He was not at the head of a prosperous church and society, rich and

well-to-do in the world,--but, as the pioneer leader of a new theology,

in a country where theology was the all-absorbing interest, he had to

breast the reaction that ever attends the advent of new ideas. His

pulpit talents, too, were unattractive. His early training had been

all logical, not in the least aesthetic; for, like the ministry of his

country generally, he had been trained always to think more of what he

should say than of how he should say it. Consequently, his style,

though not without a certain massive greatness, which always comes from

largeness of nature, had none of those attractions by which the common

masses are beguiled into thinking. He gave only the results of thought,

not its incipient processes; and the consequence was, that few could

follow him. In like manner, his religious teachings were characterized

by an ideality so high as quite to discourage ordinary virtue.

There is a ladder to heaven, whose base God has placed in human

affections, tender instincts, symbolic feelings, sacraments of love,

through which the soul rises higher and higher, refining as she goes,

till she outgrows the human, and changes, as she rises, into the image

of the divine. At the very top of this ladder, at the threshold of

paradise, blazes dazzling and crystalline that celestial grade where the

soul knows self no more, having learned, through a long experience of

devotion, how blest it is to lose herself in that eternal Love and

Beauty of which all earthly fairness and grandeur are but the dim type,

the distant shadow. This highest step, this saintly elevation, which but

few selectest spirits ever on earth attain, to raise the soul to which

the Eternal Father organized every relation of human existence and

strung every chord of human love, for which this world is one long

discipline, for which the soul's human education is constantly varied,

for which it is now torn by sorrow, now flooded by joy, to which all

its multiplied powers tend with upward hands of dumb and ignorant

aspiration,--this Ultima Thule of virtue had been seized upon by our

sage as the _all_ of religion. He knocked out every round of the ladder

but the highest, and then, pointing to its hopeless splendor, said to

the world, "Go up thither and be saved!"

Short of that absolute self-abnegation, that unconditional surrender to

the Infinite, there was nothing meritorious,--because, if _that_ were

commanded, every moment of refusal was rebellion. Every prayer, not

based on such consecration, he held to be an insult to the Divine

Majesty;--the reading of the Word, the conscientious conduct of life,

the performance of the duties of man to man, being, without this, the

deeds of a creature in conscious rebellion to its Eternal Sovereign,

were all vitiated and made void. Nothing was to be preached to the

sinner, but his ability and obligation to rise immediately to this

height.

It is not wonderful that teaching of this sort should seem to many

unendurable, and that the multitude should desert the preacher with the

cry, "This is an hard saying; who can hear it?" The young and gay were

wearied by the dryness of metaphysical discussions which to them were as

unintelligible as a statement of the last results of the mathematician

to the child commencing the multiplication-table. There remained around

him only a select circle,--shrewd, hard thinkers, who delighted

in metaphysical subtilties,--deep-hearted, devoted natures, who

sympathized with the unworldly purity of his life, his active

philanthropy and untiring benevolence,--courageous men, who admired his

independence of thought and freedom in breasting received opinion,--and

those unperceiving, dull, good people who are content to go to church

anywhere as convenience and circumstance may drift them,--people who

serve, among the keen feeling and thinking portion of the world, much

the same purpose as adipose matter in the human system, as a soft

cushion between the nerves of feeling and the muscles of activity.

There was something affecting in the pertinacity with which the good

Doctor persevered in saying his say to his discouraging minority of

hearers. His salary was small; his meeting-house, damaged during the

Revolutionary struggle, was dilapidated and forlorn,--fireless in

winter, and in summer admitting a flood of sun and dust through those

great windows which formed so principal a feature in those first efforts

of Puritan architecture.

Still, grand in his humility, he preached on,--and as a soldier never

asks why, but stands at apparently the most useless post, so he went on

from Sunday to Sunday, comforting himself with the reflection that no

one could think more meanly of his ministrations than he did himself. "I

am like Moses only in not being eloquent," he said, in his simplicity.

"My preaching is barren and dull, my voice is hard and harsh; but then

the Lord is a Sovereign, and may work through me. He fed Elijah once

through a raven, and he may feed some poor wandering soul through me."

The only mistake made by the good man was that of supposing that the

elaboration of theology was preaching the gospel. The gospel he was

preaching constantly, by his pure, unworldly living, by his visitations

to homes of poverty and sorrow, by his searching out of the lowly

African slaves, his teaching of those whom no one else in those days had

thought of teaching, and by the grand humanity, outrunning his age, in

which he protested against the then admitted system of slavery and the

slave-trade. But when, rising in the pulpit, he followed trains of

thought suited only to the desk of the theological lecture-room, he did

it blindly, following that law of self-development by which minds of a

certain amount of fervor _must_ utter what is in them, whether men will

hear or whether they will forbear.

But the place where our Doctor was happiest was his study. There he

explored, and wandered, and read, and thought, and lived a life as

wholly ideal and intellectual as heart could conceive.

And could _Love_ enter a reverend doctor's study, and find his way into

a heart empty and swept of all those shreds of poetry and romance in

which he usually finds the material of his incantations?

Even so;--but he came so thoughtfully, so reverently, with so wise

and cautious a footfall, that the good Doctor never even raised his

spectacles to see who was there. The first that he knew, poor man,

he was breathing an air of strange and subtile sweetness,--from what

paradise he never stopped his studies to inquire. He was like a great,

rugged elm, with all its lacings and archings of boughs and twigs, which

has stood cold and frozen against the metallic blue of winter sky,

forgetful of leaves, and patient in its bareness, calmly content in its

naked strength and crystalline definiteness of outline. But in April

there is a rising and stirring within the grand old monster,--a

whispering of knotted buds, a mounting of sap coursing ethereally from

bough to bough with a warm and gentle life; and though the old elm knows

it not, a new creation is at hand. Just so, ever since the good man had

lived at Mrs. Scudder's, and had the gentle Mary for his catechumen, a

richer life seemed to have colored his thoughts,--his mind seemed to

work with a pleasure as never before.

Whoever looked on the forehead of the good Doctor must have seen the

squareness of ideality giving marked effect to its outline. As yet

ideality had dealt only with the intellectual and invisible, leading to

subtile refinements of argument and exalted ideas of morals. But there

was lying in him, crude and unworked, a whole mine of those artistic

feelings and perceptions which are awakened and developed only by the

touch of beauty. Had he been born beneath the shadow of the great Duomo

of Florence, where Giotto's Campanile rises like the slender stalk of

a celestial lily, where varied marbles and rainbow-glass and gorgeous

paintings and lofty statuary call forth, even from childhood, the soul's

reminiscences of the bygone glories of its pristine state, his would

have been a soul as rounded and full in its sphere of faculties as that

of Da Vinci or Michel Angelo. But of all that he was as ignorant as a

child; and the first revelation of his dormant nature was to come to him

through the face of woman,--that work of the Mighty Master which is to

be found in all lands and ages.

What makes the love of a great mind something fearful in its inception

is that it is often the unsealing of a hitherto undeveloped portion of

a large and powerful being; the woman may or may not seem to other eyes

adequate to the effect produced, but the man cannot forget her, because

with her came a change which makes him forever a different being. So it

was with our friend. A woman it was that was destined to awaken in him

all that consciousness which music, painting, poetry awaken in more

evenly developed minds; and it is the silent breathing of her creative

presence that is even now creating him anew, while as yet he knows it

not.

He never thought, this good old soul, whether Mary were beautiful or

not; he never even knew that he looked at her; nor did he know why it

was that the truths of his theology, when uttered by her tongue, had

such a wondrous beauty as he never felt before. He did not know why it

was, that, when she silently sat by him, copying tangled manuscript for

the press, as she sometimes did, his whole study seemed so full of some

divine influence, as if, like St. Dorothea, she had worn in her bosom,

invisibly, the celestial roses of paradise. He recorded honestly in his

diary what marvellous freshness of spirit the Lord had given him, and

how he seemed to be uplifted in his communings with heaven, without once

thinking from the robes of what angel this sweetness had exhaled.

On Sundays, when he saw good Mrs. Jones asleep, and Simon Brown's hard,

sharp eyes, and Deacon Twitchel mournfully rocking to and fro, and his

wife handing fennel to keep the children awake, his eye glanced across

to the front gallery, where one earnest young face, ever kindling with

feeling and bright with intellect, followed on his way, and he felt

uplifted and comforted. On Sunday mornings, when Mary came out of her

little room, in clean white dress, with her singing-book and psalm-book

in her hands, her deep eyes solemn from recent prayer, he thought of

that fair and mystical bride, the Lamb's wife, whose union with her

Divine Redeemer in a future millennial age was a frequent and favorite

subject of his musings; yet he knew not that this celestial bride,

clothed in fine linen, clean and white, veiled in humility and meekness,

bore in his mind those earthly features. No, he never had dreamed of

that! But only after she had passed by, that mystical vision seemed to

him more radiant, more easy to be conceived.

It is said, that, if a grape-vine be planted in the neighborhood of a

well, its roots, running silently underground, wreathe themselves in

a net-work around the cold, clear waters, and the vine's putting on

outward greenness and unwonted clusters and fruit is all that tells

where every root and fibre of its being has been silently stealing. So

those loves are most fatal, most absorbing, in which, with unheeded

quietness, every thought and fibre of our life twines gradually around

some human soul, to us the unsuspected wellspring of our being. Fearful

it is, because so often the vine must be uprooted, and all its fibres

wrenched away; but till the hour of discovery comes, how is it

transfigured by a new and beautiful life!

There is nothing in life more beautiful than that trancelike quiet dawn

which precedes the rising of love in the soul. When the whole being

is pervaded imperceptibly and tranquilly by another being, and we are

happy, we know not and ask not why, the soul is then receiving all and

asking nothing. At a later day she becomes self-conscious, and then come

craving exactions, endless questions,--the whole world of the material

comes in with its hard counsels and consultations, and the beautiful

trance fades forever.

Of course, all this is not so to you, my good friends, who read it

without the most distant idea what it can mean; but there are people in

the world to whom it has meant and will mean much, and who will see in

the present happiness of our respectable friend something even ominous

and sorrowful.

It had not escaped the keen eye of the mother how quickly and innocently

the good Doctor was absorbed by her daughter, and thereupon had come

long trains of practical reflections.

The Doctor, though not popular indeed as a preacher, was a noted man in

his age. Her deceased husband had regarded him with something of the

same veneration which might have been accorded to a divine messenger,

and Mrs. Scudder had received and kept this veneration as a precious

legacy. Then, although not handsome, the Doctor had decidedly a grand

and imposing appearance. There was nothing common or insignificant about

him. Indeed, it had been said, that, when, just after the declaration of

peace, he walked through the town in the commemorative procession side

by side with General Washington, the minister, in the majesty of his

gown, bands, cocked hat, and full flowing wig, was thought by many to be

the more majestic and personable figure of the two.

In those days, the minister united in himself all those ideas of

superior position and cultivation with which the theocratic system of

the New England community had invested him. Mrs. Scudder's notions of

social rank could reach no higher than to place her daughter on the

throne of such preëminence.

Her Mary, she pondered, was no common girl. In those days, it was a rare

thing for young persons to devote themselves to religion or make any

professions of devout life. The church, or that body of people who

professed to have passed through a divine regeneration, was almost

entirely confined to middle-aged and elderly people, and it was looked

upon as a singular and unwonted call of divine grace when young persons

came forward to attach themselves to it. When Mary, therefore, at quite

an early age, in all the bloom of her youthful beauty, arose, according

to the simple and impressive New England rite, to consecrate herself

publicly to a religious life, and to join the company of professing

Christians, she was regarded with a species of deference amounting even

to awe. Had it not been for the childlike, unconscious simplicity of her

manners, the young people of her age would have shrunk away from her,

as from one entirely out of their line of thought and feeling; but a

certain natural and innocent playfulness and amiable self-forgetfulness

made her a general favorite.

Nevertheless, Mrs. Scudder knew no young man whom she deemed worthy to

have and hold a heart which she priced so highly. As to James, he stood

at double disadvantage, because, as her cousin's son, he had grown up

from childhood under her eye, and all those sins and iniquities into

which gay and adventurous youngsters will be falling had come to her

knowledge. She felt kindly to the youth; she wished him well; but as to

giving him her Mary!--the very suggestion made her dislike him. She was

quite sure he must have tried to beguile her,--he must have tampered

with her feelings, to arouse in her pure and well-ordered mind so much

emotion and devotedness as she had witnessed.

How encouraging a Providence, then, was it that he was gone to sea for

three years!--how fortunate that Mary had been prevented in any way from

committing herself with him!--how encouraging that the only man in those

parts, in the least fitted to appreciate her, seemed so greatly pleased

and absorbed in her society!--how easily might Mary's dutiful reverence

be changed to a warmer sentiment, when she should find that so great a

man could descend from his lofty thoughts to think of her!

In fact, before Mrs. Scudder had gone to sleep the first night after

James's departure, she had settled upon the house where the minister

and his young wife were to live, had reviewed the window-curtains and

bed-quilts for each room, and glanced complacently at an improved

receipt for wedding-cake which might be brought out to glorify a certain

occasion!

CHAPTER VII.

THE FRIENDS AND RELATIONS OF JAMES.

Mr. Zebedee Marvyn, the father of James, was the sample of an

individuality so purely the result of New England society and education,

that he must be embodied in our story as a representative man of the

times.

He owned a large farm in the immediate vicinity of Newport, which he

worked with his own hands and kept under the most careful cultivation.

He was a man past the middle of life, with a white head, a keen blue

eye, and a face graven deeply with the lines of energy and thought. His

was one of those clearly-cut minds which New England forms among her

farmers, as she forms quartz crystals in her mountains, by a sort of

gradual influence flowing through every pore of her soil and system.

His education, properly so called, had been merely that of those common

schools and academies with which the States are thickly sown, and which

are the springs of so much intellectual activity. Here he had learned

to think and to inquire,--a process which had not ceased with his

school-days. Though toiling daily with his sons and hired man in all the

minutiae of a farmer's life, he kept an observant eye on the field of

literature, and there was not a new publication heard of that he did

not immediately find means to add it to his yearly increasing stock of

books. In particular was he a well-read and careful theologian, and all

the controversial tracts, sermons, and books, with which then, as ever

since, New England has abounded, not only lay on his shelves, but had

his pencilled annotations, queries, and comments thickly scattered along

their margins. There was scarce an office of public trust which had not

at one time or another been filled by him. He was deacon of the church,

chairman of the school-committee, justice of the peace, had been twice

representative in the State legislature, and was in permanence a sort of

adviser-general in all cases between neighbor and neighbor. Among other

acquisitions, he had gained some knowledge of the general forms of law,

and his advice was often asked in preference to that of the regular

practitioners.

His dwelling was one of those large, square, white, green-blinded

mansions, cool, clean, and roomy, wherein the respectability of New

England in those days rejoiced. The windows were shaded by clumps of

lilacs; the deep yard with its white fence inclosed a sweep of clean,

short grass, and a few fruit-trees. Opposite the house was a small

blacksmith's-shed, which, of a wet day, was sparkling and lively with

bellows and ringing forge, while Mr. Zebedee and his sons were hammering

and pounding and putting in order anything that was out of the way in

farming-tools or establishments. Not unfrequently the latest scientific

work or the last tractate of theology lay open by his side, the contents

of which would be discussed with a neighbor or two as they entered; for,

to say the truth, many a neighbor, less forehanded and thrifty, felt the

benefit of this arrangement of Mr. Zebedee, and would drop in to see if

he "wouldn't just tighten that rivet," or "kind o' ease out that 'ere

brace," or "let a feller have a turn with his bellows, or a stroke or

two on his anvil,"--to all which the good man consented with a grave

obligingness. The fact was, that, as nothing in the establishment of

Mr. Marvyn was often broken or lost or out of place, he had frequent

applications to lend to those less fortunate persons, always to be

found, who supply their own lack of considerateness from the abundance

of their neighbors.

He who is known always to be in hand, and always obliging, in a

neighborhood, stands the chance sometimes of having nothing for himself.

Mr. Zebedee reflected quietly on this subject, taking it, as he did all

others, into grave and orderly consideration, and finally provided a

complete set of tools, which he kept for the purpose of lending; and

when any of these were lent, he told the next applicant quietly, that

the axe or the hoe was already out, and thus he reconciled the Scripture

which commanded him to "do good and lend" with that law of order which

was written in his nature.

Early in life Mr. Marvyn had married one of the handsomest girls of

his acquaintance, who had brought him a thriving and healthy family of

children, of whom James was the youngest. Mrs. Marvyn was, at this

time, a tall, sad-eyed, gentle-mannered woman, thoughtful, earnest,

deep-natured, though sparing in the matter of words. In all her

household arrangements, she had the same thrift and order which

characterized her husband; but hers was a mind of a finer and higher

stamp than his.

In her bed-room, near by her work-basket, stood a table covered with

books,--and so systematic were her household arrangements, that she

never any day missed her regular hours for reading. One who should have

looked over this table would have seen there how eager and hungry a mind

was hid behind the silent eyes of this quiet woman. History, biography,

mathematics, volumes of the encyclopaedia, poetry, novels, all alike

found their time and place there,--and while she pursued her household

labors, the busy, active soul within travelled cycles and cycles of

thought, few of which ever found expression in words. What might be that

marvellous music of the _Miserere_, of which she read, that it convulsed

crowds and drew groans and tears from the most obdurate? What might be

those wondrous pictures of Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci? What would it

be to see the Apollo, the Venus? What was the charm that enchanted the

old marbles,--charm untold and inconceivable to one who had never seen

even the slightest approach to a work of art? Then those glaciers of

Switzerland, that grand, unapproachable mixture of beauty and sublimity

in her mountains!--what would it be to one who could see it? Then what

were all those harmonies of which she read,--masses, fugues, symphonies?

Oh, could she once hear the Miserere of Mozart, just to know what music

was like! And the cathedrals, what were they? How wonderful they must

be, with their forests of arches, many-colored as autumn-woods with

painted glass, and the chants and anthems rolling down their long

aisles! On all these things she pondered quietly, as she sat often on

Sundays in the old staring, rattle-windowed meeting-house, and looked at

the uncouth old pulpit, and heard the choir faw-sol-la-ing or singing

fuguing tunes; but of all this she said nothing.

Sometimes, for days, her thoughts would turn from these subjects and be

absorbed in mathematical or metaphysical studies. "I have been following

that treatise on Optics for a week, and never understood it till

to-day," she once said to her husband. "I have found now that there has

been a mistake in drawing the diagrams. I have corrected it, and now the

demonstration is complete.--Dinah, take care, that wood is hickory, and

it takes only seven sticks of that size to heat the oven."

It is not to be supposed that a woman of this sort was an inattentive

listener to preaching so stimulating to the intellect as that of Dr. H.

No pair of eyes followed the web of his reasonings with a keener and

more anxious watchfulness than those sad, deep-set, hazel ones; and as

she was drawn along the train of its inevitable logic, a close observer

might have seen how the shadows deepened over them. For, while others

listened for the clearness of the thought, for the acuteness of the

argument, she listened as a soul wide, fine-strung, acute, repressed,

whose every fibre is a nerve, listens to the problem of its own

destiny,--listened as the mother of a family listens, to know what were

the possibilities, the probabilities, of this mysterious existence of

ours to herself and those dearer to her than herself.

The consequence of all her listening was a history of deep inward

sadness. That exultant joy, or that entire submission, with which others

seemed to view the scheme of the universe, as thus unfolded, did not

visit her mind. Everything to her seemed shrouded in gloom and mystery;

and that darkness she received as a token of unregeneracy, as a sign

that she was one of those who are destined, by a mysterious decree,

never to receive the light of the glorious gospel of Christ. Hence,

while her husband was a deacon of the church, she, for years, had sat

in her pew while the sacramental elements were distributed, a mournful

spectator. Punctilious in every duty, exact, reverential, she still

regarded herself as a child of wrath, an enemy to God, and an heir

of perdition; nor could she see any hope of remedy, except in the

sovereign, mysterious decree of an Infinite and Unknown Power, a mercy

for which she waited with the sickness of hope deferred.

Her children had grown up successively around her, intelligent and

exemplary. Her eldest son was mathematical professor in one of the

leading colleges of New England. Her second son, who jointly with his

father superintended the farm, was a man of wide literary culture and of

fine mathematical genius; and not unfrequently, on winter evenings, the

son, father, and mother worked together, by their kitchen fireside, over

the calculations for the almanac for the ensuing year, which the son had

been appointed to edit.

Everything in the family arrangements was marked by a sober precision, a

grave and quiet self-possession. There was little demonstrativeness of

affection between parents and children, brothers and sisters, though

great mutual affection and confidence. It was not pride, nor sternness,

but a sort of habitual shamefacedness, that kept far back in each soul

those feelings which are the most beautiful in their outcome; but

after a while, the habit became so fixed a nature, that a caressing or

affectionate expression could not have passed the lips of one to another

without a painful awkwardness. Love was understood, once for all, to be

the basis on which their life was built. Once for all, they loved each

other, and after that, the less said, the better. It had cost the

woman's heart of Mrs. Marvyn some pangs, in the earlier part of her

wedlock, to accept of this _once for all_, in place of those

daily outgushings which every woman desires should be like God's

loving-kindness, "new every morning"; but hers, too, was a nature

strongly inclining inward, and, after a few tremulous movements, the

needle of her soul settled, and her life-lot was accepted,--not as what

she would like or could conceive, but as a reasonable and good one. Life

was a picture painted in low, cool tones, but in perfect keeping; and

though another and brighter style might have pleased better, she did not

quarrel with this.

Into this steady, decorous, highly-respectable circle the youngest

child, James, made a formidable irruption. One sometimes sees launched

into a family-circle a child of so different a nature from all the rest,

that it might seem as if, like an aërolite, he had fallen out of another

sphere. All the other babies of the Marvyn family had been of that

orderly, contented sort who sleep till it is convenient to take them up,

and while awake suck their thumbs contentedly and look up with large,

round eyes at the ceiling when it is not convenient for their elders

and betters that they should do anything else. In farther advanced

childhood, they had been quiet and decorous children, who could be all

dressed and set up in chairs, like so many dolls, of a Sunday morning,

patiently awaiting the stroke of the church-bell to be carried out and

put into the wagon which took them over the two-miles' road to church.

Possessed of such tranquil, orderly, and exemplary young offshoots, Mrs.

Marvyn had been considered eminent for her "faculty" in bringing up

children.

But James was destined to put "faculty," and every other talent which

his mother possessed, to rout. He was an infant of moods and tenses, and

those not of any regular verb. He would cry of nights, and he would be

taken up of mornings, and he would not suck his thumb, nor a bundle of

caraway-seed tied in a rag and dipped in sweet milk, with which the good

gossips in vain endeavored to pacify him. He fought manfully with his

two great fat fists the battle of babyhood, utterly reversed all nursery

maxims, and reigned as baby over the whole prostrate household. When old

enough to run alone, his splendid black eyes and glossy rings of hair

were seen flashing and bobbing in every forbidden place and occupation.

Now trailing on his mother's gown, he assisted her in salting her butter

by throwing in small contributions of snuff or sugar, as the case might

be; and again, after one of those mysterious periods of silence which

are of most ominous significance in nursery experience, he would rise

from the demolition of her indigo-bag, showing a face ghastly with blue

streaks, and looking more like a gnome than the son of a respectable

mother. There was not a pitcher of any description of contents left

within reach of his little tiptoes and busy fingers that was not pulled

over upon his giddy head without in the least seeming to improve its

steadiness. In short, his mother remarked that she was thankful every

night when she had fairly gotten him into bed and asleep; James had

really got through one more day and killed neither himself nor any

one else. As a boy, the case was little better. He did not take to

study,--yawned over books, and cut out moulds for running anchors when

he should have been thinking of his columns of words in four syllables.

No mortal knew how he learned to read, for he never seemed to stop

running long enough to learn anything; and yet he did learn, and used

the talent in conning over travels, sea-voyages, and lives of heroes and

naval commanders. Spite of father, mother, and brother, he seemed

to possess the most extraordinary faculty of running up unsavory

acquaintances. He was hail-fellow well-met with every Tom and Jack and

Jim and Ben and Dick that strolled on the wharves, and astonished his

father with minutest particulars of every ship, schooner, and brig in

the harbor, together with biographical notes of the different Toms,

Dicks, and Harrys by whom they were worked.

There was but one member of the family that seemed to know at all what

to make of James, and that was their negro servant, Candace.

In those days, when domestic slavery prevailed in New England, it was

quite a different thing in its aspects from the same institution in

more southern latitudes. The hard soil, unyielding to any but the most

considerate culture, the thrifty, close, shrewd habits of the people,

and their untiring activity and industry, prevented, among the mass of

the people, any great reliance on slave labor. It was something foreign,

grotesque, and picturesque in a life of the most matter-of-fact

sameness; it was even as if one should see clusters of palm-trees

scattered here and there among Yankee wooden meeting-houses, or open

one's eyes on clumps of yellow-striped aloes growing among hardhack and

huckleberry bushes in the pastures.

Added to this, there were from the very first, in New England, serious

doubts in the minds of thoughtful and conscientious people in reference

to the lawfulness of slavery; and this scruple prevented many from

availing themselves of it, and proved a restraint on all, so that

nothing like plantation-life existed, and what servants were owned were

scattered among different families, of which they came to be regarded

and to regard themselves as a legitimate part and portion,--Mr. Marvyn,

as a man of substance, numbering two or three in his establishment,

among whom Candace reigned chief. The presence of these tropical

specimens of humanity, with their wide, joyous, rich physical abundance

of nature and their hearty _abandon_ of outward expression, was a relief

to the still clear-cut lines in which the picture of New England life

was drawn, which an artist must appreciate.

No race has ever shown such infinite and rich capabilities of adaptation

to varying soil and circumstances as the negro. Alike to them the snows

of Canada, the hard, rocky land of New England, with its set lines and

orderly ways, or the gorgeous profusion and loose abundance of the

Southern States. Sambo and Cuffy expand under them all. New England yet

preserves among her hills and valleys the lingering echoes of the jokes

and jollities of various sable worthies, who saw alike in orthodoxy

and heterodoxy, in Dr. This-side and Dr. That-side, only food for

more abundant merriment;--in fact, the minister of those days not

unfrequently had his black shadow, a sort of African Boswell, who

powdered his wig, brushed his boots, defended and patronized his

sermons, and strutted complacently about as if through virtue of his

blackness he had absorbed every ray of his master's dignity and wisdom.

In families, the presence of these exotics was a godsend to the

children, supplying from the abundant outwardness and demonstrativeness

of their nature that aliment of sympathy so dear to childhood, which the

repressed and quiet habits of New England education denied. Many and

many a New Englander counts among his pleasantest early recollections

the memory of some of these genial creatures, who by their warmth of

nature were the first and most potent mesmerisers of his childish mind.

Candace was a powerfully built, majestic black woman, corpulent, heavy,

with a swinging majesty of motion like that of a ship in a ground-swell.

Her shining black skin and glistening white teeth were indications of

perfect physical vigor which had never known a day's sickness; her

turban, of broad red and yellow bandanna stripes, had even a warm

tropical glow; and her ample skirts were always ready to be spread over

every childish transgression of her youngest pet and favorite, James.

She used to hold him entranced long winter-evenings, while she sat

knitting in the chimney-corner, and crooned to him strange, wild African

legends of the things that she had seen in her childhood and early

days,--for she had been stolen when about fifteen years of age;

and these weird, dreamy talks increased the fervor of his roving

imagination, and his desire to explore the wonders of the wide and

unknown world. When rebuked or chastised, it was she who had secret

bowels of mercy for him, and hid doughnuts in her ample bosom to be

secretly administered to him in mitigation of the sentence that sent him

supperless to bed; and many a triangle of pie, many a wedge of cake, had

conveyed to him surreptitious consolations which his more conscientious

mother longed, but dared not, to impart. In fact, these ministrations,

if suspected, were winked at by Mrs. Marvyn, for two reasons: first,

that mothers are generally glad of any loving-kindness to an erring boy,

which they are not responsible for; and second, that Candace was so set

in her ways and opinions that one might as well come in front of a ship

under full sail as endeavor to stop her in a matter where her heart was

engaged.

To be sure, she had her own private and special quarrels with "Massa

James" when he disputed any of her sovereign orders in the kitchen, and

would sometimes pursue him with uplifted rolling-pin and floury hands

when he had snatched a gingernut or cooky without suitable deference or

supplication, and would declare, roundly, that there "never was sich an

aggravatin' young un." But if, on the strength of this, any one

else ventured a reproof, Candace was immediately round on the other

side:--"Dat ar' chile gwin' to be spiled, 'cause dey's allers a-pickin'

on him;--he's well enough, on'y let him alone."

Well, under this miscellaneous assortment of influences,--through

the order and gravity and solemn monotone of life at home, with the

unceasing tick-tack of the clock forever resounding through clean,

empty-seeming rooms,--through the sea, ever shining, ever smiling,

dimpling, soliciting, like a magical charger who comes saddled and

bridled and offers to take you to fairyland,--through acquaintance with

all sorts of foreign, outlandish ragamuffins among the ships in the

harbor,--from disgust of slow-moving oxen, and long-drawn, endless

furrows round the fifteen-acre lot,--from misunderstandings with grave

elder brothers, and feeling somehow as if, he knew not why, he grieved

his mother all the time just by being what he was and couldn't help

being,--and, finally, by a bitter break with his father, in which came

that last wrench for an individual existence which some time or other

the young growing mind will give to old authority,--by all these united,

was the lot at length cast; for one evening James was missing at

supper, missing by the fireside, gone all night, not at home to

breakfast,--till, finally, a strange, weird, most heathenish-looking

cabin-boy, who had often been forbidden the premises by Mr. Marvyn,

brought in a letter, half-defiant, half-penitent, which announced that

James had sailed in the "Ariel" the evening before.

Mr. Zebedee Marvyn set his face as a flint, and said, "He went out from

us because he was not of us,"--whereat old Candace lifted her great

floury fist from the kneading-trough, and, shaking it like a large

snowball, said, "Oh, you go 'long, Massa Marvyn; ye'll live to count dat

ar' boy for de staff o' your old age yet, now I tell ye; got de makin'

o' ten or'nary men in him; kittles dat's full allers will bile over;

good yeast will blow out de cork,--lucky ef it don't bust de bottle.

Tell ye, der's angels has der hooks in sich, and when de Lord wants him

dey'll haul him in safe and sound." And Candace concluded her speech by

giving a lift to her whole batch of dough and flinging it down in the

trough with an emphasis that made the pewter on the dresser rattle.

This apparently irreverent way of expressing her mind, so contrary to

the deferential habits studiously inculcated in family discipline, had

grown to be so much a matter of course to all the family that nobody

ever thought of rebuking it. There was a sort of savage freedom about

her which they excused in right of her having been born and bred a

heathen, and of course not to be expected to come at once under the yoke

of civilization. In fact, you must all have noticed, my dear readers,

that there are some sorts of people for whom everybody turns out as they

would for a railroad-car, without stopping to ask why, and Candace was

one of them.

Moreover, Mr. Marvyn was not displeased with this defence of James,

as might be inferred from his mentioning it four or five times in the

course of the morning, to say how foolish it was,--wondering why it was

that Candace and everybody else got so infatuated with that boy,--and

ending, at last, after a long period of thought, with the remark, that

these poor African creatures often seemed to have a great deal of

shrewdness in them, and that he was often astonished at the penetration

that Candace showed.

At the end of the year James came home, more quiet and manly than he had

ever been known before,--so handsome with his sunburnt face, and his

keen, dark eyes, and glossy curls, that half the girls in the front

gallery lost their hearts the first Sunday he appeared in church. He was

tender as a woman to his mother, and followed her with his eyes, like a

lover, wherever she went; he made due and manly acknowledgments to his

father, but declared his fixed and settled intention to abide by the

profession he had chosen; and he brought home all sorts of strange

foreign gifts for every member of the household. Candace was glorified

with a flaming red and yellow turban of Moorish stuff, from Mogadore,

together with a pair of gorgeous yellow morocco slippers with peaked

toes, which, though there appeared no call to wear them in her common

course of life, she would put on her fat feet and contemplate with

daily satisfaction. She became increasingly strengthened thereby in the

conviction that the angels who had their hooks in Massa James's jacket

were already beginning to shorten the line.

[To be continued.]

THE PALM AND THE PINE.

When Peter led the First Crusade,

A Norseman wooed an Arab maid.

He loved her lithe and palmy grace,

And the dark beauty of her face:

She loved his cheeks, so ruddy fair,

His sunny eyes and yellow hair.

He called: she left her father's tent;

She followed whereso'er he went.

She left the palms of Palestine

To sit beneath the Norland pine.

She sang the musky Orient strains

Where Winter swept the snowy plains.

Their natures met like night and morn

What time the morning-star is born.

The child that from their meeting grew

Hung, like that star, between the two.

The glossy night his mother shed

From her long hair was on his head:

But in its shade they saw arise

The morning of his father's eyes.

Beneath the Orient's tawny stain

Wandered the Norseman's crimson vein:

Beneath the Northern force was seen

The Arab sense, alert and keen.

His were the Viking's sinewy hands,

The arching foot of Eastern lands.

And in his soul conflicting strove

Northern indifference, Southern love;

The chastity of temperate blood,

Impetuous passion's fiery flood;

The settled faith that nothing shakes,

The jealousy a breath awakes;

The planning Reason's sober gaze,

And Fancy's meteoric blaze.

And stronger, as he grew to man,

The contradicting natures ran,--

As mingled streams from Etna flow,

One born of fire, and one of snow.

And one impelled, and one withheld,

And one obeyed, and one rebelled.

One gave him force, the other fire;

This self-control, and that desire.

One filled his heart with fierce unrest;

With peace serene the other blessed.

He knew the depth and knew the height,

The bounds of darkness and of light;

And who these far extremes has seen

Must needs know all that lies between.

So, with untaught, instinctive art,

He read the myriad-natured heart.

He met the men of many a land;

They gave their souls into his hand;

And none of them was long unknown:

The hardest lesson was his own.

But how he lived, and where, and when,

It matters not to other men;

For, as a fountain disappears,

To gush again in later years,

So natures lost again may rise

After the lapse of centuries,--

May track the hidden course of blood

Through many a generation's flood,

Till, on some unsuspected field,

The latent lineage is revealed.

The hearts that met in Palestine,

And mingled 'neath the Norland pine.

Still beat with double pulse in mine.

THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.

WHAT HE SAID, WHAT HE HEARD, AND WHAT HE SAW.

Back again!--A turtle--which means a tortoise--is fond of his shell; but

if you put a live coal on his back, he crawls out of it. So the boys

say.

It is a libel on the turtle. He grows to his shell, and his shell is in

his body as much as his body is in his shell.--I don't think there

is one of our boarders quite so testudinous as I am. Nothing but a

combination of motives, more peremptory than the coal on the turtle's

back, could have got me to leave the shelter of my carapace; and after

memorable interviews, and kindest hospitalities, and grand sights, and

huge influx of patriotic pride,--for every American owns all America,--

"Creation's heir,--the world, the world is"

his, if anybody's,--I come back with the feeling which a boned turkey

might experience, if, retaining his consciousness, he were allowed to

resume his skeleton.

Welcome, O Fighting Gladiator, and Recumbent Cleopatra, and Dying

Warrior, whose classic outlines (reproduced in the calcined mineral of

Lutetia) crown my loaded shelves! Welcome, ye triumphs of pictorial art

(repeated by the magic graver) that look down upon me from the walls of

my sacred cell! Vesalius, as Titian drew him, high-fronted, still-eyed,

thick-bearded, with signet-ring, as beseems a gentleman, with book and

carelessly-held eyeglass, marking him a scholar; thou, too, Jan Kuyper,

commonly called Jan Praktiseer, old man of a century and seven years

besides, father of twenty sons and two daughters cut in copper by

Houbraken, bought from a portfolio on one of the Paris _quais_; and ye

Three Trees of Rembrandt, black in shadow against the blaze of sunlight;

and thou Rosy Cottager of Sir Joshua,--thy roses hinted by the peppery

burin of Bartolozzi; ye, too, of lower grades in nature, yet not

unlovely nor unrenowned, Young Bull of Paulus Potter, and Sleeping Cat

of Cornelius Visscher; welcome once more to my eyes! The old books

look out from the shelves, and I seem to read on their backs something

besides their titles,--a kind of solemn greeting. The crimson carpet

flushes warm under my feet. The arm-chair hugs me; the swivel-chair

spins round with me, as if it were giddy with pleasure; the vast

recumbent _fauteuil_ stretches itself out under my weight, as one joyous

with food and wine stretches in after-dinner laughter.

The boarders were pleased to say that they were glad to get me back. One

of them ventured a compliment, namely,--that I talked as if I believed

what I said.--This was apparently considered something unusual, by its

being mentioned.

One who means to talk with entire sincerity,--I said,--always feels

himself in danger of two things, namely,--an affectation of bluntness,

like that of which Cornwall accuses Kent in "Lear," and actual rudeness.

What a man wants to do, in talking with a stranger, is to get and to

give as much of the best and most real life that belongs to the two

talkers as the time will let him. Life is short, and conversation apt to

run to mere words. Mr. Hue I think it is, who tells us some very good

stories about the way in which two Chinese gentlemen contrive to keep up

a long talk without saying a word which has any meaning in it. Something

like this is occasionally heard on this side of the Great Wall. The best

Chinese talkers I know are some pretty women whom I meet from time to

time. Pleasant, airy, complimentary, the little flakes of flattery

glimmering in their talk like the bits of gold-leaf in _eau-de-vie de

Dantzic_; their accents flowing on in a soft ripple,--never a wave,

and never a calm; words nicely fitted, but never a colored phrase or a

high-flavored epithet; they turn air into syllables so gracefully, that

we find meaning for the music they make as we find faces in the coals

and fairy palaces in the clouds. There is something very odd, though,

about this mechanical talk.

You have sometimes been in a train on the railroad when the engine was

detached a long way from the station you were approaching? Well, you

have noticed how quietly and rapidly the cars kept on, just as if the

locomotive were drawing them? Indeed, you would not have suspected that

you were travelling on the strength of a dead fact, if you had not seen

the engine running away from you on a side-track. Upon my conscience,

I believe some of these pretty women detach their minds entirely,

sometimes, from their talk,--and, what is more, that we never know the

difference. Their lips let off the fluty syllables just as their fingers

would sprinkle the music-drops from their pianos; unconscious habit

turns the phrase of thought into words just as it does that of music

into notes.--Well, they govern the world, for all that,--these

sweet-lipped women,--because beauty is the index of a larger fact than

wisdom.

----The Bombazine wanted an explanation.

Madam,--said I,--wisdom is the abstract of the past, but beauty is the

promise of the future.

----All this, however, is not what I was going to say. Here am I,

suppose, sealed--we will say at a dinner-table--alongside of an

intelligent Englishman. We look in each other's faces,--we exchange a

dozen words. One thing is settled: we mean not to offend each other,--to

be perfectly courteous,--more than courteous; for we are the entertainer

and the entertained, and cherish particularly amiable feelings to each

other. The claret is good; and if our blood reddens a little with its

warm crimson, we are none the less kind for it.

----I don't think people that talk over their victuals are like to say

anything very great, especially if they get their heads muddled with

strong drink before they begin jabberin'.

The Bombazine uttered this with a sugary sourness, as if the words had

been steeped in a solution of acetate of lead.--The boys of my time used

to call a hit like this a "side-winder."

----I must finish this woman.--

Madam,--I said,--the Great Teacher seems to have been fond of talking as

he sat at meat. Because this was a good while ago, in a far-off place,

you forget what the true fact of it was,--that those were real dinners,

where people were hungry and thirsty, and where you met a very

miscellaneous company. Probably there was a great deal of loose talk

among the guests; at any rate, there was always wine, we may believe.

Whatever may be the hygienic advantages or disadvantages of wine,--and

I for one, except for certain particular ends, believe in water, and, I

blush to say it, in black tea,--there is no doubt about its being the

grand specific against dull dinners. A score of people come together in

all moods of mind and body. The problem is, in the space of one hour,

more or less, to bring them all into the same condition of slightly

exalted life. Food alone is enough for one person, perhaps,--talk,

alone, for another; but the grand equalizer and fraternizer, which works

up the radiators to their maximum radiation, and the absorbents to their

maximum receptivity, is now just where it was when

"The conscious water saw its Lord and

blushed,"

--when six great vessels containing water, which seems to have been

carefully purified, so as to be ready for the marriage-feast, were

changed into the best of wine. I once wrote a song about wine, in which

I spoke so warmly of it, that I was afraid some would think it was

written _inter pocula_; whereas it was composed in the bosom of my

family, under the most tranquillizing domestic influences.

----The divinity-student turned towards me, looking mischievous.--Can

you tell me,--he said,--who wrote a song for a temperance celebration

once, of which the following is a verse?--

Alas for the loved one, too gentle and fair

The joys of the banquet to chasten and share!

Her eye lost its light that his goblet might shine,

And the rose of her cheek was dissolved in his wine!

_I_ did,--I answered.--What are you going to do about it?--I will tell

you another line I wrote long ago:--

Don't be "consistent,"--but be simply _true_.

The longer I live, the more I am satisfied of two things: first, that

the truest lives are those that are cut rose-diamond-fashion, with many

facets answering to the many-planed aspects of the world about them;

secondly, that society is always trying in some way or other to grind

us down to a single flat surface. It is hard work to resist this

grinding-down action.--Now give me a chance. Better eternal and

universal abstinence than the brutalities of those days that made wives

and mothers and daughters and sisters blush for those whom they should

have honored, as they came reeling home from their debauches! Yet better

even excess than lying and hypocrisy; and if wine is upon all our

tables, let us praise it for its color and fragrance and social

tendency, so far as it deserves, and not hug a bottle in the closet and

pretend not to know the use of a wine-glass at a public dinner! I think

you will find that people who honestly mean to be true really contradict

themselves much more rarely than those who try to be "consistent." But

a great many things we say can be made to appear contradictory, simply

because they are partial views of a truth, and may often look unlike at

first, as a front view of a face and its profile often do.

Here is a distinguished divine, for whom I have great respect, for I owe

him a charming hour at one of our literary anniversaries, and he has

often spoken noble words; but he holds up a remark of my friend the

"Autocrat,"--which I grieve to say he twice misquotes, by omitting the

very word which gives it its significance,--the word _fluid_, intended

to typify the mobility of the restricted will,--holds it up, I say, as

if it attacked the reality of the self-determining principle, instead

of illustrating its limitations by an image. Now I will not explain any

farther, still less defend, and least of all attack, but simply quote

a few lines from one of my friend's poems, printed more than ten years

ago, and ask the distinguished gentleman where _he_ has ever asserted

more strongly or absolutely the independent will of the "subcreative

centre," as my heretical friend has elsewhere called man.

--Thought, conscience, will, to make them all thy own

He rent a pillar from the eternal throne!

--Made in His image, thou must nobly dare

The thorny crown of sovereignty to share.

--Think not too meanly of thy low estate;

Thou hast a choice; to choose is to create!

If he will look a little closely, he will see that the profile and the

full-face views of the will are both true and perfectly consistent.

Now let us come back, after this long digression, to the conversation

with the intelligent Englishman. We begin skirmishing with a few light

ideas,--testing for thoughts,--as our electro-chemical friend, De Sauty,

if there were such a person, would test for his current; trying a little

litmus-paper for acids, and then a slip of turmeric-paper for alkalies,

as chemists do with unknown compounds; flinging the lead, and looking

at the shells and sands it brings up to find out whether we are like

to keep in shallow water, or shall have to drop the deep-sea line;--in

short, seeing what we have to deal with. If the Englishman gets his

Hs pretty well placed, he comes from one of the higher grades of the

British social order, and we shall find him a good companion.

But, after all, here is a great fact between us. We belong to two

different civilizations, and, until we recognize what separates us, we

are talking like Pyramus and Thisbe,--without any hole in the wall to

talk through. Therefore, on the whole, if he were a superior fellow,

incapable of mistaking it for personal conceit, I think I would let out

the fact of the real American feeling about Old-World folks. They are

children to us in certain points of view. They are playing with toys we

have done with for whole generations. That silly little drum they are

always beating on, and the trumpet and the feather they make so much

noise and cut such a figure with, we have not quite outgrown, but play

with much less seriously and constantly than they do. Then there is a

whole museum of wigs, and masks, and lace-coats, and gold-sticks, and

grimaces, and phrases, which we laugh at, honestly, without affectation,

that are still used in the Old-World puppet-shows. I don't think we

on our part ever understand the Englishman's concentrated loyalty and

specialized reverence. But then we do think more of a man, as such,

(barring some little difficulties about race and complexion which the

Englishman will touch us on presently,) than any people that ever lived

did think of him. Our reverence is a great deal wider, if it is less

intense. We have caste among us, to some extent, it is true; but there

is never a collar on the American wolf-dog such as you often see on the

English mastiff, notwithstanding his robust, hearty individuality.

This confronting of two civilizations is always a grand sensation to me;

it is like cutting through the isthmus and letting the two oceans swim

into each other's laps. The trouble is, it is so difficult to let out

the whole American nature without its self-assertion seeming to take a

personal character. But I never enjoy the Englishman so much as when he

talks of church and king like Manco Capac among the Peruvians. Then you

get the real British flavor, which the cosmopolite Englishman loses. The

best conversation I have had with one of them for a long time, lively,

fluent, courteous, delightful, was a variation and illustrative

development in elegant phrases of the following short sentences.

_Englishman_.--Sir, your New-World civilization is barbarism.

_American_.--Sir, your Old-World development is infancy.

How much better this thorough interpenetration of ideas than a barren

interchange of courtesies, or a bush-fighting argument, in which each

man tries to cover as much of himself and expose as much of his opponent

as the tangled thicket of the disputed ground will let him!

----My thoughts flow in layers or strata, at least three deep. I follow

a slow person's talk, and keep a perfectly clear under-current of my own

beneath it. My friend the Autocrat has already made a similar remark.

Under both runs obscurely a consciousness belonging to a third train of

reflections, independent of the two others. I will try to write out a

mental movement in three parts.

A.--First part, or Mental Soprano,--thought follows a woman talking.

B.--Second part, or Mental Barytone,--my running accompaniment.

C.--Third part, or Mental Basso,--low grumble of an importunate

self-repeating idea.

A.--White lace, three skirts, looped with flowers, wreath of

apple-blossoms, gold bracelets, diamond pin and earrings, the most

delicious _berthe_ you ever saw, white satin slippers----

B.--Deuse take her! What a fool she is! Hear her chatter! (Look out of

window just here.--Two pages and a half of description, if it were

all written out, in one tenth of a second.)--Go ahead, old lady! (Eye

catches picture over fireplace.) There's that infernal family nose! Came

over in the "Mayflower" on the first old fool's face. Why don't they

wear a ring in it?

C.--You'll be late at lecture,--late at lecture,--late,--late,--late----

I observe that a deep layer of thought sometimes makes itself felt

through the superincumbent strata, thus:--The usual single or double

currents shall flow on, but there shall be an influence blending with

them, disturbing them in an obscure way, until all at once I say,--Oh,

there! I knew there was something troubling me,--and the thought which

had been working through comes up to the surface clear, definite, and

articulates itself,--a disagreeable duty, perhaps, or an unpleasant

recollection.

The inner world of thought and the outer world of events are alike in

this, that they are both brimful. There is no space between consecutive

thoughts or between the never-ending series of actions. All pack tight,

and mould their surfaces against each other, so that in the long run

there is a wonderful average uniformity in the forms of both thoughts

and actions,--just as you find that cylinders crowded all become

hexagonal prisms, and spheres pressed together are formed into regular

polyhedra.

Every event that a man would master must be mounted on the run, and no

man ever caught the reins of a thought except as it galloped by him. So,

to carry out, with another comparison, my remark about the layers of

thought, we may consider the mind, as it moves among thoughts or events,

like a circus-rider whirling round with a great troop of horses. He can

mount a fact or an idea, and guide it more or less completely, but he

cannot stop it. So, as I said in another way at the beginning, he can

stride two or three thoughts at once, but not break their steady walk,

trot, or gallop. He can only take his foot from the saddle of one

thought and put it on that of another.

----What is the saddle of a thought? Why, a word, of course.--Twenty

years after you have dismissed a thought, it suddenly wedges up to you

through the press, as if it had been steadily galloping round and round

all that time without a rider.

The will does not act in the interspaces of thought, for there are no

such interspaces, but simply steps from the back of one moving thought

upon that of another.

----I should like to ask,--said the divinity-student,--since we are

getting into metaphysics, how you can admit space, if all things are in

contact, and how you can admit time, if it is always _now_ to something.

--I will thank you for the dry toast,--was my answer.

----I wonder if you know this class of philosophers in books or

elsewhere. One of them makes his bow to the public, and exhibits an

unfortunate truth bandaged up so that it cannot stir hand or foot,--as

helpless, apparently, and unable to take care of itself, as an Egyptian

mummy. He then proceeds, with the air and method of a master, to take

off the bandages. Nothing can be neater than the way in which he does

it. But as he takes off layer after layer, the truth seems to grow

smaller and smaller, and some of its outlines begin to look like

something we have seen before. At last, when he has got them all off,

and the truth struts out naked, we recognize it as a diminutive and

familiar acquaintance whom we have known in the streets all our lives.

The fact is, the philosopher has coaxed the truth into his study and put

all those bandages on; of course it is not very hard for him to take

them off. Still, a great many people like to watch the process,--he does

it so neatly!

Dear! dear! I am ashamed to write and talk, sometimes, when I see how

those functions of the large-brained, thumb-opposing plantigrade are

abused by my fellow-vertebrates,--perhaps by myself. How they spar for

wind, instead of hitting from the shoulder!

----The young fellow called John arose and placed himself in a neat

fighting attitude.--Fetch on the fellah that makes them long words!--he

said,--and planted a straight hit with the right fist in the concave

palm of the left hand with a click like a cup and ball.--You small boy

there, hurry up that "Webster's Unabridged!"

The little gentleman with the malformation, before described, shocked

the propriety of the breakfast-table by a loud utterance of three words,

of which the two last were "Webster's Unabridged," and the first was an

emphatic monosyllable.--Beg pardon,--he added,--forgot myself. But let

us have an English dictionary, if we are to have any. I don't believe in

clipping the coin of the realm, Sir! If I put a weathercock on my house,

Sir, I want it to tell which way the wind blows up aloft,--off from the

prairies to the ocean, or off from the ocean to the prairies, or any

way it wants to blow! I don't want a weathercock with a winch in an old

gentleman's study that he can take hold of and turn, so that the vane

shall point west when the great wind overhead is blowing east with all

its might, Sir! Wait till we give you a dictionary, Sir! It takes Boston

to do that thing, Sir!

----Some folks think water can't run down-hill anywhere out of

Boston,--remarked the Koh-i-noor.

I don't know what _some folks think_ so well as I know what _some fools

say_,--rejoined Little Boston.--If importing most dry goods made the

best scholars, I dare say you would know where to look for 'em.--Mr.

Webster couldn't spell, Sir, or wouldn't spell, Sir,--at any rate, he

didn't spell; and the end of it was a fight between the owners of

some copyrights and the dignity of this noble language which we have

inherited from our English fathers,--language!--the blood of the soul,

Sir! into which our thoughts run and out of which they grow! We know

what a word is worth here in Boston. Young Sam Adams got up on the stage

at Commencement, out at Cambridge there, with his gown on, the Governor

and Council looking on in the name of his Majesty, King George the

Second, and the girls looking down out of the galleries, and taught

people how to spell a word that wasn't in the Colonial dictionaries!

_R-e, re, s-i-s, sis, t-a-n-c-e, tance, Resistance!_ That was in '43,

and it was a good many years before the Boston boys began spelling it

with their muskets;--but when they did begin, they spelt it so loud that

the old bedridden women in the English almshouses heard every syllable!

Yes, yes, yes,--it was a good while before those other two Boston boys

got the class so far along that it could spell those two hard words,

_Independence_ and _Union!_ I tell you what, there are a thousand lives,

aye, sometimes a million, go to get a new word into a language that is

worth speaking. We know what language means too well here in Boston to

play tricks with it. We never make a new word till we have made a new

thing or a new thought, Sir! When we shaped the new mould of this

continent, we had to make a few. When, by God's permission, we abrogated

the primal curse of maternity, we had to make a word or two. The

cutwater of this great Leviathan clipper, the OCCIDENTAL,--this

thirty-masted wind-and-steam wave-crusher,--must throw a little spray

over the human vocabulary as it splits the waters of a new world's

destiny!

He rose as he spoke, until his stature seemed to swell into the fair

human proportions. His feet must have been on the upper round of his

high chair;--that was the only way I could account for it.

Puts her through fust-rate,--said the young fellow whom the boarders

call John.

The venerable and kind-looking old gentleman who sits opposite said he

remembered Sam Adams as Governor. An old man in a brown coat. Saw him

take the Chair on Boston Common. Was a boy then, and remembers sitting

on the fence in front of the old Hancock house. Recollects he had a

glazed 'lection-bun, and sat eating it and looking down on to the

Common. Lalocks flowered late that year, and he got a great bunch off

from the bushes in the Hancock front-yard.

Them 'lection buns are no go,--said the young man John, so called.--I

know the trick. Give a fellah a fo'penny bun in the mornin', an' he

downs the whole of it. In about an hour it swells up in his stomach as

big as a football, and his feedin's sp'ilt for _that_ day. That's the

way to stop off a young one from eatin' up all the 'lection dinner.

Salem! Salem! not Boston,--shouted the little man.

But the Koh-i-noor laughed a great rasping laugh, and the boy

Benjamin Franklin looked sharp at his mother, as if he remembered the

bun-experiment as a part of his past personal history.

Little Boston was holding a fork in his left hand. He stabbed a boulder

of home-made bread with it, mechanically, and looked at it as if it

ought to shriek. It did not,--but he sat as if watching it.

----Language is a solemn thing,--I said.--It grows out of life,--out of

its agonies and ecstasies, its wants and its weariness. Every language

is a temple, in which the soul of those who speak it is enshrined.

Because time softens its outlines and rounds the sharp angles of its

cornices, shall a fellow take a pickaxe to help time? Let me tell you

what comes of meddling with things that can take care of themselves.--A

friend of mine had a watch given him, when he was a boy,--a "bull's

eye," with a loose silver case that came off like an oyster-shell from

its contents; you know them,--the cases that you hang on your thumb,

while the _core_ or the real watch lies in your hand as naked as a

peeled apple. Well, he began with taking off the case, and so on from

one liberty to another, until he got it fairly open, and there were the

works, as good as if they were alive,--crown-wheel, balance-wheel, and

all the rest. All right except one thing,--there was a confounded little

_hair_ had got tangled round the balance-wheel. So my young Solomon

got a pair of tweezers, and caught hold of the _hair_ very

nicely, and pulled it right out, without touching any of the

wheels,--when,--buzzzZZZ! and the watch had done up twenty-four hours in

double magnetic-telegraph time!--The English language was wound up to

run some thousands of years, I trust; but if everybody is to be pulling

at everything he thinks is a _hair_, our grandchildren will have to

make the discovery that it is a hair-_spring_, and the old Anglo-Norman

soul's-timekeeper will run down, as so many other dialects have done

before it. I can't stand this meddling any better than you, Sir. But

we have a great deal to be proud of in the lifelong labors of that old

lexicographer, and we mustn't be ungrateful. Besides, don't let us

deceive ourselves, the war of the dictionaries is only a disguised

rivalry of cities, colleges, and especially of publishers. After all,

the language will shape itself by larger forces than phonography and

dictionary-making. You may spade up the ocean as much as you like, and

harrow it afterwards, if you can,--but the moon will still lead the

tides, and the winds will form their surface.

----Do you know Richardson's Dictionary?--I said to my neighbor the

divinity-student.

Haöw?--said the divinity-student.--He colored, as he noticed on my face

a twitch in one of the muscles which tuck up the corner of the mouth,

(_zygomaticus major_,) and which I could not hold back from making a

little movement on its own account.

It was too late.--A country-boy, lassoed when he was a half-grown colt.

Just as good as a city-boy, and in some ways, perhaps, better,--but

caught a little too old not to carry some marks of his earlier ways of

life. Foreigners, who have talked a strange tongue half their lives,

return to the language of their childhood in their dying hours.

Gentlemen in fine linen, and scholars in large libraries, taken by

surprise, or in a careless moment, will sometimes let slip a word they

knew as boys in homespun and have not spoken since that time,--but it

lay there under all their culture. That is one way you may know the

country-boys after they have grown rich or celebrated; another is by the

odd old family names, particularly those of the Hebrew prophets, which

the good old people have saddled them with.

----Boston has enough of England about it to make a good English

dictionary,--said that fresh-looking youth whom I have mentioned as

sitting at the right upper corner of the table.

I turned and looked him full in the face,--for the pure, manly

intonations arrested me. The voice was youthful, but full of

character.--I suppose some persons have a peculiar susceptibility in the

matter of voice.--Hear this.

Not long after the American Revolution, a young lady was sitting in her

father's chaise in a street of this town of Boston. She overheard a

little girl talking or singing, and was mightily taken with the tones of

her voice. Nothing would satisfy her but she must have that little girl

come and live in her father's house. So the child came, being then nine

years old. Until her marriage she remained under the same roof with

the young lady. Her children became successively inmates of the lady's

dwelling; and now, _seventy_ years, or thereabouts, since the young lady

heard the child singing, one of that child's children and one of her

grandchildren are with her in that home, where she, no longer young,

except in heart, passes her peaceful days.--Three generations linked

together by so light a breath of accident!

I liked the sound of this youth's voice, I said, and his look when I

came to observe him a little more closely. His complexion had something

better than the bloom and freshness which had first attracted me;--it

had that diffused _tone_ which is a sure index of wholesome lusty life.

A fine liberal style of nature it seemed to be: hair crisped, moustache

springing thick and dark, head firmly planted, lips finished, as one

commonly sees them in gentlemen's families, a pupil well contracted, and

a mouth that opened frankly with a white flash of teeth that looked as

if they could serve him as they say Ethan Allen's used to serve their

owner,--to draw nails with. This is the kind of fellow to walk a

frigate's deck and bowl his broadsides into the "Gallant Thunderbomb,"

or any forty-portholed adventurer who would like to exchange a few tons

of iron compliments.--I don't know what put this into my head, for it

was not till some time afterward I learned the young fellow had been in

the naval school at Annapolis. Something had happened to change his plan

of life, and he was now studying engineering and architecture in Boston.

When the youth made the short remark which drew my attention to him, the

little deformed gentleman turned round and took a long look at him.

Good for the Boston boy!--he said.

I am not a Boston boy,--said the youth, smiling,--I am a Marylander.

I don't care where you come from,--we'll make a Boston man of you,--said

the little gentleman.--Pray, what part of Maryland did you come from,

and how shall I call you?

The poor youth had to speak pretty loud, as he was at the right upper

corner of the table, and Little Boston next the lower left-hand corner.

His face flushed a little, but he answered pleasantly,--telling who

he was, as if the little man's infirmity gave him a right to ask any

questions he wanted to.

Here is the place for you to sit,--said the little gentleman, pointing

to the vacant chair next his own, at the corner.

You're go'n' to have a young lady next you, if you wait till

to-morrow,--said the landlady to Little Boston.

He did not reply, but I had a fancy, that he changed color. It can't

be that _he_ has susceptibilities with reference to a contingent young

lady! It can't be that he has had experiences which make him sensitive!

Nature could not be quite so cruel as to set a heart throbbing in

that poor little cage of ribs! There is no use in wasting notes of

admiration. I must ask the landlady about him.

These are some of the facts she furnished.--Has not been long with her.

Brought a sight of furniture,--couldn't hardly get some of it up-stairs.

Hasn't seemed particularly attentive to the ladies. The Bombazine

(whom she calls Cousin something or other) has tried to enter into

conversation with him, but retired with the impression that he was

indifferent to ladies' society. Paid his bill the other day without

saying a word about it. Paid it in gold,--had a great heap of

twenty-dollar pieces. Hires her best room. Thinks he is a very nice

little man, but lives dreadful lonely up in his chamber. Wants the care

of some capable nuss. Never pitied anybody more in her life,--never see

a more interestin' person.

----My intention was, when I began making these notes, to let them

consist principally of conversations between myself and the other

boarders. So they will, very probably; but my curiosity is excited about

this little boarder of ours, and my reader must not be disappointed, if

I sometimes interrupt a discussion to give an account of whatever fact

or traits I may discover about him. It so happens that his room is

next to mine, and I have the opportunity of observing many of his ways

without any active movements of curiosity. That his room contains heavy

furniture, that he is a restless little body and is apt to be up late,

that he talks to himself, and keeps mainly to himself, is nearly all I

have found out.

One curious circumstance happened lately, which I mention without

drawing an absolute inference.--Being at the studio of a sculptor with

whom I am acquainted, the other day, I saw a remarkable cast of a _left

arm_. On my asking where the model came from, he said it was taken

direct from the arm of a _deformed person_, who had employed one of the

Italian moulders to make the cast. It was a curious case, it should

seem, of one beautiful limb upon a frame otherwise singularly

imperfect.--I have repeatedly noticed this little gentleman's use of his

left arm. Can he have furnished the model I saw at the sculptor's?

----So we are to have a new boarder to-morrow. I hope there will be

something pretty and pleasant about her. A woman with a creamy

voice, and finished in _alto rilievo_, would be a variety in the

boarding-house,--a little more marrow and a little less sinew than our

landlady and her daughter and the bombazine-clad female, all of whom are

of the turkey-drumstick style of organization. I don't mean that these

are our only female companions; but the rest being conversational

non-combatants, mostly still, sad feeders, who take in their food as

locomotives take in wood and water, and then wither away from the table

like blossoms that never come to fruit, I have not yet referred to them

as individuals.

I wonder what kind of a young person we shall see in that empty chair

to-morrow!

----I read this song to the boarders after breakfast the other morning.

It was written for our fellows;--you know who they are, of course.

THE BOYS.

Has there any old fellow got mixed with the boys?

If there has, take him out, without making a noise!

Hang the Almanac's cheat and the Catalogue's spite!

Old Time is a liar! We're twenty to-night!

We're twenty! We're twenty! Who says we are more?

He's tipsy,--young jackanapes!--show him the door!--

"Gray temples at twenty?"--Yes! _white_, if we please;

Where the snow-flakes fall thickest there's nothing can freeze!

Was it snowing I spoke of? Excuse the mistake!

Look close,--you will see not a sign of a flake;

We want some new garlands for those we have shed,--

And these are white roses in place of the red!

We've a trick, we young fellows, you may have been told,

Of talking (in public) as if we were old;--

That boy we call "Doctor," and this we call "Judge";--

It's a neat little fiction,--of course it's all fudge.

That fellow's the "Speaker,"--the one on the right;

"Mr. Mayor," my young one, how are you to-night?

That's our "Member of Congress," we say when we chaff;

There's the "Reverend"--What's his name?--don't make me laugh!

That boy with the grave mathematical look

Made believe he had written a wonderful book,

And the ROYAL ACADEMY thought it was _true!_

So they chose him right in; a good joke it was, too!

There's a boy,--we pretend,--with a three-decker-brain,

That could harness a team with a logical chain;

When he spoke for our manhood in syllabled fire,

We called him "The Justice," but now he's "The Squire."

And there's a nice youngster of excellent pith,--

Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith,--

But he shouted a song for the brave and the free,--

--Just read on his medal,--"My country,"--"of thee!"

You hear that boy laughing?--You think he's all fun,--

But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done.

The children laugh loud as they troop to his call,

And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all!

Yes, we're boys,--always playing with tongue or with pen,--

And I sometimes have asked,--Shall we ever be men?

Shall we always be youthful and laughing and gay,

Till the last dear companion drops smiling away?

Then here's to our boyhood, its gold and its gray!

The stars of its Winter, the dews of its May!

And when we have done with our life-lasting toys

Dear Father, take care of thy children, the Boys!

* * * * *

WHITE'S SHAKSPEARE.[A]

[Footnote A: _The Works of William Shakespeare_. Edited, etc., by

RICHARD GRANT WHITE. Vols. II., III., IV., and V. Boston: Little, Brown,

& Co. 1858]

(SECOND NOTICE.)

We doubt if posterity owe a greater debt to any two men living in 1623

than to the two obscure actors who in that year published the first

folio edition of Shakspeare's plays. But for them, it is more than

likely that such of his works as had remained to that time imprinted

would have been irrecoverably lost, and among them were "Julius Caesar,"

"The Tempest," and "Macbeth." But are we to believe them when they

assert that they present to us the plays which they reprinted from

stolen and surreptitious copies "cured and perfect of their limbs," and

those which are original in their edition "absolute in their numbers as

he [Shakspeare] conceived them"? Alas, we have read too many theatrical

announcements, have been taught too often that the value of the promise

was in an inverse ratio to the generosity of the exclamation-marks, too

easily to believe that! Nay, we have seen numberless processions of

healthy kine enter our native village unheralded save by the lusty

shouts of drovers, while a wretched calf, cursed by stepdame Nature with

two heads, was brought to us in a triumphal car, avant-couriered by

a band of music as abnormal as itself, and announced as the greatest

wonder of the age. If a double allowance of vituline brains deserve such

honor, there are few commentators on Shakspeare that would have gone

afoot, and the trumpets of Messieurs Heminge and Condell call up in our

minds too many monstrous and deformed associations.

What, then, is the value of the first folio as an authority? We are

inclined to think that Mr. Collier (for obvious reasons) underrates

it, and that Mr. White sometimes errs in the opposite direction. For

eighteen of the plays it is the only authority we have, and the only

one also for four others in their complete form. It is admitted that

in several instances Heminge and Condell reprinted the earlier quarto

impressions with a few changes, sometimes for the better and sometimes

for the worse; and it is most probable that copies of those editions

(whether surreptitious or not) had taken the place of the original

prompter's books, as being more convenient and legible. Even in these

cases it is not safe to conclude that all or even any of the variations

were made by the hand of Shakspeare himself. And where the players

printed from manuscript, is it likely to have been that of the author?

The probability is small that a writer so busy as Shakspeare must have

been during his productive period should have copied out their parts for

the actors, himself, or that one so indifferent as he seems to have been

to the mere literary fortunes of his works should have given any great

care to the correction of such copies, if made by others. The copies

exclusively in the hands of Heminge and Condell were, it is manifest,

in some cases, very imperfect, whether we account for the fact by the

burning of the Globe Theatre or by the necessary wear and tear of years,

and (what is worthy of notice) they are plainly more defective in some

parts than in others. "Measure for Measure" is an example of this, and

we are not satisfied with being told that its ruggedness of verse is

intentional, or that its obscurity is due to the fact that Shakspeare

grew more elliptical in his style as he grew older. Profounder in

thought he doubtless became; though, in a mind like his, we believe that

this would imply only a more absolute supremacy in expression. But, from

whatever original we suppose either the quartos or the first folio to

have been printed, it is more than questionable whether the

proof-sheets had the advantage of any revision other than that of the

printing-office. Steevens was of opinion that authors in the time of

Shakspeare never read their own proof-sheets; and Mr. Spedding, in his

recent edition of Bacon, comes independently to the same conclusion.[B]

We may be very sure that Heminge and Condell did not, as vicars, take

upon themselves a disagreeable task which the author would have been too

careless to assume.

[Footnote B: Vol. III. p. 348, _note_. He grounds his belief, not on the

misprinting of words, but on the misplacing of whole paragraphs. We were

struck with the same thing in the original edition of Chapman's _Biron's

Conspiracy and Tragedy_. One of the misprints which Mr. Spedding notices

affords both a hint and a warning to the conjectural emendator. In the

edition of _The Advancement of Learning_ printed in 1605 occurs the

word _dusinesse_. In a later edition this was conjecturally changed to

_business_; but the occurrence of _vertigine_ in the Latin translation

enables Mr. Spedding to print rightly, _dizziness_.]

Nevertheless, however strong a case may be made out against the Folio of

1623, whatever sins of omission we may lay to the charge of Heminge and

Condell, or of commission to that of the printers, it remains the only

text we have with any claims whatever to authenticity. It should be

deferred to as authority in all cases where it does not make Shakspeare

write bad sense, uncouth metre, or false grammar, of all which we

believe him to have been more supremely incapable than any other man who

ever wrote English. Yet we would not speak unkindly even of the blunders

of the Folio. They have put bread into the mouth of many an honest

editor, publisher, and printer, for the last century and a half; and he

who loves the comic side of human nature will find the serious notes of

a _variorum_ edition of Shakspeare as funny reading as the funny ones

are serious. Scarce a commentator of them all, for more than a hundred

years, but thought, as Alphonso of Castile did of Creation, that, if

he had only been at Shakspeare's elbow, he could have given valuable

advice; scarce one who did not know off-hand that there was never a

seaport in Bohemia,--as if Shakspeare's world were one which Mercator

could have projected; scarce one but was satisfied that his ten

finger-tips were a sufficient key to those astronomic wonders of poise

and counterpoise, of planetary law and cometary seeming-exception, in

his metres; scarce one but thought he could gauge like an ale-firkin

that intuition whose edging shallows may have been sounded, but

whose abysses, stretching down amid the sunless roots of Being and

Consciousness, mock the plummet; scarce one but could speak with

condescending approval of that prodigious intelligence so utterly

without congener that our baffled language must coin an adjective to

qualify it, and none is so audacious as to say Shakspearian of any

other. And yet, in the midst of our impatience, we cannot help thinking

also of how much healthy mental activity this one man has been the

occasion, how much good he has indirectly done to society by withdrawing

men to investigations and habits of thought that secluded them from

baser attractions, for how many he has enlarged the circle of study and

reflection; since there is nothing in history or politics, nothing in

art or science, nothing in physics or metaphysics, that is not sooner or

later taxed for his illustration. This is partially true of all great

minds, open and sensitive to truth and beauty through any large arc

of their circumference; but it is true in an unexampled sense of

Shakspeare, the vast round of whose balanced nature seems to have been

equatorial, and to have had a southward exposure and a summer sympathy

at every point, so that life, society, statecraft serve us at last but

as commentaries on him, and whatever we have gathered of thought, of

knowledge, and of experience, confronted with his marvellous page,

shrinks to a mere footnote, the stepping-stone to some hitherto

inaccessible verse. We admire in Homer the blind placid mirror of the

world's young manhood, the bard who escapes from his misfortune in poems

all memory, all life and bustle, adventure and picture; we revere in

Dante that compressed force of lifelong passion which could make a

private experience cosmopolitan in its reach and everlasting in its

significance; we respect in Goethe the Aristotelian poet, wise by

weariless observation, witty with intention, the stately _Geheimerrath_

of a provincial court in the empire of Nature. As we study these, we

seem in our limited way to penetrate into their consciousness and to

measure and master their methods;--but with Shakspeare it is just the

other way; the more we have familiarized ourselves with the operations

of our own consciousness, the more do we find, in reading him, that

he has been beforehand with us, and that, while we have been vainly

endeavoring to find the door of his being, he has searched every nook

and cranny of our own. While other poets and dramatists embody isolated

phases of character and work inward from the phenomenon to the special

law which it illustrates, he seems in some strange way unitary with

human nature itself, and his own soul to have been the law- and

life-giving power of which his creations are only the phenomena. We

justify or criticize the characters of other writers by our memory and

experience, and pronounce them natural or unnatural; but he seems to

have worked in the very stuff of which memory and experience are made,

and we recognize his truth to Nature by an innate and unacquired

sympathy, as if he alone possessed the secret of the "ideal form and

universal mould," and embodied generic types rather than individuals.

In this Cervantes alone has approached him; and Don Quixote and Sancho,

like the men and women of Shakspeare, are the contemporaries of

every generation, because they are not products of an artificial and

transitory society, but because they are animated by the primeval and

unchanging forces of that humanity which underlies and survives the

forever-fickle creeds and ceremonials of the parochial corners which we

who dwell in them sublimely call The World.

But the dropping of our _variorum_ volume upon the floor recalls us

from our reverie, and, as we pick it up, we ask ourselves sadly, Is it

fitting that we should have a Shakspeare according to plodding Malone

or coarse-minded Steevens, both of whom would have had the headache all

their lives after, could one of the Warwickshire plebeian's conceptions

have got into their brains and stretched them, and who would have hidden

under their bedclothes in a cold-sweat of terror, could they have

seen the awful vision of Macbeth as he saw it? No! and to every other

commentator who has wantonly tampered with the text, or obscured it

with his inky cloud of paraphrase, we feel inclined to apply the

quadrisyllable name of the brother of Agis, king of Sparta. Clearly, we

should be grateful to an editor who feels it his chief duty to scrape

away these barnacles from the brave old hull, to replace with the

original heart-of-oak the planks where these small but patient

terebrators have bored away the tough fibre to fill the gap with

sawdust!

This task Mr. White has undertaken, and, after such conscientious

examination of his work as the importance of it demands, after a painful

comparison, note by note, and reading by reading, of his edition with

those of Messrs. Knight, Collier, and Dyce, our opinion of his ability

and fitness for his task has been heightened and confirmed. Not that we

always agree with him,--not that we do not think that in respect of the

Folio text he has sometimes erred on the side of superstitious reverence

for it, and sometimes in too rashly abandoning it,--but, making all

due exceptions, we think that his edition is, in the phrase of our New

England fathers in Israel, for substance, scope, and aim, the best

hitherto published. The chief matter must in all cases be the text, and

the faults we find in him do not, as a general rule, affect that. Some

of them are faults which his own better judgment, we think, will lead

him to avoid in his forthcoming volumes; and in regard to some, he will

probably honestly disagree with us as to their being faults at all. No

conceivable edition of Shakspeare would satisfy all tastes;--sometimes

we have attached associations to received readings which make impartial

perception impossible; sometimes we have imparted our own meaning to

a passage by too steady pondering over it, just as in twilight an

inanimate thing will seem to move, if we look at it long, though the

wavering be truly in our own overstrained vision; sometimes our personal

temperament will insensibly warp our judgment;--but Mr. White has

generally shown so just a discrimination, that there are few instances

where we dissent, and in these a pencil will enable every one to edit

for himself. Any criticism of an edition of Shakspeare must necessarily

concern itself with seemingly insignificant matters, often with a

comma or a syllable,--and the danger is always of degenerating into a

captiousness and word-catching unworthy the lover of truth for its own

sake. We shall endeavor to be minute without being small.