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THE
ATLANTIC MONTHLY,
A MAGAZINE OF
_Literature, Art, and Politics._
VOLUME XV.
[Illustration]
BOSTON:
TICKNOR AND FIELDS,
135 WASHINGTON STREET.
LONDON: TRUeBNER AND COMPANY.
1865.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by
TICKNOR AND FIELDS,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of
Massachusetts.
UNIVERSITY PRESS:
ELECTROTYPED BY WELCH, BIGELOW, & CO.,
CAMBRIDGE.
CONTENTS.
Page
American Metropolis, The _Fitz-Hugh Ludlow_ 73
Andersonville, At 285
Anno Domini _Gail Hamilton_ 116
Authors, Memories of _Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall_
97, 223, 330, 477
Battle-Laureate, Our _Oliver Wendell Holmes_ 589
Birds, With the _John Burroughs_ 513
Chimney-Corner, The _Mrs. H. B. Stowe_
109, 221, 353, 490, 602, 732
Cobden, Richard _M. C. Conway_ 724
Cruikshank, George, in Mexico 54
Dely's Cow _Rose Terry_ 665
Doctor Johns _Donald G. Mitchell_
141, 296, 449, 591, 681
Dolliver Romance,
Another Scene from the _Nathaniel Hawthorne_ 1
England, A Letter about _John Weiss_ 641
Europe and Asia, Between _Bayard Taylor_ 8
Everett, Edward _E. E. Hale_ 342
Fair Play the Best Policy _T. W. Higginson_ 623
Five Sisters Court at Christmas-Tide 22
Foreign Enmity to the United States,
Causes of _E. P. Whipple_ 372
Great Lakes, The _Samuel C. Clarke_ 693
Grit _E. P. Whipple_ 407
Hofwyl, My Student-Life at _Robert Dale Owen_ 550
Ice and Esquimaux _D. A. Wasson_
39, 201, 437, 564
"If Massa put Guns into our Han's"
_Fitz-Hugh Ludlow_ 504
John Brown's Raid _John G. Rosengarten_ 711
Lecture, The Popular _J. G. Holland_ 362
Lincoln, Abraham,
The Place of, in History _George Bancroft_ 757
Lone Woman, Adventures of a _Jane G. Austin_ 385
Mining, Ancient,
on the Shores of Lake Superior _Albert D. Hagar_ 308
Modern Improvements and our National Debt
_E. B. Bigelow_ 729
Needle and Garden 88, 165, 316, 464, 613, 673
Officer's Journal, Leaves from _T. W. Higginson_ 65
Out of the Sea _Author of "Life in the Iron-Mills"_
533
Painter,
Our First Great, and his Works _Sarah Clarke_ 129
Pettibone Lineage, The 419
Pianist, Notes of a _Louis M. Gottschalk_
177, 350, 573
Pleiades of Connecticut, The _F. Sheldon_ 187
Prose Henriade, A _Gail Hamilton_ 653
Regnard _F. Sheldon_ 700
Revolution, Diplomacy of the _Prof. George W. Greene_ 576
Richmond, Late Scenes in _C. C. Coffin_ 744
St. Mary's, Up the _T. W. Higginson_ 422
Sanitary, A Fortnight with the _G. Reynolds_ 233
Schumann's Quintette in E Flat Major
_Anne M. Brewster_ 718
Taney, Roger Brooke _Charles M. Ellis_ 151
Year, The Story of a _Henry James, Jr._ 257
POETRY.
Autumn Walt, My _W. C. Bryant_ 20
Carolina Coronado, To 698
Castles _T. B. Aldrich_ 622
Down! _Henry H. Brownell_ 756
First Citizen, Our _Oliver Wendell Holmes_ 462
Frozen Harbor, The _J. T. Trowbridge_ 281
Garnaut Hall _T. B. Aldrich_ 182
God Save the Flag _O. W. Holmes_ 115
Going to Sleep _Elizabeth A. C. Akers_ 680
Gold Egg.--A Dream Fantasy _James Russell Lowell_ 528
Grave by the lake, The _John G. Whittier_ 561
Harpocrates _Bayard Taylor_ 662
Hour of Victory, The 371
Jaguar Hunt, The _J. T. Trowbridge_ 742
Kallundborg Church _John G. Whittier_ 51
Mantle of St. John de Matha, The
_John G. Whittier_ 162
Mr. Hosea Biglow to the Editor of the Atlantic Monthly
_James Russell Lowell_ 501
Oldest Friend, Our _O. W. Holmes_ 340
Old House, The _Alice Cary_ 213
Poet, To a, on his Birthday, 315
Pro Patria _Epes Sargent_ 232
Rubin Badfellow _T. B. Aldrich_ 437
Seventy-Six, On Board the _James Russell Lowell_ 107
Spaniards' Graves at the Isles of Shoals, The 406
Wind over the Chimney, The _Henry W. Longfellow_ 7
ART.
Harriet Hosmer's Zenobia _Fitz-Hugh Ludlow_ 248
REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
Beecher's Autobiography 631
Bushnell's Christ and His Salvation 377
Chamberlain's Autobiography of a New England Farm-House 255
Child's Looking toward Sunset 255
Cobbe's Broken Lights 124
De Vries, Collection. German Series 379
Dewey's Lowell Lectures 286
Frothingham's Philosophy 251
Hodde's Cradle of Rebellions 380
Hosmer's Morrisons 378
Hunt's Seer 376
Ingelow's Studies for Stories 378
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy's Letters 126
Murdoch's Patriotism in Poetry and Prose 250
Reynard the Fox 380
Russell's Review of Todleben's History 638
Sabine's Loyalists of the American Revolution 123
Seaside and Fireside Fairies 640
Thackeray's Vanity Fair 639
Thoreau's Cape Cod 381
Tuckerman's America and her Commentators 122
RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS 128, 382, 640, 764
THE
ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
_A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics._
VOL. XV.--JANUARY, 1865.--NO. LXXXVII.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by TICKNOR AND
FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.
ANOTHER SCENE FROM THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE.[A]
We may now suppose Grandsir Dolliver to have finished his breakfast,
with a better appetite and sharper perception of the qualities of his
food than he has generally felt of late years, whether it were due to
old Martha's cookery or to the cordial of the night before. Little
Pansie had also made an end of her bread and milk with entire
satisfaction, and afterwards nibbled a crust, greatly enjoying its
resistance to her little white teeth.
How this child came by the odd name of Pansie, and whether it was really
her baptismal name, I have not ascertained. More probably it was one of
those pet appellations that grow out of a child's character, or out of
some keen thrill of affection in the parents, an unsought-for and
unconscious felicity, a kind of revelation, teaching them the true name
by which the child's guardian angel would know it,--a name with
playfulness and love in it, that we often observe to supersede, in the
practice of those who love the child best, the name that they carefully
selected, and caused the clergyman to plaster indelibly on the poor
little forehead at the font,--the love-name, whereby, if the child
lives, the parents know it in their hearts, or by which, if it dies, God
seems to have called it away, leaving the sound lingering faintly and
sweetly through the house. In Pansie's case, it may have been a certain
pensiveness which was sometimes seen under her childish frolic, and so
translated itself into French, (_pensee_,) her mother having been of
Acadian kin; or, quite as probably, it alluded merely to the color of
her eyes, which, in some lights, were very like the dark petals of a
tuft of pansies in the Doctor's garden. It might well be, indeed, on
account of the suggested pensiveness; for the child's gayety had example
to sustain it, no sympathy of other children or grown people,--and her
melancholy, had it been so dark a feeling, was but the shadow of the
house and of the old man. If brighter sunshine came, she would brighten
with it. This morning, surely, as the three companions, Pansie, puss,
and Grandsir Dolliver, emerged from the shadow of the house into the
small adjoining enclosure, they seemed all frolicsome alike.
The Doctor, however, was intent over something that had reference to
his life-long business of drugs. This little spot was the place where he
was wont to cultivate a variety of herbs supposed to be endowed with
medicinal virtue. Some of them had been long known in the
pharmacopoeia of the Old World; and others, in the early days of the
country, had been adopted by the first settlers from the Indian
medicine-men, though with fear and even contrition, because these wild
doctors were supposed to draw their pharmaceutic knowledge from no
gracious source, the Black Man himself being the principal professor in
their medical school. From his own experience, however, Dr. Dolliver had
long since doubted, though he was not bold enough quite to come to the
conclusion, that Indian shrubs, and the remedies prepared from them,
were much less perilous than those so freely used in European practice,
and singularly apt to be followed by results quite as propitious. Into
such heterodoxy our friend was the more liable to fall because it had
been taught him early in life by his old master, Dr. Swinnerton, who, at
those not infrequent times when he indulged a certain unhappy
predilection for strong waters, had been accustomed to inveigh in terms
of the most cynical contempt and coarsest ridicule against the practice
by which he lived, and, as he affirmed, inflicted death on his
fellow-men. Our old apothecary, though too loyal to the learned
profession with which he was connected fully to believe this bitter
judgment, even when pronounced by his revered master, was still so far
influenced that his conscience was possibly a little easier when making
a preparation from forest herbs and roots than in the concoction of half
a score of nauseous poisons into a single elaborate drug, as the fashion
of that day was.
But there were shrubs in the garden of which he had never ventured to
make a medical use, nor, indeed, did he know their virtue, although from
year to year he had tended and fertilized, weeded and pruned them, with
something like religious care. They were of the rarest character, and
had been planted by the learned and famous Dr. Swinnerton, who on his
death-bed, when he left his dwelling and all his abstruse manuscripts to
his favorite pupil, had particularly directed his attention to this row
of shrubs. They had been collected by himself from remote countries, and
had the poignancy of torrid climes in them; and he told him, that,
properly used, they would be worth all the rest of the legacy a
hundred-fold. As the apothecary, however, found the manuscripts, in
which he conjectured there was a treatise on the subject of these
shrubs, mostly illegible, and quite beyond his comprehension in such
passages as he succeeded in puzzling out, (partly, perhaps, owing to his
very imperfect knowledge of Latin, in which language they were written,)
he had never derived from them any of the promised benefit. And to say
the truth, remembering that Dr. Swinnerton himself never appeared to
triturate or decoct or do anything else with the mysterious herbs, our
old friend was inclined to imagine the weighty commendation of their
virtues to have been the idly solemn utterance of mental aberration at
the hour of death. So, with the integrity that belonged to his
character, he had nurtured them as tenderly as was possible in the
ungenial climate and soil of New England, putting some of them into pots
for the winter; but they had rather dwindled than flourished, and he had
reaped no harvests from them, nor observed them with any degree of
scientific interest.
His grandson, however, while yet a school-boy, had listened to the old
man's legend of the miraculous virtues of these plants; and it took so
firm a hold of his mind, that the row of outlandish vegetables seemed
rooted in it, and certainly flourished there with richer luxuriance than
in the soil where they actually grew. The story, acting thus early upon
his imagination, may be said to have influenced his brief career in
life, and, perchance, brought about its early close. The young man, in
the opinion of competent judges, was endowed with remarkable abilities,
and according to the rumor of the people had wonderful gifts, which
were proved by the cures he had wrought with remedies of his own
invention. His talents lay in the direction of scientific analysis and
inventive combination of chemical powers. While under the pupilage of
his grandfather, his progress had rapidly gone quite beyond his
instructor's hope,--leaving him even to tremble at the audacity with
which he overturned and invented theories, and to wonder at the depth at
which he wrought beneath the superficialness and mock-mystery of the
medical science of those days, like a miner sinking his shaft and
running a hideous peril of the earth caving in above him. Especially did
he devote himself to these plants; and under his care they had thriven
beyond all former precedent, bursting into luxuriance of bloom, and most
of them bearing beautiful flowers, which, however, in two or three
instances, had the sort of natural repulsiveness that the serpent has in
its beauty, compelled against its will, as it were, to warn the beholder
of an unrevealed danger. The young man had long ago, it must be added,
demanded of his grandfather the documents included in the legacy of
Professor Swinnerton, and had spent days and nights upon them, growing
pale over their mystic lore, which seemed the fruit not merely of the
Professor's own labors, but of those of more ancient sages than he; and
often a whole volume seemed to be compressed within the limits of a few
lines of crabbed manuscript, judging from the time which it cost even
the quick-minded student to decipher them.
Meantime these abstruse investigations had not wrought such disastrous
effects as might have been feared, in causing Edward Dolliver to neglect
the humble trade, the conduct of which his grandfather had now
relinquished almost entirely into his hands. On the contrary, with the
mere side results of his study, or what may be called the chips and
shavings of his real work, he created a prosperity quite beyond anything
that his simple-minded predecessor had ever hoped for, even at the most
sanguine epoch of his life. The young man's adventurous endowments were
miraculously alive, and connecting themselves with his remarkable
ability for solid research, and perhaps his conscience being as yet
imperfectly developed, (as it sometimes lies dormant in the young,) he
spared not to produce compounds which, if the names were anywise to be
trusted, would supersede all other remedies, and speedily render any
medicine a needless thing, making the trade of apothecary an untenable
one, and the title of Doctor obsolete. Whether there was real efficacy
in these nostrums, and whether their author himself had faith in them,
is more than can safely be said; but at all events, the public believed
in them, and thronged to the old and dim sign of the Brazen Serpent,
which, though hitherto familiar to them and their forefathers, now
seemed to shine with auspicious lustre, as if its old Scriptural virtues
were renewed. If any faith was to be put in human testimony, many
marvellous cures were really performed, the fame of which spread far and
wide, and caused demands for these medicines to come in from places far
beyond the precincts of the little town. Our old apothecary, now
degraded by the overshadowing influence of his grandson's character to a
position not much above that of a shop-boy, stood behind the counter
with a face sad and distrustful, and yet with an odd kind of fitful
excitement in it, as if he would have liked to enjoy this new
prosperity, had he dared. Then his venerable figure was to be seen
dispensing these questionable compounds by the single bottle and by the
dozen, wronging his simple conscience as he dealt out what he feared was
trash or worse, shrinking from the reproachful eyes of every ancient
physician who might chance to be passing by, but withal examining
closely the silver or the New England coarsely printed bills which he
took in payment, as if apprehensive that the delusive character of the
commodity which he sold might be balanced by equal counterfeiting in the
money received, or as if his faith in all things were shaken.
Is it not possible that this gifted young man had indeed found out those
remedies which Nature has provided and laid away for the cure of every
ill?
The disastrous termination of the most brilliant epoch that ever came to
the Brazen Serpent must be told in a few words. One night, Edward
Dolliver's young wife awoke, and, seeing the gray dawn creeping into the
chamber, while her husband, it should seem, was still engaged in his
laboratory, arose in her night-dress, and went to the door of the room
to put in her gentle remonstrance against such labor. There she found
him dead,--sunk down out of his chair upon the hearth, where were some
ashes, apparently of burnt manuscripts, which appeared to comprise most
of those included in Doctor Swinnerton's legacy, though one or two had
fallen near the heap, and lay merely scorched beside it. It seemed as if
he had thrown them into the fire, under a sudden impulse, in a great
hurry and passion. It may be that he had come to the perception of
something fatally false and deceptive in the successes which he had
appeared to win, and was too proud and too conscientious to survive it.
Doctors were called in, but had no power to revive him. An inquest was
held, at which the jury, under the instruction, perhaps, of those same
revengeful doctors, expressed the opinion that the poor young man, being
given to strange contrivances with poisonous drugs, had died by
incautiously tasting them himself. This verdict, and the terrible event
itself, at once deprived the medicines of all their popularity; and the
poor old apothecary was no longer under any necessity of disturbing his
conscience by selling them. They at once lost their repute, and ceased
to be in any demand. In the few instances in which they were tried the
experiment was followed by no good results; and even those individuals
who had fancied themselves cured, and had been loudest in spreading the
praises of these beneficent compounds, now, as if for the utter
demolition of the poor youth's credit, suffered under a recurrence of
the worst symptoms, and, in more than one case, perished miserably:
insomuch (for the days of witchcraft were still within the memory of
living men and women) it was the general opinion that Satan had been
personally concerned in this affliction, and that the Brazen Serpent, so
long honored among them, was really the type of his subtle malevolence
and perfect iniquity. It was rumored even that all preparations that
came from the shop were harmful,--that teeth decayed that had been made
pearly white by the use of the young chemist's dentifrice,--that cheeks
were freckled that had been changed to damask roses by his
cosmetics,--that hair turned gray or fell off that had become black,
glossy, and luxuriant from the application of his mixtures,--that breath
which his drugs had sweetened had now a sulphurous smell. Moreover, all
the money heretofore amassed by the sale of them had been exhausted by
Edward Dolliver in his lavish expenditure for the processes of his
study; and nothing was left for Pansie, except a few valueless and
unsalable bottles of medicine, and one or two others, perhaps more
recondite than their inventor had seen fit to offer to the public.
Little Pansie's mother lived but a short time after the shock of the
terrible catastrophe; and, as we began our story with saying, she was
left with no better guardianship or support than might be found in the
efforts of a long superannuated man.
Nothing short of the simplicity, integrity, and piety of Grandsir
Dolliver's character, known and acknowledged as far back as the oldest
inhabitants remembered anything, and inevitably discoverable by the
dullest and most prejudiced observers, in all its natural
manifestations, could have protected him in still creeping about the
streets. So far as he was personally concerned, however, all bitterness
and suspicion had speedily passed away; and there remained still the
careless and neglectful good-will, and the prescriptive reverence, not
altogether reverential, which the world heedlessly awards to the
unfortunate individual who outlives his generation.
And now that we have shown the reader sufficiently, or at least to the
best of our knowledge, and perhaps at tedious length, what was the
present position of Grandsir Dolliver, we may let our story pass onward,
though at such a pace as suits the feeble gait of an old man.
The peculiarly brisk sensation of this morning, to which we have more
than once alluded, enabled the Doctor to toil pretty vigorously at his
medicinal herbs,--his catnip, his vervain, and the like; but he did not
turn his attention to the row of mystic plants, with which so much of
trouble and sorrow either was, or appeared to be, connected. In truth,
his old soul was sick of them, and their very fragrance, which the warm
sunshine made strongly perceptible, was odious to his nostrils. But the
spicy, homelike scent of his other herbs, the English simples, was
grateful to him, and so was the earth-smell, as he turned up the soil
about their roots, and eagerly snuffed it in. Little Pansie, on the
other hand, perhaps scandalized at great-grandpapa's neglect of the
prettiest plants in his garden, resolved to do her small utmost towards
balancing his injustice; so, with an old shingle, fallen from the roof,
which she had appropriated as her agricultural tool, she began to dig
about them, pulling up the weeds, as she saw grandpapa doing. The
kitten, too, with a look of elfish sagacity, lent her assistance, plying
her paws with vast haste and efficiency at the roots of one of the
shrubs. This particular one was much smaller than the rest, perhaps
because it was a native of the torrid zone, and required greater care
than the others to make it nourish; so that, shrivelled, cankered, and
scarcely showing a green leaf, both Pansie and the kitten probably
mistook it for a weed. After their joint efforts had made a pretty big
trench about it, the little girl seized the shrub with both hands,
bestriding it with her plump little legs, and giving so vigorous a pull,
that, long accustomed to be transplanted annually, it came up by the
roots, and little Pansie came down in a sitting posture, making a broad
impress on the soft earth. "See, see, Doctor!" cries Pansie, comically
enough giving him his title of courtesy,--"look, grandpapa, the big,
naughty weed!"
Now the Doctor had at once a peculiar dread and a peculiar value for
this identical shrub, both because his grandson's investigations had
been applied more ardently to it than to all the rest, and because it
was associated in his mind with an ancient and sad recollection. For he
had never forgotten that his wife, the early lost, had once taken a
fancy to wear its flowers, day after day, through the whole season of
their bloom, in her bosom, where they glowed like a gem, and deepened
her somewhat pallid beauty with a richness never before seen in it. At
least such was the effect which this tropical flower imparted to the
beloved form in his memory, and thus it somehow both brightened and
wronged her. This had happened not long before her death; and whenever,
in the subsequent years, this plant had brought its annual flower, it
had proved a kind of talisman to bring up the image of Bessie, radiant
with this glow that did not really belong to her naturally passive
beauty, quickly interchanging with another image of her form, with the
snow of death on cheek and forehead. This reminiscence had remained
among the things of which the Doctor was always conscious, but had never
breathed a word, through the whole of his long life,--a sprig of
sensibility that perhaps helped to keep him tenderer and purer than
other men, who entertain no such follies. And the sight of the shrub
often brought back the faint, golden gleam of her hair, as if her spirit
were in the sun-lights of the garden, quivering into view and out of it.
And therefore, when he saw what Pansie had done, he sent forth a
strange, inarticulate, hoarse, tremulous exclamation, a sort of aged and
decrepit cry of mingled emotion. "Naughty Pansie, to pull up grandpapa's
flower!" said he, as soon as he could speak. "Poison, Pansie, poison!
Fling it away, child!"
And dropping his spade, the old gentleman scrambled towards the little
girl as quickly as his rusty joints would let him,--while Pansie, as
apprehensive and quick of motion as a fawn, started up with a shriek of
mirth and fear to escape him. It so happened that the garden-gate was
ajar; and a puff of wind blowing it wide open, she escaped through this
fortuitous avenue, followed by great-grandpapa and the kitten.
"Stop, naughty Pansie, stop!" shouted our old friend. "You will tumble
into the grave!" The kitten, with the singular sensitiveness that seems
to affect it at every kind of excitement, was now on her back.
And, indeed, this portentous warning was better grounded and had a more
literal meaning than might be supposed; for the swinging gate
communicated with the burial-ground, and almost directly in little
Pansie's track there was a newly dug grave, ready to receive its tenant
that afternoon. Pansie, however, fled onward with outstretched arms,
half in fear, half in fun, plying her round little legs with wonderful
promptitude, as if to escape Time or Death, in the person of Grandsir
Dolliver, and happily avoiding the ominous pitfall that lies in every
person's path, till, hearing a groan from her pursuer, she looked over
her shoulder, and saw that poor grandpapa had stumbled over one of the
many hillocks. She then suddenly wrinkled up her little visage, and sent
forth a full-breathed roar of sympathy and alarm.
"Grandpapa has broken his neck now!" cried little Pansie, amid her sobs.
"Kiss grandpapa, and make it well, then," said the old gentleman,
recollecting her remedy, and scrambling up more readily than could be
expected. "Well," he murmured to himself, "a hair's-breadth more, and I
should have been tumbled into yonder grave. Poor little Pansie! what
wouldst thou have done then?"
"Make the grass grow over grandpapa," answered Pansie, laughing up in
his face.
"Poh, poh, child, that is not a pretty thing to say," said grandpapa,
pettishly and disappointed, as people are apt to be when they try to
calculate on the fitful sympathies of childhood. "Come, you must go in
to old Martha now."
The poor old gentleman was in the more haste to leave the spot because
he found himself standing right in front of his own peculiar row of
gravestones, consisting of eight or nine slabs of slate, adorned with
carved borders rather rudely cut, and the earliest one, that of his
Bessie, bending aslant, because the frost of so many winters had slowly
undermined it. Over one grave of the row, that of his gifted grandson,
there was no memorial. He felt a strange repugnance, stronger than he
had ever felt before, to linger by these graves, and had none of the
tender sorrow mingled with high and tender hopes that had sometimes made
it seem good to him to be there. Such moods, perhaps, often come to the
aged, when the hardened earth-crust over their souls shuts them out from
spiritual influences.
Taking the child by the hand,--her little effervescence of infantile fun
having passed into a downcast humor, though not well knowing as yet what
a dusky cloud of disheartening fancies arose from these green
hillocks,--he went heavily toward the garden-gate. Close to its
threshold, so that one who was issuing forth or entering must needs step
upon it or over it, lay a small flat stone, deeply imbedded in the
ground, and partly covered with grass, inscribed with the name of "Dr.
John Swinnerton, Physician."
"Ay," said the old man, as the well-remembered figure of his ancient
instructor seemed to rise before him in his grave-apparel, with beard
and gold-headed cane, black velvet doublet and cloak, "here lies a man
who, as people have thought, had it in his power to avoid the grave! He
had no little grandchild to tease him. He had the choice to die, and
chose it."
So the old gentleman led Pansie over the stone, and carefully closed
the gate; and, as it happened, he forgot the uprooted shrub, which
Pansie, as she ran, had flung away, and which had fallen into the open
grave; and when the funeral came that afternoon, the coffin was let down
upon it, so that its bright, inauspicious flower never bloomed again.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] See July number, 1864, of this Magazine, for the first chapter of
the story. The portion now published was not revised by the author, but
is printed from his first draught.
THE WIND OVER THE CHIMNEY.
See, the fire is sinking low,
Dusky red the embers glow,
While above them still I cower,--
While a moment more I linger,
Though the clock, with lifted finger,
Points beyond the midnight hour.
Sings the blackened log a tune
Learned in some forgotten June
From a school-boy at his play,
When they both were young together,
Heart of youth and summer weather
Making all their holiday.
And the night-wind rising, hark!
How above there in the dark,
In the midnight and the snow,
Ever wilder, fiercer, grander,
Like the trumpets of Iskander,
All the noisy chimneys blow!
Every quivering tongue of flame
Seems to murmur some great name,
Seems to say to me, "Aspire!"
But the night-wind answers,--"Hollow
Are the visions that you follow,
Into darkness sinks your fire!"
Then the flicker of the blaze
Gleams on volumes of old days,
Written by masters of the art,
Loud through whose majestic pages
Rolls the melody of ages,
Throb the harp-strings of the heart.
And again the tongues of flame
Start exulting and exclaim,--
"These are prophets, bards, and seers;
In the horoscope of nations,
Like ascendant constellations,
They control the coming years."
But the night-wind cries,--"Despair!
Those who walk with feet of air
Leave no long-enduring marks;
At God's forges incandescent
Mighty hammers beat incessant,
These are but the flying sparks.
"Dust are all the hands that wrought;
Books are sepulchres of thought;
The dead laurels of the dead
Rustle for a moment only,
Like the withered leaves in lonely
Church-yards at some passing tread."
Suddenly the flame sinks down;
Sink the rumors of renown;
And alone the night-wind drear
Clamors louder, wilder, vaguer,--
"'T is the brand of Meleager
Dying on the hearth-stone here!"
And I answer,--"Though it be,
Why should that discomfort me?
No endeavor is in vain;
Its reward is in the doing,
And the rapture of pursuing
Is the prize the vanquished gain?"
BETWEEN EUROPE AND ASIA.
"Pushed off from one shore, and not yet landed on the other."
_Russian Proverb._
The railroad from Moscow to Nijni-Novgorod had been opened but a
fortnight before. It was scarcely finished, indeed; for, in order to
facilitate travel during the continuance of the Great Fair at the latter
place, the gaps in the line, left by unbuilt bridges, were filled up
with temporary trestle-work. The one daily express-train was so thronged
that it required much exertion, and the freest use of the envoy's
prestige, to secure a private carriage for our party. The sun was
sinking over the low, hazy ridge of the Sparrow Hills as we left Moscow;
and we enjoyed one more glimpse of the inexhaustible splendor of the
city's thousand golden domes and pinnacles, softened by luminous smoke
and transfigured dust, before the dark woods of fir intervened, and the
twilight sank down on cold and lonely landscapes.
Thence, until darkness, there was nothing more to claim attention.
Whoever has seen one landscape of Central Russia is familiar with three
fourths of the whole region. Nowhere else--not even on the levels of
Illinois--are the same features so constantly reproduced. One long, low
swell of earth succeeds to another; it is rare that any other woods
than birch and fir are seen; the cleared land presents a continuous
succession of pasture, rye, wheat, potatoes, and cabbages; and the
villages are as like as peas, in their huts of unpainted logs,
clustering around a white church with five green domes. It is a monotony
which nothing but the richest culture can prevent from becoming
tiresome. Culture is to Nature what good manners are to man, rendering
poverty of character endurable.
Stationing a servant at the door to prevent intrusion at the
way-stations, we let down the curtains before our windows, and secured a
comfortable privacy for the night, whence we issued only once, during a
halt for supper. I entered the refreshment-room with very slender
expectations, but was immediately served with plump partridges, tender
cutlets, and green peas. The Russians made a rush for the great
_samovar_ (tea-urn) of brass, which shone from one end of the long
table; and presently each had his tumbler of scalding tea, with a slice
of lemon floating on the top. These people drink beverages of a
temperature which would take the skin off Anglo-Saxon mouths. My tongue
was more than once blistered, on beginning to drink after they had
emptied their glasses. There is no station without its steaming samovar;
and some persons, I verily believe, take their thirty-three hot teas
between Moscow and St. Petersburg.
There is not much choice of dishes in the interior of Russia; but what
one does get is sure to be tolerably good. Even on the Beresina and the
Dnieper I have always fared better than at most of the places in our
country where "Ten minutes for refreshments!" is announced day by day
and year by year. Better a single beef-steak, where tenderness is, than
a stalled ox, all gristle and grease. But then our cooking (for the
public at least) is notoriously the worst in the civilized world; and I
can safely pronounce the Russian better, without commending it very
highly.
Some time in the night we passed the large town of Vladimir, and with
the rising sun were well on our way to the Volga. I pushed aside the
curtains, and looked out, to see what changes a night's travel had
wrought in the scenery. It was a pleasant surprise. On the right stood a
large, stately residence, embowered in gardens and orchards; while
beyond it, stretching away to the south-east, opened a broad, shallow
valley. The sweeping hills on either side were dotted with shocks of
rye; and their thousands of acres of stubble shone like gold in the
level rays. Herds of cattle were pasturing in the meadows, and the
peasants (serfs no longer) were straggling out of the villages to their
labor in the fields. The crosses and polished domes of churches sparkled
on the horizon. Here the patches of primitive forest were of larger
growth, the trunks cleaner and straighter, than we had yet seen. Nature
was half conquered, in spite of the climate, and, the first time since
leaving St. Petersburg, wore a habitable aspect. I recognized some of
the features of Russian country-life, which Puschkin describes so
charmingly in his poem of "Eugene Onaegin."
The agricultural development of Russia has been greatly retarded by the
indifference of the nobility, whose vast estates comprise the best land
of the empire, in those provinces where improvements might be most
easily introduced. Although a large portion of the noble families pass
their summers in the country, they use the season as a period of
physical and pecuniary recuperation from the dissipations of the past,
and preparation for those of the coming winter. Their possessions are so
large (those of Count Scheremetieff, for instance, contain one hundred
and thirty thousand inhabitants) that they push each other too far apart
for social intercourse; and they consequently live _en deshabille_,
careless of the great national interests in their hands. There is a
class of our Southern planters which seems to have adopted a very
similar mode of life,--families which shabbily starve for ten months, in
order to make a lordly show at "the Springs" for the other two. A most
accomplished Russian lady, the Princess D----, said to me,--"The want of
an active, intelligent country society is our greatest misfortune. Our
estates thus become a sort of exile. The few, here and there, who try to
improve the condition of the people, through the improvement of the
soil, are not supported by their neighbors, and lose heart. The more we
gain in the life of the capital, the more we are oppressed by the
solitude and stagnation of the life of the country."
This open, cheerful region continued through the morning. The railroad
was still a novelty; and the peasants everywhere dropped their scythes
and shovels to see the train pass. Some bowed with the profoundest
gravity. They were a fine, healthy, strapping race of men, only of
medium height, but admirably developed in chest and limbs, and with
shrewd, intelligent faces. Content, not stupidity, is the cause of their
stationary condition. They are not yet a people, but the germ of one,
and, as such, present a grand field for anthropological studies.
Towards noon the road began to descend, by easy grades, from the fair,
rolling uplands into a lower and wilder region. When the train stopped,
women and children whose swarthy skin and black eyes betrayed a mixture
of Tartar blood made their appearance, with wooden bowls of cherries and
huckleberries for sale. These bowls were neatly carved and painted. They
were evidently held in high value; for I had great difficulty in
purchasing one. We moved slowly, on account of the many skeleton
bridges; but presently a long blue ridge, which for an hour past had
followed us in the south-east, began to curve around to our front. I now
knew that it must mark the course of the Oka River, and that we were
approaching Nijni-Novgorod.
We soon saw the river itself; then houses and gardens scattered along
the slope of the hill; then clusters of sparkling domes on the summit;
then a stately, white-walled citadel; and the end of the ridge was
levelled down in an even line to the Volga. We were three hundred miles
from Moscow, on the direct road to Siberia.
The city being on the farther side of the Oka, the railroad terminates
at the Fair, which is a separate city, occupying the triangular level
between the two rivers. Our approach to it was first announced by heaps
of cotton-bales, bound in striped camel's-hair cloth, which had found
their way hither from the distant valleys of Turkestan and the warm
plains of Bukharia. Nearly fifty thousand camels are employed in the
transportation of this staple across the deserts of the Aral to
Orenburg,--a distance of a thousand miles. The increase of price had
doubled the production since the previous year, and the amount which now
reaches the factories of Russia through this channel cannot be less than
seventy-five thousand bales. The advance of modern civilization has so
intertwined the interests of all zones and races, that a civil war in
the United States affects the industry of Central Asia!
Next to these cotton-bales, which, to us, silently proclaimed the
downfall of that arrogant monopoly which has caused all our present woe,
came the representatives of those who produced them. Groups of
picturesque Asians--Bashkirs, Persians, Bukharians, and Uzbeks--appeared
on either side, staring impassively at the wonderful apparition. Though
there was sand under their feet, they seemed out of place in the sharp
north-wind and among the hills of fir and pine.
The train stopped: we had reached the station. As I stepped upon the
platform, I saw, over the level lines of copper roofs, the dragon-like
pinnacles of Chinese buildings, and the white minaret of a mosque. Here
was the certainty of a picturesque interest to balance the uncertainty
of our situation. We had been unable to engage quarters in advance:
there were two hundred thousand strangers before us, in a city the
normal population of which is barely forty thousand; and four of our
party were ladies. The envoy, indeed, might claim the Governor's
hospitality; but our visit was to be so brief that we had no time to
expend on ceremonies, and preferred rambling at will through the teeming
bazaars to being led about under the charge of an official escort.
A friend at Moscow, however, had considerately telegraphed in our behalf
to a French resident of Nijni, and the latter gentleman met us at the
station. He could give but slight hope of quarters for the night, but
generously offered his services. Droshkies were engaged to convey us to
the old city, on the hill beyond the Oka; and, crowded two by two into
the shabby little vehicles, we set forth. The sand was knee-deep, and
the first thing that happened was the stoppage of our procession by the
tumbling down of the several horses. They were righted with the help of
some obliging spectators; and with infinite labor we worked through this
strip of desert into a region of mud, with a hard, stony bottom
somewhere between us and the earth's centre. The street we entered,
though on the outskirts of the Fair, resembled Broadway on a
sensation-day. It was choked with a crowd, composed of the sweepings of
Europe and Asia. Our horses thrust their heads between the shoulders of
Christians, Jews, Moslem, and Pagans, slowly shoving their way towards
the floating bridge, which was a jam of vehicles from end to end. At the
corners of the streets, the wiry Don Cossacks, in their dashing blue
uniforms and caps of black lamb's-wool, regulated, as best they could,
the movements of the multitude. It was curious to notice how they, and
their small, well-knit horses,--the equine counterparts of
themselves,--controlled the fierce, fiery life which flashed from every
limb and feature, and did their duty with wonderful patience and
gentleness. They seemed so many spirits of Disorder tamed to the service
of Order.
It was nearly half an hour before we reached the other end of the
bridge, and struck the superb inclined highway which leads to the top of
the hill. We were unwashed and hungry; and neither the tumult of the
lower town, nor the view of the Volga, crowded with vessels of all
descriptions, had power to detain us. Our brave little horses bent
themselves to the task; for task it really was,--the road rising between
three and four hundred feet in less than half a mile. Advantage has been
taken of a slight natural ravine, formed by a short, curving spur of the
hill, which encloses a _pocket_ of the greenest and richest foliage,--a
bit of unsuspected beauty, quite invisible from the other side of the
river. Then, in order to reach the level of the Kremlin, the road is led
through an artificial gap, a hundred feet in depth, to the open square
in the centre of the city.
Here, all was silent and deserted. There were broad, well-paved streets,
substantial houses, the square towers and crenellated walls of the old
Kremlin, and the glittering cupolas of twenty-six churches before us,
and a lack of population which contrasted amazingly with the whirlpool
of life below. Monsieur D., our new, but most faithful friend, took us
to the hotel, every corner and cranny of which was occupied. There was a
possibility of breakfast only, and water was obtained with great
exertion. While we were lazily enjoying a tolerable meal, Monsieur D.
was bestirring himself in all quarters, and came back to us radiant with
luck. He had found four rooms in a neighboring street; and truly, if one
were to believe De Custine or Dumas, such rooms are impossible in
Russia. Charmingly clean, elegantly furnished, with sofas of green
leather and beds of purest linen, they would hive satisfied the severe
eye of an English housekeeper. We thanked both our good friend and St.
Macarius (who presides over the Fair) for this fortune, took possession,
and then hired fresh droshkies to descend the hill.
On emerging from the ravine, we obtained a bird's-eye view of the whole
scene. The waters of both rivers, near at hand, were scarcely visible
through the shipping which covered them. Vessels from the Neva, the
Caspian, and the rivers of the Ural, were here congregated; and they
alone represented a floating population of between thirty and forty
thousand souls. The Fair, from this point, resembled an immense flat
city,--the streets of booths being of a uniform height,--out of which
rose the great Greek church, the Tartar mosque, and the curious Chinese
roofs. It was a vast, dark, humming plain, vanishing towards the west
and north-west in clouds of sand. By this time there was a lull in the
business, and we made our way to the central bazaar with less trouble
than we had anticipated. It is useless to attempt an enumeration of the
wares exposed for sale: they embraced everything grown, trapped, or
manufactured, between Ireland and Japan. We sought, of course, the
Asiatic elements, which first met us in the shape of melons from
Astrachan, and grapes from the southern slopes of the Caucasus. Then
came wondrous stuffs from the looms of Turkestan and Cashmere,
turquoises from the Upper Oxus, and glittering strings of Siberian topaz
and amethyst, side by side with Nuremberg toys, Lyons silks, and
Sheffield cutlery. About one third of the population of the Fair was of
Asiatic blood, embracing representatives from almost every tribe north
and west of the Himalayas.
This temporary city, which exists during only two months of the year,
contained two hundred thousand inhabitants at the time of our visit.
During the remaining ten months it is utterly depopulated, the bazaars
are closed, and chains are drawn across the streets to prevent the
passage of vehicles. A single statement will give an idea of its extent:
the combined length of the streets is twenty-five miles. The Great
Bazaar is substantially built of stone, after the manner of those in
Constantinople, except that it encloses an open court, where a
Government band performs every afternoon. Here the finer wares are
displayed, and the shadowed air under the vaulted roofs is a very
kaleidoscope for shifting color and sparkle. Tea, cotton, leather, wool,
and the other heavier and coarser commodities, have their separate
streets and quarters. The several nationalities are similarly divided,
to some extent; but the stranger, of course, prefers to see them
jostling together in the streets,--a Babel, not only of tongues, but of
feature, character, and costume.
Our ladies were eager to inspect the stock of jewelry, especially those
heaps of exquisite color with which the Mohammedans very logically load
the trees of Paradise; for they resemble fruit in a glorified state of
existence. One can imagine virtuous grapes promoted to amethysts,
blueberries to turquoises, cherries to rubies, and green-gages to
aqua-marine. These, the secondary jewels, (with the exception of the
ruby,) are brought in great quantities from Siberia, but most of them
are marred by slight flaws or other imperfections, so that their
cheapness is more apparent than real. An amethyst an inch long, throwing
the most delicious purple light from its hundreds of facets, quite takes
you captive, and you put your hand in your pocket for the fifteen
dollars which shall make you its possessor; but a closer inspection is
sure to show you either a broad transverse flaw, or a spot where the
color fades into transparency. The white topaz, known as the "Siberian
diamond," is generally flawless, and the purest specimens are scarcely
to be distinguished from the genuine brilliant. A necklace of these,
varying from a half to a quarter of an inch in diameter, may be had for
about twenty-five dollars. There were also golden and smoky topaz and
beryl, in great profusion.
A princely Bashkir drew us to his booth, first by his beauty and then by
his noble manners. He was the very incarnation of Boker's "Prince Adeb."
The girls of Damar paused to see me pass,
I walking in my rags, yet beautiful.
One maiden said, 'He has a prince's air!'
I am a prince; the air was all my own.
This Bashkir, however, was not in rags; he was elegantly attired. His
silken vest was bound with a girdle of gold-thread studded with jewels;
and over it he wore a caftan, with wide sleeves, of the finest dark-blue
cloth. The round cap of black lamb's-wool became his handsome head. His
complexion was pale olive, through which the red of his cheeks shone, in
the words of some Oriental poem, "like a rose-leaf through oil"; and his
eyes, in their dark fire, were more lustrous than smoky topaz. His voice
was mellow and musical, and his every movement and gesture a new
revelation of human grace. Among thousands, yea, tens of thousands, of
handsome men, he stood preeminent.