see except in

two of the most genuine phases of humanity—genius and childhood; in

this tendency they coalesce; and hence the freshness that lingers around

the richly endowed nature, and the universal faith which it inspires.

The secret is that such characters have never wandered far from nature;

they have kept within sight of that “immortal sea that brought us

hither;” they constitute an aristocracy spontaneously recognized by all;

and they triumph as poets, artists, and influential social beings, not

through the exercise of any rare and wonderful gift, but from obedience

to the simple laws of truth—to the primal sympathies, and to a kind of

innate and glorious confidence which lifts them above ignoble fear and

selfish tricks. The true hero, poet, artist, the true man or woman, who

seem to the multitude to be peculiarly endowed, differ from those who do

them voluntary homage, chiefly in this unconsciousness of self; this

capacity to be ever “nobler than their moods;” this sympathetic breadth

of life that enables them to go forth with a kind of elemental power and

enter into other forms of being; the principle of their existence is

faith, not dexterity; sentiment, not calculation.

It will be seen that we recognize a moral basis as the source of Jenny

Lind’s fascination; and if we were obliged to define this in a single

word, perhaps the lexicon would furnish none so expressive as the homely

one—_truth_. But we use it as significant of far more than the absence

of falsehood; we mean by it candor, trust, spontaneity, directness. We

believe that Jenny Lind inspires sympathy in spite of her petite figure,

not altogether because she warbles enchantingly, and has amiable

manners, but also on account of the faith she at once excites. We

perceive that love of approbation is not her ruling impulse, although

her profession might excuse it; but that she has an ideal of her own, an

artistic conscience, a love of art, a musical ministry to satisfy and

accomplish, and that these considerations induce a nobler ambition than

co-exists with mere vanity. It is said that the remarkable novel of

Consuelo, by George Sand, is founded on the character and history of

Jenny Lind. Whether this be so or not, the theory of the tale, the

guileless devotion to art as such, which stamps the heroine with such

exalted grace, finds a parallel in this famed vocalist of the North; the

same singleness of purpose and intact clearness of soul, the same firm

will and gentle heart are evident. Much, too, of her success is

attributable to the philosophy of Consuelo’s _maestro_—that to reach

the highest excellence in Art, the affections as well as the mind must

be yielded at her shrine. There is a subtle and deep relation between

feeling and expression, and the biographies of those who have achieved

renown in the latter, under any of its artistic forms, indicate that it

has embodied that within them that found no adequate response in actual

life. The highest efforts of the poet and musician, are confessedly the

result of baffled or overflowing emotion; disguised, perhaps, as to the

form, but clearly evident in the tone of their productions. Mozart and

Raphael, Bryant and Paganini, have illustrated this most emphatically.

Jenny Lind seems to have kept her better feelings alive by the habitual

exercise of benevolence, and a diffusive friendliness, while her

concentrated and earnest activity finds utterance in her art. Hence the

sway she has gained over countless hearts, each absorbed in its own

dream or shadowed by its own regrets, that glow again in the kindling

atmosphere of song, which gushes from a soul over which no overmastering

passion has yet cast a gloom, and whose transparent waters no agitation

of conflicting desires has ever made turbid and restless. Jenny Lind has

been a priestess at the shrine of Art, and therefore interprets its

oracles “as one having authority.”

In this country the idea of fashion and the mere relish of amusement,

have blended so exclusively with the support of the Opera, that we

seldom realize its artistic relations and influence. The taste for the

Italian Opera seems to have extended in the ratio of civilization; and

although it is, after all, an exotic among the Anglo-Saxons—a pleasure

born in the “sweet South,” and in its very richness of combination,

suggestive of the impassioned feeling and habitual luxury of those

climes—yet, on the other hand, it is typical of the complex life, wants

and tendencies of modern society. The old English tragic drama, robust,

fierce-hearted and unadorned, has faded before it; the theatre, as a

reunion of wits, and an arena for marvelous histrionic effects, as a

subject of elegant criticism, and a nucleus for universal sympathy, may

be said not to exist; while the Opera has become the scene of display,

elegance, and pleasure on the one hand, and of the highest triumphs on

the other. The sentiment of the age has written itself in music—its

wide intelligence, its keen analysis, its revolutionary spirit, its

restlessness, and its humanity, may be traced in the rich and brilliant

combinations of Rossini, in the grand symphonies of Beethoven, in the

pleading tenderness of Bellini, and in the mingled war-notes and

sentiment of Verdi. The demand for undisguised and free expression,

characteristic of the times, finds also its requisite scope in the

lyrical drama. Recitation is too tame, pantomime too silent, scenic art

too illusive, costume too familiar, music too unpicturesque; but all

these combined are, at once, as romantic, exciting, impressive, and

melo-dramatic as the varied aptitudes, the exacting taste, and the

broad, experimental genius of the age. The gifts of nature, the

resources of art, the gratification of the senses, the exigencies of

fashion and taste, and the wants of the heart and imagination find in

the Opera a most convenient luxury. The lyrical drama has thus gradually

usurped the place of tournament and theatre; it is a social as well as

an artistic exponent of the day; and those who have best illustrated it

are justly regarded as public benefactors. Few, however, have ministered

in this temple, with the artless grace, the pure enthusiasm, the vestal

glory of Jenny Lind. The daughters of the South, ardent and susceptible,

but capricious and extravagant, heretofore won its chief honors; their

triumphs have been great but spasmodic, gained by impulse rather than

nature, by glorious gifts of person rather than rare graces of soul.

Jenny Lind, with her fair hair and blue eyes, her unqueenly form, and

child-like simplicity, has achieved almost unparalleled success, by

means quite diverse. Her one natural gift is a voice of singular depth,

compass, flexibility and tone. This has been, if we may be allowed the

expression, mesmerized by a soul, earnest, pure and sincere; and thus,

with the clear perception and dauntless will of the North has she

interpreted the familiar musical dramas in a new, vivid, and original

manner. One would imagine she had come with one bound from tending her

flock on the hill-side, to warble behind the foot-lights; for so

directly from the heart of nature springs her melody, and so beyond the

reach of art is the simple grace of her air and manners, that we

associate her with the Opera only through the consummate skill—the

result of scientific training—manifested in her vocalism. The term

warbling is thus adapted peculiarly to express the character of her

style; its ease, fluency, spontaneous gush, and the total absence of

every thing meretricious and exaggerated in the action and bearing that

accompanies it. It is like the song of a bird, only more human. Nature

in her seems to have taken Art to her bosom, and assimilated it, through

love, with herself, until the identity of each is lost in the other.

The union of such musical science—such thoroughly disciplined art with

such artlessness and simplicity, is, perhaps, the crowning mystery of

her genius. To know and to love are the conditions of triumph in all the

exalted spheres of human labor; and in the musical drama, they have

never been so admirably united. Her command of expression seems not so

much the result of study as of inspiration; and there is about her a

certain gentle elevation which stamps her to every eye, as one who is

consecrated to a high service. Her ingenuous countenance, always

enlivened by an active intelligence, might convey, at first, chiefly the

idea of good-nature and cleverness in the English sense; but her

carriage, voice, movements, and expression in the more affecting moments

of a drama, give sympathetic assurance of what we must be excused for

calling—a crystal soul. In all her characters she transports us, at

once, away from the commonplace and the artificial, if not always into

the domain of lofty idealism, into that more human and blissful domain

of primal nature; and unhappy is the being who finds not the unconscious

delight of childhood, or the dream of love momently renewed in that

serene and unclouded air.

In accordance with this view of Jenny Lind’s characteristics, the

enthusiasm she excited in England, is alluded to by the leading critics,

as singularly honest. No musical artist, indeed, was ever so fitted to

win Anglo-Saxon sympathies. She has the _morale_ of the North; and does

not awaken the prejudice so common in Great Britain, and so truly

described in Corinne, against the passionate temperament and tendency to

extravagance that mark the children of the South. No candidate for

public favor was ever so devoid of the ordinary means of attaining it.

There is something absurd in making such a creature the mere nucleus of

fashionable vanity, or the object of that namby-pamby criticism that

busies itself with details of personal appearance and French terms of

compliment. Jenny Lind is not beautiful; she does not take her audiences

by storm; she exercises no intoxicating physical magnetism over their

sensitive natures. She is not classic either in form or feature, or

manner, or style of singing. Her loveliness as a woman, her power as an

artist, her grace as a character, lies in expression; and that

expression owes its variety and its enchantment to unaffected truth to

nature, sentiment and the principles of art.

And now that Jenny Lind is hourly expected among us, let a word be

ventured as to what self-respect and the love of art make appropriate

for her reception. Let not so charitable a soul be mortified by a

tasteless hospitality; let not this genuine artist be seized upon by the

remorseless purveyors of meretricious Fashion; and, above all, let not

her gentle and candid nature be subjected to the vulgarism of the

lionizing mania! As a priestess of Art, in its highest and sweetest

form, as a fair ministrant to the spirit of Beauty, as a true musical

interpreter of humanity—let the people welcome her with sincere and

grateful recognition. This is the most acceptable tribute an unperverted

soul can receive or bestow. It is that intelligent sympathy due from a

free and educated society, and cheering to a discriminating recipient.

Far from Nature’s minstrel be the critical affectation of the professed

amateur, and the empty adulation of the coxcomb. Let her pure and

exquisite vocalism—the result of such discipline, faith, and rare gifts

of heaven, find a response in the American heart unprofaned by absurd

excitement, and truly indicative of a genuine and cordial appreciation

of the beautiful in art, and the excellent in character.

* * * * *

THE POET’S PRAYER.

BY MRS. EMMA C. EMBURY.

Leave me not, Love! ’twas thus a poet chanted

His heart’s fond pleadings to the midnight air—

Leave not the dwelling by thy presence haunted,

The home thou long hast filled with visions fair.

Oh, leave me not! although thy fleeting pleasures

Are but as snow-flakes in the sun’s warm ray;

Though thy best gifts are only fairy treasures,

A golden glitter flung o’er things of clay;

Yet leave me not!—all earthly hopes have perished,

And e’en thine hour of promise has gone by,

But I would fain the fond illusion cherish

Which still in joy or sorrow brought thee nigh.

Perhaps my hand, like hers[4] in olden story,

Let fall the burning drop that broke thy rest,

Marring by base distrust thy veiléd glory,

And scaring thee too rudely from my breast;

Yet leave me not!—although thy shrine be broken,

Though all its votive wreaths are long since gone,

Faith lingers there, albeit the prayer, unspoken,

Dies on her lip like sorrow’s half-breathed moan.

-----

[4] Psyche.

* * * * *

IMPLORA PACE:—A VERSION.

BY MRS. ELIZABETH J. EAMES.

Oh, Rest! serenest rest!

Mild evening of the soul—

Thou soft and silent Hesperus

Whose influences control

The pulses of the weary-hearted—

How often have our warm tears started

At mention of thy name,

When pictures blest of days departed

Our memories overcame!

Oh, Rest! serenest rest!

That by the sun of Truth

Art standing firm and fast,

Sought after from our youth—

Through all the changes of life’s lot,

But oh! sad truth, we find _thee_ not!

* * * * *

THE FALL OF THE FAIRIES.

BY HENRY B. HIRST.

The night was clear and cool and calm,

The evening wind, exhaling balm

From spicy Caribbean isles,

Perfumed the forest’s deep defiles.

The mournful sister Pleiades

Arose from oriental seas;

Lyra no more, as once, in old,

Shook harmony from her harp of gold.

Silence, like God, was every where:

There was no sound in earth or air:

An omnipresent quietude

Reposed on field and flood and wood.

Serenely calm, the waning moon

Rose, dreaming of the nights of June,

And silently, from weeping eyes,

Shed tears of silver down the skies.

She seemed to walk her pilgrimage

Like one who, in the frosts of age,

Totters on toward the Holy Land,

Impelled by some pale phantom hand.

Wan August _in extremis_ lay:

He knew that the approaching day

Consigned him to the solemn tomb

Which yawned upon him through the gloom.

The summer flowers were on their wane;

And silently, like one in pain,

Who hides his pangs from loving eyes,

The brooks looked calmly toward the skies.

A little circle in a wood—

The heart of the old solitude—

Lay wrapped in something more than sleep—

A boding silence, stern and deep.

Suddenly, from a distant bell,

Ten several sounds fell, like a knell,

And like a sigh (which was despair)

A shudder thrilled the tremulous air.

The leaves fell rustling from the trees,

The grasses shivered in the breeze,

As Saturn, with complacent eye,

Walked coldly up the central sky.

Slowly among the quivering limbs

Come hollow moons, like funeral hymns;

The trees, aroused from slumber, wail

Before the occidental gale.

The clouds, in horror, hurry by;

Unusual darkness drowns the sky;

The moon moves with suspended breath,

Like one who dreads the approach of death.

The stars expire, the moon grows dim,

The wind has ceased to be a hymn,

And through the arches of the wood

Roars, like a lion scenting blood.

Above the wind, whose surging sound

The brazen tumult almost drowned,

Pealing and ringing as it passed,

A clarion’s clamor filled the blast.

Along the earth, among the elms

Who shook and clanged their hoary helms,

And waved their arms in wild despite,

Again that summons filled the night.

Up, piercing space, again it rung

Where fair-haired Lyra sat and sung

Like Sappho, in a passionate trance,

Stunning her with its dissonance.

The little vista of the wood

Suddenly in the darkness stood

Flushed with a wild, unusual light,

Which filled the filmy eyes of night.

From oak and elm, from beech and larch,

That crowned the vista, like an arch,

Between whose leaves, like frowning eyes,

Came glimpses of the gloomy skies;

From Asia’s sultry hills and vales,

From far Topróbanè’s dells and dales,

From Ganges’ source, from Niger’s side,

And turbid Nile’s eternal tide;

From England’s fields, from Scotland’s glens,

From Ireland’s mosses, bogs and fens;

From sunny France, from swarthy Spain,

As if the skies shed golden rain,

Flashing, like streams of falling stars,

A myriad million minim Lars,

With terror painted on each face,

Stood, shuddering in that solemn place.

And from the farthest sphere of even,

From every sun (whose name is heaven,

And whose inhabitants are kings,)

Was heard the rushing of their wings.

Some stood attired in elfin steel,

With sword on hip, and spur at heel,

And crimson cheeks, and brows aflame;

Some in long, flowing garments came,—

Sages, whose sunken eyes had caught

From ceaseless study quenchless thought—

Maidens, with timid, trembling lips,

Their beauties purple with eclipse;

Mothers, within whose matron eyes

Dwelt all the depth of tropic skies,

Clasping their offspring, as the rose

Enfolds its heart at evening close.

Some stood alone, with drooping wings;

Some gathered here and there in rings,

But each one felt, though far apart,

The beating of his neighbor’s heart.

And each one, with a sad surmise,

Gazed wistfully in his fellow’s eyes,

And turned, and doubtfully bowed his head,

Despairing at the lore he read.

Each seemed to wonder why that hour

Beheld them in that ancient bower,

Where tree, and leaf, and grass, and stone,

Spoke audibly of ages gone.

Where shining, ghostly, through the trees,

Were idols, fern-clad to the knees,

And scattered round, in pale decay,

The ruins of old temples lay.

Altars of many a mythic age,

Forgotten even on history’s page,

With sacrificial knife and brand,

Arose, like tombs, on either hand.

And each one seemed to ask, though not

A word disturbed that haunted spot,

For some one, who, with eye of lynx,

Would read this riddle of the Sphynx;

And with oracular voice and air

Declare why they were summoned there—

Why called from worlds that felt no flood

To tremble in that ancient wood—

That wood which from the birth of time

Had gone on growing, through the chime

Of falling spheres,—a Druid sage,

Unwearied with life’s pilgrimage.

While standing thus in mute amaze,

Sadly, along the forest ways

Came slowly toward the appointed place

The Fathers of the Fairy Race.

And as, by sacred instinct urged,

From gloom to light their forms emerged,

It seemed as if unnumbered years

Of elfin lore had made them seers.

And each one seemed to walk the sod,

Clothed in his wisdom, like a god;

But in his step, and in his air,

Were mingled terror and despair.

Even as they came, the distant bell

Again proclaimed its solemn knell;

Eleven deep sounds, which, one by one,

Through every shuddering bosom run.

The night grew light, and on the skies

Each one in wonder fixed his eyes,

And saw, encircled with his rays,

Cold Saturn, like a comet, blaze.

Saturn, who on the zenith stood,

Freezing, it seemed, their very blood;

So cold, so thin it grew, they shook

As if by sudden palsy strook.

Each gazed in terror on the other;

Sister sought sister—brother brother—

But over all had come a strange,

Unprecedented—horrid change.

A moment did the work of years;

And gazing through their blinding tears,

They felt that centuries had passed

Since they saw one another last—

That what was youth was wrinkled age,

Sere, hoary, palsied, trembling age:

The very babe, so great the charm,

Grew gray upon its mother’s arm.

Suddenly, on the gloom of night,

Leaving a trail of silvery light,

Six coursers, with disheveled hair,

Swept madly through the fields of air.

Their argent manes, in separate threads,

Streamed from their bony necks and heads;

The crooked lightnings of their eyes

Flashed fitfully athwart the skies;

Behind a sparkling chariot shone,

Burning with many a precious stone

And flaming on the eyes of all—

A planet trembling to its fall!

Erect, while sobbing, at his side

Reclined his once immortal bride,

Sat Oberon, with pallid brow,

And tresses white as winter’s snow.

Pale Hecatè, peering from a cloud—

A maiden, lying in her shroud—

Less pale were than the Fairy Queen,

Less cold, less motionless of mien.

Heart-broken Titania, wan with age,

Leant feebly on her Indian page,

Looking as if all hope was gone;—

Than even Death himself more wan.

“Subjects,” said Oberon, “gentle friends,

This night our long dominion ends;

Stern Saturn, with his stony eyes,

Smiles grimly on his sacrifice.”

“Henceforth all poetry is dead!”

And as he spoke, above his head

In masses rolled the weltering clouds;

The stars still lay within their shrouds;

Save Saturn, whose untroubled light

Almost made daylight of the night.

With groans the myriad mourners said—

“Henceforth all poetry is dead!”

“The Ideal age, the lyric strain

Expire; with them the fairy reign;

The Real comes with iron tread:—

Henceforth all poetry is dead!”

So said the king, and as he spoke

Long, heavy, rolling thunders broke

Above them, rattling through the spheres,

Whose eyes were drowned with pitying tears.

The wind arose and struck the wood;

The rain descended in a flood;

Hither and thither rushed the leaves

Along the ruined temples’ eaves.

But Saturn shone as cold and stern

As death beside a funeral urn,

Looking as though his lustre said—

“Henceforth all poetry is dead!”

And now the storm was at its height;

The trees rolled to and fro in fright;

The lurid lightnings blazed and played

Demoniac through the eternal shade.

While far above the tempest’s plash,

Above the thunder’s deafening crash,

Twelve sounds fell, fainting, on the blast

Which rushed in eddying whirlwinds past.

Even as the last sound rent the air

A hopeless shriek of fierce despair

Shook earth and heaven! and all was calm—

Unutterably, coldly calm.

The stars came out; the moon once more

Shone bright as on its birth of yore;

Lyra alone looked down in pain:

Her golden chords were rent in twain.

But Saturn, smiling, seemed to say—

“The Ideal Age has passed away;

I have devoured my sons,” he said—

“_Henceforth all poetry is dead!_”

* * * * *

THE BRIDE OF THE BATTLE.

A SOUTHERN NOVELET.

BY W. GILMORE SIMMS.

CHAPTER I.

To the reader who, in the pursuit of the facts in our national history,

shall confine himself only to those records which are to be found in the

ordinary narrative, much that he reads will be found obscure, and a

great deal absolutely untruthful. Our early historians gave themselves

but little trouble in searching after details. A general outline was all

that they desired, and, satisfied with this, they neither sought after

the particular events which should give rise to the narrative, nor into

the latent causes which gave birth to many of its actions. In the

history of South Carolina, for example, (which was one brimming with

details and teeming with incidents,) there is little to be found—as the

history is at present written—which shall afford to the reader even a

tolerably correct idea of the domestic character of the struggle. We

know well enough that the people of the colony were of a singularly

heterogeneous character; that the settlers of the lower country were

chiefly Cavaliers and Huguenots, or French Protestants, and that the

interior was divided into groups, or settlements, of Scotch, Irish, and

German. But there is little in the record to show that, of these, the

sentiment was mixed and various without degree; and that, with the

exception of the parishes of the lower country, which belonged almost

wholly, though with slight modifications, to the English church, it was

scarcely possible to find any neighborhood, in which there was not

something like a civil war. The interior and mountain settlements were

most usually divided, and nearly equally, between their attachments to

the crown and the colony. A Scotch settlement would make an almost

uniform showing in behalf of the English authority—one, two, or three

persons, at the utmost, being of the revolutionary party. An Irish

settlement (wholly Protestant, be it remembered) would be as unanimous

for the colonial movements; while the Germans were but too frequently

for the monarchical side, that being represented by a prince of Hanover.

The German settlements mostly lay in the Forks of Edisto, and along the

Congarees. The business of the present narrative will be confined

chiefly to this people. They had settled in rather large families in

Carolina, and this only a short period before the Revolution. They had

been sent out, in frequent instances, at the expense of the crown, and

this contributed to secure their allegiance. They were ignorant of the

nature of the struggle, and being wholly agricultural, could not well be

taught the nature of grievances which fell chiefly upon commerce and the

sea-board. Now, in Carolina, and perhaps throughout the whole south, the

Revolution not only originated with the natives of the country, but with

the educated portions of the natives. It was what may be termed the

gentlemen of the colony—its wealth and aristocracy—with whom and which

the movement began; and though it is not our purpose here to go into

this inquiry, we may add that the motives to the revolutionary movement

originated with them, in causes totally different from those which

stimulated the patriotism of the people of Massachusetts Bay. The pride

of place, of character and of intellect, and not any considerations of

interest, provoked the agricultural gentry of the south into the field.

It was the earnest desire of these gentry, at the dawning of the

Revolution, to conciliate the various people of the interior. At the

first signs of the struggle, therefore, an attempt was made to influence

the German population along the Edisto and Congaree, by sending among

them two influential men of their own country, whose fidelity to the

_mouvement_ party was beyond dispute. But these men were unsuccessful.

They probably made few converts. It is enough, if we give a glimpse at

the course of their proceedings in a single household in the Forks of

Edisto.[5] George Wagner and Felix Long arrived at the habitation of

Frederick Sabb, on the 7th day of July, 1775. Frederick was an honest

Dutchman of good character, but not the man for revolution. He was not

at home on the arrival of the commissioners, but his good _vrow_,

Minnicker Sabb, gave them a gracious reception. She was a good

housekeeper, with but one daughter; a tall, silent girl, with whom the

commissioners had no discourse. But Minnicker Sabb, had _she_ been

applied to, might have proved a better revolutionist than her spouse. It

is very certain, as the results will show, that Frederica Sabb, the

daughter, was of the right material. She was a calm, and sweetly-minded

damsel, not much skilled in society or books—for precious little was

the degree of learning in the settlement at this early period; but the

native mind was good and solid, and her natural tastes, if

unsophisticated, were pure and elevated. She knew, by precious

instincts, a thousand things which other minds scarcely ever reach

through the best education. She was what we call, a good girl, loyal,

with a warm heart, a sound judgment, and a modest, sensible behavior. We

are not seeking, be it remembered, a heroine, but a pure, true-hearted

woman. She was young too—only seventeen at this period—but just at the

season when the woman instincts are most lively, and her

susceptibilities most quick to all that is generous and noble. She made

the cakes and prepared the supper for the guests that evening, and they

saw but little of her till the evening feast had been adjusted, and was

about to be discussed. By this time old Frederick Sabb had made his

appearance. He came, bringing with him three of his neighbors, who were

eager to hear the news. They were followed, after a little space, and in

season for supper, by another guest—perhaps the most welcome of all to

the old couple—in the person of a favorite preacher of the Methodist

persuasion. Elijah Fields, was a man of middle age, of a vigorous mind

and body, earnest and impetuous, and represented, with considerable

efficiency, in his primitive province, the usefulness of a church which,

perhaps, more than any other, has modeled itself after that of the

Primitive Fathers. We shall see more of Elijah Fields hereafter. In the

course of the evening, three other neighbors made their appearance at

the farm-house of Frederick Sabb; making a goodly congregation upon

which to exercise the political abilities of Messrs. Wagner and Long.

They were all filled with a more or less lively curiosity in regard to

the events which were in progress, and the objects which the

commissioners had in view. Four of these neighbors were of the same good

old German stock with Frederick Sabb, but two of them were natives of

the country, from the east bank of the north branch of the Edisto, who

happened to be on a visit to an adjoining farmstead. The seventh of

these was a young Scotchman, from Cross Creek, North Carolina, who had

already declared himself very freely against the revolutionary movement.

He had, indeed, gone so far as to designate the patriots as traitors,

deserving a short cord and a sudden shrift; and this opinion was

expressed with a degree of temper which did not leave it doubtful that

he would gladly seek an opportunity to declare himself offensively in

the presence of the commissioners. As we shall see more of this person

hereafter, it is only right that we should introduce him formally to the

reader as Matthew or Mat Dunbar. He went much more frequently by the

name of Mat than Matthew. We may also mention that he was not entirely a

politician. A feeling of a tender nature brought him to the dwelling of

old Sabb, upon whose daughter, Frederica, our young Scotchman was

supposed to look with hungry eyes. And public conjecture did not err in

its suspicions.

But Mat Dunbar was not without a rival. Richard Coulter was the only

native of the country present, Parson Fields excepted. He was a tall,

manly youth, about the same age with Dunbar. But he possessed many

advantages over the latter, particularly in respect to person. Tall,

while Dunbar was short, with a handsome face, fine eye, and a luxuriant

shock of hair, and a massive beard of the same color, which gave quite a

martial appearance to his features, otherwise effeminate—the spectator

inevitably contrasted him with his rival, whose features, indeed, were

fair, but inexpressive; and whose hair and beard were of the most

burning and unmitigated red. Though stout of limb, vigorous and

athletic, Mat Dunbar was awkward in his movement, and wanting in dignity

of bearing. Mentally, the superiority of Coulter was not so manifest. He

was more diffident and gentle than the other, who, experienced by

travel, bold and confident, never exhibited himself at less than his

real worth. These preliminaries must suffice. It is perhaps scarcely

necessary to say that Frederica Sabb made _her_ comparisons between the

two, and very soon arrived at one conclusion. A girl of common instincts

rarely fails to discover whether she is sought or not; and the same

instincts lead her generally to determine between rivals long in advance

of the moment when they propose. Richard Coulter was certainly her

favorite—though her prudence was of that becoming kind which enabled

her easily to keep to herself the secret of her preference.

Old Sabb treated his guests with good Dutch hospitality. His wife and

daughter were excellent housekeepers, and the table was soon spread with

good things for supper. Butter, milk, and cream-cheeses, were not

wanting; pones and hoe-cakes made an ample showing, and a few boiled

chickens, and a large platter of broiled ham, in the centre of the

table, was as much a matter of course in that early day, in this

favorite region, as we find them among its good livers now. Of course,

supper was allowed to be discussed before the commissioners opened their

budget. Then the good _vrow_ took her place, knitting in hand, and a

huge ball of cotton in her lap, at the door, while the guests emerged

from the hall into the piazza, and sweet Frederica Sabb, quietly, as was

her habit, proceeded to put away the _debris_ of the feast, and to

restore the apartment to its former order. In this she was undisturbed

by either of her lovers; the custom of the country requiring that she

should be left to these occupations without being embarrassed by any

obtrusive sentiments, or even civilities. But it might be observed that

Richard Coulter had taken his seat in the piazza, at a window looking

into the hall, while Mat Dunbar had placed himself nearly at the

entrance, and in close neighborhood with the industrious dame. Here he

divided himself with attentions to her, and an occasional dip into the

conversation on politics, which was now fully in progress. It is not our

purpose to pursue this conversation. The arguments of the commissioners

can be readily conjectured. But they were fruitless to persuade our

worthy Dutchman into any change, or any self-committals, the issue of

which might endanger present comforts and securities. He had still the

same answer to every argument, delivered in a broken English which we

need not imitate.

“The king, George, has been a good king to me, my friends. I was poor,

but I am not poor now. I had not a finger of land before I came hither.

Now, I have good grants, and many acres. I am doing well. For what

should I desire to do better? The good king will not take away my

grants; but if I should hear to you, I should be rebel, and then he

would be angry, and he might make me poor again as I never was before.

No, no, my friends; I will sign no association, that shall make me lose

my lands.”

“You’re right!” vociferated Mat Dunbar. “It’s treason, I say, to sign

any association, and all these rangers here, in arms, are in open

rebellion; and should be hung for it; and let the time come, and I’m one

to help in the hanging them!”

This was only one of many such offensive speeches which Dunbar had

contrived to make during the evening. The commissioners contented

themselves with _marking_ the individual, but without answering him. But

his rudely expressed opinions were not pleasing to old Sabb himself, and

still less so to his worthy _vrow_, who withdrew at this into the hall;

while the stern voice of Elijah Fields descended in rebuke upon the

offender.

“And who art thou,” said he, abruptly, “to sit in judgment upon thy

brethren? And who has commissioned thee to lend thyself to the taking of

human life. Life is a sacred thing, young man—the most precious of

human possessions, since it depends on the time which is allowed us

whether we shall ever be fit for eternity. To one so young as thyself,

scarcely yet entered on thy career as a man, it might be well to

remember that modesty is the jewel of youth, and that when so many of

the great and good of the land have raised their voices against the

oppressions of the mother country, there may be good reason why we, who

know but little, should respect them, and listen till we learn. If thou

wilt be counseled by me, thou wilt hearken patiently to these worthy

gentlemen, that we may know all the merits of their argument.”

Dunbar answered this rebuke with a few muttered sentences, which were

hardly intelligible, making no concessions to the preacher or the

commissioners, yet without being positively offensive. Richard Coulter

was more prudent. He preserved a profound silence. But he was neither

unobservant nor indifferent. As yet he had taken no side in the

controversy, and was totally uncommitted among the people. But he had

been a listener, and was quietly chewing the cud of self-reflection.

After a little while, leaving the venerable signiors still engaged in

the discussion—for Wagner and Long, the commissioners, were not willing

to forego the hope of bringing over a man of Sabb’s influence—the young

men strolled out into the grounds, where their horses had been fastened.

It was almost time to ride. As they walked, the Scotchman broke out

abruptly:

“These fellows ought to be hung, every scoundrel of them; stirring up

the country to insurrection and treason; but a good lesson of hickories,

boys, might put a stop to it quite as well as the halter! What say you?

They ride over to old Carter’s, after they leave daddy Sabb’s, and it’s

a lonesome track! If you agree, we’ll stop ’em at Friday’s flats, and

trice ’em up to a swinging limb. We’re men enough for it, and who’s

afraid?”

The proposition was received with great glee by all the young fellows,

with one exception. It was a proposition invoking sport rather than

patriotism. When the more eager responses were all received, Richard

Coulter quietly remarked:

“No, no, boys; you must do nothing of the kind. These are good men, and

old enough to be the fathers of any of us. Besides, they’re strangers,

and think they’re doing right. Let ’em alone.”

“Well, if you wont;” said Dunbar, “we can do without you. There are four

of us, and they’re but two.”

“You mistake,” replied Coulter, still quietly, “they are three!”

“How! who!”

“Wagner, Long, and Richard Coulter!”

“What, you! Will you put yourself against us? You go with the rebels,

then?”

“I go with the strangers; I don’t know much about the rebellion, but I

think there’s good sense in what they say. At all events, I’ll not stand

by and see them hurt, if I can help it.”

“Two or three boys,” continued Dunbar, “will make no difference!”

This was said with a significant toss of the head toward Coulter. The

instincts of these young men were true. They already knew one another as

rivals. This discovery may have determined the future course of Coulter.

He did not reply to Dunbar; but, addressing his three companions, he

said, calling each by his Christian name, “You, boys, had better not mix

in this matter before it’s necessary. I suppose the time will come, when

there can be no skulking. But it’s no use to hurry into trouble. As for

four of you managing three, that’s not impossible; but I reckon there

will be a fight first. These strangers may have weapons; but whether

they have or not, they look like men; and I reckon, you that know me,

know that before my back tastes of any man’s hickory, my knife would be

likely to taste his blood.”

Dunbar replied rudely for the rest; and, but that Coulter quietly

withdrew at this moment, seemingly unruffled, and without making any

answer, there might have been a struggle between the two rivals even

then. But the companions of Dunbar had no such moods or motives as

prompted him. They were impressed by what Coulter had said, and were,

perhaps, quite as much under his influence as under that of Dunbar. They

accordingly turned a cold shoulder upon all his exhortations, and the

commissioners, accordingly, left the house of old Sabb in safety,

attended by young Coulter. They little knew his object in escorting them

to the dwelling of Bennett Carter, where they staid that night, and

never knew the danger from which his prompt and manly courage had saved

them. But the events of that night brought out Richard Coulter for the

cause of the patriots; and a few months found him a second-lieutenant in

a gallant corps of Thompson’s Rangers, raised for the defense of the

colony. But the commissioners parted from Frederick Sabb without making

any impression on his mind. He professed to desire to preserve a perfect

neutrality—this being the suggestion of his selfishness; but his heart

really inclined him to the support of the “goot King Jorge,” from whom

his grants of land had been derived.

“And what dost thou think, brother Fields,” said he to the parson, after

the commissioners had retired.

“Brother Sabb,” was the answer, “I do not see that we need any king any

more than the people of Israel, when they called upon Samuel for one;

and if we are to have one, I do not see why we should not choose one

from out our own tribes.”

“Brother Fields, I hope thou dost not mean to go with these rebels?”

“Brother Sabb, I desire always to go with my own people.”

“And whom callest thou our own people.”

“Those who dwell upon the soil and nurse it, and make it flourish, who

rear their flocks and children upon it, in the fear of God, and have no

fear of man in doing so.”

“Brother Fields, I fear thou thinkst hardly of ‘goot King Jorge,’” said

our Dutchman, with a sigh. “Minnicker, my _vrow_, got you de Piple.”

-----

[5] So called from the branching of the river at a certain point—the

country between the two arms being called the Forks, and settled chiefly

by native Germans.