CHAPTER V.

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

CONTENTS

Agrarianism

Bulls and Bears

Bundle of Old Letters, A

Calculus, The Differential and Integral

Charge with Prince Rupert

Charles Lamb and Sydney Smith

Coffee and Tea

Did I?

El Llanero

Gymnasium, The

Holbein and the Dance of Death

Illustrious Obscure, The

In a Cellar

In the Pines

Juanita

Letter to a Dyspeptic, A

Lizzy Griswold's Thanksgiving

Men of the Sea

Mien-yaun

Minister's Wooing, The

New Life of Dante, The

Odds and Ends from the Old World

Olympus and Asgard

Ought Women to Learn the Alphabet?

Palfrey's and Arnold's Histories

Plea for the Fijians, A

Professor at the Breakfast-Table, The

Roba di Roma

Shakespeare's Art

Smollett, Some Unedited Memorials of

Stereoscope and Stereograph, The

Trip to Cuba, A

Two Sniffs

Utah Expedition, The

White's Shakspeare

Why did the Governess Faint?

Winter Birds, The

POETRY.

Achmed and his Mare

At Sea

Bloodroot

Chicadee

Double-Headed Snake of Newbury, The

Drifting

Hamlet at the Boston

Inscription for an Alms-Chest

Joy-Month

Last Bird, The

Left Behind

Morning Street, The

Our Skater Belle

Palm and the Pine, The

Philter, The

Prayer for Life

Sphinx, The

Spring

Two Years After

Walker of the Snow, The

Waterfall, The

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

Allibone's Dictionary of Authors

Arabian Days' Entertainments

Avenger, The

Bacon, The Works of

Bitter-Sweet

Bryant, Durand's Portrait of

Bunsen's Gott in der Geschichte

Cotton's Illustrated Cabinet Atlas

Courtship of Miles Standish

Dexter's Street Thoughts

Duyckinck's Life of George Herbert

Emerson, Rowse's Portrait of

Ernest Carroll

Furness's Thoughts on the Life and Character of Jesus

Hamilton's Lecture on Metaphysics

Hymns of the Ages

Index to Catalogue of Boston City Library

Lytton, R.B., (Owen Meredith,) Poems by

Mathematical Monthly, The

Morgan's, Lady, Autobiography

Mothers and Infants, Nurses and Nursing

Mustee, The

Prescott's Philip II

Sawyer's New Testament

Seddon, Thomas, Memoir and Letters of

Sixty Years' Gleanings from Life's Harvest

Stratford Gallery, The

Symbols of the Capital

Trübner's Bibliographical Guide to American Literature

Vernon Grove

Whittier, Barry's Portrait of

Wilson's Conquest of Mexico

LIST OF BOOKS

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. III.--JANUARY, 1859.--NO. XV.

OLYMPUS AND ASGARD.

How remote from the nineteenth century of the Christian era lies the

old Homeric world! By the magic of the Ionian minstrel's verse that

world is still visible to the inner eye. Through the clouds and murk of

twenty centuries and more, it is still possible to catch clear glimpses

of it, as it lies there in the golden sunshine of the ancient days. A

thousand objects nearer in the waste of past time are far more muffled,

opaque, and impervious to vision. As you enter it through the gates of

the "Ilias" and "Odusseia," you bid a glad adieu to the progress of the

age, to railroads and telegraph-wires, to cotton-spinning, (there might

have been some of that done, however, in some Nilotic Manchester or

Lowell,) to the diffusion of knowledge and the rights of man and

societies for the improvement of our race, to humanitarianism and

philanthropy, to science and mechanics, to the printing-press and

gunpowder, to industrialism, clipper-ships, power-looms, metaphysics,

geology, observatories, light-houses, and a myriad other things too

numerous for specification,--and you pass into a sunny region of

glorious sensualism, where there are no obstinate questionings of

outward things, where there are no blank misgivings of a creature

moving about in worlds not realized, no morbid self-accusings of a

morbid methodistic conscience. All there in that old world, lit "by the

strong vertical light" of Homer's genius, is healthful,

sharply-defined, tangible, definite, and sensualistic. Even the divine

powers, the gods themselves, are almost visible to the eyes of their

worshippers, as they revel in their mountain-propped halls on the far

summits of many-peaked Olympus, or lean voluptuously from their

celestial balconies and belvederes, soothed by the Apollonian lyre, the

Heban nectar, and the fragrant incense, which reeks up in purple clouds

from the shrines of windy Ilion, hollow Lacedaemon, Argos, Mycenae,

Athens, and the cities of the old Greek isles, with their shrine-capped

headlands. The outlooks and watch-towers of the chief deities were all

visible from the far streets and dwellings of their earthly

worshippers, in that clear, shining, Grecian atmosphere. Uranography

was then far better understood than geography, and the personages

composing the heavenly synod were almost as definitely known to the

Homeric men as their mortal acquaintances. The architect of the

Olympian palaces was surnamed Amphiguëeis, or the Halt. The Homeric

gods were men divinized with imperishable frames, glorious and immortal

sensualists, never visited by qualms of conscience, by headache, or

remorse, or debility, or wrinkles, or dyspepsia, however deep their

potations, however fiercely they indulged their appetites. Zeus, the

Grand Seignior or Sultan of Olympus and father of gods and men,

surpassed Turk and Mormon Elder in his uxoriousness and indiscriminate

concubinage. With Olympian goddess and lone terrestrial nymph and

deep-bosomed mortal lass of Hellas, the land of lovely women, as Homer

calls it, did he pursue his countless intrigues, which he sometimes had

the unblushing coolness and impudence to rehearse to his wedded wife,

Herè. His _list_ would have thrown Don Giovanni's entirely into the

shade. Herè, the queen of Olympus, called the Golden-Throned, the

Venerable, the Ox-Eyed, was a sort of celestial Queen Bess, the

undaunted she-Tudor, whose father, bluff Harry, was not a bad human

copy of Zeus himself, the Rejoicer in Thunder.

In that old Homeric heaven,--in those quiet seats of the gods of the

heroic world, which were never shaken by storm-wind, nor lashed by the

tempest that raved far below round the dwellings of wretched

mortals,--in those quiet abodes above the thunder, there was for the

most part nought but festal joy, music, choral dances, and emptying of

nectar-cups, interrupted now and then by descents into the low-lying

region of human life in quest of adventure, or on errands of divine

intervention in the affairs of men, for whom, on the whole, Zeus and

his court entertained sentiments of profound contempt. Once in a while

Zeus and all his courtiers went on a festal excursion to the land of

the blameless Ethiops, which lay somewhere over the ocean, where they

banqueted twelve days. Why such a special honor as this was shown to

these Ethiops is not explained. Within their borders were evidently the

summer resorts, Newport and Baden-Baden, frequented by the Olympians.

Only in great crises was the whole mythic host of the Grecian religion

summoned to meet in full forum on the heights of the immemorial

mountain. At such times, all the fountains, rivers, and groves of

Hellas were emptied of their guardian daemons, male and female, who

hastened to pay their homage to and receive their orders from the

Cloud-Gatherer, sitting on his throne, in his great skyey Capitolium,

and invested with all the pomp of mythic majesty, his ambrosial locks

smoothly combed and brushed by some Olympian _friseur_, his eagle

perched with ruffled plumes upon his fist, and everything else so

arranged as most forcibly to impress the country visitors and rural

incumbents with salutary awe for the occupant of their sky-Vatican.

Whether these last were compelled to salute the Jovine great toe with a

kiss is not recorded, there being no account extant of the ceremonial

and etiquette of Olympus. Whatever it was, doubtless it was rigidly

enforced; for the Thunderer, it would seem, had a Bastile, or lock-up,

with iron doors and a brazen threshold specially provided for

contumacious and disobedient gods.

Zeus, although he could claim supreme dominion under the law of

primogeniture, was originally only a coequal ruler with his two

brothers, Hades, king of the underworld, and Ennosigaeus, monarch of

the salt sea-foam. They were alike the sons and coequal heirs of

Kronos, or Time, and the Moerae, or Destinies, had parcelled out the

universe in three equal parts between them. But the position of Zeus in

his serene air-realm gave him the advantage over his two brothers,--as

the metropolitan situation of the Roman see in the capital of the world

gave its diocesan, who was originally nothing more than the peer of the

Bishops of Antioch, Alexandria, Carthage, and Constantinople, an

opportunity finally to assert and maintain a spiritual lordship. This

is a case exactly in point. It is certainly proper to illustrate a

theocratic usurpation by an hierarchic one. Zeus, with his eagle and

thunder and that earthquaking nod, was too strong for him of the

trident and him of the three-headed hound. The whole mythic host

regarded Jove's court as a place of final resort, of ultimate appeal.

He was recognized as the Supreme Father, Papa, or Pope, of the Greek

mythic realm. The nod of his immortal head was decisive. His azure

eyebrows and ambrosial hair were full of fate.

The wars of mortals in Hellas and Dardanland were matters of more

interest to the Olympian celestials than any other mere human

transactions. These occasioned partisanships, heartburnings, and

factions in the otherwise serene Olympian palaces. Even Father Zeus

himself acknowledged a bias for sacred Ilium and its king and people

over all the cities of terrestrial men beneath the sun and starry

heaven. In the ten-years' war at Troy, the Olympians were active

partisans upon both sides at times, now screening their favorites from

danger, and now even pitting themselves against combatants of more

vulnerable flesh and blood. But in the matter of vulnerability they

seem not to have enjoyed complete exemption, any more than did Milton's

angels. Although they ate not bread nor drank wine, still there was in

their veins a kind of ambrosial blood called _ichor_, which the prick

of a javelin or spear would cause to flow freely. Even Ares, the genius

of homicide and slaughter, was on one occasion at least wounded by a

mortal antagonist, and sent out of the melee badly punished, so that he

bellowed like a bull-calf, as he mounted on a dusty whirlwind to

Olympus. Over his misadventures while playing his own favorite game

certainly there were no tears to be shed; but when, prompted by

motherly tenderness, Aphrodite, the soft power of love,--she of the

Paphian boudoir, whose recesses were glowing with the breath of Sabaean

frankincense fumed by a hundred altars,--she at whose approach the

winds became hushed, and the clouds fled, and the daedal earth poured

forth sweet flowers,--when such a presence manifested herself on the

field of human strife on an errand of motherly affection, and attempted

to screen her bleeding son from the shafts of his foes with a fold of

her shining _peplum_, surely the audacious Grecian king should have

forborne, and, lowering his lance, should have turned his wrath

elsewhere. But no,--he pierced her skin with his spear, so that,

shrieking, she abandoned her child, and was driven, bleeding, to her

immortal homestead. The rash earth-born warrior knew not that he who

put his lance in rest against the immortals had but a short lease of

life to live, and that his bairns would never run to lisp their sire's

return, nor climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

Homer, in the first books of his "Ilias," permits us to glance into the

banqueting-hall of Olympus. The two regular pourers of nectar, to wit,

Hebe and Ganymede, are off duty. Hephaestus the Cripple has taken their

place; and as he halts about from guest to guest, inextinguishable

laughter arises among the gods at his awkward method of "passing the

rosy." His lameness was owing to that sunset fall on the isle of Lemnos

from the threshold of heaven. So, all day long, says the poet, they

revelled, Apollo and the Muses performing the part of a ballet-troop.

It is pleasing to learn that the Olympians kept early hours,

conforming, in this respect, to the rule of Poor Richard. Duly at set

of sun they betook themselves to their couches. Zeus himself slept, and

by his side Herè of the Golden Throne.

Who would wish to have lived a pagan under that old Olympian

dispensation, even though, like the dark-eyed Greek of the Atreidean

age, his fancy could have "fetched from the blazing chariot of the Sun

a beardless youth who touched a golden lyre and filled the illumined

groves with ravishment"?--even though, like him, he might in

myrtle-grove and lonely mountain-glen have had favors granted him even

by Idalian Aphrodite the Beautiful, and felt her warm breath glowing

upon his forehead, or been counselled by the blue-eyed Athene, or been

elevated to ample rule by Herè herself, Heaven's queen? That Greek

heaven was heartless, libidinous, and cold. It had no mild divinities

appointed to bind up the broken heart and assuage the grief of the

mourner. The weary and the heavy-laden had no celestial resource

amongst its immortal revellers and libertines, male and female. There

was no sympathy for mortal suffering amongst those divine sensualists.

They talked with contempt and unsympathizing ridicule of the woes of

the earthborn, of the brevity of mortal life, and of its miseries. A

boon, indeed, and a grateful exchange, was the Mother Mild of the Roman

Catholic Pantheon, the patroness of the broken-hearted, who inclines

her countenance graciously to the petitions of womanly anguish, for the

voluptuous Aphrodite, the haughty Juno, the Di-Vernonish Artemis, and

the lewd and wanton nymphs of forest, mountain, ocean, lake, and river.

Ceres alone, of the old female classic daemons, seemed to be endowed

with a truly womanly tenderness and regard for humankind. She, like the

Mater Dolorosa, is represented in the myths to have known bereavement

and sorrow, and she, therefore, could sympathize with the grief of

mothers sprung from Pyrrha's stem. Nay, she had envied them their

mortality, which enabled them to join their lost ones, who could not

come back to them, in the grave. Vainly she sought to descend into the

dark underworld to see her "young Persephone, transcendent queen of

shades." Not for her weary, wandering feet was a single one of the

thousand paths that lead downward to death. Her only consolation was in

the vernal flowers, which, springing from the dark earthly mould,

seemed to her to be

"heralds from the dreary deep,

Soft voices from the solemn streams,"

by whose shores, veiled in eternal twilight, wandered her sad child,

the queen of the realm of Dis, with its nine-fold river, gates of

adamant, and minarets of fire. The heartlessness of all the ethnic

deities, of whatever age or nation, is a noticeable feature, especially

when contrasted with the unfathomable pity of their Exterminator, who

wept over the chief city of his fatherland, and would have gathered it,

as a hen gathereth her chickens, under the wings of his love, though

its sons were seeking to compass his destruction. Those old ethnic

deities were cruel, inexorable, and relentless. They knew nothing of

mercy and forgiveness. They ministered no balm to human sorrow. The

daemons who wandered in human shape over the classic lands of old were

all fickle and malevolent. They oftentimes impelled their victims to

suicide. The ghouls that haunt the tombs and waste places of the

regions where they were once worshipped are their lineal descendants

and modern representatives. The vampires and pest-hags of the Levant

are their successors in malignity. The fair humanities of the old

religion were fair only in shape and exterior. The old pagan gods were

friendly only to kings, heroes, and grandees; they had no beatitude for

the poor and lowly. Human despair, under their dispensation, knew no

alleviation but a plunge from light and life into the underworld,

--rather than be monarch of which, the shade of Achilles avers,

in the "Odusseia," that it would prefer to be the hireling and

drudge of some poor earthly peasant. Elysium was only for a privileged

few.

It has been said that the old ethnic creeds were the true religion

"growing wild,"--that the human soil was prepared by such kind of

spiritual crops and outgrowths, with their tares and weeds intermingled

with wheat, for the seed that was finally to be sown by the Divine

Sower,--that, erroneous as they were in a thousand respects, they were

genuine emanations of the religious nature in man, and as such not to

be stigmatized or harshly characterized,--that without them the human

soil could not have been made ready for the crop of unmixed truth. This

may be true of some of them, though surely not of the popular form of

the old Greek ethnic faith. Its deities were nothing better than the

passions of human nature projected upon ethereal heights, and

incarnated and made personal in undecaying demonic shapes,--not

conditioned and straitened like the bodies of man, but enjoying

perpetual youth and immunity from death in most cases, with permission

to take liberties with Space and Time greater even than are granted to

us by steam and telegraph-wires.

The vulgar Grecian polytheism was all material. It had no martyrs and

confessors. It was not worth dying for, as it was good for nothing to

live by. The religion of Hellas was the religion of sensualistic beauty

simply. It was just the worship for Pheidias and Praxiteles, for the

bard of Teos and the soft Catullus, for sensual poet, painter, and

sculptor. But "the blind old man of Scio's rocky isle," although we

gather most of our knowledge of Olympus and the Olympians from his

verse, was worthy of a loftier and purer heaven than the low one under

which he wandered from city to city, singing the tale of Troy divine,

and hymns and paeans to the gods. The good and the true were mere

metaphysical abstractions to the old Greek. What must he have been when

it would not have been safe for him to leave his wife alone with the

best and highest of his gods? The ancient Hellenes were morally most

vicious and depraved, even when compared with contemporary heathen

nations. The old Greek was large in brain, but not in heart. He had

created his gods in his own image, and they were--what they were. There

was no goodness in his religion, and we can tolerate it only as it is

developed in the Homeric rhapsodies, in the far-off fable-time of the

old world, and amongst men who were but partially self-conscious. In

that remote Homeric epoch it is tolerable, when cattle-stealing and war

were the chief employments of the ruling caste,--and we may add,

woman-stealing, into the bargain. "I did not come to fight against the

Trojans," says Achilles, "because I had suffered any grievance at their

hands. They never drove off my oxen and horses or stole my harvests in

rich-soiled Phthia, the nurse of heroes; for vale-darkening mountains

and a tumultuous sea separate us."

Into that old Homeric world we enter through the portals of the "Ilias"

and "Odusseia," and see the peaks of Olympus shining afar off in white

splendor like silvery clouds, not looking for or expecting either a

loftier or a purer heaven. Somewhere on the bounds of the dim

ocean-world we know that there is an exiled court, a faded sort of St.

Germain celestial dynasty, geologic gods, coevals of the old Silurian

strata,--to wit, Kronos, Rhea, Nox, _et al._ Here these old,

unsceptred, discrowned, and sky-fallen potentates "cogitate in their

watery ooze," and in "the shady sadness of vales,"--sometimes visited

by their successors for counsel or concealment, or for the purpose of

establishing harmony amongst them. The Sleep and Death of the Homeric

mythology were naturally gentle divinities,--sometimes lifting the

slain warrior from the field of his fame, and bearing him softly

through the air to his home and weeping kindred. This was a gracious

office. The saintly legends of the Roman Church have borrowed a hint

from this old Homeric fancy. One pleasant feature of the Homeric

battles is, that, when some blameless, great-souled champion falls, the

blind old bard interrupts the performances for a moment and takes his

reader with him away from the din and shouting of the battle,

following, as it were, the spirit of the fallen hero to his distant

abode, where sit his old father, his spouse, and children,--thus

throwing across the cloud of battle a sweet gleam of domestic, pastoral

life, to relieve its gloom. Homer, both in the "Ilias" and "Odusseia,"

gives his readers frequent glimpses into the halls of Olympus; for

messengers are continually flashing to and fro, like meteors, between

the throne of Zeus and the earth. Sometimes it is Hermes sandalled with

down; sometimes it is wind-footed Iris, who is winged with the emerald

plumes of the rainbow; and sometimes it is Oneiros, or a Dream, that

glides down to earth, hooded and veiled, through the shadow of night,

bearing the behests of Jove. But however often we are permitted to

return to the ambrosial homestead of the ever-living gods in the wake

of returning messengers, we always find it the same calm region, lifted

far up above the turbulence, the perturbations, the clouds and storms

of

"That low spot which men call earth,"

--a glorious aërial Sans-Souci and house of pleasaunce.

It is curious that the atheistic Lucretius has given us a most glowing

description of the Olympian mansions; but perhaps the Olympus of the

Epicurean poet and philosopher is somewhat higher up and more

sublimated and etherealized than the Olympus of Homer and of the

popular faith. In a flash of poetic inspiration, he says, "The walls of

the universe are cloven. I see through the void inane. The splendor

(_numen_) of the gods appears, and the quiet seats which are not shaken

by storm-winds nor aspersed by rain-clouds; nor does the whitely

falling snow-flake, with its hoar rime, violate _their summery warmth_,

but an ever-cloudless ether laughs above them with widespread

radiance." Lucretius had all these lineaments of his Epicurean heaven

from old Homer. They are scattered up and down the "Ilias" and

"Odusseia" in the shape of _disjecta membra_. For instance, the Olympus

which he beholds through a chasm in the walls of the universe, towering

into the pure empyrean, has some of the features of Homer's island

Elysiums, the blissful abodes of mortal heroes who have been divinized

or translated. The Celtic island-valley of Avalon, the abode of King

Arthur, "with its orchard-lawns and bowery hollows," so exquisitely

alluded to by Tennyson, is a kindred spot with the Homeric Elysian

plain. Emerson says, "The race of gods, or those we erring own, are

shadows floating up and down in the still abodes." This is exactly the

meaning of Lucretius also. They are all air-cities, these seats of the

celestials, whatever be the creed,--summery, ethereal climes, fanned

with spice-winds and zephyrs. Meru, Kaf, Olympus, Elboorz,--they are

all alike. The ethnic superior daemons were well termed the powers of

the air. Upward into the far blue gazes the weary and longing saint and

devotee of every faith. Beyond the azure curtains of the sky, upward

into the pure realm, over the rain-cloud and the thunder and the silver

bars of the scirrhus, he places his quiet seats, his mansions of rest.

The German poet, Schiller, who was a worshipper of Art and sensualistic

beauty, and who regarded the sciences as the mere handmaids of Art,

exalting the aesthetic above the moral nature in man, quite naturally

regretted that he had not lived in the palmy days of the

anthropomorphic creed of Hellas, before the dirge of Pan was chanted in

the Isle of Naxos. His "Gods of Greek Land" is as fine a piece of

heathenish longing as could well be written at so late a day. His heart

was evidently far away from the century in which he lived, and pulsated

under that distant Grecian sky of which he somewhere speaks. For

artistic purposes the myths of Greece formed a glorious faith. Grace

and symmetry of form were theirs, and they satiated the eye with

outward loveliness; but to the deep fountains of feeling and sentiment,

such as a higher faith has unsealed in the heart, they never

penetrated. What a poor, narrow little world was that myth-haunted one

of the Grecian poet and sculptor, and even philosopher, compared with

the actual world which modern science is revealing from year to year!

What a puny affair was that Grecian sun, with its coachman's apparatus

of reins, fire-breathing nags, and golden car, which Schiller looks

back to, in the spirit of Mr. Weller, Senior, when compared with the

vast empyreal sphere and light-fountain of modern science, with its

retinue of planets, ships of space, freighted with souls! Science the

handmaid of Art! Well might the mere artist and worshipper of

anthropomorphic beauty shrink appalled, and sigh for a lodge under some

low Grecian heaven and in the bosom of some old myth-peopled Nature, as

he trembled before the apocalypses of modern sidereal science, which

has dropped its plummet to unimaginable depths through the nebulous

abysses of space, shoaled with systems of worlds as the sea is with its

finny droves. The Nature and the Physical Universe of the old ethnic

Greek formed only a little niche and recess, on the walls of which the

puny human image was easily reflected in beautiful and picturesque and

grotesque shadows, which were mistaken for gods. But the Nature and

Universe revealed by modern Christian science are too vast and profound

to mirror anything short of the image of the Omnipotent himself.

Still there is a period in the life of every imaginative youth, when he

is a pagan and worships in the old Homeric pantheon,--where self-denial

and penance were unknown, and where in grove and glen favored mortal

lover might hear the tread of "Aphrodite's glowing sandal." The

youthful poet may exclaim with Schiller,--

"Art thou, fair world, no more?

Return, thou virgin-bloom on Nature's face!

Ah, only on the minstrel's magic shore

Can we the footstep of sweet Fable trace!

The meadows mourn for the old hallowing life;

Vainly we search the earth of gods bereft;

Where once the warm and living shapes were rife,

Shadows alone are left!

Cold, from the North, has gone

Over the flowers the blast that chilled their May;

And, to enrich the worship of the One,

A universe of gods must pass away!

Mourning, I search on yonder starry steeps,

But thee, no more, Selene, there I see!

And through the woods I call, and o'er the deeps,

And--Echo answers me." [Bulwer's Translation.]

The Elysian beauty and melancholy grace which Wordsworth throws over

the shade of Alcestis were gleams borrowed from a better world than the

mythic Elysium. Neither Olympus nor Erebus disdained the pleasures of

sense.

Shakspeare, in his "Midsummer-Night's Dream," has mingled the

mythologies of Hellas and Scandinavia, of the North and the South,

making of them a sort of mythic _olla podrida_. He represents the tiny

elves and fays of the Gothic fairyland, span-long creatures of dew and

moonshine, the lieges of King Oberon, and of Titania, his queen, as

making an irruption from their haunted hillocks, woods, meres, meadows,

and fountains, in the North, into the olive-groves of Ilissus, and

dancing their ringlets in the ray of the Grecian Selene, the chaste,

cold huntress, and running by the triple Hecate's team, following the

shadow of Night round the earth. Strangely must have sounded the horns

of the Northern Elfland, "faintly blowing" in the woods of Hellas, as

Oberon and his grotesque court glanced along, "with bit and bridle

ringing," to bless the nuptials of Theseus with the bouncing Amazon.

Strangely must have looked the elfin footprints in the Attic green.

Across this Shakspearean plank, laid between Olympus and Asgard, or

more strictly Alfheim, we gladly pass from the sunny realm of Zeus into

that of his Northern counterpart, Odin, who ought to be dearer and more

familiar to his descendants than the Grecian Jove, though he is not.

The forms which throng Asgard may not be so sculpturesquely beautiful,

so definite, and fit to be copied in marble and bronze as those of

Olympus. There may be more vagueness of outline in the Scandinavian

abode of the gods, as of far-off blue skyey shapes, but it is more

cheerful and homelike. Pleasantly wave the evergreen boughs of the

Life-Tree, Yggdrasil, the mythic ash-tree of the old North, whose

leaves are green with an unwithering bloom that shall defy even the

fires of the final conflagration. Iduna, or Spring, sits in those

boughs with her apples of rejuvenescence, restoring the wasted strength

of the gods. In the shade of its topmost branches stands Asgard, the

abode of the Asen, who are called the Rafters of the World,--to wit,

Odin, Thor, Freir, and the other higher powers, male and female, of the

old Teutonic religion. In Asgard is Valhalla, the hall of elect heroes.

The roots of this mundane ash reach as far downwards as its branches do

upwards. Its roots, trunk, and branches together thrid the universe,

shooting Hela, the kingdom of death, Midgard, the abode of men, and

Asgard, the dwelling of the gods, like so many concentric rings.

This ash was a psychological and ontological plant. All the lore of

Plato and Kant and Fichte and Cousin was audible in the sigh of its

branches. Three Norns, Urt, Urgand, and Skuld, dwelt beneath it, so

that it comprehended time past, present, and future. The gods held

their councils beneath it. By one of its stems murmured the Fountain of

Mimir, in Niflheim or Mistland, from whose urn welled up the ocean and

the rivers of the earth. Odin had his outlook in its top, where kept

watch and ward the All-seeing Eye. In its boughs frisked and gambolled

a squirrel called _Busybody_, which carried gossip from bough to root

and back. The warm Urdar Fountain of the South, in which swam the sun

and moon in the shape of two swans, flowed by its celestial stem in

Asgard. A tree so much extended as this ash of course had its parasites

and _rodentia_ clinging to it and gnawing it; but the brave old ash

defied them all, and is to wave its skywide umbrage even over the ruins

of the universe, after the _dies irae_ shall have passed. So sings the

Voluspa. This tree is a worthy type of the Teutonic race, so green, so

vigorous, so all-embracing. We should expect to find the chief object

in the Northern myth-world a tree. The forest was ever dear to the sons

of the North, and many ancient Northern tribes used to hold their

councils and parliaments under the branches of some wide-spreading oak

or ash. Like its type, Yggdrasil, the Teutonic race seems to be

threading the earth with the roots of universal dominion, and, true to

hereditary instincts, it is belting the globe with its colonies,

planting it, as it were, with slips from the great Mundane Ash, and

throwing Bifröst bridges across oceans, in the shape of

telegraph-cables and steamships.

Asgard is a more homelike place than Olympus. Home and fireside, in

their true sense, are Teutonic institutions. Valhalla, the hall of

elect heroes, was appropriately shingled with golden shields. Guzzlers

of ale and drinkers of _lagerbier_ will be pleased to learn that this

Northern Valhalla was a sort of celestial beer-saloon, thus showing

that it was a genuine Teutonic paradise; for ale would surely be found

in such a region. In the "Prose Edda," Hor replies to Gangler--who is

asking him about the board and lodgings of the heroes who had gone to

Odin in Valhalla, and whether they had anything but water to drink--in

huge disdain, inquiring of Gangler whether he supposed that the

Allfather would invite kings and jarls and other great men, and give

them nothing to drink but water. How do things divine and supernatural,

when conceived of by man and cast in an earthly, finite mould,

necessarily assume human attributes and characteristics! Strong drinks,

the passion of the Northern races in all ages, are of course found in

their old mythic heaven, in their fabled Hereafter,--and even boar's

flesh also. The ancient Teuton could not have endured a heaven with

mere airy, unsubstantial joys. There must be celestial roasts of strong

meat for him, and flagons of his ancestral ale. His descendants to this

day never celebrate a great occasion without a huge feed and

corporation dinners, thus establishing their legitimate descent from

Teutonic stock. The Teutonic man ever led a life of vigorous action;

hence his keen appetite, whetted by the cold blasts of his native

North. What wonder, then, at the presence of sodden boar's flesh in his

ancient Elysium, and of a celestial goat whose teats yielded a strong

beverage? The Teuton liked not fasting and humiliation either in

Midgard or Asgard. He was ever carnivorous and eupeptic. We New

Englanders are perhaps the leanest of his descendants, because we have

forsaken too much the old ways and habits of the race, and given

ourselves too much to abstractions and transcendentalism. The old

Teuton abhorred the abstract. He loved the concrete, the substantial.

The races of Southern Europe, what are now called the Latin races, were

more temperate than the Teutonic, but they were far less brave, honest,

and manly. Their sensuality might not be so boisterous, but it was more

bestial and foul. Strength and manliness, and a blithe, cheery spirit,

were ever the badges of the Teuton. But though originally gross and

rough, he was capable of a smoother polish, of a glossier enamel, than

a more superficial, trivial nature. He was ever deeply thoughtful, and

capable of profounder moods of meditation than the lightly-moved

children of the South. Sighs, as from the boughs of Yggdrasil, ever

breathed through his poetry from of old. He was a smith, an artificer,

and a delver in mines from the beginning. The old Teutonic Pan was far

more musical and awe-inspiring than his Grecian counterpart The

Noon-spirit of the North was more wild than that of the South. How all

the ancient North was alive in its Troll-haunted hillocks, where

clanged the anvil of the faery hill-smith, and danced and banqueted the

Gnome and Troll,--and in its streams and springs, musical with the

harps of moist-haired Elle-women and mermaids, who, ethnic daemons

though they were, yet cherished a hope of salvation! The myth-spirits

of the North were more homely and domestic than those of the South, and

had a broader humor and livelier fancies. The Northern Elf-folk were

true natives of the soil, grotesque in costume and shape.

The Teuton of to-day is the lineal descendant of the old worshipper of

Thor. Miöllnir, the hammer of Thor, still survives in the gigantic

mechanisms of Watt, Fulton, and Stephenson. Thor embodied more Teutonic

attributes than Odin. The feats which Thor performed in that strange

city of Utgard, as they are related in the old "Prose Edda," were

prophetic of the future achievements of the race, of which he was a

chief god. Thor once went on a journey to Jötunheim, or Giant-land,--a

primitive outlying country, full of the enemies of the Asgard dynasty,

or cosmical deities. In the course of the journey, he lodged one night

with his two companions in what he supposed to be a huge hall, but

which turned out to be the glove of a giant named Skrymir, who was

asleep and snoring as loud as an earthquake, near by. When the giant

awoke, he said to Thor, who stood near,--"My name is Skrymir, but I

need not ask thy name, for I know that thou art the god Thor. But what

hast thou done with my glove?" Sure enough, on looking, Thor found that

he had put up that night in Skrymir's handshoe, or glove. The giant and

Thor breakfasted amicably together and went on their way till night,

when Skrymir gave up his wallet of provisions to Thor and his two

companions, and bade them supply themselves,--he meanwhile composing

himself to sleep, snoring so loudly that the forest trembled. Thor

could not undo the giant's wallet, and in his wrath he smote the

somnolent lubber with his mallet, a crushing blow. Skrymir simply

awoke, and inquired whether a leaf had not fallen upon his head from

the oak-tree under which he was lying. Conceive the chagrin and shame

of Thor at this question! A second time Thor let fly at the giant with

his mallet. This time it sank into his skull up to the handle, but with

no more satisfactory result. The giant merely inquired whether an acorn

had not dropped on his head, and wanted to know how Thor found himself,

whether he slept well or not; to which queries Thor muttered an answer,

and went away, determined to make a third and final effort with his

mallet, which had never failed him until then. About daybreak, as

Skrymir was taking his last snooze, Thor uplifted his hammer, clutching

it so fiercely that his knuckles became white. Down it came, with

terrific emphasis, crushing through Skrymir's cheek, up to the handle.

Skrymir sat up and inquired if there were not birds perched on the tree

under which he had been lodging; he thought he felt something dropping

on his head,--some moss belike. Alas for Thor and his weapon! For once

he found himself worsted, and his mightiest efforts regarded as mere

flea-bites; for Skrymir's talk about leaves and acorns and moss was

merely a sly piece of humor, levelled at poor crestfallen Thor, as he

afterwards acknowledged. After this incident, Thor and his two

companions, the peasant's children, Thjalfi and Röska, and Skrymir went

their ways, and came to the high-gated city of Utgard, which stood in

the middle of a plain, and was so lofty that Thor had to throw back his

head to see its pinnacles and domes. Now Thor was by no means small;

indeed, in Asgard, the city of the AEsir, he was regarded as a giant;

but here in Utgard Skrymir told him he had better not give himself any

airs, for the people of that city would not tolerate any assumption on

the part of such a mannikin!

Utgard-Loki, the king of the city, received Thor with the utmost

disdain, calling him a stripling, and asked him contemptuously what he

could do. Thor professed himself ready for a drinking-match. Whereupon

Utgard-Loki bade his cup-bearer bring the large horn which his

courtiers had to drain at a single draught, when they had broken any of

the established rules and regulations of his palace. Thor was thirsty,

and thought he could manage the horn without difficulty, although it

was somewhat of the largest. After a long, deep, and breathless pull

which he designed as a finisher, he set the horn down and found that

the liquor was not perceptibly lowered. Again he tried, with no better

result; and a third time, full of wrath and chagrin, he guzzled at its

contents, but found that the liquor still foamed near to the brim. He

gave back the horn in disgust. Then Utgard-Loki proposed to him the

childish exercise of lifting his cat. Thor put his hands under Tabby's

belly, and, lifting with all his might, could only raise one foot from

the floor. He was a very Gulliver in Brobdignag. As a last resort, he

proposed to retrieve his tarnished reputation by wrestling with some

Utgardian; whereupon the king turned into the ring his old nurse, Elli,

a poor toothless crone, who brought Thor to his knees, and would have

thrown him, had not the king interfered. Poor Thor! The next morning he

took breakfast in a sad state of mind, and owned himself a shamefully

used-up individual. The fact was, he had strayed unconsciously amongst

the old brute powers of primitive Nature, as he ought to have perceived

by the size of the kids they wore. He had done better than he was aware

of, however. The three blows of his hammer had fallen on nothing less

than a huge mountain, instead of a giant, and left three deep glens

dinted into its surface; the drinking-horn, which he had undertaken to

empty, was the sea itself, or an outlet of the sea, which he had

perceptibly lowered; while the cat was in reality the Midgard Serpent,

which enringed the world in its coils, and the toothless she-wrestler

was Old Age! What wonder that Thor was brought to his knees? On finding

himself thus made game of, Thor grew wroth, but had to go his ways, as

the city of Utgard had vanished into thin air, with its cloud-capped

towers and enormous citizens. Thor afterwards undertook to catch the

Midgard Serpent, using a bull's head for bait. The World-Snake took the

delicious morsel greedily, and, finding itself hooked, writhed and

struggled so that Thor thrust his feet through the bottom of his boat,

in his endeavors to land his prey.

There is a certain grotesque humor in Thor's adventures, which is

missed in his mythologic counterpart of the South, Hercules. It is the

old rich "world-humor" of the North, genial and broad, which still

lives in the creations of the later Teutonic Muse. The dints which Thor

made on the mountain-skull of Skrymir were types and forerunners of the

later feats of the Teutonic race, performed on the rough, shaggy,

wilderness face of this Western hemisphere, channelling it with watery

highways, tunnelling and levelling its mountains, and strewing its

surface with cities. The old Eddas and Voluspas of the North are full

of significant lore for the sons of the Northmen, wherever their lot is

cast. There they will find, that, in colonizing and humanizing the face

of the world, in zoning it with railroads and telegraph-wires, in

bridging its oceans with clipper-ships, and steamboats, and in weaving,

forging, and fabricating for it amid the clang of iron mechanisms, they

are only following out the original bent of the race, and travelling in

the wake of Thor the Hammerer.

While the Grecian and Roman myths are made familiar by our

school-books, it is to be regretted that the wild and glorious mythic

lore of our ancient kindred is neglected. To that you must go, if you

would learn whence came

"the German's inward sight,

And slow-sure Britain's secular might,"

and it may be added, the Anglo-American's unsurpassed practical energy,

skill, and invincible love of freedom. From the fountains of the

ash-tree Yggdrasil flowed these things. Some of the greatest of modern

Teutonic writers have gone back to these fountains, flowing in these

wild mythic wastes of the Past, and have drunk inspiration thence.

Percy, Scott, and Carlyle, by so doing, have infused new sap from the

old life-tree of their race into our modern English literature, which

had grown effete and stale from having had its veins injected with too

much cold, thin, watery Gallic fluid. Yes, Walter Scott heard the

innumerous leafy sigh of Yggdrasil's branches, and modulated his harp

thereby. Carlyle, too, has bathed in the three mystic fountains which

flow fast by its roots. In an especial manner has the German branch of

the Teuton kindred turned back to those old musical well-springs

bubbling up in the dim North, and they have been strengthened and

inspired by the pilgrimage. "Under the root, which stretches out

towards the Jötuns, there is Mimir's Well, in which Wisdom and Wit lie

hidden." Longfellow, too, has drunk of Mimir's Well, and hence the rare

charm and witchery of his "Evangeline," "Hiawatha," and "Golden

Legend." This well in the North is better than Castalian fount for the

children of the North.

How much more genial and lovable is Balder, the Northern Sun-god, than

his Grecian counterpart, the lord of the unerring bow, the Southern

genius of light, and poesy, and music! Balder dwelt in his palace of

Breidablick, or Broadview; and in the magical spring-time of the North,

when the fair maiden Iduna breathed into the blue air her genial

breath, he set imprisoned Nature free, and filled the sky with silvery

haze, and called home the stork and crane, summoning forth the tender

buds, and clothing the bare branches with delicate green. "Balder is

the mildest, the wisest, and the most eloquent of all the AEsir," says

the "Edda." A voice of wail went through the palaces of Asgard when

Balder was slain by the mistletoe dart. Hermod rode down to the kingdom

of Hela, or Death, to ransom the lost one. Meantime his body was set

adrift on a floating funeral pyre. Hermod would have succeeded in his

mission, had not Lok, the Spirit of Evil, interposed to thwart him. For

this, Lok was bound in prison, with cords made of the twisted

intestines of one of his own sons; and he will remain imprisoned until

the Twilight of the Gods, the consummation of all things.

On the shoulders of Odin, the supreme Scandinavian deity, sat two

ravens, whispering in his ears. These two ravens are called Hugin and

Munin, or Thought and Memory. These "stately ravens of the saintly days

of yore" flew, each day, all over the world, gathering "facts and

figures," doubtless for their August master. It is a beautiful fable,

and reminds one of Milton's "thoughts which wander through eternity."

The dove of the Ark, and the bird which perched on the shoulder of the

old Plutarchan hero Sertorius, are recalled by this Scandinavian

legend:--

"Hugin and Munin

Each down take their flight

Earth's fields over."

Nobler birds, these dark ravens of the Northern Jove, than the

bolt-bearing eagle of his Grecian brother. So much deeper, more

significant, and musical are the myths of the stern, dark, and tender

North than those of the bright and fickle South!

Notwithstanding that Valhalla was full of invincible heroes, and that

the celestial city of Asgard was the abode of the chief gods, still it

had a watchman who dwelt in a tower at the end of the Bridge Bifröst.

Heimdall was his name, and he was endowed with the sharpest ear and eye

that ever warder possessed. He could hear grass and wool grow with the

utmost distinctness. The AEsir, notwithstanding their supreme position,

had need of such a warder, with his Gjallar-horn, mightier than the

Paladin Astolfo's, that could make the universe reëcho to its blast.

The truth was, over even the high gods of Asgard hung a Doom which was

mightier than they. It was necessary for them to keep watch and ward,

therefore, for evil things were on their trail. There were vast,

mysterious, outlying regions beyond their sway: Niflheim or Mistland,

Muspellheim or Flameland, and Jötunheim, the abode of the old

earth-powers, matched with whom, even Thor, the strongest of the Asen,

was but a puny stripling. Over this old Scandinavian heaven, as over

all ethnic celestial abodes, the dark Destinies lorded it with

unquestioned sway. From the four corners of the world, at last, were to

fly the snow-flakes of the dread Fimbul, Winter, blotting the sun, and

moaning and drifting night and day. Three times was Winter to come and

go, bringing to men and gods "a storm-age, a wolf-age." Then cometh

Ragnarök, the Twilight of the Gods! Odin mounts his war-steed. The vast

ash Yggdrasil begins to shiver through all its height. The beatified

heroes of Valhalla, who have ever been on the watch for this dread era,

issue forth full of the old dauntless spirit of the North to meet the

dread agents of darkness and doom. Garm, the Moonhound, breaks loose,

and bays. "High bloweth Heimdall his horn aloft. Odin counselleth

Mimir's head." The battle joins. In short, the fiery baptism prophesied

in the dark scrolls of Stoic sage and Hebrew and Scandinavian scald

alike wraps the universe. The dwarfs wail in their mountain-clefts. All

is uproar and hissing conflagration.

"Dimmed's now the sun;

In ocean earth sinks;

From the skies are cast

The sparkling stars;

Fire-reek rageth

Around Time's nurse,

And flickering flames

With heaven itself shall play."

By "Time's nurse," in the foregoing lines from the "Voluspa," is meant

the Mundane Tree Yggdrasil, which shall survive unscathed, and wave

mournfully over the universal wreck. But in the "Edda" Hor tells

Gangler that "another earth shall appear, most lovely and verdant, with

pleasant fields, where the grain shall grow unsown. Vidar and Vali

shall survive. They shall dwell on the Plain of Ida, where Asgard

formerly stood. Thither shall come the sons of Thor, bringing with them

their father's mallet. Baldur and Hödur shall also repair thither from

the abode of Death. There shall they sit and converse together, and

call to mind their former knowledge and the perils they underwent."

Perhaps we might give the Eddaic Twilight of the Gods a more human and

strictly European interpretation. May it not also foreshadow the great

Armageddon struggle which is evidently impending between the Teutonic

races in Western Europe, with their Protestantism, free speech,

individual liberty, right of private judgment, and scorn of all

thraldom, both material and mental, on the one side, and the dark

powers of absolutism, repression, and irresponsible authority in church

and state, on the other? How Russia, the type of brute-force, presses

with crushing weight on intellectual Germany! Soon she will absorb the

old kingdoms of Scandinavia,--to wit, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. On

the shores of Norway the ruler of the Sclavonic race will hang over

Scotland and England, like a bird of prey about to swoop upon his

victim. All despots and absolutists will array themselves under his

banner or be his auxiliaries. The old hierarchies will be banded with

him to crush out Protestantism, which is a plant of Teutonic growth.

Old Asia, with her rancor and despotic traditions, recognizes in the

Russian imperial rule a congenial rallying-point against the

progressive and hated Anglo-Saxonism and Protestantism of the West. A

decisive struggle is surely impending between freedom and absolutism,

between the bigoted adherents of the old faiths and the nations that

have cut loose from them. Perhaps this struggle may be prefigured in

the old Northern myth of the Twilight of the Gods.

All the old mythic cosmogonies are strangely suggestive and full of

mystic import,--that of Northern Odinism more than any other. In that

dim Niflheim, for instance, with its well-springs of the waters of the

upper world confusedly bubbling, and its metallic ore-veins, and dusk,

vaporous atmosphere, whence issued the old Nibelungen heroes of the

great Teutonic epos, there is much that is suggestive. May not one

discover in this old cosmogonic myth a dim hint of the nebular

hypothesis of creation, as it is called? Certainly, Niflheim, the

Mistland, and Muspellheim, the Flameland, commingled together, would

produce that hot, seething, nebulous fire-mist, out of which, the

physicists say, was evolved, by agglomeration and centrifugal and

centripetal attraction, our fair, harmonious system of worlds bounded

by outermost Neptune, thus far the Ultima Thule of the solar system.

Perhaps Asgard, translated from mythic into scientific language, means

the Zodiacal Light, and the Bridge Bifröst, the Milky Way.

How curious, to trace in the grotesque mythic cosmogonies of India,

Greece, and Scandinavia, modern geology, botany, chemistry, etc.,--the

vast and brutal giants of the Eddas and other old mythic scriptures

being recognized as impersonations of the forces of Nature! The old

mythic cosmogonists and the modern geologists and astronomers do not

differ amongst themselves so much, after all. The mythic physicists had

personal agents at work, in place of our simple elemental ones; the

result is the same. Take the mythic cosmogonies of ancient Greece,

Scandinavia, and India, and the geologies and astronomies of the

present day, and compare their pages, changing things personal into

things impersonal. The expulsion and banishment of the old shapeless

mundane deities by a new and more beautiful race of gods, the cosmical

divinities, the powers and rulers of an ordered world, are intelligible

enough when translated into our modern geological nomenclature. The

leaves of the Stone Book, as the rocky layers of the earth have been

called, and the blue hieroglyphic page of heaven, also, are more

intelligibly read by the aid of the mythic glosses of old religion, of

Saga, Rune, and Voluspa. They spell the telluric records aright in

their own peculiar language. The assaults of the Typhons and Jötuns

upon the celestial dynasty, and their attempts to scale the fiery

citadels of the gods by making ladders of mountains, indicate clearly

enough the different revolutions read by geology in the various strata

and rocky layers piled upon the primitive granite of the globe, the

bursting through of eruptions from the central fire, extruding and

uplifting mountains, and the subsidence of the ocean from one

ripple-marked sea-beach to another lower down. In those dim geologic

epochs, where annals are written on Mica Slate, Clay Slate, and

Silurian Systems, on Old Red Sandstones and New, on Primary and

Secondary Rocks and Tertiary Chalk-beds, there were topsy-turvyings

amongst the hills and gambollings and skippings of mountains, to which

the piling of Pelion upon Ossa was a mere cobblestone feat. Alps and

Apennines then played at leap-frog. Vast basaltic masses were

oftentimes extruded into the astonished air from the very heart and

core of the world. In truth, the old mythic cosmogonies of the ancient

East, South, and North are not a whit too grotesque in their

descriptions of the embryo earth, when it lay weltering in a sort of

uterine film, assuming form and regular lineaments.

There is nothing more drear, monstrous, wild, dark, and lonely in the

descriptions of the mythologic than of the scientific page. What more

wild and drear is there, even in Indian cosmogonic fable, than that

strange carbonigenous era of the globe, whose deposits, in the shape of

petrified forests, now keep us warm and cook our food, and whose relics

and souvenirs are pressed between the stone leaves of the secondary

rock for preservation by the Omnipotent Herbalist? Land and water were

then distinguishable,--but as yet there was no terrestrial animal,

nothing organic but radiata and molluscs, holly-footed and head-footed,

and other aquatic monstrosities, mailed, plated, and buckler-headed,

casting the shovel-nosed shark of the present Cosmos entirely into the

shade, in point of horned, toothed, and serrated horrors. These

amorphous creatures glided about in the seas, and vast sea-worms, or

centipedal asps, the parents of modern krakens and sea-serpents,

doubtless, accompanied them. There stood that unfinished world reeking

with charcoal fumes, its soft, fungous, cryptogamic vegetation

efflorescing with fierce luxuriance in that ghastly carbonic

atmosphere. Rudimental palms and pines of mushroom growth stood there

motionless, sending forth no soft and soul-like murmurs into the lurid

reek; for as yet leaves and flowers and blue skies and pure breezes

were not,--nothing but whiffs of mephitic and lethal vapor ascending,

as from a vast charcoal brazier. No lark or linnet or redbreast or

mocking-bird could live, much less warble, in those carbonic times. The

world, like a Mississippi steamer, was coaling, with an eye to the

needs of its future biped passengers. The embryotic earth was then

truly a Niflheim, or Mistland,--a dun, fuming region. Those were the

days, perhaps, when Nox reigned, and the great mundane egg was hatching

in the oven-like heat, from which the winged boy Eros leaped forth,

"his back glittering with golden plumes, and swift as eddying air." We

have it on good authority, that the Adirondack Mountains of New York,

and the Grampian Hills of Scotland, where Norval was to feed his

flocks, had already upheaved their bare backs from the boiling caldrons

of the sea, thus stealing a march on the Alps and many other more

famous mountains.

How opposite and remote from each other are the mythologic ages and the

nineteenth century! The critical and scientific spirit of the one is in

strange contrast with the credulous, blindly reverent spirit of the

other. Mythology delegated the government of the world to inferior

deities, the subjects of an omnipotent Fate or Necessity; while, to

show how extremes meet, mere science delegates it to chemical and

physiological agencies, and ends, like the mythic cosmogonies, in some

irrepressible spontaneous impulse of matter to develope itself in the

ever-changing forms of the visible universe. Myriads of gods were the

actors in "the rushing metamorphosis" of the old myth-haunted Nature;

while chemic and elemental forces perform the same parts in the

masquerade of the modern _Phasis_. Both mythology and science,

therefore, stick fast in secondary causes.

Myths are the religion of youth, and of primitive, unsophisticated

nations; while science may be called the religion of the mature man,

full of experience and immersed in the actual. The Positivism of Comte,

like the old myth-worship, sets up for its deity human nature

idealized, adorned with genius and virtue. The Positivist worships

virtuous human nature, conditioned and limited as it is; while the

Mythist worshipped it reflected on the outer world and endowed with

supernatural attributes, clothed with mist-caps and wishing-caps that

gave it dominion over space and time. The restless, glittering,

whimsical sprites of fairy mythology, that were believed of old to have

so large a share in shaping the course of Nature and of human life,

have vanished from the precincts of the schoolmaster at least. They

could not endure the clear eyebeam of Science, which has searched their

subterranean abodes, withering them up and metamorphosing them into

mere physiological forces. Reason and scientific investigation have no

patience with the things of faith and imagination. Our poets now have

to go back to the Past, to the standpoints of the old pagan bards.

Tennyson lives in the land of the Lotophagi, in the Arabian Nights of

the Bagdad of Caliph Haroun, and in the orchard lawns of King Arthur's

Avalon. So, too, Longfellow must inhale the golden legendary air of the

Past. The mere humanitarian bards, who try to make modern life trip to

the music of trochees, dactyles, and spondees, fail miserably.

Industrialism is not poetical. Our modern life expresses itself in

machines, in mathematical formulas, in statistics and with scientific

precision generally. Art and poetry are pursued in the spirit of past

ages, and concern themselves with the symbols, faiths, and ideal

creations of the Past.

It is true, however, that all past ages of the world are

contemporaneous in this age. For example, we have in this nineteenth

century the patriarchal age of the world still surviving in the desert

tents of the Arab,--while the mythic, anthropomorphic period is still

extant in Persia, China, and India, and even among the nations of the

West, in the rustic nooks and corners of the Roman Catholic countries

of Europe. But the existing nations, which still preserve that old

ethnic worship and the mediaeval superstitions, are mere lingerers and

camp-followers in the march of humankind. Under the ample skirts of the

Roman Church still cower and lurk the superstitions of the old ethnic

world, baptized to be sure, and called by new names. The Roman see has

ever had a lingering kindness for the fair humanities of old religion,

which live no longer in the faith of Protestant reason and free

inquiry. She compromised with them of old, and they have clung about

her waist ever since. She has put her uniform upon them, and made them

do service in her cause, and keep alive with their breath the fast

expiring embers of faith and imaginative credulity, which she so much

loves and commends. Like an equivocal and ambiguous nature, the old

Mother Church, as she is called, is upward fair and Christian, but

downward foul and ethnic. She attacks human nature on the side of the

heart, the senses, and those old instincts which Coleridge says bring

back the old names. Reason and intellection, sharpened by science, she

abhors; but so large a part of mankind still linger in the rear of the

vanguard nations, that she has yet a long lease of life to run, with

myriads of adherents to cling to her with fanatical tenacity,--nay,

with proselytes from amongst the poetical, the artistic, and

imaginative, who voluntarily prefer to the broad sunshine of science

the twilight gloom of her sanctuaries, in order there the better to woo

the old inspiration of art, superstitious faith, and poesy. The old

ethnic instincts of human nature are formidable auxiliaries of the

Mother Church. Puseyism would rehallow the saintly wells even of

Protestant, practical England, and send John Bull again on a pilgrimage

to the shrines of Canterbury and Walsingham. Compare a Yankee,

common-school-bred, and an Austrian peasant, if you would learn how the

twelfth and nineteenth centuries live together in the current year. The

one is self-reliant, helpful, and versatile, not freighted with any

old-world rubbish; while the other is abject, and blindly reverent, and

full of the old mythic imagination that is in strong contrast with the

keen common-sense of the Protestant, who dispels all twilight fantasies

with a laugh of utter incredulity. The one sees projected on the outer

world his own imaginings, now fair, now gloomy; while the other sees in

the world, land to be cut up into corner-lots for speculation, and

water for sawmills and cotton-mills, and to float clipper-ships and

steamers. The one is this-worldly; the other is other-worldly. The one

is armed and equipped at all points to deal with the Actual, to subdue

it and make the most of it; he aims for success and wealth, for

elegance, plenty, and comfort in his home;--while the other is

negligent, a frequenter of shrines, in all things too superstitious,

overlooking and slighting mere physical comfort, and content with

misery and dirt. The Romish peasant lives begirt by supernatural

beings, who demand a large share of his time and thoughts for their

service; while the thrifty Protestant artisan or agriculturist is a

practical naturalist, keeping his eye fixed on the main chance.

Brownson would have us believe that he is morally and spiritually the

inferior of the former. For this light of common day, which now shines

upon the world, the multiplication-table, and reading and writing, are

far better than amulet, rosary, and crucifix.

After all, this light of common day, which the bards and saints so much

condemn and disdain, when subjected to the microscopic and telescopic

ken of modern science, opens as large a field for wonder and for the

imagination to revel in as did the old marvels, fables, and fictions of

the Past. The True is beginning to be found as strange, nay, stranger

than the purely Imaginative and Mythic. The Beautiful and the Good will

yet be found to be as consistent with the strictly True and Actual,

with the plain Matter-of-Fact as it is called, as they have been, in

the heroic ages of human-achievement and endurance, with the glorious

cheats and delusions that nerved man to high emprise. The modern

scientific discoverer and inventor oftentimes finds himself engaged in

quests as strange as that of the Holy Grail of Round-Table fiction. To

the Past, with its mythic delusions, simplicity, and dense ignorance of

Nature, we can never return, any more than the mature man can shrink

into the fresh boy again. Nor is it to be regretted. The distant in

time, like the distant in space, wears a halo, a vague, blue

loveliness, which is all unreal. The tired wayfarer, who is weary with

the dust, the din, and stony footing of the Actual and the Present, may

sometimes fondly imagine, that, if he could return to the far Past, he

would find all smooth and golden there; but it is a pleasant delusion

of that glorious arch-cheat, the Imagination. Yet if we cannot go back

to the Past, we can march forward to a Future, which opens a deeper and

more wondrous and airier vista, with its magicians of the Actual

casting into shade the puny achievements of old necromancy and mythic

agencies.

* * * * *

JUANITA.

Yes! I had, indeed, a glorious revenge! Other people have had home,

love, happiness; they have had fond caresses, tender cares, the bright

faces of children shining round the board. I had none of these; my

revenge has stood to me in place of them all. And it has stood well.

Love may change; loved ones may die; the fair-faced children may grow

up hard-hearted and ungrateful. But my revenge will not deceive or

disappoint me; it cannot change or pass away; it will last through Time

into Eternity.

I was left an orphan in early childhood. My father was an officer in

the American Navy; my mother a Spaniard. She was very beautiful, I

always heard; and her miniature, which my father's dying hand placed

about my neck, proclaimed her so. A pale, clear, olive tint, eyes of

thrilling blackness, long, lustrous hair, and a look of mingled

tenderness and melancholy made it, in my thought, the loveliest face

that mortal eyes could see.

My parents left me no fortune, and I fell to the care of my father's

only brother, a man of wealth and standing. I have no story to tell of

the bitterness of dependence,--of slights, and insult, and privation.

My uncle had married, somewhat late in life, a young and gentle woman;

when I was twelve years old she became the mother of twins,--two lovely

little girls. No one, unacquainted with the family history, could have

supposed that I was other than the elder sister of Florence and

Leonora. Every indulgence was granted me, every advantage of dress and

education bestowed upon me. So far as even I could see, my uncle and

aunt regarded me as their own child. Nor was I ungrateful, but repaid

them with a filial reverence and affection.

I did not inherit the fulness of my mother's beauty, but had yet some

traits of her,--the pale, clear skin, the large, black eyes, the glossy

and abundant hair. Here the resemblance ceased. I have heard my uncle

say,--how often!--"Your mother, Juanita, had the most perfect form I

ever saw, except in marble"; all Spanish women, indeed, he told me, had

a full, elastic roundness of shape and limb, rarely seen among our

spare and loose-built nation. I was American in form, at least,--slight

and stooping, with a certain awkwardness, partly to be imputed to my

rapid growth, partly to my shyness and reserve. I was insatiably fond

of reading, little attracted toward society. When my uncle's house, as

often happened, was full of gay company, I withdrew to my own room, and

read my favorite authors in its pleasant solitude. I was ill at ease

with lively, fashionable people,--very much at home with books. Thanks

to my uncle's care, I was well educated, even scholarly, for my age and

sex. My studious habits, far from being discouraged, were praised by

all the household, and I was looked upon as a prodigy of cleverness and

industry.

A widow lady, of the name of Haughton, came to live in the little

cottage near us when I was fifteen years old. She was well-born, but

poor, and had known many sorrows. My aunt, Mrs. Heywood, soon became

interested in her, and took pleasure in offering her those numerous

attentions which a wealthy neighbor can so easily bestow, and which are

so grateful to the recipient. Mrs. Haughton and her sons were frequent

guests at our house; and we, too, spent many pleasant hours in the

vine-covered porch of the cottage. I had few companions, and John and

William Haughton were very welcome to me. They were somewhat older than

I,--John twenty-two, and William two years younger; and I was thus just

able to escape regarding them with that profound contempt which the

girl of fifteen usually feels for "boys." After knowing them awhile I

felt how baseless such contempt would be; for they possessed a depth

and maturity of character rarely seen except in men of much experience.

John was grave and thoughtful; his livelier brother often said he had

come into the world some centuries too late,--that he was meant for an

Augustine or a Pascal, so studious was he, and so saintly. Do not fancy

that he was one of those stiff, bespectacled, pedantic youths who

cannot open their lips without a classic allusion or a Greek quotation;

nothing could be farther from the truth. He was quiet and retiring;

very few guessed how beneath that exterior, so unassuming, lay hid the

noblest aspirations, the most exalted thought. It was John I should

have loved.

But it was William who won my heart, even without an effort. I, the

pale, serious girl, loved with a wild idolatry the gay and careless

youth. Never, from that day till now, have I seen a man so perfect in

all manly beauty. Strength and symmetry were united in his tall,

athletic figure; his features were large, but nobly formed; his hair,

of a sunny hue, fell in rich masses over a broad, white brow. So might

Apollo have looked in the flush of his immortal youth.

At first I gazed at him only with the enthusiasm which his extreme

beauty might well awaken in the heart of a romantic maiden; then I grew

to see in the princely type of that beauty a reflection of his mind.

Did ever any fond fool so dote upon her Ideal as I on mine? All

generous thoughts, all noble deeds, seemed only the fit expression of

his nature. Then I came to mingle a reverence with my admiration. We

were friends; he talked to me much of his plans in life,--of the future

that lay before him. What an ambitious spirit burned within him!--a

godlike ambition I thought it then. And how my weak, womanish heart

thrilled with sympathy to his! With what pride I listened to his words!

with what fervor I joined in his longings!

There came a time when I trembled before him. I could no longer walk

calmly arm-in-arm with him under the linden-trees, hearkening joyfully.

I dared not lift my eyes to his face; I turned pale with suppressed

feeling, if he but spoke my name--Juanita--or took my hand in his for

friendly greeting. What a hand it was!--so white, and soft, and

shapely, yet so powerful! It was the right hand for him,--a fair and

delicate seeming, a cruel, hidden strength. When he spoke of the future

my heart cried out against it; it was intolerable to me. In its bright

triumphs I could have no part; thereto I could follow him only with my

love and tears. The present alone was mine, and to that I passionately

clung. For I never dreamed, you see, that he could love me.

My manner toward him changed; I was fitful and capricious. I dreaded,

above all things, that he should suspect my feelings. Sometimes I met

him coldly; sometimes I received his confidences with an indifferent

and weary air. This could not last.

One night--it was a little time before he left us--he begged me to walk

with him once more under the lindens. I made many excuses, but he

overruled them all. We left the brilliantly-lighted rooms and stood

beneath the solemn shadow of the trees. It was a warm, soft night; the

harvest moon shone down upon us; a south wind moaned among the

branches. We walked silently on till we reached a rustic seat, formed

of gnarled boughs fantastically bound together; here he made me sit

down and placed himself beside me.

"Juanita," he said, in a tone so soft, so thrillingly musical, that I

shall never forget it, "what has come between us? Are you no longer my

friend?"

I tried to answer him, and could not; love and grief choked my

utterance.

"Look at me," he said.

I looked. The moon shone full on his face; his eyes were bent on mine.

What a serpent-charm lurked in their treacherous blue depths! If,

looking at me thus, he had bidden me kill myself at his feet, I must

have done it.

"Juanita," he said, with a smile of conscious power, "you love me! But

why should that destroy our happiness?"

He held out his arms; I threw myself on his bosom in an agony of shame

and joy. Oh, Heaven! could it be possible that he loved me at last?

Long, long, we sat there in the moonlight, his arms around me, my hand

clasped in his. Poor hand! even by that faint radiance how dark and

thin it looked beside his, so white and rounded! How gloriously

beautiful was he! what a poor, pale shadow I! And yet he loved me! He

did not talk much of it; he spoke more of the future,--_our_ future. It

all lay before him, a bright, enchanted land, wherein we two should

walk together. We had not quite reached it, but we surely should, and

that ere long.

The steps toward it were prosaic enough, save as his imagination

brightened them. An early friend of his dead father, a distinguished

lawyer, wishing to further William's advancement in life, gave him the

opportunity of studying his profession with him,--offering him, at the

same time, a home in his own family. From these slender materials

William's fancy built air-castles the most magnificent. He would study

assiduously; with such a prize in view, he fondly said, his patience

would never weary. He felt within himself the consciousness of talent;

and talent and industry _must_ succeed. A bright career was before

him,--fame, fortune; and all were to be laid at my feet; all would be

valueless, if not shared with me.

"Ah, William," I asked, with a moment's sorrowful doubt, "are you sure

of that? Are you certain that it is not fame you look forward so

eagerly to possess, instead of me?"

"How _dare_ you say such a thing?" he answered, sternly. I did not mind

the sternness; there was love behind it.

"And what am I to do while you are thus winning gold and glory?" I

asked, at length.

"I will tell you, Juanita. In the first place, you are _not_ to waste

your time and spirits in long, romantic reveries, and vain pining

because we cannot be together."

"Indeed, I will not!" was my quick reply, though I colored deeply. I

was ashamed that he thought me in danger of loving him too well. "I

know you think me foolish and sentimental; but I assure you I will try

to be different, since you wish it."

"That is my own dear girl! You must go out,--you must see people,--you

must enjoy yourself. You must study, too; don't let your mind rust

because you are engaged. It will be quite time enough for that when we

are married."

"You need not be afraid; I shall always wish to please you, William,

and so I shall always endeavor to improve."

"Good child!" he said, laughing. "But you will not always be such an

obedient infant, Juanita. You will find out your power over me, and

then you will want to exercise it, just for the pleasure of seeing me

submit. You will be despotic about the veriest trifles, only to show me

that my will must bow to yours."

"That will never be! I have no will of my own, where you are concerned,

William. I only ask to know your wishes, that I may perform them."

"Is that indeed so?" he said, with a new tenderness of manner. "I am

very glad; for, to tell the truth, my love, I fear I should have little

patience with womanish caprices. I have reasons always for what I do

and for what I require, and I could not long love any one who opposed

them."

Again I assured him that he need feel no such dread. How happy we

were!--yes, I believe he loved me enough then to be happy, even as I

was.

It was so late before we thought of going in, that a messenger was sent

to seek us, and many a fine jest we had to encounter when we reached

the drawing-room.

The next day, William spoke to my uncle, who seemed to regard the

matter in a light very different from ours. He said, we were a mere boy

and girl, that years must elapse before we could marry, and by that

time we should very probably have outgrown our liking for each other;

still, if we chose, we might consider ourselves engaged; he did not

know that he had any objection to make. This manner of treating the

subject was not a flattering one; however, we had his consent,--and

that was the main point, after all.

So we were troth-plight; and William went forth on his career of labor

and success, and I remained at home, loving him, living for him,

striving to make my every act what he would have it. I went into

company as he had bidden me; I studied and improved myself; I grew

handsomer, too. All who saw me noticed and approved the alteration in

my appearance. I was no longer awkward and stooping; my manner had

acquired something of ease and gracefulness; a faint bloom tinged my

cheek and made my dark eyes brighter. I was truly happy in the change;

it seemed to render me a little more suited to him, who was so proudly,

so splendidly handsome.

I remembered what he had said too well to spend much time in

love-dreams; but my happiest moments were when I was alone, and could

think of him, read his letters, look at his picture, and fancy the

joyfulness of his return.

His letters!--there the change first showed itself. At first they were

all, and more than all, I could wish. I blushed to read the ardent

words, as I did when he had spoken them. But by-and-by there was a

different tone: I could not describe it; there was nothing to complain

of; and yet I felt--so surely!--that something was wrong. I never

thought of blaming him; I dreaded lest I had in some way wounded his

affection or his pride. I asked no explanation; I thought to do so

might annoy or vex him, for his was a peculiar nature. I only wrote to

him the more fondly,--strove more and more to show him how my whole

heart was his. But the change grew plainer as months passed on; and

some weeks before the time appointed for his return, the letters ceased

altogether.

This conduct grieved me, certainly, yet I was more perplexed than

unhappy. It never occurred to me to doubt his love; I thought there

must be some mistake, some offence unwittingly given, and I looked to

his coming to clear away all doubt and trouble. But I longed so for

that coming!--it seemed as if the weeks would never end. I knew he

loved me; but I needed to hear him say it once more,--to have every

shadow dispelled, and nothing between us but the warmest affection and

fullest confidence.

In such a mood I met him. The house was full of guests, and I could not

bear to see him for the first time before so many eyes. I had watched,

as may well be believed, for his arrival, and a little before dark had

seen him enter his mother's house. He would surely come over soon; I

ran down the long walk, and paced up and down beneath the trees,

awaiting him. As soon as he came in sight I hastened toward him; he met

me kindly, but the change that had been in his letters was plainer yet

in his manner. It struck a chill to my heart.

"I suppose you have a house full of company, as usual," he remarked

presently, glancing at the brilliant windows.

"Yes, we have a number of friends staying with us. Will you go in and

see them? There are several whom you know."

"Thank you,--not to-night; I am not in the mood. And I have a good deal

to say to you, Juanita, that deeply concerns us both."

"Very well," I replied; "you had better tell me at once."

We walked on to the old garden-chair, and sat down as we had done that

memorable night. We were both silent,--I from disappointment and

apprehension. He, I suppose, was collecting himself for what he had to

say.

"Juanita," he spoke at last, taking my hand in his, "I do not know how

you will receive what I am about to tell you. But this I wish you to

promise me: that you will believe I speak for our best happiness,

--yours as well as mine."

"Go on," was all my reply.

"A year ago," he continued, "we sat here as we do now, and, spite of

doubts and misgivings and a broken resolution, I was happier than I

shall ever be again. I had loved you from the first moment I saw you,

with a passion such as I shall never feel for any other woman. But I

knew that we were both poor; I knew that marriage in our circumstances

could only be disastrous. It would wear out your youth in servile

cares; it would cripple my energies; it might even, after a time,

change our love to disgust and aversion. And so, though I believed

myself not indifferent to you, I resolved never to speak of my love,

but to struggle against it, and root it out of my heart. You know how

differently it happened. Your changed manner, your averted looks, gave

me much pain. I feared to have offended you, or in some way forfeited

your esteem. I brought you here to ask an explanation. I said,

'Juanita, are you no longer my friend?' You know what followed; the

violence of your emotion showed me all. You remember?"

Did I not?--and was it not generous of him to remind me then?

"I saw you loved me, and the great joy of that knowledge made me forget

prudence, reason, everything. Afterwards, when alone, I tried to

justify to myself what I had done, and partially succeeded. I argued

that we were young and could wait; I dreamed, too, that my ardor could

outrun time, and grasp in youth the rewards of mature life. In that

hope I left you.

"Since then my views have greatly changed. I have seen something--not

much, it is true--of men and of life, and have found that it is an easy

thing to dream of success, but a long and difficult task to achieve it.

That I have talent it would be affectation to deny; but many a poor and

struggling lawyer is my equal. The best I can hope for, Juanita, is a

youth of severe toil and griping penury, with, perhaps, late in

life,--almost too late to enjoy it,--competence and an honorable name.

And even that is by no means secure; the labor and the poverty may last

my life long.

"You have been reared in the enjoyment of every luxury which wealth can

command. How could you bear to suffer privations, to perform menial

labors, to be stinted in dress, deprived of congenial society, obliged

to refrain from every amusement, because you were unable to afford the

expense? How should you like to have a grinding economy continually

pressing upon you, in every arrangement of your household, every detail

of your daily life? to have your best days pass in petty cares and

sayings, all your intellect expended in the effort to make your paltry

means do the greatest possible service?"

It was not a pleasant picture, but, harshly drawn as it was, I felt in

the fulness of my love that I could do all that, and more, for him. Oh,

yes! for him and with him I would have accepted any servitude, any

suffering. Yet a secret something withheld me from saying so; and how

glad I soon was that I had kept silence!

"You make no reply, Juanita," he said. "Well, I might put on a pretence

of disinterestedness, and say that I was unwilling to bind you to such

a fate, and therefore released you from your engagement. It would not

be altogether a pretence, for nothing could be more painful to me than

to see the brightness of your youth fading away in the life I have

described. But I think of myself, too; comforts, luxuries, indulgences,

I value highly. Since my father's death I have tasted enough of poverty

to know something of its bitterness; and to be doomed to it for life is

appalling to me. The sordid cares of narrow means are so distasteful,

that I cannot contemplate them with any degree of patience. After a day

of exhausting mental effort, to return to a dingy, ill-furnished

home,--to relieve professional labors by calculations about the

gas-bill or the butcher's account,--I shrink from such a miserable

prospect! I love the elegant, the high-bred, the tasteful, in women; I

am afraid even my love for you would alter, Juanita, to see you day by

day in coarse or shabby clothing, performing such offices as are only

suited to servants,--whom we could not afford to keep.

"I have thought of it a great deal, and it seems to me that it is

useless and hopeless, that it would be the wildest folly, to continue

our engagement. With our tastes and habits, we must seek in marriage

the means of comfort, the appliances of luxury. Others may find in it

the bewildering bliss we might have known, had fortune been favorable

to us; but, as it is, I think the best, the wisest, the happiest thing

we can do is--to part!"

Oh, Heaven! this from him!

"Still, Juanita, if you think otherwise," he went on after a moment's

pause,--"if you prefer to hold me to our engagement, I am ready to

fulfil it when you wish."

It was like a man to say this, and then to feel that he had acted

uprightly and honorably!

I said nothing for a time; I could not speak. All hell woke in my

heart. I knew then what lost spirits might feel,--grief, and wounded

pride, and rage, hatred, despair! In the midst of all I made a vow; and

I kept it well!

How I had loved this man!--with what a self-forgetting, adoring love!

He had been my thought, day and night. I would have done

anything,--sacrificed, suffered anything,--yes, sinned even,--to please

his lightest fancy. And he cast me coldly off because I had no

fortune!--trampled my heart into the dust because I was poor!

"You make no answer, Juanita," he said, at length.

"I am thinking," I replied, looking up and laughing slightly, "how to

say that I quite agree with you, and have been planning all day how I

should manage to tell you the very same thing."

Miserable falsehood! But I spoke it so coolly, that he was thoroughly

deceived. He never suspected the truth,--my deep love, my outraged

pride.

"It is just as you have said, William. We have elegant tastes, and no

means of gratifying them. What should we do together? Only make each

other miserable. You need a rich wife, I a rich husband, who can supply

us with the indulgences we demand. To secure these we can well make the

sacrifice of a few romantic fancies."

"I am glad you think so," he replied, yet somewhat absently.

"You must wait awhile for Florence," I continued; "she is four years

old, and twelve years hence you will yet be quite a personable

individual. And Florence will have a fortune worth waiting for, I

assure you. Or perhaps you have somebody more eligible already in view.

Come, William, be frank,--tell me all about it."

"I did not expect this levity, Juanita," he answered, severely. "You

must know that I have never thought of such a thing. And believe me,"

he said, in a tenderer tone, "that, among all the beautiful women I

have seen,--and some have not disdained to show me favor,--none ever

touched my heart for a moment. Had we any reasonable prospect of

happiness, I could never give you up; I love you better a thousand

times than anything in the world."

"Except yourself," I said, mockingly; and I looked at him with a

mischievous smile, while a storm of passion raged in my heart and my

brain seemed on fire. "Be it so! I do not complain of such a splendid

rival. But really, William, I cannot boast of constancy like yours,

even; though I suppose most people would consider that rather a poor,

flawed specimen. It hurt my dignity very much when Uncle Heywood called

our attachment a boy-and-girl affair; but I soon found that he knew

best about it. For a time I kept my love very warm and glowing; but it

was not long ere the distractions you bade me seek in society proved

more potent than I wished. I found there were other things to be

enjoyed than dreams of you, and even--shall I confess it? I can now, I

suppose--other people to be admired as well as you!"

"Indeed!" he said, with ill-concealed annoyance. "You had a great

talent for concealment, then; your letters showed no trace of the

change."

"I know they didn't," I answered, laughing. "I hated very much to admit

even to myself that I had altered; it seemed, you know, so capricious

and childish,--in short, so far from romantic. I kept up the illusion

as long as I could; used to go off alone to read your letters, look at

your picture, and fancy I felt just as at first. Then when I sat down

to write, and remembered how handsome you were, and all that had

happened, the old feelings would come back, and for the time you were

all I cared for. But I am very glad we have had this explanation, and

understand each other. We shall both be happier for it."

I had a little taste of vengeance, even then, when I saw how his vanity

was wounded. He tried to look relieved,--I dare say he tried to feel

so,--but I question very much whether he was pleased with himself that

he had been so cool and philosophical. He did not wish to make me

wretched; but he had expected I would be so, as a matter of course. To

find me so comfortable under the infliction perplexed and disconcerted

him.

"This will not make any coldness between us, I hope?" he said, at last.

"We will be friends still, dear Juanita?"

"Yes," I replied, "we will be friends, dear William. We are a great

deal more in our true relations thus than as lovers."

"And your uncle's family," he inquired,--"shall we explain all to

them?"

"There is no need of that," I answered, carelessly. "Let things pass.

After a time they will perhaps notice that there is a change, and I can

tell them that we are both tired of the engagement. They will ask no

further questions."

"Thank you," he said. "It will save me some embarrassment."

"Yes," I replied, looking at him steadily, "I think it would have been

a rather awkward topic for you to broach."

His eye fell before mine; through all the sophistry he had used, I

think some slight sense of the baseness of his conduct forced itself

upon his mind.

"Now I must return to the house," I said, rising; "will you not come

with me? My uncle and aunt will expect to see you, and Anna Gray is

here. You can make your first essay toward the rich match this

evening."

"Nonsense!" he said, impatiently, yet he accompanied me. I knew he did

not like to lose sight of me.

Never had I exerted myself so much to please any one, as I did that

night to charm and attract him;--not, indeed, by any marked attention;

that would have failed of its object. But I talked and danced; I

displayed for his benefit all that I had acquired of ease and manner

since he left. I saw his astonishment, that the pale, quiet girl who

was wont to sit in some corner, almost unnoticed, should now be the

life of that gay circle. I made him admire me most at the very moment

he had lost me forever,--and so far, all was well.

I went to my room that night a different creature. That place had been

a kind of sanctuary to me. By its vine-draped window I had loved to sit

and think of him, to read the books he liked, and fashion my mind to

what he could approve. But the spot which I had left, a hopeful and

loving girl, I returned to, a forsaken and revengeful woman. My whole

nature was wrought up to one purpose,--to repay him, to the last iota,

all he had made me suffer, all the humiliation, the despair. It was

strange how this purpose upbore and consoled me; for I needed

consolation. I hated him, yet I loved him fiercely, too; I despised

him, yet I knew no other man would ever touch my heart. He had been, he

always must be, everything to me,--the one object to which all my

thoughts tended, to which my every action was referred.

I took from a drawer his letters and his few love-gifts. The paper I

tore to fragments and threw into the empty fireplace. I lighted the

heap, and tossed the gifts, one after another, into the flame. Last of

all, I drew his portrait from my bosom. I gazed at it an instant,

pressed it to my lips. No,--I would not destroy this,--I would keep it

to remind me.

I remember thinking, as I watched the flickering flame, that this was

something like a witch's incantation. I smiled at the idea.

The next morning there was only a heap of light ashes left in the

grate. I pursued my purpose determinedly and with unflagging zeal. I

did not know exactly how it would be realized, but I felt sure I should

achieve it. My first care was to cultivate to the utmost every faculty

I possessed. My education had been hitherto of rather a substantial

order; I had few accomplishments. To these I turned my care. "What has

a woman," I thought, "to do with solid learning? It never tells in

society." I had observed the rapt attention with which William listened

to music. Hitherto I had been only a passable performer, such as any

girl of sixteen might be. But under the influence of this new motive I

studied diligently; the best masters were supplied me; and soon my

progress both astonished and delighted myself and all who heard me.

I have before said that a change for the better had taken place in my

person; this I strove by every means in my power to increase. I rode, I

walked, I plied the oars vigorously upon our little lake. My health

grew firm, my cheeks more blooming, my form fuller and majestic. I took

the greatest pains with my toilet. It was wonderful to see, day by day,

as I looked into the mirror, the alteration that care and taste could

effect in personal appearance. Could this erect, stately figure, with

its air of grace and distinction, be one with the thin, stooping form,

clad in careless, loose-fitting garb, which I so well remembered as

myself? Could that brilliant face, with its bands of shining hair, that

smile of easy self-confidence, belong to me? What, had become of the

pale, spiritless girl? My uncle sometimes asked the question, and,

looking at me with a fond, admiring glance, would say,--"You were made

for an empress, Juanita!" I knew then that I was beautiful, and

rejoiced in the knowledge; but no tinge of vanity mingled with the joy.

I cultivated my beauty, as I did my talents, for a purpose of which I

never lost sight.

It was now I learned for the first time that John Haughton loved me.

When it became generally understood that William and I were no longer

engaged, John came forward. I do not know what he, so good, so

high-minded, saw in me; but certainly he loved me with a true

affection. When he avowed it, a strange joy seized me; I felt that now

I held in my hand the key of William's destiny. Now I should not lose

my hold on him; we could not drift apart in the tide of life. As John's

bride, John's wife, there must always be an intimate connection between

us. So I yielded with well-feigned tenderness to my lover's suit,--only

stipulating, that, as some time must elapse before our marriage, no one

should know of our attachment,--not even William, or his mother,--nor,

on my part, any of my uncle's family. He made no objection; I believe

he even took a romantic pleasure in the concealment. He liked to see me

moving about in society, and to feel that there was a tie between us

that none dreamed of but ourselves. Poor John! he deserved better of

Fate than to be the tool of my revenge!

William came home, soon after our engagement, for his annual visit. He

was succeeding rather better than his dismal fancies had once

prognosticated. He was very often at our house,--very much my friend. I

saw through all that clearly enough; I knew he loved me a hundred-fold

more passionately than in our earlier days; and the knowledge was to me

as a cool draught to one who is perishing of thirst. I did all in my

power to enhance his love; I sang bewildering melodies to him; I talked

to him of the things he liked, and that roused his fine intellect to

the exercise of its powers. I rode with him, danced with him; nor did I

omit to let him see the admiration with which others of his sex

regarded me. I was well aware that a man values no jewel so highly as

that which in a brilliant setting calls forth the plaudits of the

crowd. I talked to him often of his prospects and hopes; his ambition,

all selfish as it was, fascinated me by its pride and daring. "Ah,

William!" I sometimes thought, "you made a deadly mistake when you cast

me off! You will never find another who can so enter, heart and soul,

into all your brilliant projects!"

He came to me, one morning, rather earlier than his wont. I was

reading, but laid aside my book to greet him.

"What have you there, Juanita? Some young-ladyish romance, I suppose."

"Not at all,--it is a very rational work; though I presume you will

laugh at it, because it contains a little sentiment,--you are grown so

hard and cold, of late."

"Do you think so?" he asked, with a look that belied the charge.

He took up the volume, and, glancing through it, read now and then a

sentence.

"What say you to this, Juanita? 'If we are still able to love one who

has made us suffer, we love him more than ever.' Is that true to your

experience?"

"No," I answered, for I liked at times to approach the topic which was

always uppermost in my mind, and to see his perfect unconsciousness of

it. "If any one had made me suffer, I should not stop to inquire

whether I were able to love him still or not; I should have but one

thought left,--revenge!"

"How very fierce!" he said, laughing. "And your idea of revenge

is--what? To stab him with your own white hand?"

"No!" I said, scornfully. "To kill a person you hate is, to my mind,

the most pitiful idea of vengeance. What! put him out of the world at

once? Not so! He should live," I said, fixing my eyes upon him,--"and

live to suffer,--and to remember, in his anguish, why he suffered, and

to whose hand he owed it!"

It was a hateful speech, and would have repelled most men; for my life

I dared not have made it before John. But I knew to whom I was talking,

and that he had no objection to a slight spice of _diablerie_.

"What curious glimpses of character you open to me now and then," he

said, thoughtfully. "Not very womanly, however."

"Womanly!" I cried. "I wonder what a man's notion of woman is! Some

soft, pulpy thing that thrives all the better for abuse? a spaniel that

loves you more, the more you beat it? a worm that grows and grows in

new rings as often as you cut it asunder? I wonder history has never

taught you better. Look at Judith with Holofernes,--Jael with

Sisera,--or if you want profane examples, Catherine de Medicis,

Mademoiselle de Brinvilliers, Charlotte Corday. There are women who

have formed a purpose, and gone on steadily toward its accomplishment,

even though, like that Roman girl,--Tullia was her name?--they had to

drive over a father's corpse to do it."

"You have known such, perhaps," said Richard.

"Yes," I answered, with, a gentle smile, "I have. They wished no harm,

it might be, to any one, but people stood in their way. It is as if you

were going to the arbor after grapes, and there were a swarm of ants in

the path. You have no malice against the ants, but you want the

grapes,--so you walk on, and they are crushed."

I was thinking of John and of his love, but William did not know that.

"You are a strange being!" he said, looking at me with a mixture of

admiration and distrust.

"Ah! Well, you see my race is somewhat anomalous,--a blending of the

Spaniard and the Yankee. Come, I will be all Spanish for a time; bring

me the guitar. Now let me sing you a _romance_."

I struck the tinkling chords, and began a sweet love-ditty. Fixing my

eyes on his, I made every word speak to his heart from mine. I saw his

color change, his eyes melt;--when the song ended, he was at my feet.

I know not what he said; I only know it was passion, burning and

intense. Oh, but it was balm both to my love and hate to hear him! I

let him go on as long as he would,--then I said, gently caressing his

bright hair,--

"You forget, dear William, all those lessons of prudence you taught me

not so very long ago."

He poured forth the most ardent protestations; he begged me to forget

all that cold and selfish reasoning. Long since he had wished to offer

me his hand, but feared lest I should repel him with scorn. Would I not

pardon his former ingratitude, and return his love?

"But you forget, my friend," I said, "that circumstances have not

altered, but only your way of viewing them; we must still be poor and

humble. Don't you remember all your eloquent picturings of the life we

should be obliged to lead? Don't you recollect the dull, dingy house,

the tired, worn-out wife in shabby clothing"----

"Oh, hush, Juanita! Do not recall those wretched follies! Besides,

circumstances have somewhat changed; I am not so very poor. My income,

though small, will be sufficient, if well-managed, to maintain us in

comfort and respectability."

"Comfort and respectability!" I exclaimed, with a shudder. "Oh,

William, can you imagine that such words apply to me? The indulgences

of wealth are necessary to me as the air I breathe. I suppose you would

be able to shield me from absolute suffering; but that is not enough.

Do not speak of this again, for both our sakes. And now, good friend,"

I added, in a lighter tone, "I advise you to get up as soon as may be;

we are liable to interruption at any time; and your position, though

admirable for a _tableau_, would be a trifle embarrassing for ordinary

life."

He started to his feet, and would have left me in anger, but I recalled

him with a word. It was good to feel my power over this man who had

slighted and rejected me. Before we parted that day he had quite

forgiven me for refusing him and making him ridiculous; I thought a

little of the spaniel was transferred to him. I saw, too, he had a

hope, which I carefully forbore to contradict, that I preferred him to

any other, and would accept him, could he but win a fortune for me. And

so I sent him out into the world again, full of vain, feverish desires

after the impossible. I gave him all the pains of love without its

consolations. It was good, as far as it went.

John and I, meanwhile, got on very peacefully together. He was not

demonstrative, nor did he exact demonstration from me. I had promised

to marry him, and he trusted implicitly to my faith; while his love was

so reverent, his ideal of maiden delicacy so exalted, that I should

have suffered in his esteem, I verily believe, had my regard been shown

other than by a quiet tenderness of manner.

About this time my uncle's family went abroad. They wished me to

accompany them, but I steadily declined. When they pressed me for a

reason, I told them of my engagement to John, and that I was unwilling

to leave him for so long a time. The excuse was natural enough, and

they believed me; and it was arranged that during the period of their

absence I should remain with a sister of Mrs. Heywood.

The time passed on. I saw William frequently. Often he spoke to me of

his love, and I scarcely checked him; I liked to feed him with false

hopes, as once he had done to me. He did not speak again of marriage; I

knew his pride forbade it. I also knew that he believed I loved him,

and would wait for him.

I heard often from our travellers, and always in terms of kindness and

affection. At last their speedy return was announced; they were to sail

in the "Arctic," and we looked joyfully forward to the hour of their

arrival. Too soon came the news of the terrible disaster; a little

while of suspense, and the awful certainty became apparent. My kind,

indulgent uncle and all his family, whom I loved as I would my own

parents and sisters, were buried in the depths of the Atlantic.

I will not attempt to describe my grief; it has nothing to do with the

story that is written here. When, after a time, I came back to life and

its interests, a startling intelligence awaited me. My uncle had died

intestate; his wife and children had perished with him; as next of kin,

I was sole heir to his immense estate. When my mind fully took in the

meaning of all this I felt that a crisis was at hand. Day by day I

looked for William.

I had not long to wait. I was sitting by my window on a bright October

day, reading a book I loved well,--"Shirley," one of the three immortal

works of a genius fled too soon. As I read, I traced a likeness to my

own experience; Caroline was a curious study to me. I marvelled at her

meek, forgiving spirit; if I would not imitate, I did not condemn her.

Then I heard the gate-latch click; I looked out through the

vine-leaves, all scarlet with the glory of the season, and saw William

coming up the walk. I knew why he was there, and, still retaining the

volume in my hand, went down to meet him.

We walked out in the grounds; it was a perfect afternoon; all the

splendor of autumn, without a trace of its swift-coming decay. Gold,

crimson, and purple shone the forests through their softening haze; and

the royal hues were repeated on the mountain, reflected in the river.

The sky was cloudless and intensely blue; the sunlight fell, with red

glow, on the fading grass. A few late flowers of gorgeous hues yet

lingered in the beds and borders; and a sweet wind, that might have

come direct from paradise, sighed over all. William and I walked on,

conversing.

At first we spoke of the terrible disaster and my loss; he could be

gentle when he chose, and now his tenderness and sympathy were like a

woman's. I almost forgot, in listening, what he was and had been to me.

I was reminded when he began to speak of ourselves; I recalled it

fully, when again, with all the power that passion and eloquence could

impart, he declared his love, and begged me to be his.

I looked at him; to my eye he seemed happy, hopeful, triumphant;

handsomer he could not be, and to me there was a strange fascination in

his lofty, masculine beauty. I felt then, what I had always known, that

I loved him even while I hated him, and for an instant I wavered. Life

with him! It looked above all things dear, desirable! But what! Show

such a weak, such a _womanish_ spirit? Give up my revenge at the very

moment that it was within my grasp,--the revenge I had lived for

through so many years? Never!--I recalled the night under the lindens,

and was myself again.

"Dear William," I said, gently, "you amaze and distress me. Such love

as a sister may give to an only brother you have long had from me. Why

ask for any other?"

"'A sister's love!'" he cried, impatiently. "I thought, Juanita, you

were above such paltry subterfuges! Is it as a brother I have loved you

all these long and weary years?"

"Perhaps not,--I cannot say. At any rate," I continued, gravely, "a

sisterly affection is all I can give you now."

"You are trifling with me, Juanita! Cease! It is unworthy of you."

He seized my hand, and clasped it to his breast. How wildly his heart

beat under my touch! I trembled from head to foot,--but I said, in a

cold voice, "You are a good actor, William!"

"You cannot look in my eyes and say you believe that charge," he

answered.

I essayed to do it,--but my glance fell before his, so ardent, so

tender. Spite of myself, my cheeks burned with blushes. Quietly I

withdrew my hand and said, "I am to be married to John in December."

Ah, but there was a change then! The flush and the triumph died out of

his face, as when a lamp is suddenly extinguished. Yet there was as

much indignation as grief in his voice when he said,--

"Heaven forgive you, Juanita! You have wilfully, cruelly deceived me!"

"Deceived you!" I replied, rising with dignity. "Make no accusation. If

deceived you were, you have simply your own vanity, your own folly, to

blame for whatever you may suffer."

"You have listened to my love, and encouraged me to hope"----

"Silence! I did love you once,--your cold heart can never guess how

well, how warmly. I would have loved on through trial and suffering

forever; no one could have made me believe anything against you;

nothing could have shaken my fidelity, or my faith in yours. It was

reserved for yourself to work my cure,--for your own lips to pronounce

the words that changed my love to cool contempt."

"Oh, Juanita," he cried, passionately, "will you always be so

vindictive? Will you forever remind me of that piece of insane folly?

Let it go,--it was a boy's whim, too silly to remember."

"You were no boy then," I answered. "You had a mature prudence,--a

careful thoughtfulness for self. Or if otherwise, in your case the

child was indeed father to the man."

"Your love is dead, then, I suppose?" he questioned, with a bitter

smile.

I handed him the book I had been reading. It was marked at these words:

"Love can excuse anything except meanness; but meanness kills love,

cripples even natural affection; without esteem, true love cannot

exist."

William raised his head with an air of proud defiance. "And in what

sense," he asked, "do such words apply to me?"

"You are strangely obtuse," I said. "You see no trace of yourself in

that passage--no trace of meanness in the man who cast off the

penniless orphan, with her whole heart full of love for him, yet pleads

so warmly with the rich heiress, when he knows she is pledged to

another?"

"You have said enough, Juanita," he replied, with concentrated passion.

"This is too much to bear, even from you, from whom I have already

endured so much. You _know_ you do not believe it."

"I _do_ believe it," was my firm reply. It was false, but what did I

care? It served my purpose.

"I might bid you remember," he said, "how I urged you to be mine when

my prospects had grown brighter, and you were poor as before. I might

appeal to the manner in which my suit has been urged for years, as a

proof of my innocence of this charge that you have brought against me.

But I disdain to plead my cause with so unwomanly a heart,--that

measures the baseness of others by what it knows of its own."

He went, and for a time I was left in doubt whether my victory had been

really achieved. Then I thought it all over, and was reassured. He

could not simulate those looks and tones,--no, nor that tumult of

feeling which had made his heart throb so wildly beneath my hand. He

loved me,--that was certain; and no matter how great his anger or his

indignation, my refusal must have cut him to the soul. And the charge I

had made would rankle, too. These thoughts were my comfort when John

told me, with grief and surprise, that his brother had joined the

Arctic expedition under Dr. Kane. I knew it was for no light cause he

would forsake the career just opening so brightly before him.

John and I were married in December, as had been our intention. We led

a quiet, but to him a happy, life. He often wondered at my content with

home and its seclusion, and owned what fears he had felt, before our

marriage, lest I, accustomed to gayety and excitement, should weary of

him, the thoughtful, book-loving man. It seemed he had made up his mind

to all manner of self-sacrifice in the way of accompanying me to

parties, and having guests at our own house. I did not exact much from

him; I cared little for the gay world in which William no longer moved.

I read with John his favorite books; I interested myself in the

sciences which he pursued with such enthusiasm. It was no part of my

plan to inflict unnecessary misery on any one, and I strove with all my

power to make happy the man whom I had chosen. I succeeded fully; and

when we sat on the piazza in the moonlight, my head resting on his

shoulder, my hand clasped in his, he would tell me how infinitely

dearer the wife had grown to be than even the lover's fancy had

portrayed her.

And my thoughts were far away from the bland airs and brightening moon

amid the frozen solitudes of the North. Where was William? what was he

doing? did he think of me? and how? What if he should perish there, and

we should never meet again? Life grew blank at the thought; I put it

resolutely away.

I had drunk of the cup of vengeance; it was sweet, but did not satisfy.

I longed for a fuller draught; but might it not be denied to my fevered

lips? Perhaps, amid the noble and disinterested toils of the

expedition, his heart would outgrow all love for me, and when we met

again I should see my power was gone. I pondered much on this; I

believed at last that the solitude, the isolation, would be not

unpropitious to me. From the little world of the ice-locked vessel his

thoughts would turn to the greater world he had left, and I should be

remembered. When he returned we should be much together. His mother was

dead; our house was the only place he could call his home. Not even for

me, I felt assured, would he cast off the love of his only brother. I

had not done with him yet. So quietly and composedly I awaited his

return.

He came at last, and his manner when we met smote me with a strange

uneasiness. It was not the estrangement of a friend whom I had injured,

but the distant politeness of a stranger. Was my influence gone? I

determined to know, once for all. When we chanced to be alone a moment

I went to his side. "William," I asked, laying my hand on his arm, and

speaking in a tender, reproachful tone, "why do you treat me so?"

With a quick, decided motion, he removed my hand,--then looked down on

me with a smile. "'You are strangely obtuse,'" he said, quoting my own

words of two years before. "What can Mrs. Haughton desire from a base

fortune-hunter with whom she is unhappily connected by marriage, but a

humility that does not presume on the relationship?"

I saw a bold stroke was needed, and that I must stoop to conquer. "Oh,

William," I said, sorrowfully, "you called me vindictive once, but it

is you who are really so. I was unhappy, harassed, distracted

between"----

"Between what?"

"I do not know--I mean I cannot tell you," I stammered, with

well-feigned confusion. "Can you not forgive me, William? Often and

often, since you left me that day, I have wished to see you, and to

tell you how I repented my hasty and ungenerous words. Will you not

pardon me? Shall we not be friends again?"

"I am not vindictive," he said, more kindly,--"least of all toward you.

But I cannot see how you should desire the friendship of one whom you

regard as a mercenary hypocrite. When you can truthfully assure me that

you disbelieve that charge, then, and not till then, will I forgive you

and be your friend."

"Let it be now, then," I said, joyfully, holding out my hand. He did

not reject it;--we were reconciled.

William had come home ill; the hardships of the expedition and the

fearful cold of the Arctic Zone had been too much for him. The very

night of his return I noticed in his countenance a frequent flush

succeeded by a deadly pallor; my quick ear had caught, too, the sound

of a cough,--not frequent or prolonged, but deep and hollow. And now,

for the first time in my long and dreary toil, I saw the path clear and

the end in view.

Every one knows with what enthusiasm the returned travellers were

hailed. Amid the felicitations, the praises, the banquets, the varied

excitements of the time, William forgot his ill-health. When these were

over, he reopened his office, and prepared to enter once more on the

active duties of his profession. But he was unfit for it; John and I

both saw this, and urged him to abandon the attempt for the

present,--to stay with us, to enjoy rest, books, society, and not till

his health was fully reestablished undertake the prosecution of

business.

"You forget, my good sister," he laughingly said to me one day,--(he

could jest on the subject now,)--"that I have not the fortune of our

John,--I did not marry an heiress, and I have my own way to make. I had

got up a few rounds of the ladder when an adverse fate dragged me down.

Being a free man once more, I must struggle up again as quickly as may

be."

"Oh, for that matter," I returned, in the same tone, "I had some part,

perhaps, in the adverse fate you speak of; so it is but fair that I

should make you what recompense I can. I am an admirable nurse; and you

will gain time, if you will deliver yourself up to my care, and not go

back to Coke and Chitty till I give you leave. Seriously, William, I

fear you do not know how ill you are, and how unsafe it is for you to

go on with business."

He yielded without much persuasion, and came home to us. Those were

happy days. William and I were constantly together. I read to him, I

sung to him, and played chess with him; on mild days I drove him out in

my own little pony-carriage. Did he love me all this time? I could not

tell. Never by look or tone did he intimate that the old affection yet

lived in his heart. I fancied he felt as I with him,--perfect content

in my companionship, without a thought or wish beyond. We were made for

each other; our tastes, our habits of mind and feeling, fully

harmonized; had we been born brother and sister, we should have

preferred each other to all the world, and, remaining single for each

other's sakes, have passed our lives together.

So the time wore on, sweetly and placidly, and only I seemed to notice

the failure in our invalid; but I watched for it too keenly, too

closely, to be blinded. The occasional rallies of strength that gave

John such hope, and cheered William himself so greatly, did not deceive

me; I knew they were but the fluctuations of his malady. Changes in the

weather, or a damp east wind, did not account to me for his relapses; I

knew he was in the grasp of a fell, a fatal disease; it might let him

go awhile, give him a little respite, as a cat does the mouse she has

caught,--but he never could escape,--his doom was fixed.

But you may be sure I gave him no hint of it, and he never seemed to

suspect it for himself. One could not believe such blindness possible,

did we not see it verified in so many instances, year after year.

Often, now, I thought of a passage in an old book I used to read with

many a heart-quake in my girlish days. It ran thus:--"Perhaps we may

see you flattering yourself, through a long, lingering illness, that

you shall still recover, and putting off any serious reflection and

conversation for fear it should overset your spirits. And the cruel

kindness of friends and physicians, as if they were in league with

Satan to make the destruction of your soul as sure as possible, may,

perhaps, abet this fatal deceit." We had all the needed accessories:

the kind physician, anxious to amuse and fearful to alarm his

patient,--telling me always to keep up his spirits, to make him as

cheerful and happy as I could; and the cruel friends--I had not far to

seek for them.

For a time William came down-stairs every morning, and sat up during

the greater part of the day. Then he took to lying on the sofa for

hours together. At last, he did not rise till afternoon, and even then

was too much fatigued to sit up long. I prepared for his use a large

room on the south side of the house, with a smaller apartment within

it; to this we carried his favorite books and pictures, his easy-chair

and lounge. My piano stood in a recess; a guitar hung near it. When all

was finished, it looked homelike, pleasant; and we removed William to

it, one mild February day.

"This is a delightful room," he said, gazing about him. "How pleasant

the view from these windows will be as spring comes on!"

"You will not need it," I said, "by that time."

"I should be glad, if it were so," he replied; "but I am not quite so

sanguine as you are, Juanita."

He did not guess my meaning; how should he, amused, flattered, kept

along as he had been? To him, life, with all its activities, its

prizes, its pleasures, seemed but a little way removed; a few weeks or

months and he should be among them again. But I knew, when he entered

that room, that he never would go forth again till he was borne where

narrower walls and a lowlier roof should shut him in.

I had an alarm one day. "Juanita," said the invalid, when I had

arranged his pillows comfortably, and was about to begin the morning's

reading, "do not take the book we had yesterday. I wish you would read

to me in the Bible."

What did this mean? Was this proud, worldly-minded man going to humble

himself, and repent, and be forgiven? And was I to be defrauded thus of

my just revenge? Should he pass away to an eternal life of holiness and

joy,--while I, stained through him and for his sake with sins

innumerable, sank ever lower and lower in unending misery and despair?

Oh, I must stop this, if it were not yet too late.

"What!" I said, pretending to repress a smile, "are you getting alarmed

about yourself, William? Or is Saul really going to be found among the

prophets, after all?"

He colored, but made no reply. I opened the Bible and read two or three

of the shorter Psalms,--then, from the New Testament, a portion of the

Sermon on the Mount.

"It must have been very sweet," I observed, "for those who were able to

receive Jesus as the true Messiah, and his teachings as infallible, to

hear these words from his lips."

"And do you not so receive them?" William asked.

"We will not speak of that; my opinion is of no weight."

"But you must have thought much of these things," he persisted; "tell

me what result you have arrived at."

"Candidly, then," I said, "I have read and pondered much on what this

book contains. It seems to me, that, if it teaches anything, it clearly

teaches, that, no matter how we flatter ourselves that we are doing as

we choose, and carrying out our own designs and wishes, we are all the

time only fulfilling purposes that have been fixed from all eternity.

Since, then, we are the subjects of an Inexorable Will, which no

entreaties or acts of ours can alter or propitiate, what is there for

us to do but simply to bear as best we can what comes upon us? It is a

short creed."

"And a gloomy one," he said.

"You are right; a very gloomy one. If you can rationally adopt a

cheerfuller, pray, do it. I do not wish for any companion in mine."

There was silence for a time, and then I said, with affectionate

earnestness, "Dear William, why trouble yourself with these things in

your weak and exhausted state? Surely, the care of your health is

enough for you, now. By-and-by, when you have in some measure regained

your strength, look seriously into this subject, if you wish. It is an

important one for all. I am afraid I gave you an overdose of anodyne

last night, and am to blame for your low spirits of this morning. Own,

William," I said, smilingly, "that you were terribly hypped, and

fancied you never could recover."

He looked relieved as I spoke thus lightly. "I should find it sad to

die," he said. "Life looks bright to me even yet."

This man was a coward. He dreaded that struggle, that humiliation of

spirit, through which all must pass ere peace with Heaven is achieved.

Yet more, perhaps, he dreaded that deeper struggle which ensues when we

essay to tear Self from its throne in the heart, and place God thereon.

As he said, life looked bright to him; and all his plans and purposes

in life were for himself, his own advancement, his own well-being. It

would have been hard to make the change; and he thought it was not

necessary now, at least.

No more was said upon the subject. Our days went on as before. There

was a little music, some light reading, an occasional call from a

friend,--and long pauses of rest between all these. And slowly, but

surely, life failed, and the soul drew near its doom.

I knew now that he loved me still; he talked of it sometimes when he

woke suddenly, and did not at once remember where he was; I saw it,

too, in his look, his manner; but we never breathed it to each other,

and he did not think I knew.

One night there was a great change; physicians were summoned in haste;

there were hours of anxious watching. Toward morning he seemed a little

better, and I was left alone with him. He slumbered quietly, but when

he awoke there was a strange and solemn look in his face, such as I had

never seen before. I knew what it must mean.

"When Dr. Hammond comes, let me see him alone," he whispered.

I made no objection; nothing could frustrate my purpose now.

The physician came,--a kind old man, who had known us all from infancy.

He was closeted awhile with William; then he came out, looking deeply

moved.

"Go to him,--comfort him, if you can," he said.

"You have told him?" I asked.

"Yes,--he insisted upon hearing the truth, and I knew he had got where

it could make no difference. Poor fellow! it was a terrible blow."

I wanted a few moments for reflection; I sent John in my stead. I

locked myself in my own room, and tried to get the full weight of what

I was going to do. I was about to meet him who had rejected my heart's

best love, no longer in the flush and insolence of health and strength,

but doomed, dying,--with a dark, hopeless eternity stretching out

before his shuddering gaze. And when he turned to me in those last

awful moments for solace and affection, I was to tell him that the girl

he loved, the woman he adored, had since that one night kept the

purpose of vengeance hot in her heart,--that for years her sole study

had been to baffle and to wound him,--and that now, through all those

months that she had been beside him, that he had looked to her as

friend, helper, comforter, she had kept her deadly aim in view. _She_

had deceived him with false hopes of recovery; _she_ had turned again

to the world the thoughts which he would fain have fixed on heaven;

while he was loving her, she had hated him. She had darkened his life;

she had ruined his soul.

Oh, was not this a revenge worthy of the name?

I went to him. He was sitting in the great easy-chair, propped with

pillows; John had left the room, overcome by his feelings. Never shall

I forget that face,--the despair of those eyes.

I sat down by him and took his hand.

"The Doctor has told you?" I murmured.

"Yes,--and what is this world which I so soon must enter? I believe too

much to have one moment's peace in view of what is coming. Oh, why did

I not believe more before it was too late?"

I kept silence a few minutes; then I said,--

"Listen, William,--I have something to tell you."

He looked eagerly toward me;--perhaps he thought even then, poor dupe,

that it was some word of hope, that there was some chance for his

recovery.

Then I told him all,--all,--my lifelong hatred, my cherished purpose.

Blank amazement was in the gaze that he turned upon me. I feared that

impending death had blunted his senses, and that he did not fully

comprehend.

"You will remember now what I once told you," I cried, with savage joy;

"for so surely as there is another world, in that world shall you live,

and live to suffer, and to remember in your anguish why you suffer, and

to whose hand you owe it."

He understood well enough now. "Fiend!" he exclaimed, with a look of

horror, and started to his feet. The effort, the emotion, were too

much. Blood gushed from his lips; a frightful spasm convulsed his

features; he fell back; he was gone!

Yes,--he was gone! And my life's work was complete!

I cannot tell what happened after that. I suppose they must have found

him, and laid him out, and buried him; but I remember nothing of it.

Since then I have lived in this great, gloomy house, with its barred

doors and windows. Never since I came here have I seen a face that I

knew. Maniacs are all about me; I meet them in the halls, the gardens;

sometimes I hear the fiercer sort raving and dashing about their cells.

But I do not feel afraid of them.

It is strange how they all fancy that the rest are mad, and they the

only sane ones. Some of them even go so far as to think that _I_ have

lost my reason. I heard one woman say, not long ago,--"Why, she has

been mad these twenty years! She never was married in her life; but she

believes all these things as if they were really so, and tells them

over to anybody who will listen to her."

Mad these twenty years! So young as I am, too! And I never married, and

all my wrongs a maniac's raving! I was angry at first, and would have

struck her; then I thought, "Poor thing! Why should I care? She does

not know what she is saying."

And I go about, seeing always before me that pallid, horror-stricken

face; and wishing sometimes--oh, how vainly!--that I had listened to

him that bright October day,--that I had been a happy wife, perchance a

happy mother. But no, no! I must not think thus. Once I look at it in

that way, my whole life becomes a terror, a remorse. I will not, must

not, have it so.

Then let me rejoice again, for I have had my revenge,--a great, a

glorious revenge!

* * * * *

LEFT BEHIND.

It was the autumn of the year;

The strawberry-leaves were red and sere;

October's airs were fresh and chill,

When, pausing on the windy hill,

The hill that overlooks the sea,

You talked confidingly to me,

Me, whom your keen artistic sight

Has not yet learned to read aright,

Since I have veiled my heart from you,

And loved you better than you knew.

You told me of your toilsome past,

The tardy honors won at last,

The trials borne, the conquests gained,

The longed-for boon of Fame attained:

I knew that every victory

But lifted you away from me,--

That every step of high emprise

But left me lowlier in your eyes;

I watched the distance as it grew,

And loved you better than you knew.

You did not see the bitter trace

Of anguish sweep across my face;

You did not hear my proud heart beat

Heavy and slow beneath your feet;

You thought of triumphs still unwon,

Of glorious deeds as yet undone;--

And I, the while you talked to me,

I watched the gulls float lonesomely

Till lost amid the hungry blue,

And loved you better than you knew.

You walk the sunny side of Fate;

The wise world smiles, and calls you great;

The golden fruitage of success

Drops at your feet in plenteousness;

And you have blessings manifold,--

Renown, and power, and friends, and gold;

They build a wall between us twain

Which may not be thrown down again;--

Alas! for I, the long years through,

Have loved you better than you knew.

Your life's proud aim, your art's high truth

Have kept the promise of your youth;

And while you won the crown which now

Breaks into bloom upon your brow,

My soul cried strongly out to you

Across the ocean's yearning blue,

While, unremembered and afar,

I watched you, as I watch a star

Through darkness struggling into view,

And loved you better than you knew.

I used to dream, in all these years,

Of patient faith and silent tears,--

That Love's strong hand would put aside

The barriers of place and pride,--

Would reach the pathless darkness through,

And draw me softly up to you.

But that is past. If you should stray

Beside my grave, some future day,

Perchance the violets o'er my dust

Will half betray their buried trust,

And say, their blue eyes full of dew,

"She loved you better than you knew."

* * * * *

COFFEE AND TEA.

Facts, and figures representing facts, are recognized as stubborn

adversaries when arrayed singly in an argument; in aggregate, and in

generalizations drawn from aggregates, they are often unanswerable.

To the nervous reader it may seem a startling, and to the reformatory

one a melancholy fact, that every soul in these United States has

provided for him annually, and actually consumes, personally or by

proxy, between six and seven pounds of coffee, and a pound of tea;

while in Great Britain enough of these two luxuries is imported and

drunk to furnish every inhabitant, patrician or pauper, with over a

pound of the former, and two of the latter.

Coffee was brought to Western Europe, by way of Marseilles, in 1644,

and made its first appearance in London about 1652. In 1853, the

estimated consumption of coffee in Great Britain, according to official

returns, was thirty-five million pounds, and in the United States, one

hundred and seventy-five million pounds, a year.

Tea, in like manner, from its first importation into England by the

Dutch East India Company, early in the seventeenth century, and from a

consumption indicated by its price, being sixty shillings a pound, has

proportionately increased in national use, until, in 1854, the United

States imported and retained for home consumption twenty-five million

pounds, and England fifty-eight million pounds.

Two centuries have witnessed this almost incredible advance. The

consumption of coffee alone has increased, in the past twenty-five

years, at the rate of four _per cent. per annum_, throughout the world.

We pay annually for coffee fifteen millions of dollars, and for tea

seven millions. Twenty-two millions of dollars for articles which are

popularly accounted neither fuel, nor clothing, nor food!

"What a waste!" cries the reformer; "nearly a dollar apiece, from every

man, woman, and child throughout the country, spent on two useless

luxuries!"

Is it a waste? Is it possible that we throw all this away, year after

year, in idle stimulation or sedation?

It is but too true, that the instinct, leading to the use of some form

of stimulant, appears to be universal in the human race. We call it an

instinct, since all men naturally search for stimulants, separately,

independently, and unceasingly,--because use renders their demands as

imperious as are those for food.

Next to alcohol and tobacco, coffee and tea have supplied more of the

needed excitement to mankind than any other stimulants; and, taking the

female sex into the account, they stand far above the two former

substances in the ratio of the numbers who use them.

In Turkey coffee is regarded as the essence of hospitality and the balm

of life. In China not only is tea the national beverage, but a large

part of the agricultural and laboring interest of the country is

engaged in its cultivation. Russia follows next in the almost universal

use of tea, as would naturally result from its proximity and the common

origin of a large part of its population. Western Europe employs both

coffee and tea largely, while France almost confines itself to the

former. The _cafés_ are more numerous, and have a more important social

bearing, than any other establishments in the cities of France. Great

Britain uses more tea than coffee. The former beverage is there thought

indispensable by all classes. The poor dine on half a loaf rather than

lose their cup of tea; just as the French peasant regards his

_demi-bouteille_ of Vin Bleu as the most important part of his meal.

Tea first roused the rebellion of these American Colonies; and tea made

many a half Tory among the elderly ladies of the Revolution. It has,

indeed, been regarded, and humorously described by the senior Weller,

as the indispensable comforter and friend of advanced female life. Dr.

Johnson was as noted for his fondness for tea as for his other excesses

at the table. Many sober minds make coffee and tea the _pis a tergo_ of

their daily intellectual labor; just as a few of greater imagination or

genius seek in opium the spur of their ephemeral efforts. In the United

States, the young imbibe them from their youth up; and it is quite as

possible that a part of the nation's nervousness may arise from this

cause, as it is probable that our wide-spread dyspepsia begins in the

use of badly-cooked solid food, immediately on the completion of the

first dentition.

All over this country we drink coffee and tea, morning and night; at

least, the majority of us do. They are expensive; their palpable

results to the senses are fleeting; they are reported innutritious;

nay, far worse, they are decried as positively unwholesome. Yet we

still use them, and no one has succeeded in leading a crusade against

them at all comparable with the onslaughts on other stimulants, made in

these temperance days. The fair sex raises its voice against tobacco

and other masculine sedatives, but clings pertinaciously to this

delusion.

It becomes, then, an important question to decide whether the choice of

civilization is justified by experience or science,--and whether some

effect on the animal economy, ulterior to a merely soothing or

stimulant action, can be found to sanction the use of coffee and tea.

And this is a question in so far differing from that of other

stimulants, that it is not to be discussed with the moralist, but

solely with the economist and the sanitarian.

More even than us, economically, does it concern the overcrowded and

limited states of Europe, where labor is cheap, and the necessaries of

life absorb all the efforts, to decide whether so much of the earnings

of the poor is annually thrown away in idle stimulation.

It concerns us in a sanitary point of view, more than in any other way,

and more than any other people. We are rich, spare in habit, and of

untiring industry. We can afford luxurious indulgences, we are very

susceptible to nervous stimuli, and we overwork.

Our national habit is feeble. Debility is recognized as the prevailing

type of our diseases. Nervous exhaustion is met by recourse to all

kinds of stimulation. We are apt to think coffee and tea as harmless,

or rather as slow in their deleterious action, as any. Are they nothing

more?

As debility marks the degeneration of our physical constitution, so

does a morbid sensitiveness at all earthly indulgence, a tendency to

reform things innocent, although useless, betray the weakness of the

moral health of our day. An ascetic spirit is abroad; our amateur

physiologists look rather to a mortification than an honest building-up

of the flesh. They prefer naked muscle to rounded outline, and seek

rather to test than to enjoy their bodies. Fearing to be Epicureans,

they become Spartans, as far as their feebler organizations will allow

them, and very successful Stoics, by the aid of Saxon will. By a faulty

logic, things which in excess are hurtful are denied a moderate use.

Habits innocent in themselves are to be cast aside, lest they induce

others which are injurious.

There is but little danger that Puritan antecedents and a New England

climate should tend to idle indulgence or Epicurean sloth. We think

there is a tendency to reform too far. We confess our preference for

the physique of Apollo to that of Hercules. We acknowledge an amiable

weakness for those bounties of Nature which soothe or comfort us or

renew our nervous energy, and which, we think, injure us no more than

our daily bread, if not immoderately used.

Science almost always finds some foundation in fact for popular

prejudices. For years, men have continued wasting their substance on

coffee and tea, insisting that they strengthened as well as comforted

them, in spite of the warnings of the sanitarian, who looked on them

solely as stimulants or sedatives, and of the economist, who bewailed

their extravagant cost.

Physiology, relying on organic chemistry, has at least justified by

experiment the choice of the civilized world. Coffee and tea had been

regarded by the physiologist and the physician as stimulants of the

nervous system, and to a less extent and secondarily of the

circulation, and that was all. To fulfil this object, and to answer the

endless craving for habitual excitants of the cerebral functions, they

had been admitted reluctantly to the diet of their patients, rather as

necessary evils than as positive goods. It was reserved for the

all-searching German mind to discover their better qualities; and it is

only within the last five years, that the self-sacrificing experiments

of Dr. Böcker of Bonn, and of Dr. Julius Lehmann, have raised them to

their proper place in dietetics, as "Accessory Foods." This term, which

we borrow from the remarkable work on "Digestion and its Derangements,"

by Dr. Thomas K. Chambers, of London, is only the slightest of the many

obligations which we hasten to acknowledge ourselves under to this

author, as will appear from citations in the course of this article.

The labors of earlier physiologists and chemists, as Carpenter, Liebig,

and Paget, had resulted in the classification of nutritive substances

under different heads, according to the purposes they served in the

physical economy. Perhaps the most convenient, though not an

unexceptionable division, is into the Saccharine, Oleaginous,

Albuminous, and Gelatinous groups. The first includes those substances

analogous in composition to sugar, being chemically composed of

hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen. Such are starch, gum, cellulose, and so

forth, which are almost identical in their ultimate composition, and

admit of ready conversion into sugar by a simple process of vital

chemistry. The oleaginous group comprises all oily matters, which are

even purer hydro-carbons than the first-mentioned class. The third, or

albuminous group, includes all substances closely allied to albumen,

and hence containing a large proportion of nitrogen in addition to the

other three elements. The last group consists also of nitrogenized

substances, which resemble gelatine in many of their characteristics.

The first two groups are called non-azotized, as they contain no

nitrogen; the last two, azotized, containing nitrogen. "All articles of

food that are to be employed in the production of heat must contain a

larger proportion of hydrogen than is sufficient to form water with the

oxygen that they contain, and none are appropriate for the maintenance

of any tissues (except the adipose) unless they contain nitrogen."

Hence the obvious restriction of the first two classes to the

heat-producing function, and of the last two (or azotized) to the

reparation of the tissues.

We have, then, the two natural divisions of calorifacient and plastic

foods: the one adapted to sustain the heat of the body, and enable us

to maintain a temperature independent of that of the medium we may be

in; the other to build up, repair, and preserve in their natural

proportions the various tissues, as the muscular, fibrous, osseous, or

nervous, which compose our frames. These two kinds of food we must have

in due proportion and quantity in order to live. Neither the animal nor

the vegetable kingdom furnishes the one to the exclusion of the other.

We derive our supplies of each from both. More than this, we consume

and appropriate certain incidental elements, which find their place and

use in the healthy system. Iron floats in our blood, sulphur lies

hidden in the hair and nails, phosphorus scintillates unseen in the

brain, lime compacts our bones, and fluorine sets the enamelled edges

of our teeth. At least one-third of all the known chemical elements

exist in some part of the human economy, and are taken into the stomach

hidden in our various articles of food. This would seem enough for

Nature's requirements. It is enough for all the brute creation. As men,

and as thinkers, we need something more.

In all the lower orders of creation the normal state is preserved.

Health is the rule, and sickness the rare exception. Demand and supply

are exactly balanced. The contraction of the voluntary muscles, and the

expenditure of nervous power consequent on locomotion, the temperate

use of the five senses, and the quiet, regular performance of the great

organic processes, limit the life and the waste of the creature. But

when the brain expands in the dome-like cranium of the human being, a

new and incessant call is made on the reparative forces. The nervous

system has its demands increased a hundred-fold. We think, and we

exhaust; we scheme, imagine, study, worry, and enjoy, and

proportionately we waste.

In the rude and primitive nations this holds good much less than among

civilized people. Yet even among them, the faculties whose possession

involves this loss have been ever exercised to repair it by artificial

means. In the busy life of to-day how much more is this the case!

Overworked brains and stomachs, underworked muscles and limbs, soon

derange the balance of supply and demand. We waste faster than

enfeebled digestion can well repair. We feel always a little depressed;

we restore the equilibrium temporarily by stimulation,--some with

alcohol and tobacco, others with coffee and tea. Now it is to these

last means of supply that the name has been given of "accessory foods."

"Accessories are those by whose use the moulting and renewing (that is,

the metamorphosis) of the organic structures are modified, so as best

to accommodate themselves to required circumstances. They may be

subdivided into those which _arrest_ and those which _increase_

metamorphosis." It is under the former class that are placed alcohol,

sugar, coffee, and tea. Again, says Dr. Chambers,--"Not satisfied with

the bare necessaries," (the common varieties of plastic and

calorifacient food,) "we find that our species chiefly are inclined by

a _soi-disant_ instinct to feed on a variety of articles the use of

which cannot be explained as above; they cannot be found in the

organism; they cannot, apparently, without complete disorganization, be

employed to build up the body. These may be considered as extra diet,

or called accessory foods..... These are what man does not want, if the

protracting from day to day his residence on earth be the sole object

of his feeding. He could live without them, grow without them, think,

after a fashion, without them. A baby does. Would he be wise to try and

imitate it?

"Thus, there is no question but that easily assimilable brown meat is

the proper food for those whose muscular system is subjected to the

waste arising from hard exercise; and if plenty of it is to be got, and

the digestive organs are in sufficiently good order to absorb enough to

supply the demand, it completely covers the deficiency. Water, under

these circumstances, is the best drink; and a 'total abstainer,' with

plenty of fresh meat, strong exercise, and a vigorous digestion, will

probably equal anybody in muscular development. But should the

digestion not be in such a typical condition, should the exercise be

oversevere and the victuals deficient, then the waste must be limited

by some arrester of metamorphosis; if it is not, the system suffers,

and the man is what is called 'overworked.'.... Intellectual labor also

exercises the demand for food, and at the same time, unfortunately,

injures the assimilating organs; so that, unless a judicious diet is

employed, waste occurs which cannot be replaced."

Waste, we may be told, is life, and the rapidity of change marks the

activity of the vital processes. True, if each particle consumed is at

once and adequately replaced. Beyond that point, let the balance once

tend to over-consumption, and we approach the confines of decay. Birds

live more and faster than men, and insects probably most of all; yet

many of the latter are ephemeral.

Every-day experience had long pointed to the recurring coincidence,

that, of the annual victims of pulmonary consumption, few were to be

found among the habitual consumers of ardent spirits. Science

volunteered the explanation, that alcohol supplied a hydro-carbonaceous

nutriment similar to that furnished by the cod-liver oil, which,

serving as fuel, spared the wasting of the tissues, just in proportion

to its own consumption and assimilation. Other aid it was supposed to

lend, by stimulating the function of nutrition to renewed energy. Later

investigations have proved that it exercises a yet more important

influence as an arrester of metamorphosis. It was on arriving at this

conclusion, that Dr. Böcker was led to institute a series of careful

experiments to determine the influence of water on the physical

economy, and the real value of salt, sugar, coffee, tea, and other

condiments, as articles of food. "The experimenter appears to have used

the utmost precision, and details so conscientiously the mode adopted

of making his estimates, that additional knowledge may perhaps alter

the conclusions drawn, but can never diminish the value of the

experiments." They are not open to the objections of mistaken

sensations, and honest, though ludicrous, misapprehension of fallible

symptoms, to which the testing of drugs homeopathically is liable, and

of which another instance has just occurred in London, in the "proving"

of the new medicinal agent, gonoine. They rather resemble in accuracy a

quantitative, as well as a qualitative, analysis. We will cite first

the experiments on tea, and quote from the interesting narrative of Dr.

Chambers.

"After Dr. Böcker had determined by some preliminary trials what

quantity of food and drink was just enough to satiate his appetite

without causing loss of weight to his body,--that is to say, was

sufficient to cover exactly the necessary outgoings of the

organism,--he proceeded to special experiments, in which, during

periods of twenty-four hours, he took the amount of victuals

ascertained by the former trials.

"The first set of the first series of experiments consists of seven

observations, of twenty-four hours' duration each, in the months of

July and August, with three barely sufficient meals _per diem_, in

quantities as nearly equal each day as could be managed, and only

spring-water to drink. The second set comprises the same number of

observations in August, September, and October, under similar

circumstances, except that infusion of tea, drunk cold, was taken

instead of plain water.

"Each day there are carefully recorded" qualitative and quantitative

analyses of the excretions,--estimates of "the amount of insensible

perspiration, and of expired carbonic acid,--the quickness of

respiration,--the beats of the pulse,--together with accurate notes of

the duration of bodily exercise in the open air, the loss of weight of

the whole body, the general feelings, and the circumstances,

thermometric, barometric, and meteoric, under which the observations

are taken.

"A second series of seventeen experiments of equal duration were made,

and at a different time of year, so as to answer the question, which

might arise, as to whether the season made any difference."

In these experiments similar observations and records are made as

previously, "under the three following circumstances, namely: while

taking tea as an ordinary drink, on the days immediately following the

leaving it off, and on other days when it was not taken."

"A third series, of four experiments, was also made during four fasts

of thirty-six hours each--two with water only, and two with tea to

drink.

"In the following particulars, all the three series so entirely

coincide, that the conclusions will be set down as general deductions

from the whole.

"Tea, in ordinary doses, has not any effect on the amount of carbonic

acid expired, the frequency of the respirations, or of the pulse."

Obviously, then, it is not with reference to the heat-producing

function that we can look upon tea as in any sense a nutriment; and if

it causes no saving of carbon, its effects must be sought in checking

some other waste, or in the less consumption of nitrogen. The pulse,

and hence the respiration, are unaltered; for the two great processes

of circulation and aëration of the blood are interdependent functions,

and have, in health, a definite ratio of activity one with the other.

As a nervous stimulant, tea in excess will, as we all know, produce an

exaltation of the action of the heart, amounting in some persons to a

painful and irregular palpitation. No such result seems to follow its

moderate use.

"The loss by perspiration is limited by tea." This seems, at first,

contrary to common experience, as the sensible perspiration produced by

several cups of warm tea is a familiar fact to all tea-drinkers. That

this effect is wholly owing to the warmth of the mixture, it being

drunk usually in hot infusion or decoction, was pointed out long since

by Cullen. Tea limits perspiration, perhaps, by the astringent action

of the tannin which it contains,--of which more hereafter. What is

saved by limiting perspiration? Water, largely; carbonic acid, in

considerable amount; ammonia (a nitrogenized substance;) salts of soda,

potash and lime, and a trace of iron, all in quantities minute, to be

sure, but to be counted in the aggregate of arrest of metamorphosis.

But the great fact which establishes tea as an arrester of the change

of tissue is, that its use diminishes remarkably the amount of nitrogen

thrown off by the excretions, specially destined to remove that

element, when in excess, from the system. "We have before called

attention to the fact, that an indispensable component of plastic food,

by which alone the tissues are repaired, is nitrogen. By a

chemico-vital process, nitrogen builds up and is incorporated in the

tissues. Nitrogen, again, is one of the resulting components of the

change of tissue. This element forms a large part of the effete

particles which are rejected on accumulation from such change or waste.

That a less amount is excreted by the tea-drinker, when similar

quantities are ingested, the weight and plumpness of the body remaining

undiminished the while, is proof of the slower change of tissue which

takes place under the modifying influence of tea. The importance of

this effect we shall presently see.

"In the first series of experiments, the daily allowance of food,

though less copious on the tea days, was more nitrogenized, and

nitrogen also was taken in as theine. Yet, in spite of this, the

quantity thrown off in twenty-four hours was nearly a _gramme_ less

than on the water days. Still more strikingly is this shown in the days

of complete fast, when pure spring-water is seen to cause a greater

loss of nitrogen than infusion of tea, in spite of the supply of

nitrogen contained in the latter. The difference also is seen to exist

in spite of an increased amount of bodily exercise."

As final deductions from these experiments, there result, first, "that,

when the diet is sufficient, the body _is_ more likely to gain weight

when tea is taken than when not"; second, "that, when the diet is

_insufficient_, tea _limits_ very much _the loss of weight_ thereby

entailed."

A set of experiments made by Dr. Lehmann are parallel with these. They

exhibit the effects of coffee on the excretion of phosphorus, chloride

of sodium, (common salt,) and nitrogen. If less full than Dr. Böcker's,

they appear to be equally accurate, and more complete in showing the

separate actions of the several constituents of coffee. It would be

tedious to the general reader to follow them in detail, and we shall

avail ourselves of the brief _resumé_ of Dr. Chambers.

"First,--Coffee produces on the organism two chief effects, which it is

very difficult to connect together,--namely, the raising the activity

of the vascular and nervous systems, and protracting remarkably the

decomposition of the tissues. Second,--that it is the reciprocal

modifications of the specific actions of the empyreumatic oil and

cafeine contained in the bean which call forth the stimulant effects of

coffee, and therefore those peculiarities of it which possess

importance in our eyes,--such as the rousing into new life the soul

prostrated by exertion, and especially the giving it greater

elasticity, and attuning it to meditation, and producing a general

feeling of comfort. Third,--that the protraction of metamorphic

decomposition which this beverage produces in the body is chiefly

caused by the empyreumatic oil, and that the cafeine only causes it

when it is taken in larger quantity than usual. Fourth,--that cafeine

(in excess) produces increased action of the heart, rigors, headache, a

peculiar inebriation, delirium, and so on. Fifth,--that the

empyreumatic oil (in excess) causes perspirations, augmented activity

of the understanding, which may end in irregular trains of thought,

restlessness, and incapacity for sleep."

It follows that both the active elements of the coffee-berry are

necessary to insure its grateful effects,--that the volatile and

odorous principle alone protracts decomposition,--and that careful

preparation in roasting and decocting are essential to secure the full

benefits of it as a beverage.

It would be difficult to overestimate the practical importance of these

results. They raise coffee and tea from the rank of stimulants to that

of food,--from idle luxuries to real agents of support and lengthening

of life. Henceforth the economist can hear of their increasing

consumption without a regret. The poor may indulge in them, not as

extravagant enjoyments, but practical goods. The cup of tea, which is

the sole luxury of their scanty meal, lessens the need for more solid

food; it satisfies the stomach, while it gladdens the heart. It saves

them, too, the waste of those nitrogenized articles of food which

require so much labor and forethought to procure. The flesh meats and

the cereals, which contain the largest amounts of this requisite of

organic life, are always the dearest articles of consumption. Certainly

it is not as positive nutriment that we recommend the use of coffee and

tea; for although they contain a relatively large amount of nitrogen,

that supply can be better taken in solid food. Their benefit is

two-fold. While they save more than enough of the waste of tissue to

justify their use as economical beverages, they supply a need of the

nervous system of no small importance. They cheer, refresh, and

console. They thus fill a place in the wants of humanity which common

articles of food cannot, inasmuch as they satisfy the cravings of the

spirit as well as of the flesh.

We have before attempted to show that the human race is liable to a

peculiar and constant waste from the development of the nervous system,

and that the body has to answer for the labor of the mind. At first

thought, we shall find it difficult to appreciate the endless vigilance

and activity of the brain. Like the other organisms which possess a

proper nervous system, man carries on the common organic processes of

life with a regularity and unfailing accuracy which seem to verge on

the mechanical forces, or to be, at least, automatic. All habitual

voluntary acts by repetition become almost automatic, or require no

perceptibly distinct impulse of the will. When we emerge from this

necessary field of labor, we come to those functions peculiar to the

proper brain. Here all is continual action. Thought, imagination, will,

the conflicting passions, language, and even articulation, claim their

first impulse from the nervous centre. The idlest reverie, as well as

the most profound study, taxes the brain. That distinguishing attribute

of man can almost never rest. In sleep, to be sure, we find a seeming

exception. Then only its inferior portion remains necessarily at work

to supervise the breathing function. Yet we know that we have often

dreamed,--while we do not know how often we fail to recall our dreams.

The duality of the cerebrum may also furnish a means of rest in all

trivial mental acts. Still, the great demands of the mind upon the

nervous tissues remain. And it is these losses which may be peculiarly

supplied by the nervous stimulants. Such are coffee and tea. Common

nutrition by common food, and particularly the adipose and phosphatic

varieties, nourishes nerve tissue, no doubt, as gluten and fibrine do

muscle. But the stimulants satisfy temporarily their pressing needs,

and enable them to continue their labors without exhaustion. Reacting

again upon the rest of the body, they invigorate the processes of

ordinary nutrition; for whatever rests or stimulates the nerve

proportionately refreshes and vitalizes the tissues which it supplies.

It would be curious and well worth while to follow out the peculiar

connection between the use of coffee and the excretion of phosphorus,

which has been before hinted at. Other experiments of Dr. Böcker prove

sugar to be a great saver of the phosphates, and hence of bone,--which

affords, at least, a very plausible reason for the instinctive fondness

of children for sweets, during the building portion of their lives.

In exhausting labors, long-continued exposure, and to insure

wakefulness, the uses of coffee and tea have long been practically

recognized by all classes. The sailor, the trapper, and the explorer

value them even above alcohol; and in high latitudes we are assured of

their importance in bracing the system to resist the rigors of the

Arctic winter.

There is of course, as in all human history, another side of this

picture. Abuse follows closely after use. The effects of the excessive

employment of nervous stimulants in shaking the nerves themselves, and

in impairing digestion, are too familiar to need description. Yet even

here abuse is not followed by those terrible penalties which await the

drunkard or the opium-eater. Idiosyncrasy, too, may forbid their use;

and this is not very rare. As strengtheners and comforters of the

average human system, however, they have no superiors, and none others

are so largely used.

It is a little singular that the active principles of coffee and tea

are probably identical,--no more so, however, than the marvellous

similarity of starch, gum, and sugar, or other chemical wonders. They

have been called cafeine and theine, respectively. They are azotized,

and contain quite a marked amount of nitrogen. Chemically, they consist

of carbon 19, hydrogen 10, nitrogen 4, oxygen 4. Some allowance is

therefore to be made for them as plastic food.

This peculiar principle (theine) is also found in the leaves of the

_Ilex Paraguayensis_, or Paraguay tea, used in South America, as a

beverage.

"Good black tea contains of theine from 2.00 to 2.13 per cent.

Coffee-_leaves_ contain of theine from 1.15 to 1.25 per cent.

Paraguay tea contains of theine from 1.01 to 1.23 per cent.

The coffee-berry a mean of 1.00 per cent.

"Besides the theine and the essential oils, which latter give the aroma

of the plants, there is contained in both coffee and tea a certain

amount of difficultly soluble vegetable albumen, and in the latter,

especially, a large quantity of tannin. Roasting renders volatile the

essential oil of the coffee-berry. The tea-leaf, infused for a short

time, parts with its essential oil, and a small portion of alkaloid,

(theine,) a good deal of which is thrown away with the grounds. If it

stands too long, or is boiled, more indeed is got out of it, but an

astringent, disagreeable drink is the result. The boiling of coffee

extracts all its oil and alkaloid too, and, when it is drunk with the

grounds, allows the whole nutriment to be available. Even when

strained, it is clearly more economical than tea."

Roasted coffee is a powerful deodorizer, also. This fact is familiarly

illustrated by its use in bar-rooms; and it might be made available for

other purposes.

The cost and vast consumption of coffee and tea have made the

inducements to adulterate them very great. The most harmless form, is

the selling of coffee-grounds and old tea-leaves for fresh coffee and

tea. There is no security in buying coffee ready-ground; and we always

look at the neat little packages of it in the grocers' windows with a

shudder. Beans and peas we have certainly tasted in ground coffee. The

most fashionable adulteration, and one even openly vaunted as

economical and increasing the richness of the beverage, is with the

root of the wild endive, or chicory. Roasted and ground, it closely

resembles coffee. It contains, however, none of the virtues of the

latter, and has nothing to recommend it but its cheapness. The leaves

of the ash and the sloe are used to adulterate tea. They merely dilute

its virtues, without adding any that are worth the exchange.

The coffee-tree is a native of Ethiopia or Abyssinia. Bruce tells us

that the nomad tribes of that part of Africa carry with them, in

crossing deserts on hostile expeditions, only balls of pulverized

roasted coffee mixed with butter. One of these as large as a

billiard-ball keeps them, they say, in strength and spirits during a

whole day's fatigue, better than a loaf of bread or a meal of meat. The

Arabs gave the first written account of coffee, and first used it in

the liquid form. Burton, in his "Anatomy of Melancholy," mentions it as

early as 1621. "The Turks have a drink they call coffee, (for they use

no wine,)--so named of a berry as black as soot, and as bitter, which

they sip up as warm as they can suffer, because they find by experience

that that kind of drink, so used, helpeth digestion and procureth

alacrity."

The coffee-tree reaches a height of from six to twelve feet, and when

fully grown much resembles the apple-tree. Its leaves are green all the

year; and in almost all seasons, blossoms and green and ripe fruit may

be seen on the same tree at the same time. When the blossom falls,

there springs from it a small fruit, green at first, red when ripe, and

under its flesh, instead of a stone, is the bean or berry we call

coffee. "It has but recently become known by Europeans that the leaves

of the coffee-plant contain the same essential principle for which the

berries are so much valued. In Sumatra, the natives scarcely use

anything else. The leaves are cured like tea. And the tree will produce

leaves over a much larger _habitat_ than it will berries." Should the

decoction of the leaves prove as agreeable as that of the berry, we

shall have a much cheaper coffee; though it remains to be proved that

they contain the essential oil as well as the cafeine.

The coffees of Java, Ceylon, and Mocha are most esteemed. The

quantities produced are quite limited. Manila and Arabia together give

less than 4,500 tons. Cuba yields 5,000 tons _per annum_; St. Domingo,

18,000; Ceylon and the British East Indies, 16,000; Java, 60,000; and

Brazil, 142,000. Yet, in 1774, a Franciscan friar, named Villaso,

cultivated a single coffee-tree in the garden of the convent of San

Antonio, in Brazil. In the estimates for 1853, we find that Great

Britain consumes 17,500 tons; France, 21,500; Germany, (Zollverein),

58,000; and the United States, about 90,000 tons. It is worth remarking

how small is the comparative consumption of tea in France. The

importation of tea for 1840 was only 264,000 kilogrammes (less than

600,000 pounds).

In Asia, coffee is drunk in a thick farinaceous mixture. With us the

cup of coffee is valued by its clearness. We generally drink it with

sugar and milk. The French with their meals use it as we do,--but after

dinner, invariably without milk (_café noir_). And we would suggest to

the nervous and the dyspeptic, who do not want to resign the luxury of

coffee, or to whom its effects as an arrester of metamorphosis are

beneficial, that when drunk on a full stomach its effects upon the

nerves are much less felt than when taken fasting or with the meals.

In the consumption of tea the United States rank next to Great Britain.

Tea is the chief import from China into this country. The tea-plant

flourishes from the equator to the forty-fifth parallel of latitude;

though it grows best between the twenty-third and the twenty-fifth

parallels. Probably it can be successfully cultivated in our Southern

States. Mr. Fortune considers that all varieties of tea are derived

from the same plant. Other authorities say that there are two species,

the green and the black,--_Thea viridis_ and _Thea Bohea_. This point

is yet unsettled. Tea is grown in small, shrub-like plantations,

resembling vineyards. As it is a national beverage, certain localities

are as much valued for choice varieties as are the famous vintage-hills

and slopes of Southern France. The buds and the leaves are used; and

there are three harvestings,--in February, April, and June. The young,

unfolded buds of February furnish the "Youi" and "Soumlo," or "Imperial

Teas." These are the delicate "Young Hysons" which we are supposed to

buy sometimes, but most of which are consumed by the Mandarins.

Souchong, Congo, and Bohea mark the three stages of increasing size and

coarseness in the leaves. Black tea is of the lowest kind, with the

largest leaves. In gathering the choicer varieties, we are told on

credible authority that "each leaf is plucked separately; the hands are

gloved; the gatherer must abstain from gross food, and bathe several

times a day." Many differences in the flavor and color of green and

black teas are produced by art. Mr. Fortune says of green tea, that "it

has naturally no bloom on the leaf, and a much more natural color. It

is dyed with Prussian blue and gypsum. Probably no bad effects are

produced. There is no foundation for the suspicion that green tea owes

its verdure to an inflorescence acquired from plates of copper on which

it is curled or dried. The drying-pans are said to be invariably of

sheet-iron." We drink our tea with milk or sugar, or both, and always

in warm infusion. In Russia, it is drunk cold,--in China, pure; in Ava,

it is used as a pickle preserved in oil.

It would be improper not to notice, finally, the moral effect of

coffee- and tea-drinking. How much resort to stronger stimulants these

innocent beverages prevent can be judged only by the weakness of human

nature and the vast consumption of both.

* * * * *

MEN OF THE SEA.

When the little white-headed country-boy of an inland farmstead lights

upon a book which shapes his course in life, five times out of six the

volume of his destiny will turn out to be "Robinson Crusoe." That

wonderful fiction is one of the servants of the sea,--a sort of

bailiff, which enters many a man's house and singles out and seizes the

tithe of his flock. Or rather, cunning old De Foe,--like Odusseus his

helmet, wherewith he detected the disguised Achilles among the

maids-of-honor,--by his magic book, summons to the service of the sea

its predestined ones. Why is it, but from a difference in blood and

soul, that the sea gets its own so surely? The farmer's sons grow up

about the fireside, do chores together, together range the woods for

squirrels, woodchucks, chestnuts, and sassafras, go to the same

"deestrick-school," and succeed to the same ambitions and hopes.

Reuben, the first-born, comes in due time to the care of the paternal

acres and oxen. Simeon, Dan, Judah, Benjamin, and the rest, grow up and

emigrate to Western clearings. Levi, it may be, pale, thoughtful Levi,

sees other fields "white to harvest," and struggles up through a New

England academy- and college-education, to find a seat in the

lecture-rooms of Andover, and to hope for a pulpit hereafter. But

Joseph, the pet and pride of the household,--what becomes of him?

Unlucky little duck! why could he not go "peeping" at the heels of the

maternal parent with his brother and sister biddies? Why must he be

born with webbed toes, and run at once to the wash-tub, there to make

nautical experiments with walnut-shells?

I know why the boys of a seaport-town take kindly to the water. All the

birds of the shore are something marine, and their table-flavor is apt

to be fishy. We youngsters, who were rocked to sleep with the roar of

the surf in our ears,--one wall of whose play-room was colored in blue

edged with white, in striking contrast with the peaceful green of the

three other sides,--who have many a night lain warm in bed and listened

to the distant roll of a sea-chorus and the swinging tramp of a dozen

jolly blue-jackets,--we whose greatest indulgence was a sail with Old

Card, _the_ boatman _par excellence_,--we who knew ships, as the

farmer's boy knows his oxen, before we had mastered the

multiplication-table,--it is not strange that we should take kindly to

salt water. So, too, all along the lovely "fiords" of Maine, in the

villages which cluster about the headlands of Essex, in the brown and

weather-mossed cottages which dot the white sands of Cape Cod, by the

southern shore of Long Island, wherever the sea and the land meet, the

boy grows up drawing into his lungs the salt air, which passes in

Nature's mysterious alchemy into his blood, so that he can never wholly

disown his birthright. But what is it that draws from the remote inland

the predestinate children of the deep?

Poor little Joseph! he tries to slip along with the others; but when

the holiday comes, instinct takes him straight to the mill-pond, there

to construct forbidden rafts and adventure contraband voyages. The

best-worn page of his Malte-Brun Geography is that which treats the

youthful student to a packet-passage to England. He can tell the names

of all islands, capes, and bays; but ask him the boundaries of Bohemia

or Saxony, the capitals of Western States, and down he goes to the foot

of the class. Thus it continues awhile, till, after a fracas at school,

or a neglected duty on the farm, or similar severance of the bonds of

home, Master Joe may be seen trudging along the dusty seaport-highway,

in a passion of tears, but with a resolute heart, and an ever-deepening

conviction that he must go on, and not back.

Then there is another class,--the poetical, dreamy adventurer, to whom

the sea beckons in every white Undine that rises along the beaches of a

moonlight night, to whom it calls in that mournful and magic undertone

heard only by those who love and listen. These do not often run away to

go to sea; they prefer to voyage genteelly in yachts or packet-ships,

and, if the impulse be very strong, will get a commission in the navy.

However, if circumstances compel a Tapleyan "coming out strong," they

will sometimes face their work, and that right nobly; for there is

nowhere that gentle blood so tells as at sea. The utter absence of all

sham or room for sham brings out true and noble qualities as well as

mean and selfish ones. For ordinary work, one man's muscle is as good

as another's. It is only when the time of trial comes,--when the

volunteers are called to man the boat that is to venture through the

wild seas to pick off the crew of a foundering wreck,--"when the

jerking, slatting sail overhead must be got in somehow," though topmast

and yard and sail may go any minute,--when the quailing mate or

frightened captain dares not _order_ men to all but certain death, and

still less dares to _lead_,--then it is, when the lives of all hang on

the heroism of one, that the good blood will assert itself.

Then there is the class who are _sent_ to sea,--scapegraces all. The

alternative is not unfrequently the one of which Dr. Johnson chose the

other side. The Doctor being _sans question_ a landsman, _he_ never

saw, we warrant, any resemblance to fore and main and mizzen in the

three spires of Litchfield. But the Doctor, not being a scamp, was not

compelled to choose. Many another is not so well off. Like little boys

who are sent to school, they learn what they learn from pretty much the

same motive. Sometimes they turn out good and gallant men; but not

often does it reform a man who is unfit for the shore to dispatch him

to sea. If there are any vices he does not carry with him, they are

commonly to be had dog- and dirt-cheap at the first port his ship

makes.

Then, last of all, there is a large and increasing class who _get_ to

sea. They fall into the calling, they cannot tell how; they continue in

it, they cannot tell why. Some have friends who would rescue them, if

they could; others have no friend, no home, no nationality even, the

pariahs of the sea, sullen, stupid, and broken-down, burnt-out shells

of men, which the belaying-pin of some brutal or passionate mate

crushes into sudden collapse, or which the hospital duly consigns to

the potter's field.

There is a popular idea of the sailor, which, beginning at the lowest

note of the gamut, with the theatrical and cheap-novelist mariner, runs

up its do-re-mi with authors, preachers, public speakers, reformers,

and legislators, but always in the wrong key. There is no use in making

up an ideal of any class; but if you must have one, let it be of an

extinct class. It does not much harm to construct horrible

plesiosaurians from the petrified scales we dig out of a coal-mine or

chalk-pit; but when it comes to idealizing the sea-serpent, who winters

at the Cape Verds and summers at Nahant, it is a serious matter. For

the love of Agassiz, give us true dimensions or none.

So, too, fancy Greeks and Romans may be ever preferable to the true

Aristophanic or Juvenalian article,--imaginary Cavaliers or Puritans

not at all hard to swallow,--but ideal sailors, why in the world must

we bear them, when we can get the originals so cheaply? When the

American "Beggar's Opera" was put upon the stage, "Mose" stepped

forward, the very impersonation of the Bowery. If it was low, it was at

least true, a social fact. But the stage sailor is not as near

probability as even the stage ship or the theatrical ocean. He is a

relic of the past,--a monstrous compound out of the imperfect gleanings

of the Wapping dramatists of the last century. Yet all those who deal

with this character of the sailor begin upon the same false notion. In

their eyes the seaman is a good-natured, unsophisticated, frank,

easy-going creature, perfectly reckless of money, very fond of his

calling, unhappy on shore, manly, noble-hearted, generous to a degree

inconceivable to landsmen. He is a child who needs to be put in

leading-strings the moment he comes over the side, lest he give way to

an unconquerable propensity of his to fry gold watches and devour

bank-notes, _à la sandwich_, with his bread and butter.

With this theory in view, all sorts of nice schemes are set forward for

the sailor, and endless are the dull and decorous substitutes for the

merriment or sociability of his favorite boarding-house, and wonderful

are the schemes which are to attract the nautical Hercules to choose

the austere virtue and neglect the rollicking and easy-going vice.

Beautiful on paper, admirable in reports, pathetic in speeches,--all

pictorial with anchors and cables and polar stars, with the light-house

of Duty and the shoals of Sin. But meanwhile the character of the

merchant-marine is daily deteriorating. More is done for the sailor now

by fifty times than was done fifty years ago; yet who will compare the

crews of 1858 with those of 1808?

There are many reasons for this change, and one is Science. That which

always makes the rich richer and the poor poorer, and which can be made

to restore the lost equilibrium in a higher civilization only by the

strong pressure of an enlightened Christianity, has been at work upon

the sea. Columbus sailed out of Palos in a very different looking craft

from the "Great Republic." The Vikings had small knowledge of taking a

lunar, and of chronometers set by Greenwich time. Sir Humphrey Gilbert,

when he so gallantly and piously reminded his crew that "heaven was as

near by sea as on land," was sitting in the stern of a craft hardly so

large as the long-boat of a modern merchantman. Yet the modern time

does not give us commanders such as were of old, still less such

seamen. Science has robbed the sea of its secret,--is every day bearing

away something of the old difficulties and dangers which made the

wisest head and the strongest arm so dear to their fellows, which gave

that inexpressible sense of brotherhood. Science has given us the

steamship,--it has destroyed the sailor. The age of discovery is

closing with this century. Up to the limits of the ice-fields, every

shore is mapped out, every shoal sounded. Not only does Science give

the fixed, but she is even transferring to her charts the variable

features of the deep,--the sliding current, the restless and veering

wind.

The personal qualities which were once needed for the sea-service are

fast passing away. The commander or the master needs no longer to lean

upon his men, or they to trust in him. He wants drudges, not

shipmates,--obedient, active drudges,--men who can be drilled to quick

execution of duty, even as in a machine the several parts. The navy is

manned after this pattern; but there is a touchstone which sharpens the

edge dulled with routine,--the touchstone of war. When the time comes

that the drum-tap calls to quarters, and the decks are strewn with

sand,--when with silence as of the grave, fore and aft, the frigate

moves stately and proud into the line of her adversaries' fire, then it

is that the officer and the man meet face to face, and the awful truth

of battle compels them to own their common brotherhood. The

merchant-service has few such exigencies. The greater the size of the

ship, the greater the number of the crew. The system of

shipping-offices and outfitters breaks up almost all the personal

contact between master and men. They come on board at the hour of

sailing. A gang of riggers, stevedores, or lightermen work the vessel

into the stream. A handful of boosy wretches are bundled into the

forecastle, and as many more rolled, dead-drunk, into their bunks, to

sleep off their last spree. The mates are set to the task of dragooning

into order the unruly mass. Half the men have spent their advance, and

mean to run as soon as the ship arrives. They intend to do as little as

they can,--to "soger," and shirk, and work against the ship all they

can. The captain cares only to make a quick passage and get what he can

out of the crew. Community of interest there is none. Brutal authority

is pitted against sullen discontent.

In the old days of the little white-headed farmer's boy's dreams, there

were discovery and trading-ships sailing into unknown seas, and finding

fairy islands never visited before. There were savages to trade

with,--to fight with, it might be. There were a thousand perils and

adventures that called for all the manly and ennobling qualities both

of generous command and loyal obedience. It was a point of honor to

stick by ship and captain while ship and captain remained to stick by;

for the success of a voyage depended on such mutual trust and help. But

now where is the sea's secret? There is hardly a square league of water

which has not been sailed over. Find an island large enough to land a

goat upon, and you will find it laid down in the charts,--and, if it be

only far enough south, a Stonington sealer at anchor under its lee, or

a New Bedford whaler's crew ashore picking up drift-wood. Where are the

old dangers of the sea? We are fast learning to calculate for the

storms, and to run from them. Steam-frigates have ended forever the

pirates of the Spanish Main. The long, low, black schooner, which could

sail dead to windward through the pages of the cheap "yellow-covers,"

and the likeness of which sported its skull and crossbones on the said

covers, is to be met with nowhere else. Neither the Isle of Pines nor

the numberless West India keys know her or her romantic commander any

more.

The relations of trade, too, have changed with the changes of Science.

We were once gathered with the group of travellers who are wont to

smoke the cigar of peace beside the pilot-house of one of our noble

Sound steamers. As we rounded the Battery and sped swiftly up the East

River, the noblest avenue of New York, lined with the true palaces of

her merchant-princes,--an avenue which by its solid and truthful

architecture half atones for the flimsiness of its land structures,--as

we passed the ocean steamships lying at the "Hook," the sea-captains

about me began to talk of the American triumphs of speed. "They say to

the Englishmen now," said one, "that we're going to take the berths out

of the 'Pacific.'" (She had just made the then crack passage.) "When

the English fellows ask, 'What for?'--they say, 'Because Collins

intends to run her for a day-boat.'" This extravaganza raised a laugh;

but one of the older brethren shook his head solemnly and sadly. "It's

all very well," said he; "but what with a steamer twice a week, and

your telegraph to New Orleans, they know what's going on at Liverpool

as well as if they were at Prince's Dock. It don't pay now to lay a

week alongside the levee on the chance of five cents for cotton."

It was a text that suggested a long homily. The shipmaster was degraded

from his old position of the merchant's friend, confidential agent, and

often brother-merchant. He was to become a mere conductor, to take the

ship from port to port. No longer identified with the honor and success

of a great and princely house, with the old historic kings of the

Northwest Coast, or of Canton, or of Calcutta, he sinks into a mere

navigator, and a smuggler of Geneva watches or Trench embroideries.

We state facts. Thus much has Science done to deteriorate the men of

the sea. It has robbed them of all the noblest parts of their calling.

It has taken away the spirit of adventure, the love of enterprise, and

the manly spirit which braved unknown dangers. It has destroyed their

interest by its new-modelling of trade; it has divided labor, and is

constantly striving to solve the problem, How to work a ship without

requiring from the sailor any courage or head-work, or anything, in

short, but mere muscle. It interferes with the healthful relations of

officer and man. The docks of Liverpool are a magnificent work, but

they necessitate the driving of the seaman from his ship into an

atmosphere reeking with pollution. The steam-tugs of New York are a

wonderful convenience, but they help to further many a foul scheme of

the Cherry-Street crimps and land-sharks.

For all this Science owes a remedy. It must be in a scientific way. We

have indicated some of the leading causes of the decline of the

seaman's character. The facts are very patent. Step into any

shipping-office, or consult any sea-captain of your acquaintance, and

you will have full evidence of what we say.

The remedy must not be outside the difficulty. You may build "Bethels"

into which the sailor won't come, and "Homes" where he won't stay,

distribute ship-loads of tracts, and scatter Bibles broadcast, but you

will still have your work to do. The Bethel, the Home, and the Bible

are all right, but they are for the shore, and the sailor's home is on

the sea. It points an address prettily, no doubt, to picture a group of

pious sailors reading their Bibles aloud of a Sunday afternoon, and

entertaining each other with profound theological remarks, couched in

hazy nautical language. But what is the real truth of the case? It may

be a ship close-hauled, with Cape Horn under her lee,--all hands on

deck for twelve hours,--sleet, snow, and storm,--the slide over the

forecastle hatchway,--no light below by which to make out a line even

of the excellent type of the American Bible Society, and on deck a gale

blowing that would take the leaves bodily out of any book short of a

fifteenth-century folio,--this, with the men now reefing and now

shaking out topsails and every other thing, as the gale rages or lulls,

in the hope of working to windward of certain destruction.

The remedy, to be effectual, must touch the seaman's calling. It is of

no use to appeal to his better nature, if he hasn't any. If you make a

drudge and a beast of him, you can't do him much good by preaching at

him. The working of the present system is, that there are afloat a set

of fellows who are a sort of no-countrymen. Like the beach-combers of

the Pacific, they have neither country, home, nor friends, and are as

different from the old class of American sailors as the _condottiere_

from the loyal soldier. Let the navigation-laws be enforced first of

all, and see that the due proportion of the crews of every ship be

native-born. Let the custom-house protections be no longer the farce

they are,--where a man who talks of "awlin haft the main tack" is set

down as a native of Martha's Vineyard, and his messmate, who couldn't

say "peas" without betraying County Cork, is permitted to hail from the

interior of Pennsylvania. Let the ship-owners combine (it is for their

interest) to do away with the whole body of shipping-agents, middlemen,

and land-sharks. Jack will take his pleasure ashore,--you can't help

that; and perhaps so would you, Sir, after six months of "old horse"

and stony biscuit, with a leaky forecastle and a shorthanded crew. Jack

will take his pleasure, and that in ways we may all of us object to;

but, for Heaven's sake, break up a system of which the whole object is

to degrade the man into the mere hack of a set of shore harpies. Do not

leave him in the hands of those whom you are now permitting to combine

with you to clear him out as swiftly as possible, and then dispatch him

to sea. Let the captains ship their own crews on board the ship, and do

away with the system of advances. But, at any rate, do learn to treat

the sailor as if he were not altogether a fool. He has sense, plenty of

it, shrewd, strong, common sense, and more real gentlemanly feeling

than we on shore generally suppose, a good deal of faith, and certain

standing principles of sea-morality. But at the same time he has

prejudices and whims utterly unaccountable to men living on shore. He

will forfeit one or two hundred dollars of wages to run from a ship and

captain with which he can find no fault. He will ship the next day in a

worse craft for smaller wages. You cannot understand his impulses and

moods and grievances till you see them from a forecastle point of view.

It may be that Science will solve the riddle by casting aside the works

and improvements of a thousand years,--the "wave line," the spar, the

sail, and all,--and with them the men of the sea. It may be that

"Leviathans" will march unheedingly _through_ the mountain waves,--that

steam and the Winans's model will obliterate old inventions and labors

and triumphs. Blake and Raleigh and Frobisher and Dampier may be known

no more. The poetry and the mystery of the sea may perish altogether,

as they have in part. Out of the past looks a bronzed and manly face;

along the deck of a phantom-ship swings a square and well-knit form. I

hear, in memory, the ring of his cheerful voice. I see his alert and

prompt obedience, his self-respecting carriage, and I know him for the

man of the sea, who was with Hull in the "Constitution" and Porter in

the "Essex." I look for him now upon the broad decks of the magnificent

merchantmen that lie along the slips of New York, and in his place is a

lame and stunted, bloated and diseased wretch, spiritless, hopeless,

reckless. Has he knowledge of a seaman's duty? The dull sodden brain

can carry the customary orders of a ship's duty, but more than that it

cannot. Has he hopes of advancement? His horizon is bounded by the bar

and the brothel. A dog's life, a dog's berth, and a dog's death are his

heritage.

The old illusion still prevails and has power over little towheaded

Joseph on the Berkshire interval. It will not prevail much longer. It

is fast yielding to the power of facts. The Joes of next year may run

from home in obedience to the planetary destiny which casts their

horoscope in Neptune, but they will not run to the forecastle. We shall

have officers and men of a different class,--the Spartan on the

quarter-deck, the Helot in the forecastle. We have it now. A story of

brutal wrong on shipboard startles the public. A mutiny breaks out in

the Mersey, and a mate is beaten to death, and we wonder why the

service is so demoralized. The story could be told by a glance at the

names upon the shipping-papers. The officers are American,--the men are

foreigners, blacks, Irish, Germans, non-descripts, but hopelessly

severed from the chances of the quarter-deck. The law may interpose a

strong arm, and keep the officer from violence, the men from mutiny. We

may enact a Draconian code which shall maintain a sullen and revengeful

order upon the seas, but all fellowship and mutual helpfulness are

gone. When the day of trial comes,--the wreck, the fire, the

leak,--subordination is lost, and every man scrambles for his own

selfish safety, leaving women and children to the flames and the waves.

Why is it that ships, dismasted, indeed, but light and staunch, are so

often found rolling abandoned on the seas? It is the daily incident of

our marine columns. I have been told by an old shipmaster, how, when he

was a young mate, his ship was dismasted on the Banks of Newfoundland,

on a voyage to Europe. The captain had been disabled and the vessel was

leaking. He came into command. But in those days men never dreamed of

leaving their ship till she was ready to leave them. They rigged

jury-masts, and, under short canvas and working at the pumps, brought

their craft to the mouth of Plymouth Harbor. The pilot demanded

salvage, and was refused leave to come on board. The mate had been into

that port before, was a good seaman and a sharp observer, and he took

his vessel safely to her anchorage himself, rather than burden his

owners with a heavy claim. Captains and mates will not now-a-days

follow that lead, because they cannot trust their men, because with

every emergency the _morale_ of the forecastle is utterly gone.

For all this there is of course no universal panacea. Nor do I believe

that legislation will much help the matter. The common-law of the seas,

well carried out by competent courts of admiralty, is better than many

statutes. For emergencies require extraordinary powers and a wide

discretion. There can be no divided rule in a ship. But if every man

know his place and his duty, and none overstep it, there will come

thereof successful and happy voyages. There must be discipline,

subordination, and law. The republican theory stops with the shore.

"Obey orders, though you break owners," is the Magna Charta of the

main. This can be well and wisely carried out only with some

homogeneity of the ship's company, with a community of feeling and a

community of interest. Everybody who has been off soundings knows, or

ought to know, the difference between things "done with a will" and

"sogering." If it be important on land to adjust the relations of

employer and employed, it is doubly important on the sea, where the

peril and the privation are great. For it is a hard life, a life of

unproductive toil, that oftenest shows no results while accomplishing

great ends. It cannot be made easy. The gale and the lee-shore are the

same as when the sea-kings of old dared them and did battle with them

in the heroic energy of their old Norse blood. The wet, the cold, the

exposure must be, since you cannot put a Chilson's furnace into a

ship's forecastle, nor wear India-rubbers and carry an umbrella when

you go aloft. But men will brave all such discomforts and the attendant

perils with a hearty delight, if you will train up the right spirit in

them. Better the worst night that ever darkened off Hatteras, than the

consumption-laden atmosphere of the starving journeyman-tailor's

garret, the slow inhalation of pulverized steel with which the

needle-maker draws his every breath! The sea's work makes a man, and

leaves him with his duty nobly done, a man at the last. Courage, loyal

obedience, patient endurance, the abnegation of selfishness,--these are

the lessons the sea teaches. Why must the shore make such diabolical

haste and try such fiendish ingenuity to undo them? The sea is pure and

free, the land is firm and stable,--but where they meet, the tide rises

and falls, leaving a little belt of sodden mud, of slippery, slimy

weeds, where the dead refuse of the sea is cast up to rot in the hot

sun. Something such is the welcome the men of the sea get from that

shore which they serve. Into this Serbonian bog between them and us we

let them flounder, instead of building out into their domain great and

noble piers and wharves, upon which they can land securely and come

among us.

Some years ago, a young scholar was led to step forth from his natural

sphere into the forecastle of a merchantman. No quarrel with the world,

no romantic fancy, drove him thither, but a plain common-sense purpose.

He saw what he saw fairly, and he has told the tale in a volume which,

for picturesque clearness, vigor, and manly truthfulness, will scarcely

find its equal this side the age of Elizabeth. He owed it to the sea,

for the sea gave him health, self-reliance, and fearlessness, and that

persistent energy which saved him from becoming that which elegant

tastes and native refinement make of too many of our young men, a mere

literary or social _dilettante_, and raised him up to be a champion of

right, a chivalrous defender of the oppressed, whose name has honored

his calling. His book was an effort in the right direction. By that we

of the land were brought nearer to those to whom this country owes so

much, its merchant-seamen. But we want more than the work, however

noble, of one man. We want the persistent and Christian interest in the

elevation of the seaman of every man who is connected with his calling.

We do not want a Miss-Nancyish nor Rosa-Matildan sentimentalism, but a

good, earnest, practical handling of the matter. We call our merchants

princes. If wealth and lavish expenditure make the prince, they are,

indeed, fit peers of Esterhazy or Lichtenstein. But the true princely

heart looks after the humblest of its subjects. When the poor of Lyons

were driven from their homes by the flooded Rhone, Louis Napoleon urged

his horse breast-deep into the tide to see with his own eyes that his

people were thoroughly rescued. The merchant whose clippers have coined

him gold should spare more than a passing thought upon the men who hung

over the yards and stood watchful at the wheel. England's earls can

afford to look after the toiling serfs in their collieries; the

patricians of New York and Boston might read as startling a page as

ever darkened a Parliamentary Blue-book, with a single glance into

Cherry and Ann Streets.

For a thousand years the Anglo-Saxon race has been sending its

contributions to the nation of the Men of the Sea. Ever since the

Welshman paddled his coracle across Caernarvon Bay, and Saxon Alfred

mused over the Danish galley wrecked upon his shore, each century has

been adding new names of fame to the Vikings' bead-roll. Is the list

full? has Valhalla no niche more for them? and must the men of the sea

pass away forever? If it must be so,--it must. _Che sarà sarà_. But if

there is no overruling Fate in this, but only the working of casual

causes, it is somebody's care that they be removed. In almost all

handicrafts and callings the last thirty years have wrought a vast and

rapid deterioration of the men who fill them. Machinery, the boasted

civilizer, is the true barbarizer. The sea has not escaped. Its men are

not what the men of old were. The question is, Can we let them go?--can

they be dispensed with among the elements of national greatness?

Passing fair is Venice, but she sits in lonely widowhood in the

deserted Adriatic. Amalfi crouches under her cliffs in the shame of her

poverty. The harbors of Tyre and Carthage are lonesome pools. They tell

their own story. When the men of the sea no longer find a home or a

welcome on the shore,--when they are driven to become the mere

hirelings who fight the battles of commerce, like other hirelings they

will serve beneath the flag where the pay and the provant are most

abundant. The vicissitudes of traffic are passing swift in these latter

days; and it does not lie beyond the reach of a possible future that

the great commercial capitals of the Atlantic coast may be called to

pause in their giddy race, even before they have rebuilded the

Quarantine Hospital, or laid the capstone of the pharos of Minot's

Ledge.

* * * * *

CHICADEE.

The song-sparrow has a joyous note,

The brown thrush whistles bold and free;

But my little singing-bird at home

Sings a sweeter song to me.

The cat-bird, at morn or evening, sings

With liquid tones like gurgling water;

But sweeter by far, to my fond ear,

Is the voice of my little daughter.

Four years and a half since she was born,

The blackcaps piping cheerily,--

And so, as she came in winter with them,

She is called our Chicadee.

She sings to her dolls, she sings alone,

And singing round the house she goes,--

Out-doors or within, her happy heart

With a childlike song o'erflows.

Her mother and I, though busy, hear,--

With mingled pride and pleasure listening,--

And thank the inspiring Giver of song,

While a tear in our eye is glistening.

Oh! many a bird of sweetest song

I hear, when in woods or meads I roam;

But sweeter by far than all, to me,

Is my Chicadee at home.

* * * * *

THE ILLUSTRIOUS OBSCURE.

A SECOND LETTER FROM PAUL POTTER, OF NEW YORK, TO THE DON ROBERTO

WAGONERO, COMMORANT OF WASHINGTON, IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.

22,728, Five Hundred and Fifty-First St., }

New York, June 1, 1858. }

Dear Don Bobus,--I see that you have been Christian enough to send my

last letter to "The Atlantic Monthly," and that the editors of that

famous work have confirmed my opinion of their high taste by printing

it. Your disposition of my MSS. I do not quarrel with; although it must

be regarded in law as an illegal liberty, inasmuch as the Court of

Chancery has decided that a man does not part with property in his own

letters merely by sending them; but I ask permission to hint that your

conduct will acquire a certain graceful rotundity, if you will remit to

me in current funds the munificent sum of money which the whole-souled

and gentlemanly proprietors--pardon the verbal habits of my humble

calling!--have without doubt already remitted to you. _Pecunia prima

quaerenda, virtus post nummos_. Mind you, I do not expect to be as well

paid as Sannazarius.

"Who the deuse was he?" I hear you growling.

My dear Iberian friend, I really thought that you knew everything; but

I find that you have set up for an Admirable Crichton upon an

inadequate capital. Know, then, that a great many years ago

Sannazarius--never mind who he was,--I do not justly know,

myself--wrote an hexastich on the city of Venice, and sent it to the

potent Senators of that moist settlement. It was as follows:--

"Viderat Adriacis Venetam Neptunus in undis

Stare urbem et toti ponere jura mari.

Nunc mihi Tarpeias quantumvis, Jupiter, arces,

Objice, et ilia tui moenia Martis, ait;

Sic Pelago Tibrim praefers; urbem aspice utramque,

Illam homines dices, hanc posuisse deos."

Which may be liberally rendered thus:--

When sea-faring Neptune saw Venice well-founded

And stiffly coercing the Adrian main,

The jolly tar cried, in a rapture unbounded:

"Why, d--ash my eyes, Jove, but I have you again;

You may boast of your city, and Mars of his walling;

But while I'm afloat, I'll stick to it that mine

Beats yours into rope-yarn in spite of your bawling,

Just as snuffy old Tiber is flogged by the brine;

And he who the difference cannot discern

Is a lob-sided lubber from bowsprit to stern.

"Very free, indeed!" you will say. It might have been worse, if I had

staid at college a year or two longer, or if I had been elevated to a

place in the Triennial Catalogue,--thus:

PAULUS POTTER, LL.D., S.T.D.; Barat.

V. Gubernator, Lit. Hum. Prof.,

e Cong., Praeses Rerumpub. Foed., A.B.

Yal., M.D. Dart., D.D. Dart., P.D.

V. Mon., etc., etc., etc.

I have put myself down _stelliger_, because it is certain, that, after

obtaining all the above honors, if not an inmate of the cold and silent

tomb, I should be false to my duties as a member of society, and a

nuisance to my fellow-creatures. The little anachronism of translating

after being translated you will also pardon; and talking of the tomb,

let us return to Sannazarius. I pray that your nicely noble nose may

not be offended by the tarry flavor of my version. You will find the

Latin in Howell's "Survey of Venice," 1651,--a book so thoroughly

useless, and so scarce withal, that I am sure it must be in your

library. By the way, as you have written travels in all parts of this

and other worlds, without so much as stirring from your arm-chair, and

have calmly and coolly published the same, I must quote to you the

rebuke of Howell, who says, "He would not have adventured upon the

remote, outlandish subject, had he not bin himself upon the place; had

he not had practicall conversation with the people of whom he writes."

This veracious person very properly dedicated his book to the saints in

Parliament assembled, many of whom had, soon after, ample leisure for

perusing the fat folio. Nor is it perfectly certain that you have read

the book, although you may own it; since it is your sublime pleasure to

collect books like Guiccardini's History, which somebody went to the

galleys rather than read through.

But let us return, my dear Bobus, to the money question. Know, then,

that the Sannazarian performance above quoted, so different from the

language of the malignant and turbaned Turks, filled with rapture the

first Senator and the second Senator and all the other Senators

mentioned in Act I., Scene 3, of "Othello," so that, in grand

committee, and, for all I know to the contrary, with Brabantio in the

chair, they voted to the worthy author a reward of three hundred

zechins, or, to state it cambistically in our own beloved Columbian

currency, $1,233.20,--this being the highest literary remuneration upon

record, if we except the untold sums lavished by "The New York Blotter"

upon the fascinating author of "Steel and Strychnine; or, the Dagger

and the Bowl." But as we have had enough of Sannazarius, let us leave

him with the gentle hope that his check was cashed in specie at the

Rialto Bank, and that he made a good use of the money.

Now, dear Don, in the great case of Virtue _vs_. Money, I appear for

the defendant. Confound Virtue, say I, and the whole tribe of the

Virtuous! I am as weary of both as was that sensible Athenian of

hearing Aristides called _The Just_; and if I had been there, and a

legal voter, I know into which box my humble oyster-shell would have

been plumped. Such was the vile, self-complacent habit of the

Athenians, that I suspect the best fellows then were not good fellows

at all. And what did the son of Lysimachus make by being recalled from

banishment? He died so poor, that he was buried at the public charge,

and left a couple of daughters as out-door pensioners upon public

charity. The Athenians, I aver, were a duncified race; and it would

have pleased me hugely to have been in the neighborhood when Alcibiades

rescinded his dog's charming tail,--a fine practical protest, although

unpleasant to the dog. Virtue may be well enough by way of variety; but

for a good, steady, permanent pleasure, commend me to Avarice! Yes, O

my Bobus, I, who was once, as to money, "still in motion of raging

waste," and, like Timon, "senseless of expense,"--I, who have many a

time borrowed cash of you with amiable recklessness, and have never

asked you to take it back again,--I, who have had many a race with the

constable, and have sometimes been overtaken,--I, who have in my callow

days spoken disrespectfully of Mammon in several charming copies of

verses,--I am waxing sordid. I am for the King of Lydia against Solon.

How do I know that the insolent Cyras was not blandished out of his

bloodthirsty intention of roasting his deposed brother by a little cash

which the son of Gyges had saved out of the wide, weltering wreck of

his wealth, and had concealed in his boots? Royal palms were not wholly

free from _pruritus_ even then. Why has this silly world still

persisted in putting long ears upon Midas? I do not know whether he

sang better or worse than Apollo; and I am sure it is much better, and

bespeaks more sense, to play the flute ill than to play it well. Depend

upon it, his Majesty of Phrygia has been very much abused by the

mythologists. With that particular skill of his, during an epidemic of

the _brevitas pecuniaria_, (_Angl._ shorts,) he would have been just

the person to coax into one's house of accompt, at five minutes before

two o'clock in the afternoon, to work a little involuntary

transmutation,--to change the coal-scuttle into ingots, and the ruler

into a great, gorged, glittering _rouleau_. So little would his

auricular eccentricity have hindered his welcome, that I verily believe

he would have been heartily received, if he had come with ensanguined

chaps straight from the pillory, and had left both ears nailed to the

post.

Don't talk to me about filthy lucre! Pray, when would Sheikh Tâhâr,

that eminent Koordish saint, have become convinced that he was a great

sinner, if they had not carried about the contribution-boxes in the

little New England churches? Do you think it has cost nothing to

demonstrate to the widows of Scindiah the folly of _suttee_? Don't you

know that it has been an expensive work to persuade the Khonds of

Goomsoor to give up roasting each other in the name of Heaven? Very

fine is Epictetus,--but wilt he be your bail? Will Diogenes bring home

legs of mutton? Can you breakfast upon the simple fact that riches have

wings and use them? Can you lunch upon _vanitas vanitatum_? Are loaves

and fishes intrinsically wicked? As for Virtue, we have the opinion of

Horace himself, that it is viler than the vilest weed, without fortune

to support it. Poets, of all men, are supposed to live most easily upon

air; and yet, Don Bob, is not a fat poet, like Jamie Thomson, quite

likely, although plumper than beseems a bard, to be ten thousand times

healthier in his singing than my Lord Byron thinning himself upon cold

potatoes and vinegar? Do you think that Ovid cuts a very respectable

figure, blubbering on the Euxine shore and sending penitential letters

to Augustus and afterward to Tiberius? He was a poor puppy, and as well

deserved to have three wives as any sinner I ever heard of. Don't you

think, that, if the cities of Smyrna, Chios, Colophon, Salamis, Rhodes,

Argos, and Athens had given over disputing about the birthplace of the

author of the "Iliad" and other poems, and had "pooled in" a handsome

sum to send him to a blind asylum, it would have been a sensible

proceeding? Do you think Milton would have written less sublimely, if

he had been more prosperous? Do you think Otway choking, or Hudibras

Butler dying by inches of slow starvation, pleasant to look upon? Are

we to keep any terms with the thin-visaged jade, Poverty, after she has

broken down a great soul like John Dryden's? That is a very foolish

notion which has so long and so universally prevailed, that a poet

must, by the necessity of the case, be poor. David was reckoned an

eminent bard in his day, and he was a king; and Solomon, another sweet

singer, was a king also. Depend upon it, no man sings, or thinks, or,

if he be a man, works, the worse for being tolerably provided for in

basket and pocket-money.

Objectively considered, I say that there is not in this world a sadder

sight, one so touchingly suggestive of departed joys, departed never to

return, as a pocketbook, flat, planed, exenterated, crushed by the

elephantine foot of Fate,--nor is there one so ridiculous, inutile,

impertinent, possibly reproachful and disagreeably didactic. Think of

it, Don Bob,--for you in your day, as I in mine, have seen it. 'Tis so

much leather stripped from the innocent beast, and cured and colored

and polished and stamped to no purpose,--with a prodigious show of

empty compartments, like banquet-halls deserted. It has a clasp to

mount guard over nothing,--a clasp made of steel digged from the bowels

of the earth, and smelted and hammered and burnished, only to keep

watch and ward after the thief has made his visit leisurely. 'Tis an

egregious chaos. 'Tis an absurd vacuum. To make it still more

unpleasant, there are your memoranda. You are reminded that upon

Thursday last you purchased butter flavous, or chops rosy; but where is

hint, sign, direction, or instruction touching the purchase of either

upon Thursday next? How much would it have helped poor Belisarius, in

his sore estate, if he had kept a record of his household expenses, as

my friend Minimus does? By the same token, he sometimes makes odd

misentries, pious figurative fictions, in order to save the feelings of

Mrs. Minimus, who is auditor-general and comptroller of the household.

And speaking of Belisarius, just fancy the hard fate of that gallant

and decayed soldier! Figure him left naked by the master whom he had

served so well, crying out for a beggarly _obolus_! Now this, you must

know, was one of the least respectable coins of ancient times, being of

about the value of one farthing sterling. If the poor man had got his

battered old helmet full of them, the ponderous alms would not have

driven the wolf gaunt and grinning many paces from his squalid

home,--always admitting that he had any home, however squalid, to crawl

into at sunset. And how often he crouched and whined, white-headed and

bare-headed all day, and did not get a _lepton_ (which was, in value,

thirty-one three hundred thirty-sixths of an English farthing) for his

pains! 'Tis such a pitiful story, that I am truly glad that the eminent

German scholar, Nicotinus of Heidelberg, in his work upon the Greek

Particle, has pretty clearly shown (Vol. xxviii. pp. 2850 to 5945) that

the story may be regarded as a myth, illustrating the great, eternal,

and universal danger of ultimate seediness, in which the most

prosperous creatures live. And just think of Napoleon squabbling about

wine with Sir Hudson Lowe,--the hero of Areola, without courage enough

to hang himself. Now you will notice, my dear friend, that he did not

lose his dignity, until, with true British instinct, they took away his

cash, and even opened his letters to confiscate his remittances. He

should have hidden the imperial spoons in a secret pocket. He should,

at least, have saved a sixpence wherewithal to buy Mr. Alison.

You may think, dear Don, that my views are exceedingly sordid. I

readily admit that all the philosophy and poetry, and I suppose I must

add the morality, of the world are against me. I know that it is

prettier to turn up one's nose at ready cash. I have not found, indeed,

that for the poetical pauper, in his proper person, the world, whether

sentimental or stolid, has any deep reverence. Will old Jacob Plum, who

lives on an unapproachably high avenue,--his house front and his heart

of the same material,--and who made two mints of money in the patent

_poudrette_, come to my shabby little attic in Nassau Street, and ask

me to dinner simply because "The Samos (Ill.) Aristarchean" has spoken

with condescending blandness of my poems? I know that Miss Plum dotes

upon my productions. I know that she pictures me to herself as a

Corydon in sky-blue smalls and broad-brimmed straw hat, playing elegies

in five flats, or driving the silly sheep home through the evening

shades. Now, whatever else I may be, I am not that. I keep my

refinement for gala-days; I do not shave, because I would save

sixpences; I do not wear purple and fine linen. I should be a woful

disappointment to Mistress Plum: for I like beer with my beef, and a

heart-easing tug at my pipe afterwards; and as for the album, we should

never get along at all, for I have too much respect for poetry to write

it for nothing. But if I have not wholly escaped the shiftlessness and

improvidence of my vocation,--if I have never rightly comprehended the

noble maxim, "A penny saved is a penny gained," (which cannot in rigid

mathesis be true, because by saving the penny you miss the enjoyment:

that is, half-and-half, chops, or cheese, which the penny aforesaid

would purchase; so that the penny saved is no better than pebbles which

you may gather by the bushel upon any shore,)--if I like to haunt Old

Tom's, and talk of politics and poetry with the dear shabby set who

nightly gather there, and are so fraternally blind to the holes in each

other's coats,--why it is all a matter between myself and Mrs. Potter,

and perhaps the clock. We have a good, stout, manly supper,--no Apician

kickshaws, the triumphs of palate-science,--no nightingales' tongues,

no peacocks' brains, no French follies,--but just a rasher or so, in

its naked and elegant simplicity. Montaigne's cook, who treated of his

art with a settled countenance and magisterial gravity, would have

turned his nose skyward at our humble repast; and he would have cast

like scorn upon that to which Milton with such charming grace invited

his friend, in one of those matchless sonnets which make us weep to

think that the author did not write a hundred of them. But Montaigne's

cook may follow his first master, the late Cardinal Caraffa, to that

place where there will always be fire for his saucepans! The epicures

of Old Tom's would deal very crisply with that spit-bearing Italian, or

his shade, should it appear to them. We are not very polished, but most

of us could give hints to men richer than we can hope to be of a wiser

use of money than the world is in any danger of witnessing. There is

Old Sanders, the proof-reader,--"Illegitimate S." we call him,--who

knows where there is an exquisite black-letter Chaucer which he pants

to possess, and which he would possess, were it not for a fear of Mrs.

Sanders and a tender love of the little Sanderses. There is young

Smooch,--he who smashed the Fly-Gallery in "The Mahlstick" newspaper,

and was not for a moment taken in by the new Titian. There is

Crosshatch, who has the marvellous etching by Rembrandt, of which there

are only three copies in the world, and which he will not sell,--no,

Sir,--not to the British Museum. There is Mr. Brevier Lead, who has in

my time successively and successfully smitten and smashed all the

potentates, big and little, of Europe, and who has in his museum a

wooden model of the Alsop bomb. Give them money, and Sanders will

rebuild and refurnish the Alexandrian Library,--Smooch will bid every

young painter in America reset his palette and try again,--and Brevier

Lead will be fool enough to start a newspaper upon his own account,

and, while his purse holds out to bleed, will make it a good one. But

until all these high and mighty things happen,--until we come into our

property,--we must make the best of matters. I know a clever Broadway

publisher, who, if I were able to meet the expenses, would bring out my

minor poems in all the pomp of cream-laid paper, and with all the

circumstance of velvet binding, with illustrations by Darley, and with

favorable notices in all the newspapers. I should cut a fine figure,

metaphorically, if not arithmetically speaking; whereas my farthing

rush-light is now sputtering, clinkering, and guttering to waste, and

all because I have not a pair of silver snuffers. If you wish me to

move the world, produce your lever! Your wealthy bard has at least

audience; and if he cannot sing, he may thank his own hoarse throat,

and not the Destinies.

For myself, dear Don Bob, having come into my inheritance of oblivion

while living,--having in vain called upon Fame to sound the trumpet,

which I am sure is so obstinately plugged that it will never syllable

my name,--having resolutely determined to be nobody,--I do not waste my

sympathy upon myself, but generously bestow it upon a mob of fine

fellows in all ages, who deserved, but did not grasp, a better fortune.

All that live in human recollection are but a handful to the tribes

that have been forgotten. You will be kind enough, my sardonic friend,

to repress your sneers. I tell you that a great many worthy gentlemen

and ladies have been shouldered out of the Pantheon who deserved at

least a corner, and who would not while living have given sixpence to

insure immortality, so certain were they of monuments harder than

brass. The murrain among the poets is the severest. For, in the first

place, a fine butterfly may have a pin stuck through his stomach even

while living. There are Bavius and Maevius, who have been laughed at

since Virgil wrote his Third Eclogue. Now why does the world laugh?

What does the world know of either? They were stupid and malevolent,

were they? Pray, how do you know that they were? You have Virgil's word

for it. But how do you know that Virgil was just? It might have been

the east wind; it might have been an indigestion; it might have been

Virgil's vanity; it might have been all a mistake. When a man has once

been thoroughly laughed down, people take his stupidity for granted;

and although he may grow as wise as Solomon, living he is considered a

fool, dying he is regarded as a fool, and dead he is remembered as a

fool. Do you not suppose that very responsible folk were pilloried in

the "Dunciad"? My own opinion is, that a person must have had some

merit, or he would not have been put there at all. How many of those

who laugh at Dennis and Shadwell know anything of either? And let me

ask you if the Pope set had such a superabundance of heart, that you

would have been willing, with childlike confidence, to submit your own

verses to their criticism? For myself, I am free to say that I have no

patience with satirists. I never knew a just one. I never heard of a

fair one. They are a mean, malicious, murdering tribe,--they are a

supercilious, dogmatical, envious, suspicious company,--knocking down

their fellow-creatures in the name of Virtue for their own

gratification,--mere Mohawks, kept by family influence out of the

lock-up.

But of all Mohawks, Time is the fiercest. If I were upon the high road

to fame, if I had honestly determined to win immortality or perish in

the attempt, I should look upon the gentleman with no clothing except a

scanty forelock, and with no personal property save his scythe and

hour-glass, as my greatest enemy,--and I should behold the perpetual

efforts made to kill him with perfect complacency. This, I know, is not

regarded as a strictly moral act; for this murderer of murderers is

very much caressed by those who, in the name of Moses, would send a

poor devil to his hempen destiny for striking an unlucky blow. How

continually is it beaten upon the juvenile tympanum,--"Be careful of

Time,"--"Time is money,"--"Make much of Time"! Certainly, I do not know

what he has done to merit consideration so tender. The best that can be

said of old Edax Rerum is that he has an unfailing appetite, and is not

very fastidious about his provender,--and that, if he does take heavy

toll of the wheat, he also rids the world of no small amount of chaff.

But 'tis such a prodigious maw!

You think, Don Bob, that you know the name of every man who has

distinguished himself since the days of Deucalion and Pyrrha. Let us

see how much you know. I believe that in your day you had something to

do with the new edition of the Aldine Poets. I therefore ask you, in

the name of an outraged gentleman, who is too dead to say much for

himself, why you left out of the series my friend Mr. Robert Baston.

You have used Baston very ill. Baston was an English poet. Baston lived

in the fourteenth century, and wove verses in Nottingham. When proud

Edward went to Scotland, he took Baston along with him to sing his

victories. Unhappily, Bruce caged the bird, and compelled him to amend

his finest poems by striking out "Edward," wherever the name of that

revered monarch occurred, and inserting "Robert," which, as I have

said, he was obliged to do,--and a very ridiculous mess the process

must have made of Mr. Baston's productions. This is all I know of

Baston; but is not this enough to melt the toughest heart? No wonder he

prologued his piping after the following dismal fashion:--

"In dreary verse my rhymes I make,

Bewailing whilst such theme I take."

However, Baston was a monk of the Carmelite species, and I hope he bore

his agonies with religious bravery.

And now let us make a skip down to Charles Aleyn, _temp._ Charles I.

"of blessed memory." A Sidney collegian of Cambridge, he began life as

an usher in the celebrated school of Thomas Farnably,--another great

man of whom you never heard, O Don!--a famous school, in Goldsmith's

Rents, near Red-Cross Street, in the Parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate.

Those were stirring times; but Aleyn managed to write, before he died,

in 1640, a rousing great poem, intituled, "The Battailes of Crescey and

Poictiers, under the Fortunes and Valour of King Edward the Third of

that Name, and his Sonne, Edward, Prince of Wales, surnamed The Black."

8vo. 1633. Let me give you a taste of his quality, in the following

elaborate catalogue of the curiosities of a battle-field:--

"Here a hand severed, there an ear was cropped;

Here a chap fallen, and there an eye put out;

Here was an arm lopped off, there a nose dropped;

Here half a man, and there a less piece fought;

Like to dismembered statues they did stand,

Which had been mangled by Time's iron hand."

This is prosaic enough, and might have been written by a surgical

student; but this is better:--

"The artificial wood of spears was wet

With yet warm blood; and trembling in the wind,

Did rattle like the thorns which Nature set

On the rough hide of an armed porcupine;

Or looked like the trees which dropped gore,

Plucked from the tomb of slaughtered Polydore."

So much for Mr. Charles Aleyn.

But it is at the theatre, as you may well believe, that poets live and

die most like the blithesome grasshoppers. The poor players, marvellous

compounds of tin, feathers, and tiffany, fret but a brief hour; but the

playwright, less considered alive, is sooner defunct. I have not

Dodsley's Plays by me, but, if my memory does not deceive me, not one

of them keeps the stage; nor did dear Charles Lamb make many in love

with that huge heap in the British Museum. Alas! all these good people,

now grown so rusty, fusty, and forgotten, might have rolled under their

tongues, as a sweet morsel, those lines which civil Abraham Cowley sent

to Leviathan Hobbes:--

"To things immortal Time can do no wrong;

And that which never is to die forever must be young."

Alas! they had great first nights and glorious third nights,--lords and

ladies smiled and the groundlings were affable,--they lived in a

paradise of compliment and cash,--and then were no better off than the

garreteer who took his damnation comfortably early upon the first

night, and ran back to his den to whimper with mortification and to

tremble with cold. There is worthy Mr. Shakspeare, of whom an amiable

writer kindly said, in 1723,--"There is certainly a great deal of

entertainment in his comical Humors, and a pleasing and

well-distinguished variety in those characters which he thought fit to

meddle with. His images are indeed everywhere so lively, that the thing

he would represent stands full before you, and you possess every part

of it. His sentiments are great and natural, and his expression just,

and raised in proportion to the subject and occasion." You may laugh at

this as much as you please, Don Bob; but I think it quite as sensible

as many of the criticisms of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.,--as that one of

his, for instance, upon "Measure for Measure," which I never read

without a feeling of personal injury. I should like to know if it is

writing criticism to write,--"Of this play, the light or comic part is

very natural and pleasing; but the grave scenes, if a few passages be

excepted, have more labor than elegance." Now, if old Boltcourt had

written instead, as he might have done, if the fit had been on

him,--"Of this play, the heavy or tragic part is very natural and

pleasing; but the comic scenes, if a few passages be excepted, have

more labor than elegance,"--his remark would have been quite as

sonorous, and just a little nearer the truth. For my own part, I think

there is nothing finer in all Shakspeare than the interview between

Angelo and Isabella, in the Second Act, or that exquisite outburst of

the latter, afterward, "Not with fond shekels of the tested gold,"

which is a line the sugar of which you can sensibly taste as you read

it. Incledon used to wish that his old music-master could come down

from heaven to Norwich, and could take the coach up to London to hear

that d--d Jew sing,--referring thus civilly to the respectable John

Braham. I have sometimes wished that Shakspeare could make a similar

descent, and face his critics. Ah! how much he could tell us over a

single bottle of _Rosa Solis_ at some new "Mermaid" extemporized for

the occasion! What wild work would he make with the commentators long

before we had exhausted the ordinate cups! and how, after we had come

to the inordinate, would he be with difficulty prevented from marching

at once to break the windows of his latest glossator! If anything could

make one sick of "the next age," it would be the shabby treatment which

the Avonian has received. I do not wonder that the illustrious authors

of "Salmagundi" said,--"We bequeathe our first volume to future

generations,--and much good may it do them! Heaven grant they may be

able to read it!" Seeing that contemporary fame is the most

profitable,--that you can eat it, and drink it, and wear it upon your

back,--I own that it is the kind for which I have the most absolute

partiality. It is surely better to be spoken well of by your neighbors,

who do know you, than by those who do not know you, and who, if they

commend, may do so by sheer accident.

You never heard of Mr. Horden, of Charles Knipe, of Thomas Lupon, of

Edward Revet? Great men all, in their day! So there was Mr. John

Smith,--_clarum et venerabile nomen_!--who in 1677 wrote a comedy

called "Cytherea; or, the Enamoring Girdle." So there was Mr. Swinney,

who wrote one play called "The Quacks." So there was Mr. John Tutchin,

1685, who wrote "The Unfortunate Shepherd." So there is Mr. William

Smith, Mr. H. Smith, author of "The Princess of Parma," and Mr. Edmund

Smith, 1710, author of "Phedra and Hippolytus," who is buried in

Wiltshire, under a Latin inscription as long as my arm. There is Thomas

Yalden, D.D., 1690, who helped Dryden and Congreve in the translation

of Ovid, who wrote a Hymn to Morning, commencing vigorously thus:--

"Parent of Day! whose beauteous beams of light

Sprang from the darksome womb of night!"--

and who was a great friend of Addison, which is the best I know of him.

He might have been, like Sir Philip Sidney, "scholar, soldier, lover,

saint,"--for Doctors of Divinity have been all four,--but I declare

that I have told you all I have learned about him.

It is grievous to me, dear Bobus, a man of notorious gallantry, to find

that the ladies, after consenting to smirch their rosy fingers with

Erebean ink, are among the first who are discarded. If you will go into

the College Library, Mr. Sibley will show you a charming copy of the

works of Mrs. Behn, with a roguish, rakish, tempting little portrait of

the writer prefixed. Poor Mrs. Behn was a notability as well as a

notoriety in her day; and when I have great leisure for the work, I

mean to write her life and do her justice. The task would have been

worthy of De Foe; but, with a little help from you, I hope to do it

passably. Poor Aphra! poet, dramatist, intriguant strumpet! Worthy of

no better fate, take my benison of light laughter and of tears! Then

there is Mrs. Elizabeth Singer, who was living in 1723, who selected as

the subject of her work nothing less than the Creation, and who was a

woman of great religion. Her poem commences patronizingly thus:--

"Hail! mighty Maker of the Universe!

_My_ song shall still _thy_ glorious deeds rehearse.

_Thy_ praise, whatever subject others choose,

Shall be the lofty theme of _my_ aspiring Muse."

Elizabeth was a Somersetshire woman, a clothier's daughter; and if she

had thrown away her lyre and gone back to the distaff, I do not think

Parnassus would have broken its heart. Then there is our fair friend,

Mrs. Molesworth. Her father was a Right Honorable Irish peer of the

same name, who had some acquaintance, if not a friendlier connection,

with John Locke. Her Muse was rather high-skirted, as you may believe,

when you read this epitaph:--

"O'er this marble drop a tear!

Here lies fair Rosalinde;

All mankind was pleased with her,

And she with all mankind."

Let me introduce you to one more lady. This is Mrs. Wiseman, dear Don!

She was of "poor, but honest" parentage; and if she did wash the dishes

of Mr. Recorder Wright of Oxford, she did better than my Lady Hamilton

or my Lady Blessington of later times. Mrs. Wiseman read novels and

plays, and, of course, during the intervals of domestic drudgery, began

to write a drama, which she finished after she went to London. It was

of high-sounding title, for it was called, "Antiochus the Great; or,

the Fatal Relapse." Who relapsed so fatally--whether Antiochus with his

confidant, or his wife with her confidante, or Ptolemy Pater with his

confidant, or Epiphanes with his confidant--is more than I can tell.

Indeed, I am not sure that I know which Antiochus was honored by Mrs.

Wiseman's Muse. Whether it was Antiochus Soter, or Antiochus Theos, or

Antiochus the Great, or Antiochus the Epiphanous or Illustrious, or

Antiochus Eupator, or Antiochus Eutheus, or Antiochus Sidetes, or

Antiochus Grypus, or Antiochus Cyzenicus, or Antiochus Pius,--the

greatest rogue of the whole dynasty,--or Antiochus Asiaticus, who "used

up" the family entirely in Syria--is more than I can tell. Indeed,

Antiochus was such a favorite name with kings, that, without seeing the

play,--and I have not seen it,--I cannot inform you which Antiochus we

are talking about. Possibly it was the Antiochus who went into a fever

for the love of Stratonice; and if so, please to notice that this was

the wicked Antiochus Soter, the son of Selencus, and the scapegrace who

married his mother-in-law, by the advice of the family-doctor, while

his fond father stood tearfully by and gave away the bride. After such

a scandalous piece of business, I shall have nothing more to do with

the family, but shall gladly return to our talented friend, Mrs.

Wiseman. She brought out her work at the Theatre Royal in 1706, "with

applause"; and the play, I am glad to inform you, brought in money, so

that an enterprising young vintner, by the name of Holt, besought her

hand, and won it. With the profits of "Antiochus" they established a

tavern in Westminster, and the charming Wiseman with her own hand drew

pots of half-and-half, or mixed punch for the company. I should very

much like to see two-thirds of our many poet-_esses_ doing the same

thing.

But enough, probably too much, of this skimble-skamble! If you will

look into a copy of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary, (Worcester's edition,)

you will find the names of nearly a thousand English authors cited in

alphabetical order as authorities. Of these it is safe to say that not

more than one hundred are remembered by the general reader. Such is

Fame! Such is the jade who leads us up hill and down, through jungles

and morasses, into deep waters and into swamps, through thick weather

and thin, under blue skies and brown ones, in heat and in cold, hungry

and thirsty and ragged, and heart-sore and foot-sore, now hopeful and

now hopeless, now striding and now stumbling, now exultant and now

despairing, now singing, now sighing, and now swearing, up to her

dilapidated old temple. And when we get there, we find Dr. Beattie, in

a Scotch wig, washing the face of young Edwin! A man of your pounds

would be a fool to undertake the journey; but if you will be such a

fool, you must go without the company of

Your terrestrial friend,

PAUL POTTER.

* * * * *

"THE NEW LIFE" OF DANTE.

I.

"At that season," says Boccaccio, in his Life of Dante, "when the

sweetness of heaven reclothes the earth with its adornments, and makes

it all smiling with flowers among the green leaves, it was the custom

in our city for the men and for the ladies to celebrate festivals in

their own streets in separate companies. Wherefore it happened, that,

among the rest, Folco Portinari, a man held in much honor in those

times among the citizens, had collected his neighbors at a feast in his

own house on the first of May. Among them was the before-named

Alighieri,--and, as little boys are wont to follow their fathers,

especially to festive places, Dante, whose ninth year was not yet

finished, accompanied him. It happened, that here, with others of his

age, of whom, both boys and girls, there were many at the house of the

entertainer, he gave himself to merry-making, after a childish fashion.

Among the crowd of children was a little daughter of Folco, whose name

was Bice,--though this was derived from her original name, which was

Beatrice. She was, perhaps, eight years old, a pretty little thing in a

childish way, very gentle and pleasing in her actions, and much more

sedate and modest in her manners and words than her youthful age

required. Beside this, she had very delicate features, admirably

proportioned, and full, in addition to their beauty, of such openness

and charm, that she was looked upon by many as a little angel. She

then, such as I depict her, or rather, far more beautiful, appeared at

this feast before the eyes of our Dante, not, I believe, for the first

time, but first with power to enamor him. And although still a child,

he received her image into his heart with such affection, that, from

that day forward, never, as long as he lived, did it leave him."[1]

It was partly from tradition, partly from the record which Dante

himself had left of it, that Boccaccio drew his account of this scene.

In the _Vita Nuova_, "The New Life," Dante has written the first part

of the history of that love which began at this festival, and which,

growing with his growth, became, not many years after, the controlling

passion of his life. Nothing is better or more commonly known about

Dante than his love for Beatrice; but the course of that love, its

relation to his external and public life, its moulding effect upon his

character, have not been clearly traced. The love which lasted from his

boyhood to his death, keeping his heart fresh, spite of the scorchings

of disappointment, with springs of perpetual solace,--the love which,

purified and spiritualized by the bitterness of separation and trial,

led him through the hard paths of Philosophy and up the steep ascents

of Faith, bringing him out of Hell and through Purgatory to the glories

of Paradise and the fulfilment of Hope,--such a love is not only a

spiritual experience, but it is also a discipline of character whose

results are exhibited in the continually renewed struggles of life.

The earthly story of this love, of its beginning, its irregular course,

its hopes and doubts, its exaltations and despairs, its sudden

interruption and transformation by death, is the story which the "Vita

Nuova" tells. The narrative is quaint, embroidered with conceits,

deficient in artistic completeness, but it has the _naiveté_ and

simplicity of youth, the charm of sincerity, the freedom of personal

confidence; and so long as there are lovers in the world, so long as

lovers are poets, so long will this first and tenderest love-story of

modern literature be read with appreciation and responsive sympathy.

But "The New Life" has an interest of another sort, and a claim, not

yet sufficiently acknowledged, upon all who would read the "Divina

Commedia" with fit appreciation, in that it contains the first hint of

the great poem itself, and furnishes for it a special, interior,

imaginative introduction, without the knowledge of which it is not

thoroughly to be understood. The character of Beatrice, as she appears

in the "Divina Commedia," the relation in which the poet stands to her,

the motive of the dedication of the poem to her honor and memory, and

many minor allusions, are all explained or illustrated by the aid of

the "Vita Nuova." Dante's works and life are interwoven as are those of

no other of the poets who have written for all time. No other has so

written his autobiography. With Dante, external impressions and

internal experiences--sights, actions, thoughts, emotions,

sufferings--were all fused into poetry as they passed into his soul.

Practical life and imaginative life were with him one and indissoluble.

Not only was the life of imagination as real to him as the life of

fact, but the life of fact was clothed upon by that of imagination; so

that, on the one hand, daily events and common circumstances became a

part of his spiritual experience in a far more intimate sense than is

the case with other men, while, on the other, his fancies and his

visions assumed the absoluteness and the literal existence of positive

external facts. The remotest flights of his imagination never carry him

where his sight becomes dim. His journey through the spiritual world

was no less real to him than his journeys between Florence and Rome, or

his wanderings between Verona and Ravenna. So absolute was his

imagination, that it often so far controls his reader as to make it

difficult not to believe that the poet beheld with his mortal eyes the

invisible scenes which he describes. Boccaccio relates, that, after

that part of the "Commedia" which treats of Hell had become famous it

happened one day in Verona, that Dante "passed before a door where

several women were sitting, and one of them, in a low voice, yet not so

but that she was well heard by him and his companion, said to another

woman: 'See that man who goes through Hell and comes back when he

pleases, and brings news of those who are down there!' And then one of

them replied simply: 'Indeed, what you say must be true; for do you not

see how his beard is crisped and his face brown with the heat and smoke

of it?'"[2]

From this close relation between his life and his works, the "Vita

Nuova" has a peculiar interest, as the earliest of Dante's writings,

and the most autobiographic of them in its form and intention. In it we

are brought into intimate personal relations with the poet. He trusts

himself to us with full and free confidence; but there is no derogation

from becoming manliness in his confessions. He draws the picture of a

portion of his youth, and lays bare its tenderest emotions; but he does

so with no morbid self-consciousness, and no affectation. Part of this

simplicity is due, undoubtedly, to the character of the times, part to

his own youthfulness, part to downright faith in his own genius. It was

the fashion for poets to tell of their loves; in following the fashion,

he not only gave expression to real feeling, but claimed his rank among

the poets, and set a new style, from which love-poetry was to take a

fresh date.

This first essay of his poetic powers exhibits the foundation upon

which his later life was built. The figure of Beatrice, which appears

veiled under the allegory, and indistinct in the bright cloud of the

mysticism of the "Divina Commedia," takes her place in life and on the

earth through the "Vita Nuova," as definitely as Dante himself. She is

no allegorized piece of humanity, no impersonation of attributes, but

an actual woman,--beautiful, modest, gentle, with companions only less

beautiful than herself,--the most delightful figure in the midst of the

picturesque life of Florence. She is seen smiling and weeping, walking

with stately maidenly decorum in the street, praying at the church,

merry at festivals, mourning at funerals; and her smiles and tears, her

gentleness, her reserve, all the sweet qualities of her life, and the

peace of her death, are told of with such tenderness and refinement,

such pathetic melancholy, such delicate purity, and such passionate

vehemence, that she remains and will always remain the loveliest and

most womanly woman of the Middle Ages,--at once absolutely real and

truly ideal.

It was in the year 1292, about two years after the death of Beatrice,

and when he himself was about twenty-seven years old, that Dante

collected into this _libretto d' amore_ the poems that he had written

during Beatrice's life, adding to them others relating to her written

after her death, and accompanying all with a narrative and commentary

in prose. The meaning of the name which he gave to the book, "La Vita

Nuova," has been the cause of elaborate discussion among the Italian

commentators. Literally "The New Life," it has been questioned whether

this phrase meant simply early life, or life made new by the first

experience and lasting influence of love. The latter interpretation

seems the most appropriate to Dante's turn of mind and to his condition

of feeling at the time when the little book appeared. To him it was the

record of that life which the presence of Beatrice had made new.[3]

But whatever be the true significance of the title, this "New Life" is

full not only of the youthfulness of its author, but of the fresh and

youthful spirit of the time. Italy, after going through a long period

of childhood, was now becoming conscious of the powers of maturity.

Society, (to borrow a fine figure from Lamennais,) like a river, which,

long lost in marshes, had at length regained its channel, after

stagnating for centuries, was now again rapidly advancing. Throughout

Italy there was a morning freshness, and the thrill and exhilaration of

conscious activity. Her imagination was roused by the revival of

ancient and now new learning, by the stories of travellers, by the

gains of commerce, by the excitements of religion and the alarms of

superstition. She was boastful, jealous, quarrelsome, lavish,

magnificent, full of fickleness,--exhibiting on all sides the

exuberance, the magnanimity, the folly of youth. After the long winter

of the Dark Ages, spring had come, and the earth was renewing its

beauty. And above all other cities in these days Florence was full of

the pride of life. Civil brawls had not yet reduced her to become an

easy prey for foreign conquerors. She was famous for wealth, and her

spirit had risen with prosperity. Many years before, one of the

Provençal troubadours, writing to his friend in verse, had

said,--"Friend Gaucelm, if you go to Tuscany, seek a shelter in the

noble city of the Florentines, which is named Florence. There all true

valor is found; there joy and song and love are perfect and adorned."

And if this were true in the earlier years of the thirteenth century,

it was still truer of its close; for much of early simplicity and

purity of manners had disappeared before the increasing luxury (_le

morbidezze d' Egitto_, as Boccaccio terms it) and the gathered wealth

of the city,--so that gayety and song more than ever abounded. "It is

to be noted," says Giovanni Villani, writing of this time, "it is to be

noted that Florence and her citizens were never in a happier

condition." The chroniclers tell of constant festivals and

celebrations. "In the year 1283, in the month of June, at the feast of

St. John, the city of Florence being in a happy and good state of

repose,--a tranquil and peaceable state, excellent for merchants and

artificers,--there was formed a company of a thousand men or more, all

clothed in white dresses, with a leader called the Lord of Love, who

devoted themselves to games and sports and dancing, going through the

city with trumpets and other instruments of joy and gladness, and

feasting often together. And this court lasted for two months, and was

the most noble and famous that ever was in Florence or in all Tuscany,

and many gentlemen came to it, and many rhymers,[4] and all were

welcomed and honorably cared for." Every year, the summer was opened

with May and June festivals. Florence was rejoicing in abundance and

beauty.[5] Nor was it only in passing gayeties that the cheerful and

liberal temper of the people was displayed.

The many great works of Art which were begun and carried on to

completion at this time show with what large spirit the whole city was

inspired, and under what strong influences of public feeling the early

life of Dante was led. Civil liberty and strength were producing their

legitimate results. Little republic as she was, Florence was great

enough for great undertakings. Never was there such a noble activity

within the narrow compass of her walls as from about 1265, when Dante

was born, to the end of the century. In these thirty-five years, the

stout walls and the tall tower of the Bargello were built, the grand

foundations of the Palazzo Vecchio and of the unrivalled Duomo were

laid, and both in one year; the Baptistery--_Il mio bel San

Giovanni_--was adorned with a new covering of marble; the churches of

Sta Maria Novella, of Or San Michele, (changed from its original

object,) and Sta Croce,--the finest churches even now in

Florence,--were all begun and carried far on to completion. Each new

work was at once the fruit and the seed of glorious energy. The small

city, of less than one hundred thousand inhabitants, the little

republic, not so large as Rhode Island or Delaware, was setting an

example which later and bigger and richer republics have not

followed.[6] It might well, indeed, be called a "new life" for

Florence, as well as for Dante. When it was determined to supply the

place of the old church of Santa Reparata with a new cathedral, a

decree was passed in words of memorable spirit: "Whereas it is the

highest interest of a people of illustrious origin so to proceed in its

affairs that men may perceive from its external works that its doings

are at once wise and magnanimous, it is therefore ordered, that

Arnolfo, architect of our commune, prepare the model or design for the

rebuilding of Santa Reparata, with such supreme and lavish magnificence

that neither the industry nor the capacity of man shall be able to

devise anything more grand or more beautiful; inasmuch as the most

judicious in this city have pronounced the opinion, in public and

private conferences, that no work of the commune should be undertaken,

unless the design be to make it correspondent with a heart which is of

the greatest nature, because composed of the spirit of many citizens

united together in one single will."[7] The records of few other cities

contain a decree so magnificent as this.

It would be strange, indeed, if the youthful book of one so sensitive

to external influences as Dante did not give evidence of sympathy with

such pervading emotion. And so apparent is this,--that one may say that

only at such a period, when strength of sentiment was finding vent in

all manner of free expression, was such a book possible. Confidence,

frankness, directness in the rendering of personal feeling are rare,

except in conditions of society when the emotional spirit is stronger

than the critical. The secret of the active power of the arts at this

time was the conscious or unconscious resort of those who practised

them to the springs of Nature, from which the streams of all true Art

proceed. Dante was the first of the moderns to seek Poetry at the same

fountain, and to free her from the chains of conventionality which had

long bound her. In this he shows his close relation to his times. It is

his fidelity to Nature which has made him a leader for all successive

generations. The "Vita Nuova" was the beginning of a new school of

poetry and of prose as completely as Giotto's O was the beginning of a

new school of painting.

The Italian poets, before Dante, may be broadly divided into two

classes. The first was that of the troubadours, writing in the

Provençal language, hardly to be distinguished from their

contemporaries of the South of France, giving expression in their

verses to the ideas of love, gallantry, and valor which formed the base

of the complex and artificial system of chivalry, repeating constantly

the same fancies and thoughts in similar formulas of words, without

scope or truth of imagination, with rare exhibitions of individual

feeling, with little regard for Nature. Ingenuity is more

characteristic of their poetry than force, subtilty more obvious in it

than beauty. The second and later class were poets who wrote in the

Italian tongue, but still under the influence of the poetic code which

had governed the compositions of their Provençal predecessors. Their

poetry is, for the most part, a faded copy of an unsubstantial

original,--an echo of sounds originally faint. Truth and poetry were

effectually divided. In the latter half of the thirteenth century,

however, a few poets appeared whose verses give evidence of some native

life, and are enlivened by a freer play of fancy and a greater

truthfulness of feeling. Guido Guinicelli, who died in 1276, when Dante

was eleven years old, and, a little later, Guido Cavalcanti, and some

few others, trusting more than had been done before to their own

inspiration, show themselves as the forerunners of a better day.[8] But

as, in painting, Margheritone and Cimabue, standing between the old and

the new styles, exhibit rather a vague striving than a fulfilled

attainment, so is it with these poets. There is little that is

distinguishingly individual in them. Love is still treated mostly as an

abstraction, and one poet might adopt the others' love-verses with few

changes of words for any manifest difference in them of personal

feeling.

Not so with Dante. The "Vita Nuova," although retaining many ideas,

forms, and expressions derived from earlier poets, is his, and could be

the work of no other. Nor was he unaware of this difference between

himself and those that had gone before him, or ignorant of its nature.

In describing himself to Buonagiunta da Lucca in Purgatory, he says, "I

am one who, when Love breathes, mark, and according as he dictates

within, I report"; to which the poet of Lucca replies, "O brother, now

I see the knot which kept the Notary and Guittone and me back from that

sweet new style which now I hear. I see well how your pens have

followed close on the dictator, which truly was not the case with

ours."[9] As Love was the common theme of the verses from which

Buonagiunta drew his contrast, the difference between them lay plainly

in sincerity of feeling and truth of expression. The following close

upon the dictates of his heart was the distinguishing merit of Dante's

love-poetry over all that had preceded it and most of what has followed

it. There are, however, some among his earlier poems in which the

"sweet new style" is scarcely heard,--and others, of a later period, in

which the accustomed metaphysical and fanciful subtilties of the elder

poets are drawn out to an unwonted fineness. These were concessions to

a ruling mode,--concessions the more readily made, owing to their being

in complete harmony with the strong subtilizing and allegorizing

tendencies of Dante's own mind. Still, so far as he adopts the modes of

his predecessors in this first book of his, Dante surpasses them all in

their own way. He leaves them far behind him, and goes forward to open

new paths which he is to tread alone.

But there is yet another tendency of the times, to which Dante, in his

later works, has given the fullest and most characteristic expression,

and which exhibits itself curiously in the "Vita Nuova." Corresponding

with the new ardor for the arts, and in sympathy with it, was a newly

awakened and generally diffused ardor for learning, especially for the

various branches of philosophy. Science was leaving the cloister, in

which she had sat in dumb solitude, and coming out into the world. But

the limits and divisions of knowledge were not firmly marked. The

relations of learning to life were not clearly understood. The science

of mathematics was not yet so advanced as to bind philosophy to

exactness. The intellects of men were quickened by a new sense of

freedom, and stimulated by ardor of imagination. New worlds of

undiscovered knowledge loomed vaguely along the horizon. Philosophy

invaded the sphere of poetry, while, on the other hand, poetry gave its

form to much of the prevailing philosophy. To be a proper poet was not

only to be a writer of verses, but to be a master of learning.

Boccaccio describes Guido Cavalcanti as "one of the best logicians in

the world, and as a most excellent natural philosopher,"[10] but says

nothing of his poetry. Dante, more than any other man of his time,

resumed in himself the general zeal for knowledge. His genius had two

distinct, and yet often intermingling parts,--the poetic and the

scientific. No learning came amiss to him. He was born a scholar, as he

was born a poet,--and had he written not a single poem, he would still

be famous as the most profound student of his times. Far as he

surpassed his contemporaries in poetry, he was no less their superior

in the depth and the extent of his knowledge. And this double nature of

his genius is plainly shown in many parts of "The New Life." A youthful

incapacity to mark clearly the line between the work of the student and

the work of the poet is manifest in it. The display of his acquisitions

is curiously mingled with the narrative of his emotions. This is not to

be charged against him as pedantry. His love of learning partook of the

nature of passion; his judgment was not yet able, if indeed it ever

became able, to establish the division between the abstractions of the

intellect and the affections of the heart. And above all, his early

claim of honor as a poet was to be justified by his possession of the

fruits of study.

But there was also in Dante a quality of mind which led him to unite

the results of knowledge with poetry in a manner almost peculiar to

himself. He was essentially a mystic. The dark and hidden side of

things was not less present to his imagination than the visible and

plain. The range of human capacity in the comprehension of the

spiritual world was not then marked by as numerous boundary-stones of

failure as now limit the way. Impossibilities were sought for with the

same confident hope as realities. The alchemists and the astrologers

believed in the attainment of results as tangible and real as those

which travellers brought back from the marvellous and still unachieved

East. The mystical properties of numbers, the influence of the stars,

the powers of cordials and elixirs, the virtues of precious stones,

were received as established facts, and opened long vistas of discovery

before the student's eyes. Curiosity and speculative inquiry were

stimulated by wonder and fed by all the suggestions of heated fancies.

Dante, partaking to the full in the eager spirit of the times, sharing

all the ardor of the pursuit of knowledge, and with a spiritual insight

which led him into regions of mystery where no others ventured,

naturally connected the knowledge which opened the way for him with the

poetic imagination which cast light upon it. To him science was but

another name for poetry.

Much learning has been expended in the attempt to show that even the

doctrine of Love, which is displayed in "The New Life," is derived,

more or less directly, from the philosophy of Plato. It has been

supposed that this little autobiographic story, full of the most

intimate personal revelations, and glowing with a sincere passion, was

written on a preconceived basis of theory. A certain Platonic form of

expression, often covering ideas very far removed from those of Plato,

was common to the earlier, colder, and less truthful poets. Some

strains of such Platonism, derived from the poems of his predecessors,

are perhaps to be found in this first book of Dante's. But there is

nothing to show that he had deliberately adopted the teachings of the

ancient philosopher. It may well, indeed, be doubted if at the time of

its composition he had read any of Plato's works. Such Platonism as

exists in "The New Life" was of that unconscious kind which is shared

by every youth of thoughtful nature and sensitive temperament, who

makes of his beloved a type and image of divine beauty, and who by the

loveliness of the creature is led up to the perfection of the Creator.

The essential qualities of the "Vita Nuova," those which afford direct

illustration of Dante's character, as distinguished from those which

may be called youthful, or merely literary, or biographical, correspond

in striking measure with those of the "Divina Commedia." The earthly

Beatrice is exalted to the heavenly in the later poem; but the same

perfect purity and intensity of feeling with which she is reverently

regarded in the "Divina Commedia" is visible in scarcely less degree in

the earlier work. The imagination which makes the unseen seen, and the

unreal real, belongs alike to the one and to the other. The "Vita

Nuova" is chiefly occupied with a series of visions; the "Divina

Commedia" is one long vision. The sympathy with the spirit and impulses

of the time, which in the first reveals the youthful impressibility of

the poet, in the last discloses itself in maturer forms, in more

personal expressions. In the "Vita Nuova" it is a sympathy mastering

the natural spirit; in the "Divina Commedia" the sympathy is controlled

by the force of established character. The change is that from him who

follows to him who commands. It is the privilege of men of genius, not

only to give more than others to the world, but also to receive more

from it. Sympathy, in its full comprehensiveness, is the proof of the

strongest individuality. By as much as Dante or Shakspeare learnt of

and entered into the hearts of men, by so much was his own nature

strengthened and made peculiarly his own. The "Vita Nuova" shows the

first stages of that genius, the first proofs of that wide sympathy,

which at length resulted in the "Divine Comedy." It is like the first

blade of spring grass, rich with the promise of the golden harvest.

[Footnote 1: _Vita di Dante_. Milan, 1823, pp. 29, 30.]

[Footnote 2: _Vita di Dante_, p. 69.]

[Footnote 3: For _vita nova_ in the sense of _early life_, see

_Purgatory_, xxx. 115, with the comments of Landino and Benvenuto da

Imola; and for _età novella_ in a similar sense, see Canzone xviii. st.

6. Fraticelli, who supports this interpretation, gives these with other

examples, but none more to the point. Mr. Joseph Carrow, who had a

translation into English of the _Vita Nuova_, printed at Florence in

1840, entitles his book "The Early Life of Dante Allighieri." But as

giving probability to the meaning to which we incline, see Canzone x.

st. 5.

"Lo giorno che costei nel mondo venne,

Secondo che si trova

Nel libro della mente che vien meno,

La mia persona parvola sostenne

Una passion nova."

That day when she unto the world attained,

As is found written true

Within the book of my now sinking soul,

Then by my childish nature was sustained

A passion new.

In referring to Dante's Minor Poems, we shall refer to them as they

stand in the first volume of Fraticelli's edition of the _Opere Minore

al Dante_, Firenze, 1834. There is great need of a careful, critical

edition of the _Canzoniere_ of Dante, in which poems falsely ascribed

to him should no longer hold place among the genuine. But there is

little hope for this from Italy; for the race of Italian commentators

on Dante is, as a whole, more frivolous, more impertinent, and duller,

than that of English commentators on Shakespeare.]

[Footnote 4: The word in the original (Villani, Book vii. C. 89) is

_Giocolari_, the Italian form of the French _jongleur_,--the

appellation of those whose profession was to sing or recite the verses

of the troubadours or the romances of chivalry.]

[Footnote 5: See Boccaccio, _Decamerone_, Giorn. vi, Nov. 9, for an

entertaining picture of Florentine festivities.]

[Footnote 6: The feeling which moved Florence thus to build herself

into beauty was one shared by the other Italian republican cities at

this time. Venice, Verona, Pisa, Siena, Orvieto, were building or

adding to churches and palaces such as have never since been

surpassed.]

[Footnote 7: Cicognara, _Storia della Scultura_, II. 147.]

[Footnote 8: Guido Guinicelli will always be less known by his own

verses than by Dante's calling him

------"father

Of me and all those better others

Who sweet chivalric lovelays formed."

_Purg._ xxvi. 97-99.

And Guido Cavalcanti, "he who took from this other Guido the praise of

speech," (_Purg._ xi. 97,) is more famous as Dante's friend than as a

poet.]

[Footnote 9: _Purgatory_, xxiv. 53-60.]

[Footnote 10: _Decamerone_, Giorn. vi. Nov. 9. _Logician_ is here to be

understood in an extended sense, as the student of letters, or _arts_,

as they were then called, in general.]

* * * * *

AT SEA.

The night is made for cooling shade,

For silence, and for sleep;

And when I was a child, I laid

My hands upon my breast, and prayed,

And sank to slumbers deep:

Childlike as then, I lie to-night,

And watch my lonely cabin light.

Each movement of the swaying lamp

Shows how the vessel reels:

As o'er her deck the billows tramp,

And all her timbers strain and cramp

With every shock she feels,

It starts and shudders, while it burns,

And in its hingèd socket turns.

Now swinging slow, and slanting low,

It almost level lies;

And yet I know, while to and fro

I watch the seeming pendule go

With restless fall and rise,

The steady shaft is still upright,

Poising its little globe of light.

O hand of God! O lamp of peace!

O promise of my soul!--

Though weak, and tossed, and ill at ease,

Amid the roar of smiting seas,

The ship's convulsive roll,

I own, with love and tender awe,

Yon perfect type of faith and law!

A heavenly trust my spirit calms,

My soul is filled with light:

The ocean sings his solemn psalms,

The wild winds chant: I cross my palms,

Happy as if, to-night,

Under the cottage-roof, again

I heard the soothing summer-rain.

* * * * *

BULLS AND BEARS.

[Continued.]

CHAPTER V.

WHICH TREATS OF THE MODESTY OF CANDIDATES FOR OFFICE.

Mr. Sandford sat in his private room. Through the windows in front were

seen the same bald and grizzly heads that had for so many years given

respectability to the Vortex Company. The contemplation of the cheerful

office and the thought of its increasing prosperity seemed to give him

great satisfaction; for he rubbed his white and well-kept hands,

settled his staid cravat, smoothed his gravely decorous coat, and

looked the picture of placid content. He meditated, gently twirling his

watch-seal the while.

"Windham will be here presently, for my note admitted only of an answer

in person. A very useful person to have a call from is Windham; these

old gentlemen will put up their gold spectacles when he comes, and

won't think any the less of me for having such a visitor. I noticed

that Monroe was much impressed the other day. Then Bullion and Stearine

will drop in, I think,--both solid men, useful acquaintances. If

Plotman has only done what he promised, the thing will come round

right. I shall not seek office,--oh, no! I could not compromise my

position. But if the people thrust it upon me, I cannot refuse.

Citizenship has its duties as well as its privileges, and every man

must take his share of public responsibility. By-the-by, that's a

well-turned phrase; 'twill bear repeating. I'll make a note of it."

True enough, Mr. Windham called, and, after the trivial business-affair

was settled, he introduced the subject he was expected to speak on.

"We want men of character and business habits in public station, my

young friend, and I was rejoiced to-day to hear that it was proposed to

make you a Senator. We have had plenty of politicians,--men who trade

in honors and offices."

"I am sensible of the honor you mention," modestly replied Sandford,

"and should value highly the compliment of a nomination, particularly

coming from men like yourself, who have only the public welfare at

heart. But if I were to accept, I don't know how I could discharge my

duties. And besides, I am utterly without experience in political life,

and should very poorly fulfil the expectations that would be formed of

me."

"Don't be too modest, Mr. Sandford. If you have not experience in

politics, all the better; for the ways to office have been foul enough

latterly. And as to business, we must arrange that. Your duties here

you could easily discharge, and we will get some other young man to

take your place in the charitable boards;--though we shall be

fortunate, if we find any one to make a worthy successor."

After a few words, the stately Mr. Windham bowed himself out, leaving

Sandford rubbing his hands with increased, but still gentle hilarity.

Mr. Bullion soon dropped in. He was a stout man, with a round, bald

head, short, sturdy legs, and a deep voice,--a weighty voice on

'Change, though, as its owner well knew,--the more, perhaps, because it

dealt chiefly in monosyllables.

"How are you, Sandford? Fine day. Anything doing? Money more in demand,

they say. Hope all is right; though it looks like a squall."

Mr. Sandford merely bowed, with an occasional "Ah!" or "Indeed!"

"How about politics?" Bullion continued. "Talk of sending you to the

Senate. Couldn't do better,--I mean the city couldn't; _you'd_ be a

d---d fool to go. Somebody has to, though. You as well as any. Can I

help you?"

"You rather surprise me. I had not thought of the honor."

Bullion turned his eye upon him,--a cool, gray eye, overhung by an

eyebrow that seemed under perfect muscular control; for the gray wisp

of hair grew pointed like a paint-brush, and had a queer motion of

intelligence.

"Oh, shy, I see! Just as well. Too forward is bad. We'll fix it. Good

morning!"

And Bullion, sticking his hands in his pockets, went away with a

half-audible whistle, to look after his debtors, and draw in his

resources before the anticipated "squall" should come. Mr. Sandford had

lost the opportunity of making his carefully studied speech; but, as

Bullion had said, it was just as well.

Mr. Stearine came next,--a tall, thin man, with a large, bony frame,

and a bilious temperament. A smile played perpetually around his

loose mouth,--not a smile of frank good-humor, but of uneasy

self-consciousness. He smiled because it was necessary to do something;

and he had not the idea of what repose meant.

"You are going to the Senate, I hear," said the visitor.

"Indeed!"

"Oh, yes,--I've heard it from several. Mr. Windham approves it, and I

just heard Bullion speak of it. A solid man is Bullion; a man of few

words, but all his words tell; they drop like shot."

"Mr. Windham was good enough to speak of it to me to-day; but I haven't

made up my mind. In fact, it will be time enough when the nomination is

offered to me. By-the-way, Mr. Stearine, you were speaking the other

day of a little discount. If you want a thousand or two, I think I can

get it for you. Street rates are rather high, you know; but I will do

the best I can."

Mr. Stearine smiled again, as he had done every minute before, and

expressed his gratification.

"Let me have good paper on short time; it's not my money, and I must

consult the lender's views, you know. About one and a half per cent. a

month, I think; he may want one and three quarters, or two per

cent,--not more."

Mr. Stearine hoped his friend would obtain as favorable terms as he

could.

"You'll have no trouble in meeting the larger note due, Bullion, on

which I am indorser?" said Sandford.

"None at all, I think," was the reply.

"Two birds with one stone," thought Sandford, after his friend's

departure. "A good investment, and the influence of a good man to boot.

Now to see Fletcher and learn how affairs are coming on. We'll make

that ten thousand fifteen before fall is over, if I am not mistaken."