"Ay, but to die, and go we know not where!"
_Measure for Measure._
"Plains immense, interminable meads,
And vast savannas, where the wand'ring eye,
Unfix'd, is in a verdant ocean lost."
THOMSON.
"Ye shall have miracles; ay, sound ones too,
Seen, heard, attested, everything but true."
MOORE.
"Call in the barber! If the tale be long,
He'll cut it short, I trust."
MIDDLETON.
There are few sentiments of that great man Benjamin Franklin for which
he is more to be revered than for those respecting the burial-place of
the departed.[197] The grave-yard is, and should ever be deemed, a
_holy_ spot; consecrated, not by the cold formalities of unmeaning
ceremony, but by the solemn sacredness of the heart. Who that has
committed to earth's cold bosom the relics of one dearer, perchance,
than existence, can ever after pass the burial-ground with a careless
heart. There is nothing which more painfully jars upon my own
feelings--if I may except that wanton desecration of God's sanctuary
in some sections of our land {74} for a public commitia--than to see
the grave-yard slighted and abused. It is like wounding the memory of
a buried friend. And yet it is an assertion which cannot be refuted,
that, notwithstanding the reverence which, as a people, we have failed
not to manifest for the memory of our dead, the same delicate regard
and obsequy is not with us observed in the sacred rites as among the
inhabitants of the Eastern hemisphere. If, indeed, we may be permitted
to gather up an opinion from circumstances of daily notoriety, it
would seem that the plat of ground appropriated as a cemetery in many
of the villages of our land was devoted to this most holy of purposes
solely because useless for every other; as if, after seizing upon
every spot for the benefit of the living, this last poor _remnant_ was
reluctantly yielded as a resting-place for the departed. And thus has
it happened that most of the burial-grounds of our land have either
been located in a region so lone and solitary,
"You scarce would start to meet a spirit there,"
or they have been thrust out into the very midst of business, strife,
and contention; amid the glare of sunshine, noise, and dust; "the
gaudy, babbling, and remorseless day," with hardly a wall of stones to
protect them from the inroads of unruly brutes or brutish men. It is
as if the rites of sepulture were refused, and the poor boon of a
resting-place in the bosom of our common mother denied to her
offspring; as if, in our avarice of soul, we grudged even the last
narrow house destined for all; and {75} fain would resume the last,
the only gift our departed ones may retain. Who would not dread "_to
die_" and have his lifeless clay deposited thus! Who would not, ere
the last fleeting particle of existence had "ebbed to its finish," and
the feeble breathing had forsaken its tenement for ever, pour forth
the anguish of his spirit in the melancholy prayer,
"When breath and sense have left this clay,
In yon damp vault, oh lay me not!
But kindly bear my bones away
To some lone, green, and sunny spot."
Reverence for the departed is ever a beautiful feature of humanity,
and has struck us with admiration for nations of our race who could
boast but few redeeming traits beside. It is, moreover, a circumstance
not a little remarkable in the history of funeral obsequy, that
veneration for the departed has prevailed in a ratio almost inverse to
the degree of civilization. Without attempting to account for this
circumstance, or to instance the multitude of examples which recur to
every mind in its illustration, I would only refer to that deep
religion of the soul which Nature has implanted in the heart of her
simple child of the Western forests, teaching him to preserve and to
honour the bones of his fathers! And those mysterious mausoleums of a
former race! do they convey no meaning as they rise in lonely grandeur
from our beautiful prairies, and look down upon the noble streams
which for ages have dashed their dark floods along their base!
{76} But a few years have passed away since this empire valley of the
West was first pressed by the footstep of civilized man; and, if we
except those aged sepulchres of the past, the cities of the dead
hardly yet range side by side with the cities of the living. But this
cannot _always_ be; even in this distant, beautiful land, death _must_
come; and here it doubtless has come, as many an anguished bosom can
witness. Is it not, then, meet, while the busy tide of worldly
enterprise is rolling heavily forth over this fair land, and the
costly structures of art and opulence are rising on every side, as by
the enchantment of Arabian fiction--is it _not_ meet that, amid the
pauses of excitement, a solitary thought would linger around that
spot, which must surely, reader, become the last resting-place of us
all!
I have often, in my wanderings through this pleasant land, experienced
a thrill of delight which I can hardly describe, to behold, on
entering a little Western hamlet, a neat white paling rising up
beneath the groves in some green, sequestered spot, whose object none
could mistake. Upon some of these, simple as they were, seemed to have
been bestowed more than ordinary care; for they betrayed an
elaborateness of workmanship and a delicacy of design sought for in
vain among the ruder habitations of the living. This is, _surely_, as
it should be; and I pity the man whose feelings cannot appreciate such
a touching, beautiful expression of the heart. I have alluded to
Franklin, and how pleasant it is to detect the kindly, household
emotions of our nature throbbing beneath the {77} starred, dignified
breast of philosophy and science. FRANKLIN, the statesman, the sage;
he who turned the red lightnings from their wild pathway through the
skies, and rocked the iron cradle of the mightiest democracy on the
globe! we gaze upon him with awe and astonishment; involuntarily we
yield the lofty motto presented by the illustrious Frenchman,[198]
"_Eripuit fulmen coelo, mox sceptra tyrannis_." But when we behold
that towering intellect descending from its throne, and intermingling
its emotions even with those of the lowliest mind, admiration and
reverence are lost in _love_.
The preceding remarks, which have lengthened out themselves far beyond
my design, were suggested by the loveliness of the site of the
graveyard of the little village of Decatur. I was struck with its
beauty on entering the place. It was near sunset; in the distance
slept the quiet hamlet; upon my right, beneath the grove, peeped out
the white paling through the glossy foliage; and as the broad, deep
shadows of summer evening streamed lengthening through the trees wide
over the landscape, that little spot seemed to my mind the sweetest
one in the scene. And should not the burial-ground be ever thus! for
who shall tell the emotions which may swell the bosom of many a dying
emigrant who here shall find his long, last rest? In that chill hour,
how will the thought of home, kindred, friendships, childhood-scenes,
come rushing over the memory! and to lay his bones in the {78} quiet
graveyard of his own native village, perchance may draw forth many a
sorrowing sigh. But this now may never be; yet it will be consoling to
the pilgrim-heart to realize that, though the resurrection morn shall
find his relics far from the graves of his fathers, he shall yet sleep
the long slumber, and at last come forth with those who were kind and
near to him in a stranger-land; who laid away his cold clay in no
"Potter's Field," but gathered it to their own household sepulchre.
The human mind, whatever its philosophy, can never utterly divest
itself of the idea that the spirit retains a consciousness of the
lifeless body, sympathizing with its honour or neglect, and affected
by all that variety of circumstance which may attend its existence:
and who shall say how far this belief--superstition though it be--may
smooth or trouble the dying pillow! How soothing, too, the reflection
to the sorrow of distant friends, that their departed one peacefully
and decently was gathered to his rest; that his dust is sleeping
quietly in some sweet, lonely spot beneath the dark groves of the
far-land; that his turf is often dewed by the teardrop of sympathy,
and around his lowly headstone waves the wild-grass ever green and
free! The son, the brother, the loved wanderer from his father's home,
"Is in his grave!
After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well."
The route leading to Decatur from the west lies chiefly through a
broad branch of the "Grand Prairie," an immense plain, sweeping
diagonally, with {79} little interruption, through the whole State of
Illinois, from the Mississippi to the Wabash. For the first time, in
any considerable number, I here met with those singular granite
masses, termed familiarly by the settlers "_lost rocks_"; in geology,
_boulders_. They are usually of a mammillated, globular figure, the
surface perfectly smooth, sometimes six hundred tons in weight, and
always lying completely isolated, frequently some hundred miles from a
quarry. They rest upon the surface or are slightly imbedded in the
soil; and, so far as my own observation extends, are of distinct
granitic formation, of various density and composition. Several
specimens I obtained are as heavy as metal, and doubtless contain
iron. Many of them, however, like those round masses dug from the
ancient works in Ohio, are pyritous in character. There is a mystery
about these "lost rocks" not easily solved, for no granite quarry has
ever yet been discovered in Illinois. Their appearance, in the midst
of a vast prairie, is dreary and lonely enough.
The site of the town of Decatur is somewhat depressed, and in the
heart of a grove of noble oaks.[199] Long before the traveller reaches
it, the whole village is placed before his eye from the rounded summit
of the hill, over which winds the road. The neighbouring region is
well settled; the prairie high and rolling, and timber abundant. It is
not a large place, however; and perhaps there are few circumstances
which will render it otherwise for some years. It contains,
nevertheless, a few handsome buildings; several trading
establishments; a good tavern; is said to be healthy; and, upon the
whole, is a far {80} prettier, neater little village than many others
of loftier pretensions through which I have passed in Illinois. The
village will be intersected by two of the principal railroads of the
state, now projected, which circumstance cannot fail to place it in
the first rank as an inland trading town.
My visit at Decatur was a short one; and, after tea, just as the moon
was beginning to silver the tops of the eastern oaks, I left the
village and rode leisurely through the forest, in order to enter upon
the prairie at dawn the following day. A short distance from Decatur I
again forded the Sangamon; the same insignificant stream as ever; and,
by dint of scrambling, succeeded in attaining the lofty summit of its
opposite bank, from which the surrounding scenery of rolling
forest-tops was magnificent and sublime. From this elevation the
pathway plunged into a thick grove, dark as Erebus, save where lighted
up by a few pale moonbeams struggling through a break in the
tree-tops, or the deep-red gleamings of the evening sky streaming at
intervals along the undergrowth. The hour was a calm and impressive
one: its very loneliness made it sweeter; and that beautiful hymn of
the Tyrolean peasantry at sunset, as versified by Mrs. Hemans, was
forcibly recalled by the scene:
"Come to the sunset tree!
The day is past and gone;
The woodman's axe lies free,
And the reaper's work is done.
Sweet is the hour of rest!
Pleasant the wood's low sigh,
And the gleaming of the west,
And the turf whereon we lie."
{81} After a ride of a few miles my path suddenly emerged from the
forest upon the edge of a boundless prairie, from whose dark-rolling
herbage, here and there along the distant swells, was thrown back the
glorious moonlight, as if from the restless, heaving bosom of the
deep. An extensive prairie, beneath a full burst of summer moonlight,
is, indeed, a magnificent spectacle. One can hardly persuade himself
that he is not upon the ocean-shore. And now a wild, fresh breeze,
which all the day had been out playing among the perfumed flowers and
riding the green-crested waves, came rolling in from the prairie,
producing an undulation of its surface and a murmuring in the heavy
forest-boughs perfect in the illusion. All along the low, distant
horizon hung a thin mist of silvery gauze, which, as it rose and fell
upon the dark herbage, gave an idea of mysterious boundlessness to the
scene. Here and there stood out a lonely, weather-beaten tree upon the
plain, its trunk shrouded in obscurity, but its leafy top sighing in
the night-breeze, and gleaming like a beacon-light in the beams of the
cloudless moon. There was a dash of fascinating romance about the
scene, which held me involuntarily upon the spot until reminded by the
chill dews of night that I had, as yet, no shelter. On casting around
my eye, I perceived a low log cabin, half buried in vegetation,
standing alone in the skirt of the wood. Although a miserable
tenement, necessity compelled me to accept its hospitality, and I
entered. It consisted of a single apartment, in which two beds, two
stools, a cross-legged deal table, {82} and a rough clothes-press,
were the only household furniture. A few indispensable iron utensils
sat near the fire; the water-pail and gourd stood upon the shelf, and
a half-consumed flitch of bacon hung suspended in the chimney; but the
superlatives of andirons, shovel and tongs, etc., etc., were all
unknown in this primitive abode. A pair of "lost rocks"--_lost_,
indeed--supplied the first, and the gnarled branch of an oak was
substituted for the latter. The huge old chimney and fireplace were,
as usual, fashioned of sticks and bedaubed with clay; yet everything
looked neat, yea, _comfortable_, in very despite of poverty itself. A
young female with her child, an infant boy, in her arms, was
superintending the preparation of the evening meal. Her language and
demeanour were superior to the miserable circumstances by which she
was surrounded; and though she moved about her narrow demesne with a
quiet, satisfied air, I was not long in learning that _affection_
alone had transplanted this exotic of the prairie from a more
congenial soil. What woman does not love to tell over those passages
of her history in which the _heart_ has ruled lord of the ascendant?
and how very different in this respect is our sex from hers! Man,
proud man, "the creature of interest and ambition," often blushes to
be reminded that he has a heart, while woman's cheek mantles with the
very intensity of its pulsation! The husband in a few minutes came in
from attending to my horse; the rough table was spread; a humble fare
was produced; all were seated; and then, beneath that miserable roof,
{83} around that meager board, before a morsel of the food, poor as it
was, passed the lip of an individual, the iron hand of toil was
reverently raised, and a grateful heart called down a blessing from
the Mightiest! Ah! thought I, as I beheld the peaceful, satisfied air
of that poor man, as he partook of his humble evening meal with
gratefulness, little does the son of luxury know the calm contentment
which fills his breast! And the great God, as he looks down upon his
children and reads their hearts, does he not listen to many a warmer,
purer thank-offering from beneath the lowly roof-tree of the
wilderness, than from all the palaces of opulence and pride? So it has
ever been--so it has _ever_ been--and so can it never cease to be
while the heart of man remains attempered as it is.
The humble repast was soon over; and, without difficulty, I entered
into conversation with the father of the family. He informed me that
he had been but a few years a resident of Illinois; that he had been
unfortunate; and that, recently, his circumstances had become more
than usually circumscribed, from his endeavours to save from
speculators a pre-emption right of the small farm he was cultivating.
This farm was his _all_; and, in his solicitude to retain its
possession, he had disposed of every article of the household which
would in any way produce money, even of a part of his own and his
wife's wardrobe. I found him a man of considerable intelligence, and
he imparted to me some facts respecting that singular sect styling
themselves Mormonites of which I was previously hardly aware. Immense
{84} crowds of these people had passed his door on the great road from
Terre Haute, all with families and household effects stowed away in
little one-horse wagons of peculiar construction, and on their journey
to Mount Zion, the New Jerusalem, situated near Independence, Jackson
county, Missouri! Their observance of the Sabbath was almost
pharisaically severe, never permitting themselves to travel upon that
day; the men devoting it to hunting, and the females to washing
clothes, and other operations of the camp! It was their custom,
likewise, to hold a preachment in every village or settlement, whether
men would hear or forbear: the latter must have been the case with
something of a majority, I think, since no one with whom I have ever
met could, for the life of him, give a subsequent expose of
_Mormonism_, "though often requested."
"I never heard or could engage
A person yet by prayers, or bribes, or tears,
To name, define by speech, or write on page,
The _doctrines_ meant precisely by that word,
Which surely is exceedingly absurd."
They assert that an angelic messenger has appeared to Joe Smith,
announcing the millennial dawn at hand; that a glorious city of the
faithful--the New Jerusalem, with streets of gold and gates of
pearl--is about to be reared upon Mount Zion, Mo., where the Saviour
will descend and establish a kingdom to which there shall be no end;
ergo, argue these everlasting livers, it befits all good citizens to
get to Independence, Jackson county, aforesaid, as fast as one-horse
wagons will convey them![200] Large quantities of arms and ammunition
have, moreover, been {85} forwarded, so that the item of "the sword
being beaten into a ploughshare, and spear into pruning-hook," seems
not of probable fulfilment according to these worthies. The truth of
the case is, they anticipated a brush with the long-haired
"pukes"[201] before securing a "demise, release, and for ever
quitclaim" to Zion Hill, said _pukes_ having already at sundry times
manifested a refractory spirit, and, from the following anecdote of my
good man of the hut, in "rather a ridic'lous manner." I am no voucher
for the story: I give it as related; "and," as Ben Jonson says, "what
he has possessed me withal, I'll discharge it amply."
"One Sabbath evening, when the services of the congregation of the
Mormonites were over, the Rev. Joe Smith, priest and prophet,
announced to his expectant tribe that, on the succeeding Sabbath, the
baptismal sacrament would take place, when an angel would appear on
the opposite bank of the stream. Next Sabbath came, and 'great was the
company of the people' to witness the miraculous visitation. The
baptism commenced, and was now wellnigh concluded: 'Do our eyes
deceive us! can such things _be_! The prophecy! the angel!' were
exclamations which ran through the multitude, as a fair form, veiled
in a loose white garment, with flowing locks and long bright pinions,
stood suddenly before the assembled multitude upon the opposite shore,
and then disappeared! All was amazement, consternation, awe! But where
is Joe Smith? In a few moments Joe Smith was with them, and their
faith was confirmed.
{86} "Again was a baptism appointed--again was the angel announced--a
larger congregation assembled--and yet again did the angel appear. At
that moment two powerful men sprang from a thicket, rushed upon the
angelic visitant, and, amid mingling exclamations of horror and
_execrations_ of piety from the spectators, tore away his long white
wings, his hair and robe, and plunged him into the stream! By some
unaccountable metamorphosis, the angel emerged from the river honest
Joe Smith, priest of Mormon, finder of the golden plates, etc., etc.,
and the magi of the enchantment were revealed in the persons of two
brawny _pukes_." Since then, the story concludes, not an angel has
been seen all about Mount Zion! The miracle of walking upon water was
afterward essayed, but failed by the removal, by some impious wags, of
the _benches_ prepared for the occasion. It is truly astonishing to
what lengths superstition has run in some sections of this same
Illinois. Not long since, a knowing farmer in the county of Macon
conceived himself ordained of heaven a promulgator to the world of a
system of "New Light," so styled, upon "a plan entirely new." No
sooner did the idea strike his fancy, than, leaving the plough in the
middle of the furrow, away sallies he to the nearest village, and
admonishes every one, everywhere, forthwith to be baptized by his
heaven-appointed hands, and become a regenerate man on the spot. Many
believed--was there ever faith too preposterous to obtain proselytes?
the doctrine, in popular phrase, "took mightily;" and, it must be
confessed, the whole world, men, women, and children, were {87} in a
fair way for regeneration. Unfortunately for that desirable
consummation, at this crisis certain simple-hearted people
thereabouts, by some freak of fancy or other, took it into their
heads that the priest himself manifested hardly that _quantum_ of the
regenerated spirit that beseemed so considerable a functionary. Among
other peccadilloes, he had unhappily fallen into a habit every Sabbath
morning, when he rode in from his farmhouse--a neat little edifice
which the good people had erected for his benefit in the outskirts of
the village--of trotting solemnly up before the grocery-door upon his
horse, receiving a glass of some dark-coloured liquid, character
unknown, drinking it off with considerable gusto, dropping a
_picayune_ into the tumbler, then proceeding to the pulpit, and, on
the inspiration of the mysterious potation, holding vehemently forth.
Sundry other misdeeds of the reverend man near about the same time
came to light, so that at length the old women pronounced that
terrible fiat, "the preacher was no _better_ than he should be;" which
means, as everybody knows, that he was a good deal _worse_. And so the
men, old and young, chimed in, and the priest was politely advised to
decamp before the doctrine should get unsavoury. Thus ended the
glorious discovery of New-lightism!
It is a humiliating thing to review the aberrations of the human mind:
and, believe me, reader, my intention in reviewing these instances of
religious fanaticism has been not to excite a smile of transient
merriment, nor for a moment to call in question the {88} reality of
true devotion. My intention has been to show to what extremes of
preposterous folly man may be hurried when he once resigns himself to
the vagaries of fancy upon a subject which demands the severest
deductions of reason. It is, indeed, a _melancholy_ consideration,
that, in a country like our own, which we fondly look upon as the hope
of the world, and amid the full-orbed effulgence of the nineteenth
century, there should exist a body of men, more than twelve thousand
in number, as is estimated, professing belief in a faith so
unutterably absurd as that styled Mormonism; a faith which would have
disgraced the darkest hour of the darkest era of our race.[202] But it
is not for me to read the human _heart_.
_Shelbyville, Ill._