CHAPTER XV.

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. III.--MARCH, 1859.--NO. XVII.

HOLBEIN AND THE DANCE OF DEATH.

At the northwest corner of Switzerland, just on the turn of the Rhine

from its westward course between Germany and Switzerland, to run

northward between Germany and France, stands the old town of Bâle. It is

nominally Swiss; but its situation on the borders of three countries,

and almost in them all, has given to the place itself and to its

inhabitants a somewhat heterogeneous air. "It looks," says one

traveller, "like a stranger lately arrived in a new colony, who,

although he may have copied the dress and the manner of those with whom

he has come to reside, wears still too much of his old costume to pass

for a native, and too little to be received as a stranger." Perhaps we

may get a better idea of the mixed nationality of the place by imagining

a Swiss who speaks French with a German accent.

Bâle is an ancient city; though Rome was bending under the weight of

more than a thousand years when the Emperor Valentinian built at this

angle of the river a fortress which was called the Basilia. Houses soon

began to cluster round it upon the ruins of an old Helvetian town, and

thus Basel or Bâle obtained its existence and its name. Bâle suffered

many calamities. War, pestilence, and earthquake alternately made it

desolate. Whether we must enumerate among its misfortunes a Grand

Ecclesiastical Council which assembled there in 1431, and sat for

seventeen years, deposing one infallible Pope, and making another

equally infallible, let theological disputants decide. But the

assembling of this Council was of some service to us; for its Secretary,

Aeneas Sylvius, (who, like the saucy little _prima donna_, was one of

the noble and powerful Italian family, the Piccolomini, and afterward,

as Pope Pius II., wore the triple crown which St. Peter did not wear,)

in his Latin dedication of a history of the transactions of that body

to the Cardinal St. Angeli, has left a description of Bâle as it was in

1436.

After telling us that the town is situated upon that "excellent river,

the Rhine, which divides it into two parts, called Great Bâle and Little

Bâle, and that these are connected by a bridge which the river rising

from its bed sometimes carries off," he, naturally enough for an

ecclesiastic and a future Pope, goes on to say, that in Great Bâle,

which is far more beautiful and magnificent than Little Bâle, there are

handsome and commodious churches; and he naively adds, that, "_although_

these are not adorned with marble, and are built of common stone, they

are much frequented by the people." The women of Bâle, following the

devotional instincts of their sex, were the most assiduous attendants

upon these churches; and they consoled themselves for the absence of

marble, which the good Aeneas Sylvius seems to imply would partly have

excused them for staying away, by an arrangement in itself as odd as in

Roman Catholic places of worship--to their honor--it is, and ever was,

unusual. Each of them performed her devotions in a kind of inclosed

bench or solitary pew. By most of these the occupant was concealed

only to the waist when she stood up at the reading of the Gospel; some

allowed only their heads to appear; and others of the fair owners were

at once so devout, so cruel, and so self-denying as to shut out the

eyes of the world entirely and at all times. But instances of this

remorseless mortification of the flesh, seem to have been exceedingly

rare. Queer enough these structures were, and sufficiently gratifying

to the pride and provocative of the envy which the beauties of Bâle

(avowedly) went to churches in which there was no marble to mortify. For

they were of different heights, according to the rank of the occupant.

A simple burgher's wife took but a step toward heaven when she went to

pray; a magistrate's of the lower house, we must suppose, took two; a

magistrate's of the upper house, three; a lady, four; a baroness, five;

a countess, six; and what a duchess, if one ever appeared there, did to

maintain her dignity in the eyes of God and man, unless she mounted into

the pulpit, it is quite impossible to conjecture. Aeneas Sylvius gives

it as his opinion that these things were used as a protection against

the cold, which to his Italian blood seemed very great. But that notion

was surely instilled into the courtly churchman by some fair, demure

Bâloise; for had it been well-founded, the sentry-boxes would have risen

and fallen with the thermometer, and not with the rank of the occupant.

The walls of the churches were hung around with the emblazoned shields

of knights and noblemen, and the roofs were richly painted in various

colors, and glowed with splendor when the rays of the sun fell upon

them. Storks built their nests upon these roofs, and hatched their young

there unmolested; for the Bâlois believed, that, if the birds were

disturbed, they would fire the houses.

The dwellings of men of any wealth or rank were very curiously planned,

elaborately ornamented, richly painted, and adorned with magnificent

tapestry. The tables were covered with vessels of wrought silver, in

which Sylvius confesses that the Bâlois surpassed even the skilful

and profuse Italians. Fountains, those sources of fantastic and

ever-changing beauty, were numerous,--so numerous, says our

afterward-to-be-infallible authority, that the town of Viterbo, in

Tuscany, had not so many,--and Viterbo was noted for its beauty, and for

being surrounded with the villas of wealthy Italians, who have always

used water freely in the way of fountains.

Bâle, although it then--four hundred and twenty years ago--acknowledged

the Emperor for its sovereign, was a free town, as it is now; that is,

it had no local lord to favor or oppress it at his pleasure, but was

governed by laws enacted by representatives of the people. The spirit of

a noble independence pervaded the little Canton of which it was and

is the capital. Though it was fortified, its stone defences were not

strong; but when Sylvius tells us that the Bâlois thought that the

strength of their city consisted in the union of its inhabitants, who

preferred death to loss of liberty, we see what stuff its men were made

of, and why the town was free.

Among its peculiarities, Bâle had no lawyers,--this happy and united

Bâle. The Bâlois did not trouble themselves about the Imperial law,

says Sylvius; but when disputes or accusations were brought before the

magistrates, they were decided according to custom and the equity of

each case. They were nevertheless inexorably severe in administering

justice. A criminal could not be saved either by gold, or by

intercession, or by the authority and influence of his family. He

who was guilty must be punished; and the punishments were terrible.

Criminals were banished, hung, beheaded, broken on the wheel, drowned in

the Rhine, (a bad use to which to put that "excellent river,") left to

starve on a gradually diminished supply of bread and water. To compel

confessions, tortures inconceivably horrible were used, to which the

alternative of death would have been a boon; and yet there were not

wanting those among the Bâlois who would endure these torments rather

than utter their own condemnation.

They were devoted to religion, and held in great reverence the pictures

and images of the Saints; but not on account of any admiration of the

skill of painter or sculptor; for they cared little for the arts, and

were so ignorant of literature that "no one of them had ever heard of

Cicero or of any other orator."

The men of Bâle were of noble presence, and dressed well, although they

avoided magnificence. Only those of knightly rank wore purple; the

wealthy burghers confined themselves to black velvet; but their wives,

on fête-days, blazed in splendid silk and satin and jewels. The boys

went with naked feet, and, adds the reverend divine, the women wore upon

their white legs only shoes. There was no distinction of age by costume,

among the women,--a very great singularity in those days, when every

stage and rank of life was marked by some peculiar style of dress; but

in Bâle the face alone distinguished the young girl from the matron

of mature years. It may, however, be doubted by some, whether this is

peculiar to the town of Bâle or to the time of Sylvius. The men were

addicted to voluptuous pleasures; they lived sumptuously, and passed a

long time at table. In the words of our churchman, "They were too much

devoted to Father Bacchus and Dame Venus,"--faults which they deemed

venial. But he adds, that they were jealous of their honor, and held to

what they promised; they would rather be upright than merely seem to be

so. Though provident, they were content, unless very poor.

Another peculiarity of Bâle: its clocks were one hour ahead of all

others, and so continued at least till the middle of the last century.

This of course depended on no difference of time; it was merely that

when, for instance, at mid-day, the clocks of neighboring towns struck

twelve, the clocks of Bâle struck one. The origin of this seeming effort

to hasten him who usually moves rapidly enough for us all is lost in

obscurity.

And now why is it that, we have gone back four hundred years and more,

to linger thus long with the Secretary of the Great Ecclesiastical

Council of Bâle, in that quaint and queer old town, with its half

French, half German look, its grand, grotesque old churches, hung round

with knightly shields and filled with women, each in a pulpit of her

own, its stork-crowned roofs, its houses blazing with wrought gold and

silver, its threescore fountains, and the magnificence in which, without

a court, it rivalled the richest capitals of Italy, its noble-spirited

and pleasure-loving, but simple-minded and unlearned burghers, its

white-limbed beauties, and its deceitful clocks? It is not because that

town is now one of the principal ribbon-factories of the world, and

exports to this country alone over $1,200,000 worth yearly; although

some fair readers may suppose that an all-sufficient reason,--and some

of their admirers and protectors, too, for that matter. Think of it!

nearly one million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars' worth of

ribbons coming to us every year from a single town in Switzerland! The

statement is enough to carry horror and dismay to the heart and the

pocket of every father and brother, and above all, of every husband,

actual or possible, who hears of it. It is a godsend to the

protectionists, who might reëdify their party on the basis of a

prohibitory tariff against ribbons. If they were successful, their

success would be brilliant; for if our fair tyrants could not get

ribbons--those necessaries of life--from Bâle in Switzerland, they

would tease and coax us to build them a Bâle in America; and we should

do it.

We have gone back to the old Bâle of four hundred and twenty years ago,

because there, and not long after that time,--about 1498,--according

to general belief, Hans Holbein was born; because these were the

surroundings under the influence of which he grew to manhood; and

because there, about sixty years before his birth, a Dance of Death was

painted, the most ancient and important of which we have any remaining

memorial. This Dance was painted upon the wall of the churchyard of the

Dominican Convent in Great Bâle, by order of the very Ecclesiastical

Council of which our Aeneas Sylvius was Secretary, and in commemoration

of a plague which visited the town during the sitting of that Council,

and carried off many of its members.

What is a Dance of Death? and why should Death be painted dancing?

Some readers may think of it as a frantic revel of grim skeletons, or

perhaps--like me in my boyish musings--imagine nameless shapes with

Death and Hell gleaming in their faces, each clasping a mortal beguiled

to its embrace, all flitting and floating round and round to unearthly

music, and gradually receding through vast mysterious gloom till they

are lost in its horrible obscurity.

But neither of these notions is near the truth. The Dance of Death is

not a revel, and in it Death does not dance at all. A Dance of Death, or

a Dance Macabre, as it was called, is a succession of isolated pictures,

all informed with the same motive, it is true, but each independent of

the others, and consisting of a group, generally of but two figures, one

of which is the representative of Death. The second always represents

a class; and in this figure every rank, from the very highest to the

lowest, finds its type. The number of these groups or pictures varies

considerably in the different dances, according to the caprice of the

artist, or, perhaps, to the expense of his time and labor which he

thought warranted by the payment he was to receive. But all express,

with sufficient fulness, the idea that Death is the common lot of

humanity, and that he enters with impartial feet the palace and the

cottage, neither pitying youth nor respecting age, and waiting no

convenient season.

The figure of Death in these strange religious works of Art,--for they

were as purely religious in their origin as the Holy Families and

Madonnas of the same and a subsequent period,--this figure of Death is

not always a skeleton. It is so in but one of the forty groups in the

Dance at Bâle, which was the germ of Holbein's, and which, indeed, until

very recently, was attributed to him, although it was painted more

than half a century before he was born. It is generally assumed that a

skeleton has always been the representative of Death, but erroneously;

for, in fact, Holbein was the first to fix upon a mere skeleton for the

embodiment of that idea.

The Hebrew Scriptures, which furnish us with the earliest extant

allusion to Death as a personage, designate him as an angel or messenger

of God,--as, for instance, in the record of the destruction of the

Assyrian host in the Second Book of Kings (xix. 35). The ancient

Egyptians, too, in whose strange system of symbolism may be found the

germ, at least, of most of the types used in the religion and the arts

of more modern nations, had no representation of Death as an individual

agent. They expressed the extinction of life very naturally and simply

by the figure of a mummy. Such a figure it was their custom to pass

round among the guests at their feasts; and the Greeks and Romans

imitated them, with slight modifications, in the form of the image and

the manner of the ceremony. Some scholars have found in this custom a

deep moral and religious significance, akin to that which certainly

attached to the custom of placing a slave in the chariot of a Roman

conquering general to say to him at intervals, as his triumphal

procession moved with pomp and splendor through the swarming streets,

"Remember that thou art a man." But this is too subtile a conjecture.

The ceremony was but a silent way of saying, "Let us eat and drink, for

to-morrow we die," which, as Paul's solemn irony makes but too plain,

must be the philosophy of life to those who believe that the dead rise

not, which was the case with the Egyptians and the Greeks, and the

Hebrews also. An old French epitaph expresses to the full this

philosophy:--

"Ce que j'ai mangé,

Ce que j'ai bu,

Ce que j'ai dissipé,

Je l'ai maintenant avec moi.

Ce que j'ai laissé,

Je l'ai perdu,"

What I ate,

What I drank,

What I dissipated,

I have with me.

That which I left

I lost.

The figure of the sad youth leaning upon an inverted torch, in which

the Greeks embodied their idea of Death, is familiar to all who have

examined ancient Art. The Etruscan Death was a female, with wings upon

the shoulders, head, and feet, hideous countenance, terrible fangs and

talons, and a black skin. No example of the form attributed to him by

the early Christians has come down to us, that I can discover; but we

know that they, as well as the later Hebrews, considered Death as the

emissary of the Evil One, if not identical with him, and called him

impious, unholy. It was in the Dark Ages, that the figure of a dead body

or a skull was first used as a symbol of Death; but even then its office

appears to have been purely symbolic, and not representative;--that is,

these figures served to remind men of their mortality, or to mark a

place of sepulture, and were not the embodiment of an idea, not the

creation of a personage,--Death. It is not until the thirteenth or

fourteenth century that we find this embodiment clearly defined and

generally recognized; and even then the figure used was not a skeleton,

but a cadaverous and emaciated body.

Among the remains of Greek and Roman Art, only two groups are known in

which a skeleton appears; and it is remarkable that in both of these the

skeletons are dancing. In one group of three, the middle figure is a

female. Its comparative breadth at the shoulders and narrowness at the

hips make at first a contrary impression; but the position of the body

and limbs is, oddly enough, too like that of a female dancer of the

modern French school to leave the question in more than a moment's

doubt. Thus the artists who did not embody their idea of death in a

skeleton were the first to conceive and execute a real Dance of Death.

In both the groups referred to, the motive is manifestly comic; and

neither of them has any similarity to the Dances of Death of which

Holbein's has become the grand representative. These had their origin,

we can hardly tell with certainty how, or when, or where; although the

subject has enlisted the investigating labors of such accomplished

scholars and profound antiquaries as Douce and Ottley in England,

and Peignot and Langlois in France. But a story with which they are

intimately connected, even if it is not their germ, has been discovered;

ancient customs which must have aided in their development are familiar

to all investigators of ancient manners, and especially of ancient

amusements; and the motives which inform them all, and the moral

condition of Christendom of which they were the result, are plain

enough.

We have seen before, that this Dance consisted of several groups of two

or more figures, one of which was always Death in the act of claiming a

victim; and for the clear comprehension of what follows, it is necessary

to anticipate a little, and remark, that there is no doubt that the

Dance was first represented by living performers. Strange as this seems

to us, it was but in keeping with the spirit of the time, which we call,

perhaps with some presumption, the Dark Ages.

The story which is probably the germ of this Dance was called _Les Trois

Morts et les Trois Vifs_,--"The Three Dead and the Three Living." It is

of indefinable antiquity and uncertain origin. It is said, that three

noble youths, as they returned from hunting, were met in the gloom of

the forest by three hideous spectres, in the form of decaying human

corpses; and that, as they stood rooted to the ground by this appalling

sight, the figures addressed them solemnly upon the vanity of worldly

grandeur and pleasure, and admonished them, that, although in the heyday

of youth, they must soon become as they (the spectres) were. This story,

or _dit_, "saying," as it was called in French, was exceedingly popular

through-out Europe five or six hundred years ago. It is found in the

language of every Christian nation of the period, and, extended by means

of accessory incidents and much moralizing, is made to cover several

pages in more than one old illuminated manuscript. In the Arundel MSS.,

in England, there is one of the many versions of the legend written

in French so old that it is quite as difficult for Frenchmen as for

Englishmen to read it. But over an illuminated picture of the incident,

in which three kings are shown meeting the three skeletons, are these

lines in English, as old, but less obsolete:--

_Over the Kings_.

"Ich am afert

Lo whet ich see

Methinketh hit be develes thre."

_Over the Skeletons_.

"Ich wes wel fair

Such schel tou be

For Godes love be wer by me."

In these rude lines is the whole moral of the legend, and of the Dance

of Death which grew out of it. That growth was simple, gradual, and

natural. In the versions and in the pictorial representations of the

legend there soon began to be much variety in the persons who met the

spectres. At first three noble youths, they became three kings, three

noble ladies, a king, a queen, and their son or daughter, and so

on,--the rank of the persons, however, being always high. For, as we

shall have occasion to notice hereafter more particularly, the mystery

of the Dance had a democratic as well as a religious significance; and

it served to bring to mind, not only the irresistible nature of Death's

summons, but the real equality of all men; and this it did in a manner

to which those of high condition could not object.

The legend was made the subject of a fresco, painted about 1350, by the

eminent Italian painter and architect, Orcagna, upon the walls of the

Campo Santo at Pisa,--which some readers may be glad to be reminded was

a cemetery, so called because it was covered with earth brought from

the Holy Land. It is remarkable, however, that in this work the artist

embodied Death not in the form commonly used in his day, but in the old

Etruscan figure before mentioned. Orcagna's Death is a female, winged

like a bat, and with terrible claws. Armed with a scythe, she swoops

down upon the earth and reaps a promiscuous harvest of popes, emperors,

kings, queens, churchmen, and noblemen. In the rude manner of the time,

Orcagna has divided his picture into compartments. In one of these we

see St. Macarius, one of the first Christian hermits, an Egyptian,

sitting at the foot of a mountain; before him are three kings, who have

returned from the chase accompanied by a gay train of attendants. The

Saint calls the attention of the kings to three sepulchres in which lie

the bodies of three other kings, one of which is much decomposed. The

three living kings are struck with horror; but the painter has much

diminished the moral effect of his work, for this century, at least, by

making one of them hold his nose;--which is regarded by Mr. Ruskin as

an evidence of Orcagna's devotion to the truth; but in this case that

brilliant writer, but most unsafe critical guide, commits an error of a

kind not uncommon with him. The representation of so homely an action,

in such a composition, merely shows that the painter had not arrived at

a just appreciation of the relative value of the actual,--and that he

failed to see that by introducing this unessential incident he diverted

attention from his higher purpose, dragged his picture from a moral to

a material plane, and went at a bound far over the narrow limit between

the horrible and the ludicrous.

St. Macarius is frequently introduced in the pictures of this subject;

and some antiquaries suppose that hence the Dance of Death derived the

name, Dance Macabre, by which it used to be generally known. Others

derive it from the Arabic _mac-bourah_,--a cemetery. Neither derivation

is improbable; but it is of little consequence to us which is correct.

It may seem strange that such a legend as this of "The Three Dead and

the Three Living," with such a moral, should become the origin of a

dance. But we should remember that in many countries dancing has been a

religious ceremony. It was so with the Greeks and Romans, and also with

the Hebrews, among whom, however, saltatory worship seems, on most

occasions, to have been performed spontaneously, and by volunteers. All

will remember the case of Miriam, who thus danced to the sound of her

timbrel after the passage of the Red Sea; and who that has read it can

forget the account of the dance which King David executed before the

ark, dancing with all his might, and girded only with a linen ephod?

Dancing has always seemed to us to be an essentially ridiculous

transaction,--for a man, at least; and we confess that we sympathize

with David's wife, Michal, who, seeing this extraordinary _pas seul_

from her window, "despised David in her heart," and treated him to a

little conjugal irony when he came home. What would the lovely Eugénie

have thought, if, after the fall of Sebastopol, she had seen his

Majesty, the Emperor of the French, "cutting it down," in broad

daylight, before the towers of Notre Dame, girded only with a linen

ephod,--though that's not exactly the name we give the garment

now-a-days? But David was master, not only in Israel, but in his own

household, (which is not the case with all kings and great men,) and

he said to Michal,--"It was before the Lord, which chose me before thy

father and before all his house;.... therefore will I play before the

Lord;.... and of the maid-servants which thou hast spoken of, of them

shall I be had in honor." And Michal all her life repented bitterly the

offence that she had given her husband.

But dancing was not one of the regular ceremonies of the Christian

Church, even in its corruptest days; and yet dances were performed four

hundred years ago in the churches and in church-yards, as a part of, or

an appendage to, entertainments of a religious character. These were the

Mysteries and Moralities, which are the origin of our drama;--and it is

remarkable that in all countries the drama has been at first a religious

ceremony. These Mysteries and Moralities were religious plays of the

rudest kind: the Mysteries being a representation, partly by dumb show

and partly by words, of some well-known incident related in the Bible;

and the Moralities, a kind of discussion and enforcement of religious

doctrine or moral truth by allegorical personages. They were performed

at first almost entirely in the churches, upon scaffolds erected for the

purpose.

In a Mystery called "Candlemas Day, or the Killing of the Children of

Israel," which represented the Massacre of the Innocents, and in which

Herod, Simeon, Joseph, the Virgin Mary, Watkin, a comic character, and

Anna the Prophetess, appeared, there was a general dance of all the

characters after the Prologue; and at the close of the play, there is

a stage-direction for another, in response to a command of Anna the

Prophetess, who says,--

"Shewe ye sume plesur as ye can

In the worship of Jesu, our Lady, and St. Anne."

And thereupon King Herod, Simeon, Joseph, the Virgin Mary, Watkin the

funny man, and the Prophetess well stricken in years, proceed to forward

four, and end with a promenade all around. Indeed, our ancestors seem to

have found it edifying, not to say entertaining, to go to a cathedral to

see Satan and an Archbishop dance a hornpipe with the Seven Deadly Sins

and the Five Cardinal Virtues.

A Morality called "Every Man," written about 1450, has a direct

connection with the subject which we are considering. Every Man, the

principal personage of the piece, is an allegorical representation of

all mankind; and the purpose of the play is told in this sentence, which

introduces it:--

"Here begynneth a Treatyse how the Hye Fader of Heven sendeth Dethe

to somon every creature to come & gyve a count of theyr lyves in this

worlde, & is in maner of a Morall Playe."

On the title-page of an edition printed in 1500, only one copy of which

exists, is a very rude wood-cut, in which an individual, who is labelled

"Every Man," is startled at the sight of Death standing at the door of

a church and summoning him. In this Moral Play, Fellowship, Good Deeds,

Worldly Goods, Knowledge, Beauty, Strength, Discretion, and Five Wittes

are characters; and they cannot interpose between Every Man and the

summons of Death, nor will any of them, except Good Deeds, go with him.

The representation of this play was a kind of Dance of Death, and from

the acting of "Every Man" to the execution of that Dance was but a short

step.

But the Dance of Death had been performed before "Every Man" was

written; and dances in churches and churchyards were of yet greater

antiquity. For, by an order of a Roman council under Pope Pius II. in

the tenth century, priests were directed "to admonish men and women not

to dance and sing in the churches on feast-days, like Pagans." The evil

increased, however, until, according to the old chroniclers, a terrible

punishment fell upon a party of dancers. One of them, Ubert, tells the

story. It was on Christmas Eve, in the time of the Emperor Henry II.,

who assumed the imperial diadem in the year 1002, that a company of

eighteen men and women amused themselves by dancing and singing in the

churchyard of St. Magnus, in the diocese of Magdeburg, to the annoyance

of a priest who was saying mass in the church. He ordered them to

desist; but they danced on in reckless mirth. The holy father then

invoked God and St. Magnus to keep them dancing for a whole year; and

not in vain. For twelve months they danced in spite of themselves.

Neither dew nor rain fell upon them; and their shoes and their clothes

were not worn away, although by their dancing they buried themselves

waist-high. Yet, fatigued and famished beyond human endurance, they

danced on, unable to stop an instant for rest or food. The priest's own

daughter was among the dancers; and, unable to undo what the Saint had

done, he sent his son to drag her out of the dance. But when her brother

pulls her by the arm it comes off in his hand, and he in horror takes it

to his father. No blood flows from the wound. The priest buries the arm,

and the next morning he finds it upon the top of the grave. He repeats

the burial, and with the same result. He makes a third attempt, and the

grave casts out the limb with violence before his eyes. Meanwhile the

girl and her companions continue dancing, and the Emperor, having heard

of this strange occurrence, travels from Rome to see so sad a sight. He

orders carpenters to inclose the dancers in a building, but in vain; for

that which is built in the day falls down in the night. The dancers have

neither rest nor mitigation of their curse until the expiration of the

year, when they all rush into the church and fall before the altar in

a swoon, from which they are not recovered for three days. Then they

immediately flee each other's faces, and wander solitary through the

world, still dancing at times in spite of themselves. In the olden time

this was believed to be the origin of St. Vitus's dance; but we can now

see that the dance is the origin of the story.

The Dance of Death was performed by a large company dressed in the

costumes of various classes of society, which were then very marked in

their difference. One by one the dancers suddenly and silently slipped

off, thus typifying the departure of all mankind at Death's summons.

That this Dance was performed, not only with the consent, but by the

procurement of the clergy, is made certain by the discovery, in the

archives of the Cathedral of Besançon, of the account of the payment of

four measures of wine by the seneschal to those persons who performed

the Dance Macabre on the 10th of July, 1453.

The moral lesson conveyed by this strange pastime or ceremony seems

hardly calculated to secure for it a noteworthy popularity in any age;

but for a long time it was, either as a ceremony or as a picture, very

popular throughout Europe. We know of forty-four places in which it was

painted or sculptured in some large public building, the oldest example

being that at Little Bâle, which was painted in 1312. This, like that

in Great Bâle, and most of the others, has been destroyed by time or

violence. The Dance was made the ornament of books of devotion, and the

subject of ornamental initial-letters; groups from it were engraved

repeatedly by those fantastic designers and exquisite workmen known as

the Little Masters of Germany; a single group was assumed as a device,

or trademark, by more than one printer; and it was sung in popular

ballads. There is now at Aix-la-Chapelle a huge state-bed-stead, on the

posts, sides, and footboards of which it is elaborately carved, in the

manner of the sixteenth century; and it was even made the ornament of

ladies' fans.

The reasons for this popularity were a certain strange fascination in

the subject,--yet not so strange at a time when women would crowd to see

men burned or hanged and quartered;--but chiefly, the grand democratic

significance of the dance. Death has ever been, and ever will be,

the greatest leveller; and at a time when rank had an importance and

bestowed advantages of which we can form little idea, while at the same

time men had begun to ask why this should be, such a satire as this

Dance of Death, sanctioned by the Church, that great protector of

established rights and dignities, and yet sparing neither noble nor

hierarch, not even the Pope himself, satisfied an eager craving in the

breast of poor, envious, self-asserting human nature. In one of those

ornamental initial-letters above mentioned, the date of which was some

years prior to the execution of Holbein's Dance, Death appears as a

grave-digger, and lifts on his spade, out of the grave which he is

making, two skulls, one crowned, the other covered with a peasant's hat.

He grins with savage glee at seeing these remnants of the two extremes

of society side by side; and underneath them, on the shovel, is written

_Idem_,--"The Same." In this word is the key to the popularity of the

Dance.

The most important and interesting of these pictured Dances of Death

were those at Bâle, at Strasbourg, and at Rouen. That at Bâle consisted

of thirty-nine groups, in the first three of which appear a Pope, an

Emperor, and a King. These were portraits of Pope Felix V., the Emperor

Sigismund, and King Albert II., of Rome, all of whom were present at the

Council, by whose order, as we have seen, the Dance was painted. The

last group of this Dance shows the seizure of the painter's child by

Death. It having been almost destroyed by time, the wall on which it was

painted was torn down about a hundred years ago; but engravings had been

made of it in the latter part of the seventeenth century. The Dance at

Strasbourg, like that at Bâle, and many others, was on the wall of

a Dominican convent. It was painted in arched compartments, and is

peculiar in that its groups consist of many figures, among whom Death

intrudes, and carries off one, generally the principal personage of the

company. It was painted about 1450, and probably by the eminent German

painter, Martin Schongauer; but having been utterly neglected and

forgotten, it was finally plastered over, no one knows when. In

repairing the church in 1824, it was accidentally discovered, and

carefully exposed; but it was so much injured that it fell into decay

soon after drawings had been made from it.

The Dance at Rouen was in the still existing Cemetery of St. Maclou, and

was not a painting, but a sculpture. It was not entirely completed

until 1526. The cemetery is surrounded by a covered gallery open on the

inside, where it was supported by thirty-nine columns, distant about

eleven feet from each other. Thirty-one of these still exist; and upon

the shaft of all but four of them, on the side facing the court of the

cemetery, is sculptured, in high relief, a group of two figures,--one a

living personage, and the other the cadaverous body by which Death was

represented. On the remainder were sculptured the Christian Virtues

and the Fates,--two on each column. The capitals of these columns are

decorated with figures quite in another manner. Cupids, naked female

figures, grotesque masks, and shapes--human and bestial--are ingeniously

substituted for the foliage usually found on that part of a column. The

execution of these figures is of quite a high order. They have all been

sadly mutilated; but, fortunately, that which has suffered least is a

beautiful figure of Eve. Her head is gone; but the flowing lines of the

lovely torso are unbroken, and the round and graceful limbs are almost

as perfect as when they came from the sculptor's chisel. This figure is

so like the Venus de Medici that it might have been copied from it.

But what is Eve doing in a Dance of Death? Alas! she took the first step

of that dance in Paradise, and the artists of the olden time did not

deprive her of her due precedence. She leads the Dance, but with this

difference from those who follow her:--they, cowering and muffled,

go off the scene with Death; she, upright in her naked innocence and

beauty, brings him on. Poor Eve! she had her punishment and made her

atonement to man for leading him to death, in becoming the source and

the joy and solace of his life; but it was not for the artists of the

Dance of Death to embody this phase of her existence. So essential a

part of the Dance is the temptation of Eve, that the whole subject was

concentrated into the representation of that event by a German engraver,

in this singular manner:--Adam and Eve stand by the Tree of Knowledge,

around which twines the serpent, from whom Eve is receiving the apple;

but the trunk of the tree is formed by the twisted legs and the ribs of

a skeleton, from the head and the outstretched arms of which spring the

branches and the foliage. It is worthy of remark, that many painters,

the greatest of them (Raphael) at their head, have represented the

tempter of Eden as a beautiful woman, whose body terminates in a

serpent. It was a mistake on their part to do so. They knew how much of

the Devil a woman might have in her, and how irresistible a temptress

she is; but they forgot, that, on this occasion, woman, not man, was

tempted.

There was a Dance of Death in Old St. Paul's Church, in London,--the

one burned down in the Great Fire; and another in the beautiful little

parish church of Stratford-on-Avon,--but this, too, has disappeared. It

is interesting to know that they were there, and that Shakspeare saw

them; for he has woven some of the thoughts that they awakened in his

mind into a noble passage in one of his historical plays. We shall recur

to it in examining Holbein's Dance.

The Dance was represented, and still exists, in one very singular place.

At Lucerne, in Switzerland, it appears upon a covered bridge, in the

triangles formed by the beams which support the roof. The groups, of

which there are thirty-six, are double, looking away from each other,

and are so arranged, that the passenger, on entering the bridge, has

before him a long array of these grotesque and gloomy pictures. The

motive for placing the Dance in such a place is unknown, and it is

difficult to conjecture what it was. It could hardly have been to

enforce the old adage,--Speak well of the bridge that carries you over.

* * * * *

While we have been thus endeavoring to discover the origin of the Dance

of Death, what it was, and what it meant, Holbein has been waiting more

patiently than he was wont, for us to see who he was, and why the Dance,

which was known three hundred years at least before he was born, is now

universally spoken of as his.

Hans Holbein, the greatest painter of the German school, came honestly

by his talent and his name. He was the son of Hans Holbein, a painter,

who was the son of another Hans Holbein, also a painter. The first Hans

was a poor painter; the second a good one; and the third so great, that

the world, when it speaks their common name, means only him. The father

and grandfather were born at Augsburg, in Bavaria, and of late years

it has been asserted by mousing antiquaries that the grandson was born

there too; but this, perhaps, is not quite certain; and it is much

pleasanter to adhere to the ancient faith, and believe that he was

born at that strange old Bâle, in sight of that great Dance, the

reproduction, or rather recreation, of which was to make so great a part

of his fame,--especially as he was quite surely an inhabitant of the

town at such tender years, that the veriest Know-Nothing in the place

would not have deprived him of his citizenship.

Of Holbein's life we unfortunately know very little. He showed his

talent early, as all the great painters have done. Conscious of his

abilities, he devoted himself eagerly to the study of the profession to

which his genius urged him. He learned not only painting, but engraving,

the sculpture of metals, and architecture; and of all these, it will be

remembered, Bâle offered him facilities for study, in examples which

must have stimulated both his imagination and his ambition. He did not

lack encouragement; for the nobles and burghers of Bâle had begun to

acquire a taste for the arts, which their ruder fathers contemned; and

they had, at this time, a university in their city, which made them

acquainted with Cicero and the orators, of whom Aeneas Sylvius found

them so ignorant.

But Holbein, although eminent and well employed, did not thrive. He had

some Bâlois failings, and, as Aeneas Sylvius would have said, worshipped

Father Bacchus and Dame Venus with too much devotion;--not that he was

a drunkard or a debauchee; but he sought in conviviality with men of

talent, and in the company of beautiful women, too happy in the caresses

of the great painter, who was generous with his florins, that happiness

which he could not find at home. For poor Hans was afflicted with what

has been the moral and social ruin of many a better, if not greater man

than he--a froward, shrill-tongued wife. Luckily, however, the great

scholar and philosopher, Erasmus, went into retirement at Bâle, in 1521;

and he soon recognized the genius of Holbein, and became his admirer and

friend. By his advice, and at the solicitation of an English nobleman,

and, poor fellow, seeking refuge from the temper of his wife, whom even

the sweet cares of maternity could not mollify, Holbein determined to

leave Bâle for England. What was the great cause of Frau Holbein's

tantrums,--whether Hans's ears were pierced with conjugal clamors, as

poor Albert Dürer's, the other great German painter's, were, because

he could not supply all his wife's demands for money, to enable her,

perhaps, to exhibit herself at church on holy days in one of those

precious pulpits, splendid in velvet and jewels, to the discomfiture of

the other painters' wives,--we do not know; but whatever was the cause

of her oft-recurring outbreaks, they made him not unwilling to put

France and the English Channel between himself and her, his children,

and the home of his childhood.

He gave out, at first, that his absence from Bâle would be

temporary,--only for the purpose of raising the value of his works, by

making them more difficult to obtain. Before he went, he finished and

sent home a portrait on which he was engaged. It was one of his best

pictures; and the person for whom it was painted, lost for a while in

admiration of its beauty, noticed at last that a fly, which had settled

upon the forehead, remained there motionless. He stepped up to brush the

insect away, and found that it was a part of the picture. This story

has, since Holbein's time, been told of many painters,--among others, of

Benjamin West. Such a piece of mere imitation should have added nothing

to the reputation of a painter of Holbein's powers; but the story was

soon told all over Bâle, and orders were given to prevent the loss

to the city of so great an artist. But Holbein had quietly gone off,

furnished with letters of introduction from Erasmus, who wrote in one of

them that in Bâle the arts were chilled; which might well be true of a

place where so much ado was made about the painting of a fly.

In England, Holbein found a friend and patron in Sir Thomas More,--Henry

the Eighth's great Lord Chancellor; and a sight of some of his works won

him, ere long, the favor of the King himself. He was appointed Court

Painter, with apartments at the palace, and a yearly salary of two

hundred florins, (or thirty pounds, equal to about two hundred pounds

now,) which he received in addition to the price of his pictures. After

about three years of prosperity he went home to his wife and children;

but as he soon returned to England, we may safely conclude that his

visit was to provide for the latter, and with no hope of living with the

former. Some years after, in 1538, when his fame was still increasing,

the city of Bâle, proud of its son, offered him a handsome annuity,

in the hope that that might induce him to return to his country, his

children, and his wife. But he could not be tempted. Though not the

wisest of men, he was Solomon enough to know that "it is better to dwell

in a corner of the house-top than with a brawling woman and in a wide

house"; and as he was successful and held in honor in England as well as

Bâle, he contented himself with a corner of King Henry's palace.

But although he fled from his wife, he painted her portrait; and we need

no testimony to warrant the likeness. She is the very type of one of

those meek shrews, alternately a martyr and a fury, that drive a man to

madness when they speak and to despair when they are silent. We might

reasonably wonder that he would paint so vivid a representation of that

which he so sedulously shunned. But poor Hans, who probably had some

lingering remains of his early love, knew, that, although he should

make a speaking likeness, it would be a silent one, and that this Frau

Holbein must keep the look which he chose to summon to her face. That,

indeed, was knowledge that was power! How he must have chuckled as he

saw his wife looking at him more natural than life and yet without the

power to worry him! His own portrait shows us a broad, good-natured,

ruddy face, in which we see marks of talent when we know that it is

Holbein's. But in spite of its strength, its bronze, and its beard, it

has a somewhat sad and subdued air; and its heavy-lidded, pensive eyes

look deprecatingly at a Frau Holbein in the distance.

While he lived at Greenwich palace, an incident occurred which may not

be known to all our readers, and which is a striking illustration of the

esteem in which he was held by Henry. It is not a little to the honor

of that monarch, who, arbitrary and sensual as he was, had some noble

traits of character. One day, as Holbein was painting a lady's portrait

in his private studio, a nobleman intruded upon him rudely. Holbein

resented the discourtesy, and, as it was doggedly persisted in, finally

threw my lord downstairs. There was an outcry; and the painter, bolting

his door on the inside, escaped from his window along the eaves of the

roof, and, making his way directly to the King, threw himself before

him and begged a pardon, without telling his offence. Henry promised

forgiveness on condition of a full confession, which the painter began.

But meantime the nobleman arrived, and Henry, in deference to his rank,

gave him precedence, and stepped into another apartment to hear

his story. He accused Holbein of the violence, but suppressed the

provocation; whereat Henry broke into a towering Tudor rage, and, after

reproaching the nobleman for his prevarication, said, "You have to do

with me, Sir. I tell you, that of seven peasants I could make seven

earls like you; but of seven earls I could not make one Holbein. Do not

molest him, if you value your head." And as second-hand heads, though

plentiful about those days, were found to be of no value, even to the

original owner, Holbein remained unmolested.

Holbein is known chiefly by his portraits. He painted some historical

and sacred pictures; but though they all bear witness to his genius, it

can hardly be denied that they also show that that genius was not suited

to such works. Holbein had an objective perception;--that is, his mind

received impressions entirely uninfluenced by its own character or

condition; and his pictures, therefore, seem like literal transcripts

of what was before his eyes. He nowhere shows that he had an idea of

abstract beauty, or the power of generalizing from individuals, or that

he was at all discontented with the subjects which he painted; so that

his works leave an impression of absolute faithfulness. But to suppose,

therefore, that his portraits have merely the merit of reproducing the

external facts of Nature, like photographs, would do him wrong; for he

was faithful to expression as well as form, and has perpetuated upon

his canvas the voluptuous sweetness of Anne Boleyn, the courtliness and

manly grace of Wyatt, and the severity, the energy, and the penetrating

judgment of Sir Thomas More. His portrait of the last is one of the

greatest portraits ever painted. Some competent critics consider it the

greatest. It is so real, so human, that we might be well content, if one

in twenty of the actual men we meet were half as real and human; and it

expresses, with equal strength and subtilty, the large and noble nature

of the man. Holbein was a great colorist, and imitated all the rich

and tender hues of Nature, in their delicate and almost imperceptible

gradations, with a minute truthfulness which is quite marvellous.

This being the character of his mind, it would hardly be supposed that

he could produce such a work as the great Dance of Death, which has

caused all others to be forgotten, except by antiquarians. For this

Dance is the most remarkable embodiment in Art of that fantastic and

grotesque idealism which has found its best expression in the works of

German poets and painters; and the preëminence of Holbein's over all the

other representations of the same subject consists in this,--that, while

they are but a dull and formal succession of mere costumed figures

seized by a corpse and shrinking away from its touch, Holbein's groups

are instinct with life, character, and emotion. In particular is this

true of the figure of Death, although it is a mere skeleton,--the face

without a muscle, and for the eye but a rayless cavern. Death is not one

whom "a limner would love to paint or a lady to look upon"; but Holbein

has given a strange and fascinating interest to the figure, which in all

other hands is merely repulsive. The grim monarch sat to a painter who

not only added to the truthfulness of his portrait the charm of poetic

feeling, but the magic touch of whose pencil made his dry bones live.

The insignificance of the material in which the painter worked, when

compared with the effect which he produced, is also remarkable in this

unique work of Art. For Holbein's Dance of Death is not, like the

others, either a great fresco painting, or a series of sculptures; it

is not a painting at all,--but merely a series of very small woodcuts,

fifty-three in number, forty-six of which were published at Lyons

in 1538, and the whole afterwards at Bâle in 1554, under the title,

_Simulachres de la Mort, Icones Mortis:_ that is, in French and Latin,

"Images of Death,"--for the title "Dance of Death" is of recent origin.

The leaves on which the cuts are printed make but part of a little book

not so large as a child's primer; but a copy of it is now worth ten

times its weight in gold. It was copied and republished in numberless

editions, as a popular book, merely for the sake of the subject, and

the great lesson taught by it,--each print being accompanied by an

admonitory stanza, and a quotation from the Bible. Beside these

editions, endeavors have been made of later years to imitate it

satisfactorily as a work of Art,--but in vain. Great as we think our

advancement in the arts has been,--the mechanical part of them, at

least,--all the efforts of the lithographer, the wood-cutter, and even

the line-engraver, to reproduce the spirit or the very lines of this

work, have been but partially successful. There is as much difference

between the most carefully-executed and costliest copies and good

impressions of the original wood-cuts, made three hundred years ago, and

sold for a franc or two, as there is between pinchbeck and gold.

Any attempt to reproduce the effect of those groups in words can hardly

fail to fall equally short of the mark; but we will tell our readers

what they are, and endeavor to give some notion of their purpose and

spirit.

The first shows the Creation of Woman;--we have seen before why she is

made thus prominent in the Dance. The composition is crowded with the

denizens of the earth, the air, and the water; the sun, the moon, and

the stars all appear; the four winds of heaven issue from the laboring

cheeks of figures that impersonate them. The Creator, in the form of

an aged man in royal robes, and wearing the imperial crown, lifts Eve

bodily from the side of the sleeping Adam.

The second represents the Temptation. Eve reclines upon the ground, and

shows Adam the fruit which she has plucked. Adam stands grasping the

tree with his left hand, and raises his right to gather for himself. The

serpent, who looks down upon Eve, has the face and body of a woman. The

forms in this group are fine; Adam's is remarkable for its symmetry and

grace; but Eve's face is ignoble. Indeed, Holbein, like Rembrandt, seems

to have been incapable of an idea of female beauty.

In the third we see the Expulsion from Paradise; and here the Dance

begins. Our guilty parents fly before the flaming sword,--poor Eve

cowering, and her hair streaming in a wavy flood upon the wind; and

before them, but unseen, Death leaps and curvets to the sound of a

vielle or rote,--an old musical stringed instrument,--which he has hung

about his neck. His glee, as he leads forth his victims into the valley

where his shadow lies, is perceptible in every line of his angular

anatomy; his very toes curl up like those of a baby in its merriment.

In the fourth, Adam has begun to till the ground. The pioneer of his

race, he is uprooting a huge tree, all unconscious that another figure

is laboring at his side. It is not Eve, who sits in the background with

her first-born at her breast and her distaff by her side,--but Death,

who, with a huge lever in his bony gripe, goes at his work with a fierce

energy which puts the efforts of his muscular companion to shame. The

people of Holbein's day not only saw in this subject the beginning of

that toil which is the lot of humankind, but, as they looked upon the

common ancestors of all men, laboring for the means of life, they asked,

in the words of an old distich,--

"When Adam delved and Eve span,

Where was then the gentleman?"

The fifth composition seems to represent a general rejoicing over the

Triumph of Death. It shows a churchyard and porch filled with skeletons,

who blow trumpets of all sorts and sizes; one beats frantically upon a

pair of kettle-drums, and another, wearing a woman's nightcap, with a

broad frill border, plays the hurdy-gurdy.

In the sixth, a Pope, the highest earthly potentate, is in the act of

crowning an Emperor, who kneels to kiss his toe. But the successor of

St. Peter does not see, as he sits upon his throne, giving authority and

sanction to the ruler of an empire, that a skeleton leans from behind

that throne, and grins in his face, and that another in a cardinal's hat

mingles with the throng before him.

The seventh is one of the finest of the series. An Emperor is enthroned,

with his courtiers round him. He is threatening one with his sword for

some act of injustice from which a poor peasant who kneels before him

has suffered. But, unseen by all, a skeleton bestrides the shoulders of

the monarch and lays his hand upon his very crown. There can be no doubt

that Shakspeare had this subject in his mind when he wrote that fine

passage in "King Richard the Second,"--

"Within the hollow crown

That rounds the mortal temples of a king

Keeps Death his court; and there the antic sits,

Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp;

Allowing him a breath, a little scene

To monarchize, be feared, and kill with looks;

Infusing him with self and vain conceit,

As if this flesh which walls about our life

Were brass impregnable; and humored thus,

Comes at the last, and with a little pin

Bores through his castle wall, and--farewell, King!"

In the eighth we see a King (it is unmistakably Francis I.) dining under

a canopy, and served by a splendid retinue. He stretches out his hand to

receive a wine-cup; for he does not see that Death is filling it.

A Cardinal appears in the ninth, selling an indulgence for a heavy

bribe; and we all rejoice to see that Death has laid hands upon his

hat,--the symbol of his rank,--and is about to tear it from his head.

In the tenth, an Empress, passing through her palace-yard, attended by

her ladies, is led by the favorite on whom she leans, and who she does

not see is Death, into an open grave.

Death, in the next, has assumed the guise of a Court Fool, and has

seized a Queen at the very gate of her palace. She recognizes him, and

struggles, shrieking, to free herself from his grasp; but in vain. With

a grin of fierce delight, he lifts up his hour-glass before her, and,

in spite of her resistance and that of a gentleman who attends her, is

about to bear her off. Every line of this composition is instinct with

life.

In the twelfth, Death carries off a Bishop from his flock.

In the thirteenth, an Elector of the Empire, surrounded by his retinue,

is approached by a poor woman, who begs his aid in behalf of herself and

her child; he repulses her scornfully; for he does not see that Death,

the avenger of the oppressed poor, and who is here crowned with

oak-leaves, has laid his gripe upon him. Holbein has put such an

expression of power into the arm and of wrath into the face of this

skeleton, that we expect to see his victim haled off into the air before

our very eyes.

The Abbot and the Abbess are the subjects of the next two cuts. In the

former, Death has assumed the mitre and the crosier of his victim, and

drags him off with such an expression of fun and burlesque pomp as we

sometimes see in the face of a mischievous boy who mocks his betters.

In the companion group his look is that of a demon; and with his head

fantastically dressed, he drags the Abbess off by the scapulary which

hangs from her neck.

A Nobleman and a Canon are his prey in the sixteenth and seventeenth

groups. We lack space to describe any but the most remarkable with

particularity.

The satire of the next three is levelled against the Lawyers, who were

held in such little respect in Bâle. They show a Judge who takes a bribe

from a rich to wrong a poor suitor, and a Counsellor and an Advocate who

lend their talents to wealthy clients, but turn their backs upon the

poor victims of "the oppressor's wrong." In one, a demon is blowing

suggestions into the Counsellor's ear from a pair of bellows, which he

has doubtless used elsewhere for other purposes; in all, Death stands

ready to avenge the poor.

In the twenty-first, a Preacher addresses a Congregation, whose

interested attention the painter has portrayed with great skill,

knowledge of character, and consequent variety and truth of expression.

Behind the Preacher stands Death, and, with a kind of grotesque

practical pun, holds the jaw of a skeleton over his head, as far more

eloquent than his own.

A Priest and a Mendicant Friar are the subjects of the twenty-second and

twenty-third.

The twenty-fourth is of peculiar interest. In it we see a youthful Nun,

who, it is clear, has taken her vows too hastily, kneeling before the

oratory in her cell. But her heart is not in her devotions; for the

lover whom she abandoned has made his way into the apartment, and sits

on her bed singing to his lute. Her hands are clasped, not in prayer,

but in an agony of love and apprehension. She turns from the crucifix to

gaze at him; and we see how the interview will end: for an aged female

attendant, in coif and scapulary, leans over to extinguish the candles.

We see, too, what its consequence will be; for that attendant is Death.

Among the remaining subjects, which we cannot examine particularly, or

in their order, are those of the Old Man and Old Woman led by Death,

each to the sound of a dulcimer;--the Physician, to whom in mockery

Death himself brings a patient;--the Astronomer, to whom the skeleton

offers a skull in place of a celestial globe;--the Miser, from whom

Death snatches his hoarded gold; and the Merchant, whom the same

inexorable hand tears away from his ships and his merchandise;--the

storm-tossed ship, with Death snapping the mast;--a Count, dressed in

the extreme of courtly splendor, who recognizes Death in the disguise

of a peasant who has flung down his flail to seize his lordship's

emblazoned shield and dash it to pieces;--a Duchess, whom one skeleton

drags rudely from her canopied bed, while another scrapes upon a

violin;--a Peddler;--a Ploughman, of whose four-horse team Death is the

driver;--Gamblers, Drunkards, and Robbers, all interrupted in their

wickedness by Death;--a Wagoner, whose wagon, horse, and load have been

tumbled in a ruinous heap by a pair of skeletons;--a Blind Beggar, who

stumbles over a stony path after Death, who is his deceitful leader, and

who turns back with a look of malicious glee to see his bewilderment

and suffering;--and a Court Fool, whom Death, playing on bagpipes, and

dancing, approaches, and, plucking him by the garment, wins him, with a

coaxing leer, to join his pastime.

A few others claim our more particular attention. Among them is a

Knight, armed cap-a-pie, who is run through and through, from back to

front, by Death, himself half armed in mockery. There is a concentrated

vigor in the thrust of the lance, and a cool venom in the countenance

of the assailant, that we may seek in vain in the works of famous

battle-painters; and it must always be remembered that Holbein's figure

is entirely without those indications of muscular movement by which we

express our feelings,--in fact, a mere bare-boned skeleton.

A Bride at her wedding-toilet, whom Holbein has contrived to make almost

beautiful, receives a robe from one attendant; another clasps round her

neck a collar--of gold and jewels? No,--of bones, and with bony fingers.

And the next cut to this shows us the Bridegroom and Bride walking

through an apartment hung with arras, while before them dances Death,

beating a tabor, like a child beside himself with joy.

One of the finest and most touching conceptions in the whole series

represents a dilapidated Cottage,--a mere shanty, so wretched that the

love of those who live in it is all their happiness,--nay, all their

comfort. The mother is preparing for two little children the simplest

and poorest of meals, at a fire made of a few small sticks. She finds

consolation in the very pranks that hinder her humble task. Death

enters,--there is no door to keep him out,--and, seizing the hand of the

younger child, who turns and stretches out the other imploringly to his

mother, carries him off, remorseless and exulting, leaving her frantic

with grief. We may look with comparative indifference, and sometimes

even with sympathy, upon his other feats,--but who is there that does

not hate that grinning skeleton?--And yet, perhaps, he exults that he

has saved one soul, yet pure, from misery and crime.

For vigor of movement the group of Death and the Soldier is preëminent.

The field is covered with the wounded and the slain, in the midst

of which the soldier encounters his last enemy. The man is armed in

panoply, and wields a huge two-handed sword with a vigor unabated

by former struggles. Death has caught a shield from the arm of some

previous victim; but his only offensive weapon is a huge thigh-bone,

which we plainly see will bear down all before it. In the distance

another figure of Death flies madly over the hills, beating a drum which

summons other soldiers to the field. It is impossible to convey in words

the fierce eagerness of this figure, minute as it is, and composed of a

few lines.

The forty-seventh composition is one which has puzzled the critics

and antiquaries; but it is not easy to conjecture why. It shows us a

wretched Beggar, naked, sick, lame,--utterly destitute, miserable, and

forsaken,--suffering at once all the ills that flesh is heir to. He sits

huddled together on some straw, near a large building, and lifts his

hands and face up piteously to heaven. Death is not there; and the

antiquaries ask in wonder, Why is the subject introduced? Why, but to

show that to him alone who would gladly welcome Death, Death will not

come?

The work ends, as a connected series, with the Last Judgment, where

Christ, who conquered Death, appears seated on the bow of promise,--with

his feet resting on a celestial sphere, attended by angels, and showing

to a throng of those who have risen from the grave the wounds by which

he redeemed them from its power.

To this is added an ornamental tail-piece called Death's Arms. It shows

a skull in a battered shield, which has for a crest a regal helmet

surmounted by an hour-glass and two bony arms grasping a stone. The

supporters to the shield are a gentleman and lady richly dressed,--said

to represent Holbein and his wife.

It is not known, positively, when Holbein drew these designs upon the

blocks (for of course he did not engrave them); and it has even been

disputed by one or two eminent antiquarian critics, that he designed

them at all. But there does not appear to be a single valid reason for

thus diminishing his fame. He probably was engaged on them between

1531, the date of his first return to Bâle, and 1538, when they were

published,--the year in which he refused the solicitation of his

townsmen to return to the home of his childhood and the bosom of his

family.

Holbein continued to live in London until the year 1554, when that city

suffered a visitation of the plague, similar to that which was the

occasion of the painting of the Great Dance of Death at Bâle. Holbein

was struck by the disease; and Death, knowing gratitude as little as

remorse, triumphed over him who had blazoned his triumphs. Upon the

painter's fame, however, and that of his great work, Death could not lay

his hand; but so long as the grim tyrant shall claim his victims, so

long will he perpetuate the memory of Hans Holbein.

Though he was a royal favorite, it is not known where he died; and the

place where lie the ashes of him who, on a king's word, was greater than

seven earls, is equally unknown; there is not a line or a stone to mark

it. So soon after his death as in the reign of Charles I., (within

one hundred years,) a nobleman--noble by nature as well as by

birth--desirous of erecting a monument to him, sought his grave, but

in vain, and was compelled to abandon his design. And thus was Holbein

driven to live among strangers, to die without a wife to console or

children to mourn him, and to lay his bones in a nameless grave in a

foreign land.

Such is an imperfect and brief account of the origin, the various forms,

and the meaning of the Dance of Death, and of the life and character of

him whose genius has caused it to be called by his name. It may

smell too much of mortality and antiquity for this fast-living and

forward-looking age; for it is not only a monument of the past, but an

exponent of its spirit. We can look back at it, through the mellowing

mist of centuries, with curiosity not unmixed with admiration; but we

should turn with aversion from such a work, coming from the hands of an

artist of our own day. We think, and with some reason, that we do not

need its teachings; for we are freed from the thraldom that gave edge

to its democratic satire; and we have learned to look with greater

calmness, if not with higher hope, upon the future, to which the grave

is but the ever-open portal. But we may yet profit by a thoughtful

consideration of the eternal truths embodied by Holbein in his Dance of

Death; and in the story of his life there is a lesson for every man, and

every woman too, if they will but find it.

LIZZY GRISWOLD'S THANKSGIVING.

"So John a'n't a-comin', Miss Gris'ld," squeaked Polly Mariner, entering

the great kitchen, where Mrs. Griswold was paring apples and Lizzy

straining squash.

"Isn't he?" quietly replied the lady addressed, as the tailoress sat

down in the flag-bottomed rocking-chair, and began rocking vehemently,

all the time eyeing Lizzy from the depths of her poke-bonnet with

patient scrutiny.

"No, he a'n't,--so Mr. Gris'ld says," went on Polly. "You see, I was

a-comin' up here from the Centre, so's to see if Sam couldn't wait for

his roundabout till arter Thanksgivin'; for Keziah Perkins, she 't was

my sister's husband's fust wife's darter, 'n' finally married sister's

fust husband's son, she's a real likely woman, and she's wrote over from

Taunton to ask me to go there to Thanksgivin'; 'n' to-day's Monday; 'n'

I was a-comin' here Tuesday so's to make Sam's roundabout; 'n' yesterday

Miss Luken's boy Simon, he 't a'n't but three year old, he got my

press-board, when he was a-crawlin' round, 'n' laid it right onto the

cookin'-stove, and fust thing Miss Lukens know'd it blazed right up, 'n'

I can't get another fixed afore Wednesday, and then I'd ought to be to

Taunton, 'cause there a'n't no stage runs Thursday, and there hadn't

oughter, of course"----

"We have got a press-board," said Mrs. Griswold, quietly.

"Yes, and I a'n't goin' to grandfather's in my old jacket, Miss Poll,"

interposed Sam, one of the "terrible" children who are scattered here

and there through this world. "Catch me where all the folks are, in that

old butternut suit!" added Sam.

But here his father stepped in at the door,--a fine, sturdy, handsome

farmer, one of New England's model men, whose honesty was a proverb, and

whose goodness a reliance to every creature in Greenfield.

"John isn't coming, wife," said Mr. Griswold, in a steady, sober tone.

"He says business will delay him, so that he can only get to Coventry

just as we do."

"So you had a letter," said Mrs. Griswold, carefully avoiding a look at

Lizzy.

"Yes," said Mr. Griswold, in a very abrupt way.--"Are you ready to go

back, Miss Polly? for I've got to go down to the Centre again with a

load of wheat."

"Well, yes, I don't know but I be. I ken stay over, if you want help,

Miss Gris'ld. I'm a-goin' to the minister's to help Miss Fletcher a

little mite this afternoon, but I guess she don't lot on it none; 'n'

seein' it's you, I ken stay, if you want help."

Lizzy looked quickly across the kitchen at her mother.

"Oh! no, thank you, Miss Polly, I know Mrs. Fletcher would feel very

badly to lose your help, and I really don't need it until to-morrow."

"Then I'll come round to the door as quick as I've loaded up," said Mr.

Griswold; and Miss Polly settled back in her chair to wait comfortably;

a process much intensified by a large piece of Mrs. Griswold's

gingerbread and a glass of new cider, both brought her by Lizzy's

hospitable hands,--readier even than usual just now, in the vain hope of

stopping Polly Mariner's clattering tongue. But neither gingerbread nor

cider was a specific to that end: Polly talked while she ate, and ate

while she talked. But while she finishes her luncheon, let us make known

to the patient reader whom and what the tailoress discusses.

John Boynton was a step-cousin of Lizzy Griswold's. Her youngest aunt

had married a widower, with one son, some five years older than Lizzy,

and had always lived in the old homestead at Coventry, with her father;

while the other daughters and sons, six in number, were scattered over

the State, returning once a year, at Thanksgiving, to visit their

birthplace, and bring their children into acquaintance with each other.

Eben Griswold, who lived at Greenfield, was nearer home than any of the

others, and Lizzy, consequently, oftener at her grandfather's house than

her cousins. She and John Boynton were playmates from childhood, and it

was not strange that John, who had never known a pleasure unshared by

Lizzy, or suffered a pain without her consolation, should grow up in

the idea that he could not possibly live without her, an idea also

entertained half-consciously by Miss Lizzy, though neither of them ever

yet had expressed it; for John was poor, and had no home to offer any

woman, much less the petted child of a rich farmer. So Mr. Boynton, Jr.,

left home to teach school in Roxbury, five years before the date of our

story, without making any confidences on the subject of his hopes

and fears to Miss Griswold; and she knit him stockings and hemmed

pocket-handkerchiefs for him with the most cold-blooded perseverance,

and nobody but the yarn and the needles knew whether she dropped any

tears on them or not.

Now it had always been John Boynton's custom to give his school

Thanksgiving-week as a vacation,--to take the train on Monday for

Greenfield, and stay there till Wednesday, when the whole family set off

together for Coventry, to spend the next day, according to time-honored

precedent.

Whatever John and Lizzy did in those two dull November days, it never

has been made known to the present chronicler; it is only understood

that no point-blank love-making went on; yet the days always ran away,

instead of creeping; and neither of the twain could believe it was

Wednesday when Wednesday came. But this year those forty-eight hours

were destined to drag past, for John wasn't coming; why, we shall

discover,--for Polly Mariner has finished the cider, and the gingerbread

is as much subject of inquiry as "The Indians,--where are they?"

"So John Boynton a'n't a-comin'? Well! Hetty Maria Clapp's jest got home

from Bunkertown, that's tew mile from Roxbury, 'n' she told Miss Lucas

that Miss Perrit, whose sister's son keeps a grocer's store to Roxbury,

told that Mr. Boynton, their teacher to the 'Cademy, was waitin' on

Miss Roxany Sharp's cousin, a dreadful pretty gal, who'd come down from

Boston to see Roxany, an' liked it so well she staid to Roxbury all

through October. I do'no's I should ha' remembered it, only 't I hed the

dredfullest jumpin' toothache that ever you did, 'n' Miss Lucas, she'd

jest come in to our house, an' she run an' got the lodlum an' was

a-puttin' some on't onto some cotton so's to plug the hole, while she

was tellin'; 'n' I remember I forgot all about the jumpin' while 't she

was talkin', so I ses, ses I, 'Miss Lucas, I guess your talkin's as good

as lodlum'; 'n' she bu'st out larfin', 'n' ses she, 'Polly Mariner, I

declare for't, you do beat all!' 'Well,' ses I, 'I'd die content, ef I

could beat John Boynton; fur ef ever I see a feller payin' attention

to a gal, he's been payin' on't to Lizzy Gris'ld this four year;

and 'ta'n't no wonder 't I think hard on't, for there never was a

prettier-behaved gal than her on Greenfield Hill'; an' I ses"----

Lizzy was on the point of "freeing her mind" just at this juncture, when

Mrs. Griswold interposed her quiet voice,--

"Don't trouble yourself to defend Lizzy, Miss Mariner; you know John

Boynton is her cousin, and he has been here a good deal. Folks will

talk, I suppose, always; but if John Boynton marries well, I don't think

anybody 'll be more forward to shake hands with him than our Lizzy."

"Of course I shall," said the young lady, with a most indignant toss of

her head. "Pray, keep your pity, Miss Polly, for somebody else. I don't

need it."

"H'm," sniffed the sagacious Polly. "Well, I didn't suppose you'd allow

't you felt put out about it; and I wouldn't, if I was you. Besides,

there's as good fish in the sea as----I declare for 't! there's Mr.

Gris'ld! I'll come round early to-morrer. Good-day, all on ye!"

So Polly departed.

"I don't care, if he is!" said Lizzy, flinging herself down on the

settle, when the door closed behind Polly's blue cloak.

Mrs. Griswold said nothing, but Sam looked up from his whittling, and

coolly remarked,--

"It looks as if you did, though!"

"Sam!" said his mother, with--emphasis.

Sam whistled, and, with his hands in his pockets, having shut his

jack-knife with a click, and kicked his shavings into the fire,

muttered something about feeding the pigs, and beat an ignominious

retreat,--snubbed, as the race of Adam daily are, and daily will be, let

us hope, for telling "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the

truth."

For Lizzy certainly did look as if she cared. A pretty enough picture

she made, too, flung down on the old black settle, one well-shaped

hand pinching the arm as if it had been--John Boynton's!--the other as

vigorously clenched on a harmless check-apron that showed no disposition

to get away; her bright red lips trembling a little, and her gray eyes

suspiciously shiny about the lashes, while her soft black hair had

fallen from part of its restraints on to the gay calico dress she wore,

and her foot beat time to some quick step that she didn't sing!

Mrs. Griswold did not care for the picturesque, just then; she cared

much more for Lizzy, and her acute feminine instinct helped her to the

right word.

"I don't believe it, dear!" said she; "you'd better finish straining

that squash, or Widow Peters won't have her pies for Thursday."

Lizzy went to work,--work is a grand panacea, even for sentimental

troubles,--and in doing battle with the obstinate squash,--which was not

as well cooked as it might have been,--Lizzy, for the moment, looked

quite bright, and forgot John, till her father came in to dinner.

Somebody once said that Mrs. Griswold was "a lesser Providence," and

Lizzy thought so now; for scarce were they all seated at dinner, when

she remarked, in a very unconcerned and natural way,--

"What keeps John in Roxbury so long, father?"

"He has business in Boston," curtly answered Mr. Griswold.--"Sam, did

you go over to the Corners, yesterday, about those sheep?"

Sam answered, and the conversation went on, but John's name did not

enter it, nor did Mr. Griswold offer to show his letter either to mother

or Lizzy.

Now the latter lady, not being a perfect woman, had sundry small faults;

she was proud, after a certain fashion of her own; slightly sentimental,

which is rather a failing than a fault; but her worst trait was a

brooding, fault-seeing, persevering tact at making herself miserable,

scarce ever equalled. The smallest bit of vantage-ground was enough for

a start, and on that foundation Lizzy took but a few hours of suspicion

and imagination to build up a whole Castle Doubting. The cause she had

to-day was even greater than was necessary; it was peculiar that

her father should be so reserved; it was more strange that he so

perseveringly withheld John's letter; and certainly he watched Lizzy at

her work with unusually tender eyes, that sometimes filled with a sort

of mist. All these things heaped up evidence for the poor girl; she

brooded over each separate item all night, and added to the sum Polly

Mariner's gossip, and looked forward to the day when everybody in

Greenfield should say, "Lizzy Griswold's had a disapp'intment of John

Boynton!" Poor, dear, Lizzy! as if that were an unheard-of pang! as if

nine-tenths of her accusers were not "disapp'inted" themselves,--some

before, some after marriage,--some in themselves, some in their

children, some in their wretched, dreary lives! But there was only one

John and only one heart-break present to her vision.

Polly Mariner came to breakfast next day, and pervaded the kitchen

like a daily paper. Horrible murders, barn-burnings, failures, deaths,

births, marriages, separations, lawsuits, slanders, and petty larcenies

outran each other in her glib speech, and her fingers flew as fast on

Sam's blue jacket as her tongue clappered above it.

Lizzy's pride kept her up before the old woman; she was in and out and

everywhere, a pretty spot of crimson on either fair cheek, her eyes as

sparkling and her step as light as any belle's in a ballroom, and her

whole manner so gay and charming that Polly inwardly pronounced John

Boynton a mighty fool, if he dodged such a pretty girl as that, and one

with "means."

But night came, and Polly went. Lizzy went to bed with a bad

headache,--convenient synonyme for aches of soul or body that one does

not care to christen! Sleep she certainly did that night, for she

dreamed John was married to a rich Boston girl with red hair and a

yellow flannel dress, and that Polly Mariner was bridesmaid in the

peculiar costume of a blue roundabout and pantaloons! But sleep with

such dreams was scarcely a restorer; and Wednesday morning, when Mrs.

Griswold asked Lizzy if she had put up her carpet-bag to go to Coventry,

she received for answer a flood of tears, and a very earnest petition to

be left at home.

"Leave you, Lizzy! Why, grandfather couldn't have Thanksgiving without

you! And Uncle Boynton! And Aunt Lizzy is coming up from Stonington with

the new baby;--and--John, too! You must go, Lizzy, dear!"

"I can't, mother! I can't!" said the poor girl, sobbing after every

word; "please don't ask me. I can't! I've got a headache; oh, dear!"

Here a fresh burst of tears followed, as Lizzy buried her head in her

mother's lap.

Mrs. Griswold was both grieved and astonished; she sat speechless,

stroking the soft hair that swept over her knee, till Lizzy's sobs

quieted, and then said,--

"Well, dear, if you're set on staying at home, I won't oppose it, if

your father thinks best; but I must ask him; only what will you do,

Lizzy, here alone all night?"

"Chloe and Peter will be here, mother; and I'll make Chloe sleep in

Sam's room, and leave the door open; and when they go down to Dinah's,

I'll lock up, and I shan't feel afraid in broad day."

Mrs. Griswold shook her head doubtfully.

"I'll see what father says," said she. So Lizzy lifted her head, and

smoothed her hair, while her mother went out to the barn to consult

"father."

Here she was, if anything, more puzzled. Mr. Griswold heard the proposal

with a rather misty look, as if he didn't see why, and when his wife

finished, said, gravely,--

"What is it, Susan? Anybody 't has lived as long as I have knows pretty

well that a woman's headache stands for a whole dictionary."

"Why, you see," said Mrs. Griswold, twisting a little lock of hay in her

fingers, and faintly blushing, as if the question had been of herself

rather than Lizzy, "she--well, the fact is, husband, she's kind of riled

about John's not coming; you see we haven't been real particular about

the children, and so"----

"You needn't spell it, Susan," said Mr. Griswold, with a half smile;

"Polly Mariner's tongue helped on, I guess. You let Lizzy stay, if she

wants to; 'twon't hurt her; when folks want to sulk, I generally let

'em. She can stay."

He began to whistle "Yankee Doodle" and pitch hay energetically, while

"Susan" was within hearing; but how would that dear woman's soul have

floundered deeper and deeper in the fog that clouded it now, had she

seen her grave husband sit down on one end of the hay-mow and laugh till

the tears stood in his keen eyes, and then, drawing his coat-sleeve

across the shaggy lashes, say to himself, "Poor child!" and begin his

work with fresh strength!

So matters were all arranged. After dinner, the rusty, dusty, old

carriage appeared at the door, with the farm-horses harnessed thereto,

jingling, and creaking, and snapping, as if oil and use were strange to

its dry joints and stiff straps. Mrs. Griswold mounted to the back seat,

after kissing Lizzy with hearty regret and tenderness,--her old gray

pelisse and green winter bonnet harmonizing with the useful age of her

conveyance. "Father," in a sturdy great-coat and buckskin mittens, took

the reins; and Sam, whose blue jacket was at that moment crushing his

mother's Sunday cap in a bandbox that sat where Lizzy should have been,

clambered over the front wheel, to the great detriment of the despised

butternut suit, and, seizing the whip, applied it so suddenly to Tom

and Jerry that they started off down the Coventry road at a pace that

threatened a solution of continuity to bones and sinews, as well as wood

and leather.

Lizzy turned away sadly from the door. Who can say that just at that

minute she did not wish she had gone, too? But nobody heard her say so.

She went up-stairs to her room, and tried to read, but couldn't attach

any ideas to the words; she was half an hour over a page of a very good

book, and then flung it upon the bed with an expression of disgust, as

if it were the book's fault. Poor authors! toil your fingers off, and

spin your brains out! be as wise as Solomon, or witty as Sheridan! your

work is vanity and vexation of spirit, unless the reader's brain choose

to receive and vivify the hieroglyphs of your ideas; think yourselves

successful because a great man praises you, and to-morrow that man is

twisted with dyspepsia, or some woman passes him without a smile, and

your sparkling sketch, your pathetic poem are declared trash! Such is

fame! Of which little homily the moral is,--Write for money! What a

thing it is to be worldly-wise! So was not Lizzy; if she had been, she

would now be at Coventry, kissed and caressed by grandfather, aunts,

uncles, cousins, and----But we won't anticipate.

Lizzy flung down the book, and went to her closet for another; but it

was as good (or as bad) as Bluebeard's closet, for there hung the pretty

crimson merino, with delicate lace at the throat and round the short

sleeves, in which Miss Lizzy Griswold once intended to electrify Mr.

John Boynton this very evening. True it is that short sleeves are not

the most sensible things for November; but Lizzy was twenty, and had

such round, white arms, that she liked to wear short sleeves, as any

girl would; and who is going to blame her? Not I! A girl doesn't know

her privileges who was never just a little vain,--just a little glad to

be pretty when John is by. Lizzy looked at the crimson merino, and at

the smart slippers on the door with a shining black bow on each instep.

There, too, on a little low table, was a green box; somebody had left

it open,--mother, perhaps,--so she saw on its cotton bed a red coral

bracelet, that came from Roxbury, or thereabout, last year at this time.

Lizzy shut up the box, and went down-stairs to get tea.

Chloe was indignant to think "Miss 'Lisbeth" thought she couldn't get

supper without help, and Miss 'Lisbeth was vexed with Chloe for being

cross. And then, when supper came, the tea seemed to be very unwilling

to be swallowed, and the new bread was full of large lumps that choked a

person, and the lamps didn't burn clearly at all,--and--and--when Chloe,

still sulky, had cleared the table, Lizzy sat down on a low cricket

beside her mother's stuffed rocking-chair, and had as good a cry as ever

she had in her life, and felt much better for it.

So she sat there, with her head on the arm of the chair, rather tired

with the cry, rather downhearted for want of the supper she hadn't

eaten, and making pictures in the fire, when all of a sudden it came

into her head to wonder what they were doing at Coventry. There was

grandfather, no doubt, in the keeping-room, telling his never-tiring

stories of Little Robby, and Old Bose, and the Babes in the Wood; of

singing the ever-new ditty of

"Did you ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever,"--

and so on, _ad infinitum_, till you got to--

"See a man eat a whale?"

to some half dozen children; while sweet Aunt Lizzy, serenely smiling,

rocked the fair little baby that fifteen cousins had kissed for welcome

that day; and Uncle Boynton trotted the baby's brother on his knee,

inviting him persistently to go to Boston and buy a penny-cake, greatly

to little Eben's aggravation, who would end, Lizzy knew, by crying for

the cake, and being sent to bed. Then there were Sam, and Lucy Peters,

and Jim Boynton, up to all sorts of mischief in the kitchen,--Susan

Boynton and Nelly James cracking nuts and their fingers on the

hearth,--father and mother up-stairs in grandmother's room; for

grandmother was bedridden, but kindly, and good, and humorous, and

patient, even in her hopeless bed, and nobody was dearer to the whole

family than she. Then, of course, there was a fire in the best parlor,

and there were all the older cousins, telling conundrums and stories,

and playing grown-up games, and some two, or four, may-be, looking out

in couples at the moonshine, from behind the curtains,--Sue James,

perhaps, and John. Sue was so pretty!

Lizzy's head bent lower on the arm of the chair; her thoughts travelled

back over a great many Thanksgivings,--years ago, when she wore short

frocks, and used to go with John to see the turkeys fed, and be

so scared when they gobbled and strutted with rage at her scarlet

bombazette;--how they used to pick up frozen apples and thaw them in

the dish-kettle; how she pounded her thumb, cracking butternuts with a

flat-iron, and John kissed it to make it well,--only it didn't! And

then how they slid down-hill before church, and sat a long two hours

thereafter in the square pew, smelling of "meetin'-seed," and dinted

with the kicks of weary boys in new boots; and finally, after the first

anthem and the two hymns and the three prayers and the long sermon were

over, came home to dinner, where the children had their own table at the

end of the grown people's board, and Lizzy always took the head and

John the foot,--till, exhausted by the good things they had eaten, and

tantalized by the good things they couldn't eat, they crept away to the

fire and their picture-books for a quiet hour, winding up the day with

all the plays that country and city children alike delight in.

Then came recollections of later days, when John was a young man, and

Lizzy still a little girl,--when long talks banished turkeys and apples

and sliding,--when new books or sleigh-rides crowded out the old

games,--when the two days of John's yearly visit were half-spent in the

leafless, sunny woods, gathering mosses and acorn-cups, delicate fern

leaves, and clusters of fire-moss, and red winter-green berries, for the

pretty frames and baskets Lizzy's skilful fingers fabricated,--when he

shook hands at coming and going, instead of kissing her;--but it seemed

just the same, somehow. Dear me! those days were all gone! John didn't

care about her any more! he was in love with a beautiful Boston lady.

Why should he care about a homely little country cousin? He would go to

live in Boston in a great big house, and he'd be a great man, and people

would talk about him, and she should see his name in the papers, but he

never would come to Coventry any more! And he'd acted as if he did love

her, too!--that was men's way,--heartless things! If John had a good

time, what did he care if Lizzy did grow into a gray-haired, puckered-up

old maid, like Miss Case, with nobody to love her, or take care of her,

or ask about her, or--or--kiss her?--The climax was too much for Lizzy;

great big tears ran down on the arm of the stuffed chair, and she

would have sobbed out loud, only Chloe opened the door, to put up the

tea-things, I suppose, and Lizzy wouldn't cry before her. But, for all

that, she didn't hear Chloe come to the fireplace; she only felt her sit

down in the big chair, and, simultaneously, a pair of strong arms lifted

Miss Lizzy on to John Boynton's knee, and held her there. It wasn't

Chloe.

I declare, one gets out of patience with these men! they do astonish a

person so sometimes, one doesn't know what to do or say. Lizzy had been

thinking to herself, not two minutes ago, with what cool and smiling

reserve she should meet John Boynton, how dignified and kindly distant

she would be to him,--and now,--well! it was so sudden,--and then, as

I said before, these men do get round one so,--if you happen to love

them.--Lizzy forgot, I suppose; at any rate, she wasn't dignified, or

reserved, or proper, or anything of the kind, for she just hid her

pretty head on his square shoulder, and said, "Oh, John!"--"slowly, and

nothing more,"--as Mr. Tennyson remarks about cutting Iphigenia's head

off with a sharp knife.

I don't know that John talked much, either. I rather think Lizzy got

over the climax that had troubled her a little while ago. Presently,

she raised her head and gathered up her hair that had fallen down, and

became painfully aware that she had on only a blue calico! John never

knew it; he knew somebody had a very sweet face, full of cloudy blushes

and sunshiny smiles, and, not being a Pre-Raphaelite, the foreground was

of no consequence to him.

So, after a time, Lizzy slipped down to her cricket again, still leaning

on the arm--of the chair,--and John expounded to her the excellent

reason that had delayed his coming home. He had been offered a large

salary to take the head of a public school in Boston, and those two

days had been devoted to arranging the affair; he had satisfied the

school-committee as to his capacity, and made up his mind on several

points of minor importance to them,--but, perhaps, greater to him. Among

others, he had found a house, a tiny house, with a little yard behind,

and a view of Boston Harbor from the upper windows, all at a reasonable

rent, prospect thrown in; this house he had hired, and now--he had come

to Greenfield for a housekeeper.

Lizzy suddenly discovered that she was hungry, and invited John into the

kitchen to get a piece of pie; but, after all, instead of eating hers

while he was eating his, she went up-stairs, brushed out her hair

and coiled it up with a coral-topped comb, that came to light, very

strangely, just in time,--put on her merino frock, her bracelet, and her

slippers,--rolled herself up in shawls and hoods and mittens, and was

lifted into John's buggy, to old Chloe's great delight, who held the

lamp, grinning like a lantern herself, and tucking "Mr. John's" fox-skin

round his feet, as if he had been ten years old.

So Lizzy Griswold did get to Coventry the night before Thanksgiving,

after all; and when Uncle Boynton met her at the door, he called her "my

dear daughter." Perhaps, as John had told Lizzy, on the drive over, that

her father had heard all about his business and his intentions, in that

letter she did not see, the young lady had decided to disinherit him,

and adopt Uncle Boynton in his place; rather an unfair proceeding, it

is true, since the letter was withheld by John's special request; and,

indeed, Lizzy didn't act like a "cruel parient" to her father, when he

came, after uncle, to give her a welcome.

They had a merry time at Coventry that Thanksgiving,--even merrier

than another smaller assemblage, that took place at Greenfield about

Christmas, when Polly Mariner came over a week before-hand to make Sam

a new suit throughout, and Lizzy looked prettier than anybody ever did

before, in a fresh white dress, and a white rose, off grandmother's

tea-rose-bush, in her hair. It is on record, that she behaved no better

than she did that evening when somebody found her crying in a blue

calico; for Sam was overheard to say, as Polly hustled him off to bed,

that, "if ever he was married, he guessed they wouldn't catch him makin'

a fool of himself by kissin' a girl right before the minister!--if he'd

have been Lizzy, John Boynton's ears would have sung for one while; but

girls _were_ fools!"

So John Boynton got a housekeeper; and Lizzy had more than one

Thanksgiving-day in her life, beside the Governor's appointments.

* * * * *

ACHMED AND HIS MARE.

An old Arabian tale the truth conveys,

That, honor's passion avarice outweighs.

* * * * *

Brave Achmed owned a mare of wondrous speed;

He prized her much above his wife or creed.

And lest some one should steal that precious mare,

He guarded her with unremitting care.

He tied her every night before his tent;

The fastening-cord then round his pillow went.

When all in slumber lay, the robber crept,

Unloosed the cord, and on the courser leapt.

"Wake up!" he cries,--"'tis I, the thief, who call;

See now if she in flight is chief of all!"

Mount Achmed and his tribe in wrath and shame,

And chase him as a tempest chases flame.

Hot Achmed nearly to the robber came,

When thus he thought: "My mare will lose her fame.

"If I o'ertake her, she is then outrun;

But if I reach her not, I am undone.

"Oh, better she were stolen before my face

Than have her vanquished in this desperate race!"

One secret sign his mare was taught to heed,

Whenever she must try her utmost speed.

He to the robber screamed, "Quick, pinch her ear!"

The sign she felt with answering love and fear.

As like a level thunderbolt she flew,

All chase was vain, the vexed pursuers knew.

Before this self-betrayal blank surprise

Fills Achmed's comrades, and their wondering cries

Demand, "How shall thy foolish act be named?"--

"My mare is lost, her glory is not shamed."

He says: "I knew, that, if her ear he nipped,

The darling prize could never be outstripped."

CHARLES LAMB AND SYDNEY SMITH.

There were in Great Britain, soon after the commencement of the present

century, three remarkable groups of young men. Distinct schools of

thought, like the philosophic schools of Greece, each of the groups was

marked by peculiar ideas, tastes, and sympathies. The French Revolution,

with its menace of fundamental changes, clashing with sentiments and

convictions which ages had rendered habitual and dear, called for an

inquiry into great principles and the grounds of things. The Napoleonic

age had the terrific formlessness of chaos. Did it premonish the passing

away of old things, and herald the birth of a new order and a new social

state? or did the trouble spring from innate madness in the "younger

strengths" which were trying to overthrow the world's kingdoms? Should

venerable Royalty, after howling in the wilderness and storm, be again

enthroned? or should men attempt to realize the fair ideals which

the word Republic suggested? Should religion be supplanted? should

Protestantism be confirmed? or should, perchance, the crosier of the Old

Church be again waved over Europe? These were the questions that were

mooted, and they aroused unwonted activity and vigor of thought as well

in literature as in politics.

The old century left in England few celebrated names to take part in the

literature of the new. The men who made the poems, romances, dramas,

reviews, and criticisms for the first quarter of our century had almost

all been in youth contemporaries of the Reign of Terror, and had been

tried in that unparalleled period as by a fiery furnace, while their

opinions were in a formative state. Crabbe and Rogers were traditions of

the time of Goldsmith and Johnson; Gilford wrote with a virulence and

ability which he might have learned in boyhood from Junius; but with

these exceptions, English literature fifty years ago was represented by

young men.

We mention, as the first group of young thinkers, the founders of the

"Edinburgh Review,"--Sydney Smith, Francis Jeffrey, Francis Horner, and

Henry Brougham,--whose united ages, when the first number of that review

appeared in 1802, made one hundred and seven years. Members of the Whig

party, possessing much learning and more vivacity and earnestness,

and having among them, if not severally, abundance both of daring and

prudence, they startled conservative people, evoked the best efforts of

authors by their brilliant castigations, and inaugurated the discussion

of measures of reform which it took thirty years to get through

Parliament. The critic of the company was Francis Jeffrey, whose

happiness it was to live just when he was needed. Without capacity to

excel either in the realm of ideas or of facts, he was unrivalled in the

power of discovering the relations between the two. He was neither a

statesman, philosopher, nor poet; but while the heavens and the earth

threatened to rush in confusion together, he was an admirable _cicerone_

to the troubled and wandering wits of men. He had no inherent qualities,

and, if other people had not existed, would not have been alive himself;

his faculty was simply an eye for relations, and his mental life began

when some one threw a series of thoughts across his line of vision.

He could tell all about those thoughts,--how large each was, what

complexion they had, how they stood in order with each other, and how

they compared with other thoughts which he remembered having seen

before. Such a mind might have achieved success among the technicalities

of the law, but nowhere else, had not the "Edinburgh Review" been

created. Jeffrey's critical articles have little value when regarded

according to their aim and as integral compositions; the arguments which

they contain are often insufficient, and the literary judgments wrong.

But they are full of the scattered elements of thought. Many of the best

ideas of the books and men of which they treat are stated in them with

admirable clearness and piquancy, and they are, therefore, pleasant

secondary sources of information.

Francis Horner died of consumption in Italy before he was forty years of

age, and there is nothing of surpassing brilliancy or power in any of

his writings. Yet he made a most extraordinary impression upon his

contemporaries. His name is never mentioned by his associates except

with unusual respect. Brougham, when he alludes to him, even in a

letter, seems to check his pen into soberness, and to be as cautious as

if he were speaking on a religious subject. Search through the published

correspondence of Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, and Mackintosh, and Horner is

found uniformly mentioned, not with peculiar affection or kindness, not

with any intention of doing him honor, but as a man whose qualities were

quite superior to those of other men, and whose destiny it was to be the

first statesman of his country. Lord Cockburn, who was a schoolmate of

Horner, relates that the latter was at one time selected by his class to

present a book to the master, and adds: "As he stepped forward at

the close of a recitation, and delivered the short Latin

presentation-address, I thought him to be a god." This fascination is

hard to be explained. The great seriousness of Horner's character may in

part account for it. He could not bear trifling on important subjects,

and could not help frowning on all jests which were not more wise

than witty. The calm determination, the unvarying earnestness of his

character, may aid in explaining it. From a boy, he never swerved from

great purposes, pursued the most useful though difficult knowledge, and

cultivated with equal zeal the ornaments of taste and those recondite

historical and statistical studies which are the roots of political

science. He was as far from being flighty as Immanuel Kant. Everything

that he did was marked both by temperance and sagacity. Philosophically

speaking, a personality, any personal being, is undoubtedly the most

mysterious thing in the universe. How abstract ideas come together to

grow and bloom in a young bosom is wholly past the comprehension of

philosophy. As personality in the abstract fascinates a philosopher

by its mystery, so a personality of uncommon purity, intensity, and

completeness fascinates all men, and thus, perhaps, is explained the

high estimation in which Horner was held. He was regarded by those

who knew him, as Pythagoras was by his disciples, with the deference

commanded by a superior person.

The indefatigable character of Lord Brougham, the only survivor of this

group, cannot yet be sketched in a paragraph. To Sydney Smith we shall

presently return.

The second group of young men was formed fifteen years later. They were

the antagonists of the Edinburgh reviewers, the authors of the "Noctes

Ambrosianae," the main support of "Blackwood's Magazine," almost from

its beginning. Their names were John Wilson, J.G. Lockhart, James Hogg,

and, for a time, William Maginn. These were very high, as well as,

excepting Hogg, very young Tories. It would be an apotheosis of loyalty

to say that they were also eminently religious, though they drank many

bumpers to their religion. When they meet in the third of the "Noctes"

and have taken their places at the table, North proposes: "A bumper!

The King! God bless him!" and three times three are given. Then Tickler

proposes: "A bumper! The Kirk of Scotland!" and the rounds of cheers

are repeated. These indispensable ceremonies being over, the Blackwood

council proceeds to discuss men and things over nectar and ambrosia.

Wilson was the centre and best representative of this group. At Oxford,

he had been so democratic that he blacked his own boots on principle.

On leaving Oxford, he had roamed for a time as a wild man in a band of

gypsies. He next took a cottage in the lake district in the North of

England, where he associated with Wordsworth, and occupied himself

alternately with desperate gymnastic exercises and composing slight

descriptive poems. Even after connecting himself with the magazine and

becoming the symposiarch of the "Noctes," and perhaps the greatest Tory

in all broad Scotland, he did not renounce his home among the lakes. He

was a lover of scenery, and an enthusiast and master in manly sports. He

is said to have fished in every trout-brook north of the Clyde, and

he wandered every season over the Highlands. In his sportsman's

accomplishments he took a truly English pride, and made fun of the

Edinburgh Whigs by representing a company of them as getting by chance

into the same room with himself and his associates, and then, pipes and

tobacco being brought, as being fairly smoked out, sickened, and

obliged to retreat by the superior smoking capacities of the Tories. He

ridiculed Leigh Hunt for fancying in one of his poems that he should

like a splendid life on a great estate, when (as Wilson says) he

couldn't even ride without being thrown. Yet, of all the men of this

time, there was probably no one who had wider sympathies or more

delightful prejudices than Professor Wilson, or who made more sagacious

reflections. The centre of a literary clique, he loved to associate

with all the other cliques, and was one of the first to recognize and

proclaim the great merits of Wordsworth.

The third group was larger than either of the preceding, retained its

_esprit de corps_ longer, and may be most conveniently defined as the

associates of Charles Lamb. Beside Lamb, there were Coleridge, Southey,

Lovel, Dyer, Lloyd, and Wordsworth, among the earlier members of

it,--and Hazlitt, Talfourd, Godwin, De Quincy, Bernard Barton, Procter,

Leigh Hunt, Gary, and Hood, among the later. This group, unlike the

others, did not make politics, but literature, its leading object. It

was composed of literary men,--a title of doubtful import, but which

certainly in civilized society will always designate a class. Political

life has more of outward importance, religious life is holier, but

literary life is the most humane of all the avocations. It is to the

professions what pastoral occupations are to the trades. Politics and

religion both have something to do with institutions. A mechanical

man can play a part in them not very well, but passably well. But

the literary man is sheer humanity, with nothing to help him but his

thoughtfulness and sensibility. He is the unfelled tree, not the timber

framed into the ship of state or carved into ecclesiastic grace. He

lives as Nature lives, putting on the splendor of green when the air

is sunny, and of crystal when the blasts sweep by; and while his roots

reach down into the earth, there rises nothing above him but the

heavens. Past experience shows that he may be harsh, prejudiced, and

unhappy; but it shows also that the richest human juices are within him,

and that not only the most peculiar and most sensitive, but also the

most highly-endowed characters are named in the list of authors. The

central and most admirable figure in this particular group of literary

men is Charles Lamb; and as each of the other groups clustered around

an organ, so at a later period Lamb and his associates supported the

"London Magazine," in which the "Essays of Elia" first appeared.

If it be asked what gave that strong coherence to these associates which

constituted them groups, a wise man would answer,--congeniality of

character. A wiser man, however, would not overlook the element of

_suppers_. The "Edinburgh Review" seems to have been first suggested

over a quiet bottle of wine; and at a later day the Edinburgh reviewers,

increased in number by the accession of Mackintosh and one or two

others, formed an honored clique by themselves in the splendid society

of Holland House. The "Noctes Ambrosianae" is the enduring monument of

the way in which the Blackwood men passed their nights, and not the less

so from the fact that they were for the most part written out by Wilson

in sober solitude. Charles Lamb began his career of suppers with

Coleridge, as the latter came up to London from the University to visit

him, and the famous Wednesday-evening parties given by him and his

sister Mary would occupy a large space in the literary history of this

epoch. It is a true proverb, that people are but distant acquaintances

till they have eaten salt together.

The sketches which we have thus given will indicate the leading

tendencies that were operating in English literature, though the groups

themselves did not include all the eminent literary men.

Campbell, Shelley, and Byron were single lights, and did not form

constellations,--unless, perhaps, Shelley and Byron may be regarded as a

wayward and quickly-disappearing Gemini. Sir Walter Scott, and, in their

later years, Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, were of a cosmopolitan

character, and served as links between different parties. And it may be

added, that diplomatic relations and frequent intercommunication existed

between all the groups.

Passing from the general schedule to the characters and careers of

Charles Lamb and Sydney Smith, it will be our aim to show how these two

most witty men were also intensely serious and dutiful,--how they

were both disciplined by a great sorrow, and obedient to a noble

purpose,--and thus to relieve wit from the charge of having any natural

alliance with frivolity.

A thorn, it needs not a sage to say, vexes the side of every human

being. Poetry laments the inadequacy of men to their ideals, philosophy

declares an error in the figures which sum up life, religion reveals

the fall of the race. The thorn is known which pierced the matchless

joyousness of Charles Lamb. His family, highly gifted with wit,

tenderness of feeling, and mutual love, had a tinge of madness in the

blood. At twenty years of age he was himself shut up six weeks in a

madhouse, his imagination in a vagary. He was not again affected; but

the poison had sunk deeper into the veins of his sister. The shadow of a

deed done in the dark ever pursued her. Charles devoted his life to

her whose life was an intermittent madness, yet who, in her months of

sanity, was a worthy sister of such a brother. His kindness to her knew

no bounds. It was strange that she had premonition of the recurring fits

of her disorder; and when the ghost of unreason beckoned, Charles

took her by the hand and led her to the appointed home. Charles Lloyd

relates, that, at dusk one evening, he met them crossing the field

together on their melancholy way toward the asylum, both of them in

tears. In the smiles of Charles Lamb, and they were many, his friends

always remarked a prevailing expression of sadness. The "fair-haired

maid," who had been the theme of his first poetizing, appears not again

in his verses or in his life. He and Mary lived together, received

evening visitors together, went to the theatre and picture-gallery

together, visited the lakes and the poets together; and if he was ever

seen in public without her, his friends knew there could be but one

reason for it, and did not ask. When he left the India House, he had

reserved from his income a considerable sum for her support; though the

liberality of his employers, as it proved, rendered this precaution

unnecessary. She was his partner in writing the Shakspearian tales, and

he always affirmed that hers were better done than his own. To her

he dedicated the first poems that he published; and she, too, was a

poetess, excellent in her simple way. Thus was Charles Lamb's life

saddened by a great affliction ever impending over it, and sanctified by

a great duty which he never for a moment forgot.

It was his good-fortune, while at school at Christ's Hospital, to become

acquainted with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. A timid boy, creeping around

among his boisterous companions like a little monk, it was that soaring

spirit which first taught him to look up. Two men whose intellects more

strongly contrasted could not be found. Coleridge suffered throughout

life from over-much speculation. Could he have had his eye less upon the

heavens and more upon the earth, could he have been concentrated upon

some human duty, he would have been a much wiser and better man. Even in

his youth he was the rhapsodist of old philosophies, had resolved social

life into its elements, and dreamed of putting it together again to suit

himself on the banks of the Susquehannah. Though Lamb wondered at the

speculations of Coleridge, and, loving him, loved the metaphysics which

were a part of him, yet it was without changing his own essentially

opposite disposition. Lamb clung to the earth. He cultivated the

excellency of this life. He was concrete, and hugged the world as he

did his sister. He reverently followed the discourses of Coleridge,

admiring, perhaps, "the beauty of the words, but not the words

themselves"; but when the Opium-Eater also began to take speculative

flights before Lamb, the latter stopped him at once by jangling his

metaphysics into jokes. It was in conversation with Coleridge, begun at

school and continued afterward at frequent meetings, that Lamb first

ventured to try his own powers and was prompted to literary activity.

But for a slight defect in his speech, he would probably have followed

Coleridge to the University with the intention of going into the Church.

A delightful clergyman he would have been, if he had duly undertaken the

office, and one would have walked far to see him in the priestly robe,

to hear him chant the service, to receive pastoral advice from him; yet

we fear the "Essays of Elia" would have been less admirable than now. He

was roused by Coleridge; and though he could not put the aureole of the

latter about his own head, he began to do the best he could in his own

way.

Life is a play between accident and purpose. Why was it, that, of all

the books in the world, Charles Lamb should have fixed his affections

chiefly on the old English dramatists? He might have turned to old

Greece, admired the fruits of the classic ages, and become one of those

sparkling artistic Hellenists that are occasionally seen in modern

times. He might have turned to the mediaeval period. He had an eye

for cloisters and nuns. His fancy would have been struck with the

grotesqueness of many of the ideas and institutions of those times.

He would have got on finely with Gurth the swineherd and Burgundy the

tusk-toothed, and one of his masterly witticisms would have upset Duns

Scotus. Perhaps, of all the mediaeval characters, he would have been

most smitten with the court fool, and, if he could have been seated at

a princely table of the twelfth century, the bowl surely would not have

been round many times before he and the fool would have had a few passes

at each other. There was enough in the Middle Ages to have fascinated

him; and could he, like some romantic Novalis, have once penetrated

thither, and tasted the fruit, he would have found it a lotus, and

would have wished never to depart. His soul would have clung to church

architecture,--under which term may be included all the religious,

political, poetical, moral, and practical life of the Middle Ages. The

accident in the case, however, was, that his uncle's library did not

contain the Greeks, nor the Middle Ages, but did contain the old English

authors. These he mastered; and out of these he created his ideals. In

the affluent vigor of the Elizabethan age, in the buoyant _négligé_ of

the times of merry Charles, he found people that he liked. To every

reflective and slightly scholastic mind, there is a charm in looking

at things in the distance. The perspective fits the eye. This may have

helped the enthusiasm with which he looked upon the writers and heroes

of the old English literature; but its principal cause was their

open-heartedness, their informality, their stout and free humanity

underneath laces and uniform.

Having thus found his place in literature, he began also to be rich in

friends, and his life was devoted every moment to thought and affection.

The time that he passed at the desk of the India House was time in which

he did not live; or perhaps, while he autographed the mercantile books,

there was a higher half-conscious life of the fancy which lightly

flitted round and round the steady course of his pen. He thus exults,

after his emancipation from his clerkship upon a pension:--"I came

home FOREVER on Tuesday in last week. The incomprehensibleness of my

condition overwhelmed me. It was like passing from life into eternity.

Every year to be as long as three; that is, to have three times as much

time that is real time--time that is my own--in it. I wandered about

thinking I was happy, but feeling I was not. But the tumultuousness is

passing off, and I begin to understand the nature of the gift." For this

one-third of his waking time, to have and to hold unhampered by any

dependence, he had most willingly consigned the rest to drudgery. The

value which he set upon it appears from the following answer which he

made to Bernard Barton, who thought of abandoning his place in a bank

and of relying upon literary labor for support:--"Throw yourself on the

world without any rational plan of support beyond what the chance employ

of booksellers would afford you! Throw yourself, rather, my dear Sir,

from the steep Tarpeian rock, slap-dash, headlong, upon iron spikes. If

you have but five consolatory minutes between the desk and the bed, make

much of them, and live a century in them, rather than turn slave to the

booksellers. Hitherto you have been at arm's length from them,--come

not within their grasp. I have known many authors want for bread,--some

repining, others enjoying the blessed security of a counting-house,

all agreeing that they would rather have been tailors, weavers,--what

not?--rather than the things they were. I have known some starved, some

go mad, one dear friend literally dying in a madhouse. Oh! you know

not--may you never know!--the miseries of subsisting by authorship."

Thus he esteemed of priceless worth honestly-earned independent time for

the pursuits that were dearest to him.

His literary and social avocations were so intimately blended that they

seem to have been almost the same. He was as thoughtful in his evening

parties as he was in the act of composition, and as gentle and kindly in

writing as he was to his friends. He gathered about him not many of the

most famous, but many of the most original and peculiar men of his time.

His Wednesday-evening parties were assemblies of thinkers. They were

composed in large part of men who were not balanced by a profession, who

were devoted only to wit, fancy, or speculation, who cultivated each a

peculiar field and cherished each peculiar tastes and opinions, who

were interested in different quarters of the heavens, and yet who came

together, prompted by the spirit of sociality and kindliness, to lay

perhaps the backs of their heads together, and to talk always sincerely

and wisely, but in the form of sense or nonsense, as the case might be.

Lamb and his sister were always ready to appreciate every variety of

goodness, and doubtless their guests received an order something like

that which was addressed to the dwellers in Thomson's enchanting

castle:--

"Ye sons of Indolence! do what you will,

And wander where you list, through hall or glade;

Be no man's pleasure for another stayed:

Let each as likes him best his hours employ,

And cursed be he who minds his neighbor's trade!"

To these parties sometimes came Coleridge, who in conversation seems

to have been a happy mixture of a German philosopher and an Italian

_improvvisatore_. Here Hazlitt learned to utter the philosophic

criticisms which he most passionately believed in; and Lloyd, whose

intellect was one of peculiar refinement, discoursed modestly of

metaphysical problems, analyzing to an extent that Talfourd says was

positively painful. Here the social reformer Leigh Hunt came, and for

the moment forgot that social reforms were needed. Here the Opium-Eater

came, and his cloudy abstract loves and hates and visions were exploded

by the sparks of Elia's wit. Here the philosopher Godwin developed

philosophy out of whist. Here the pensive face of the Quaker poet,

Bernard Barton, shed a mild light upon the scene; and here the lawyer

Thomas Noon Talfourd came to admire the finest characters that he knew

of.

Having thus noticed the painful experience and unfaltering devotion to

noble aims which marked the career of Charles Lamb, we leave him with

his friends, and pass to notice the same elements in the life of his

brother wit.

Sydney Smith preferred the legal profession, and esteemed himself a

victim in entering the Church. His practical wisdom informed him, that,

from the beginning even until then, qualities like his had not found a

happy sphere of action in the pulpit, but, on the contrary, had rusted

or grown ugly in it. He had as much sentiment as Sterne, and perhaps as

much political sagacity as Swift, yet the finest instincts within him

recoiled from following in the path of either the one or the other.

With a subtile and exuberant wit,--he knew that wit touches not sacred

things. With great practical prudence and a brilliant speculative

capacity,--in a clergyman, prudence is less than faith, and brilliancy

of thought than the glow of the heart. In his rich composite character

he had, indeed, the qualities which make the clergyman; his disposition

was religious, his heart was tender and Christian, he could give the

best advice to the people; and though his appearance was not quite

saint-like, it was at least suggestive of a good man who was walking in

the way which he pointed out to others. But these qualities were not

those with which he was most highly endowed. Energy and sterling

common-sense, which he had inherited from his father, an elastic,

mercurial, and passionate nature, which had come to him from his

Huguenot mother,--these were the strong points in his character, and it

belongs to neither of them to take the lead in the Church. Sydney had

scanned the whole field. Having questioned well his desires, examined

well his blood, derived what wisdom he could from history and

observation, he deliberately chose the law. Why, then, did he take

to theology? We read that his father had incurred so much expense in

educating his eldest son for the legal profession, and in fitting out

two others for India, that he could not well furnish the means for

Sydney's education, and strongly recommended him to go into the Church;

and that the son sacrificed his own to his father's inclination.

We may imagine Sydney Smith's reflections. With his versatile talent,

honorable ambition, and consciousness that he could have made a shining

name in political life, his object now was to find a sufficient sphere

for the exercise of all his powers in the Church. It was no fault of his

that he was unwilling to settle as curate and have no aim beyond his

parish except to go to heaven at last. With his superfluity of human

nature, for him to become a saint was out of the question. What then?

Should he enter the realm of dogmatics, and become a learned and

redoubted champion of the faith, passing his life amid exegesis? Should

he renounce thorough thinking, and become a polished and popular pastor,

an ornament of the pulpit and of society? Should he signalize himself

for gravity, orthodoxy, and ability, seek the earthly prizes of his

profession, and perhaps become Archbishop of Canterbury? Should he

become a jolly, vinous, and Friar-Tuck sort of clergyman? God forbid! he

said to each of these queries, and rushed forward into his profession.

Regarding himself as a lamb for the slaughter, yet tremendously in

earnest not to be sacrificed, he went into the Church groping and

fearing, but resolute. Trembling lest he should not do his duty both to

himself and to his sacred office, he yet determined to try. Thus the

thorn which troubled Sydney Smith was not an affliction, but was what he

regarded as a danger; and, though less patent and pointed than that

in the life of Charles Lamb, probably had not less influence in the

discipline of character.

Behold, then, the long and venerable line of the clergy opening to

receive him, and behold him entering it! The clergy, the priesthood,

the holy fathers, the strong bishops, the monks, the ghostly race, the

retired enthusiasts, now melancholy, now rapt, now merry-making, the

consolers of sorrow, the divine heroes in an earthly life,--even one

of this family does Sydney propose to be. At the age of twenty-four

he becomes curate in the little hamlet of Salisbury Plain,--the young

graduate of Oxford sent into the country to be pastor to the inmates of

half-a-dozen hovels! Then he writes his description of a curate:--"The

poor working man of God,--a learned man in a hovel, good and patient,--a

comforter and a teacher,--the first and purest pauper of the hamlet;

yet showing that in the midst of worldly misery he has the heart of a

gentleman, the spirit of a Christian, and the kindness of a pastor."

He regards himself as almost excluded from his kind, and quotes (or

originates) the proverb, that there are three sexes, men, women, and

clergymen. He took long solitary walks over the plains of Salisbury,

reflecting upon the manifold activities of the world, in which he had no

part. The only society that he had was during the occasional visits of

the squire to the neighborhood, who, surprised to find the curate so

interesting a person, gave him frequent invitations to dinner. Thus

passed two years, when the squire consigned his son to the curate to

be educated, and Sydney Smith, starting with the young man for the

Continent, was driven by stress of war to Edinburgh.

There he met Horner, Jeffrey, Brougham, and others, young thinkers and

full of matter,--Horner the philosopher, Jeffrey the critic, Brougham

the statesman, and Sydney Smith the divine,--and the divine was

unsurpassed by any of the others in wit, energy, or decision of

character. While the events with which the times were rife were striking

fire in all their brains, it was the divine who first turned their

thoughts to account by suggesting that they should start a review.

The suggestion was acted upon, and under his editorial care the

first numbers of the "Edinburgh Review" appeared. His prudence and

remonstrances saved it from manifold excesses; for Jeffrey was not a man

to be moderate in times like those. The brilliant critic received not a

few such lectures as the following:--"I certainly, my dear Jeffrey, in

conjunction with the Knight of the Shaggy Eyebrows [Homer], do protest

against your increasing and unprofitable skepticism. I exhort you to

restrain the violent tendency of your nature for analysis, and to

cultivate synthetical propensities. What is virtue? What's the use

of truth? What's the use of honor? What's a guinea but a d--d yellow

circle? The whole effort of your mind is to destroy. Because others

build slightly and eagerly, you employ yourself in kicking down their

houses, and contract a sort of aversion for the more honorable, useful,

and difficult task of building well yourself." It was the boast of

Sydney Smith in old age that he had very little to change in the

opinions which he had at various times advanced,--that he had seen

every important measure which he had advocated passed and become

recognized as beneficent. The variety of the review suited the

versatility of his talent; the problem, What worthy thing shall I employ

myself in doing? was solved; and an ample public career was opened to

him. When, after five years, he passes from Edinburgh to London, he is

not only a poor clergyman, but a famous Edinburgh reviewer. He becomes

popular in society and as a preacher, and delivers pictures on Moral

Philosophy to crowded houses of the _élite_ of the metropolis.

When he is again exiled as a curate, his solitude is not unbroken, but

he receives and returns the visits of the most eminent people. His

neighbors ran to him one day, shortly after his arrival, exclaiming,

--"Please your honor, a coach! a coach! a coach!" Sydney saw in the

distance the equipage of Lord Holland, and challenged the admiration of

his parishioners by boldly answering,--"Well, my good friends, _stand

firm_; never mind, even if there should be a coach; it will do us no

harm;--let us see." A simple pastor and an eminent man, with flashing

energy he approves himself a good man. Sunday he preached, Monday he

doctored the sick, Tuesday Sir James Mackintosh visited him for a week,

Wednesday he read Ariosto, Thursday he began an article, Friday he

reviewed his patients, Saturday he repaired his barn. Now he is laying

down a rule that no day shall pass in which he will not make somebody

happy; now he is fixing a bar whereon it shall be convenient for his

cows to scrape their backs; now he is watching by the side of his

sleeping baby, with a rattle in hand to wake the young spirit into

joyousness the moment its sleep breaks. He goes through the parish as

doctor, wit, and priest, guide, philosopher, and friend, studying the

temper and needs of the simple congregation to which he preaches on

Sunday, while his brain is racking with great thoughts. With these

higher thoughts he has to do as he sits at his desk and writes an

article for the larger parish of the United Kingdom. With a wild play of

wit and fancy and laughter he graces the sturdy column of his virtue

and fidelity. He lived in what was said to be the ugliest and most

comfortable house in England, admired by every visitor for his

independence, manliness, refinement, and liveliness. When he visited

London, as he often did, and when in later years he lived there and was

_lionné_, his simplicity of character remained. To the last he was one

of the sincerest and most active of clergymen and of men.

It is probable that there were not living at the time two more serious

men than the two wits whose careers we have outlined. Indeed, it is

quite a mistake to suppose that wit has anything to do with temper or

sentiment at all. A man may be perpetually sulky, and yet habitually

witty,--may smile, and smile, and smile, and yet be a most melancholy

individual. Wit is simply a form of thought, and is as intellectual as

scientific study. It differs from other thought only in being a little

_outré_,--a little in excess; it overdoes the thing only because it has

so much energy in it. It is what Charles Lamb said a pun was,--"a sole

digest of wisdom." All great thoughts are at first witty, and afterward

come to be common and flat. When Pythagoras discovered the theorem of

the squares erected on the sides of a right-angled triangle, it had the

effect on him of a most preposterous joke. The apple dropping on the

head of Newton struck him like a very far-fetched pun. Show a child the

picture of a wild Tartar, and his first motion will be to laugh at it.

We have seen a man while reading Kant, the dryest of metaphysicians,

slap his knee, leap upon his feet, and swear, in exuberance of mirth,

that Kant had said a good thing. If it were discovered to-morrow to be

a scientific truth that this world is wrong side out, and if inventive

genius should discover a way to put the other side out, we should all of

us think it a funny thing, but our transversed descendants would

regard the matter as a commonplace. New proposals in the arts, and new

discoveries in the sciences are always at first laughed at. Thus wit

is only thought that is beyond the present capacity of the listeners,

thought of whose meaning they can catch only a glimpse; it is the

forerunner of what our very stupid race, which is always a little behind

the times, is wont to call wisdom. If the race should ever become

completely sage, nothing less than a joke would ever be uttered.

The likenesses of Charles Lamb and Sydney Smith make them both very

severe-looking men. Like marble, which in costume takes the appearance

of the finest lace, so that it seems as if it would yield to the touch

of a finger, their delicate fancies and sentiments were but the surface

of a solid and thorough character.

They lived in different spheres, corresponding to the difference in

their genius. Sydney Smith had the more versatile and fruitful mind.

With restless energy he supported various characters, being equally

famous as a wit, Whig, Edinburgh reviewer, eloquent preacher, brilliant

man of society, and canon of Saint Paul's. His biographer well describes

him as a rough rider of subjects, and with surpassing good sense he

overran every problem with which the public mind was occupied. He was a

reformer, but it was after the English and not the French fashion. He

had unbounded respect for existing human blessings, believed in things

substantially as they were, and couldn't have been persuaded to try an

experiment that had much of hazard in it. A Frenchman is always at

home amid earthquakes and volcanoes and hurricanes, and the immediate

prospect of an end to everything that is and a beginning of something

the like of which never has been. The spirit of the great French

Revolution was to exterminate all the results of time up to that point,

and, having made a clear field, to begin over again. Hence heads went

off, religion was proscribed, thrones were burned, the calendar was

changed; even the heavenly bodies should no longer bear down their

freight of old associations, and Orion received the name of Napoleon.

Could the earth have in any way been transformed, could grass possibly

have been made blue and the heavens green, or could man have been done

over into any other sort of animal, there is not the slightest doubt

that those Frenchmen would have undertaken it. In comparison with such

men, Sydney Smith sank into insignificance as a reformer. He lived under

a religion, government, and system of manners, all of which he was

desirous to retain. He did not wish for his children any institutions

very much more comfortable than England offered at the moment. He

regarded the advantages of life with great complacency, thinking,

doubtless, that men had better opportunities than they availed

themselves of; and the chief intensity of his purpose was not to make

better opportunities, but to improve them better. He probably did not

approve of all the men and customs that he saw, was decidedly opposed

both to wickedness and stupidity; but he did not propose, like a

Frenchman, at the first fault, to blot out the heavens and the earth.

He demonstrated in his life how genial, under existing institutions, a

clergyman could be, how discreet a young enthusiast could be, how widely

active a curate could be, how acceptable in society an honest man could

be, how brilliant a plain Englishman could be. A great reformer he was,

--but the spirit of his reform consisted chiefly, not in changing, but

in making better use of the blessings which we already possess. Compared

with this prevailing spirit of personal reform, the reformatory

public measures which he was prominent in advocating were of slight

consequence. Merry on the surface, with an iron core of stubborn

resolution within, he equally delighted his most homely and his most

elegant friends, and while he sympathized with humble life, he had a

profound respect for the technically best society.

Charles Lamb lived within a narrower and peculiar range. With more of

concentration, he had a less abounding energy than Sydney Smith. His

character was an odd and elegant miniature, while that of Sydney Smith

was voluminous. He loved a particular sort of men, and that sort was

honest men; while the merry divine could deal with politicians and even

with Talleyrand himself. Sydney was playing a part in the Whig party,

among the advocates of reforms; the sympathies of Elia went for

the reform of the United Kingdom, and of the universe, too, if

possible,--but he was more interested in a profound thought, brought

forth from the struggling breast of Hazlitt, than in any bill introduced

into Parliament. He was occupied with his old books, his sincere

friends, his beloved sister. He cared little for the _beau monde_, would

rather not look upon a duke or a duchess without a grating between; but,

turning from the current into an eddy, content with the many thoughtful

and original persons whom he had about him, he delighted to fish for the

shyest tenants of the stream and to dive for strange pearls. He loved

remote thoughts, quaint expressions, fantastic ideas. He especially

attached himself to any violent symptoms of human nature. Being in a

picture-gallery, he observed a stout sailor in towering disgust at one

of the old masters, spit his tobacco-juice at it, and swear, with an

expletive, that he could do better himself. The honest opinion honestly

expressed, the truth and vigor of the man, delighted Lamb, and he rushed

up to him to shake hands. Whenever the sailor, after that, wrote to

his friends in London, he wished to be particularly remembered to Mr.

Charles Lamb, who wouldn't be humbugged about that old painting.

It was this strong sympathy with human character which made Elia rather

a contemner of the worship of Nature. He liked things that were as

definite as the works of men, and found great difficulty in sympathizing

with a landscape. There was nothing on Fleet Street for which he did not

feel a personal attachment; all the hurry and majestic order of a great

city, all the little by-ways and hedges of city life, the wealth, the

poverty, the splendor, the rags, the men and women, all acting under

the stern discipline of an immense society, the boys, the beggars, the

chimney-sweeps, the hilarious and the sorrowful, the fine ladies and

noble lords, were all duly appreciated by him. If he had been taken

up to the pinnacle of a mountain, instead of entertaining one of

Wordsworth's sublime contemplations, he would have been very likely to

flap his arms and crow like chanticleer. Indeed, in middle age he was

accustomed to boast that he had never seen a mountain. Born in London,

and always residing in London till the last years of his life, esteeming

man the crown and purpose of the universe, he was much inclined

to regard the love of Nature, which figures so largely in modern

literature, as a popular delusion. He would have sympathized with the

French philosopher who, after accompanying a young lady to the Highlands

of Scotland, surprised her raptures by saying to her,--"_Aimez-vous les

beautés de la nature? Pour moi, je les abhorre_."

The diverse religious character of these two men may be illustrated by

an allusion to their different habits with respect to Art. Sydney Smith,

visiting Paris, satisfied himself by a fifteen-minutes' observation in

the galleries of the Louvre. His mind, almost orbicular in its various

capacity, took in the scene at a glance. There were pictures from almost

every country, statues from almost every age, representations of the

finest imaginations of the mind and of the noblest labors of history. He

was not a barbarian with respect to the Louvre, but understood all about

it, and knew its excellence and value; yet he mingled his sentiment

and common-sense well together, and took a rapid walk from chamber to

chamber. He probably entertained large views of Art during his impetuous

progress through the ages, from battle-field to battle-field, from saint

to saint, from philosopher, poet, and hero, to landscape, shepherdess,

and domestic scene. He took in thought with lightning swiftness, and

lived for fifteen minutes amid statues and paintings which collected

scenes from all the universe. He went forth, satisfied that the Louvre

was a fine gallery of Art, that Art was a very fine thing, that painters

and sculptors ought to be encouraged, and that he had been looking at

many things which were worthy a man's consideration. If he had been

called upon at once to preach a sermon, there is no doubt that he would

have made very judicious reflections upon the spectacle which he had

beheld.

Charles Lamb, too, visited Paris, and though it is not recorded that he

went into the Louvre, yet we can hardly be mistaken in conjecturing that

he did, and the thoughts with which he went. He would have entered those

galleries with timid ecstasy. He would at first have shrunk away from

the full splendor, and made acquaintance with some modest painting in

a corner. Happy would some friend near him be to hear the half-tender,

half-witty, yet most appreciative conceit which should first come

stammering from his lips. He would have advanced slowly, and only after

much delay would have ventured to stand before the great masters, and

to look up eye to eye at the spirit of the Louvre. After taking his

departure, he would never have thought familiarly of the scene, but it

would have remained in his mind as terrible and sacred an episode as was

the descent into Hades to Virgil's hero.

Not only in the Louvre, but in the world, Charles Lamb was the more

timid worshipper. The whole character of his mind, the intensity of his

thought within a narrow sphere, made him reverent of the Infinite. The

thought of departure from the life which he now lived was to him a very

solemn one. Religious ideas were so sacred to him that he never referred

to them lightly, and seldom at all. When he did mention them, it was

with peculiar impressiveness. No one can read the account of his share

in a conversation on "persons one would like to have seen," without

admiring the energy and pathos with which he alluded to one Person,

whose name, however, he did not utter. Discussions on religious subjects

he never tolerated in anybody but Coleridge. One evening, after he and

Leigh Hunt had returned from a visit to Coleridge, Hunt began to express

his surprise that a man of so much genius as the Highgate sage should

entertain such religious opinions as he did, and mentioned one of his

doctrines for especial reprobation. Lamb, who was preparing the second

bowl of punch, answered, hesitatingly, with a gentle smile,--"Never mind

what Coleridge believes; he is full of fun." He was an humble, sinful

worshipper, and while he bowed his head tremblingly before Heaven, he

poured out the stream of his affections to his sister and his friends.

The religious character of Sydney Smith was less peculiar than that of

Elia. An earnest Christian, with a will too resolute to allow the aid

of the punch-bowl in vanquishing trouble, professionally wielding the

religious and moral ideas, and habitually obeying them, he stood erect

and looked at the life to come with a firm eye. "The beauty of the

Christian religion," he says, "is that it carries the order and

discipline of heaven into our very fancies and conceptions, and, by

hallowing the first shadowy notions of our minds, from which actions

spring, makes our actions themselves good and holy." This central and

vital beauty he had cultivated in a very diversified life, and he looked

with confidence for the prize which is laid up for the well-doer.

Probably, if any successful life were examined, it would be found to

consist of a series of hairbreadth escapes. Every movement would be the

crossing of the Rubicon. That man is of little account who at every step

that he has taken has not been weighing matters as nicely as if he were

matching diamonds. How narrowly did Coleridge escape being the greatest

preacher, philosopher, poet, or author of his time! Almost everything

was possible to him; and one can but marvel how he went through life

avoiding in turn each of his highest possibilities. It is the glory of

Charles Lamb and Sydney Smith, that, as far as it can be said of any

men, they did the best that was possible with their circumstances and

endowments. The old fancy which says of every person, that there is an

ideal character which he can attain, in which he shall be peculiar and

unsurpassed, was in their cases realized.

Their characters were projected into literature, where they remain as

permanent blessings. The style of writing of both of them approaches to

the simplest way of saying things. Elia employed the choicest language

of the seventeenth century, and the divine used the plainest English of

the day. The perpetual danger of literature is of becoming rhetorical;

and hardly fares vigor of thought when long words and periods are

preferred to short ones, and when the native shape and properties of

ideas are less cared for than the abundant drapery. The style of the

"Essays of Elia" is as admirable as their fancy. The author hated a

formal sentence as much as he disliked stately and insipid society.

Unlike Thomas Carlyle, in avoiding the faults of rhetorical culture, he

did not become a literary barbarian. In refusing to comb his hair like a

prig, he did not go to the extreme of making himself horridly uncomely.

His sentences are unsurpassed for neatness, are as graceful as they are

quaint and clear. The writings of Sydney Smith rarely attain the

perfect grace which uniformly distinguishes Elia; yet he never attempts

magnificence, and he so unites brilliancy and plainness as to make his

statements seem equally felicitous to the rude and the scholarly ear.

His Peter Plymley letters are remarkable examples of the way in which

one yeoman speaks to another. His literary bequest, however, is neither

so valuable nor so charming as that of Charles Lamb. His powers were too

various, and he engaged in too many fields of labor, to attain supreme

success in any direction. The best result of his life is his own

exuberant and unresting character, which harmonized all the diversities

in his career; and adequately to behold this there is needed a fuller

and more philosophical biography of him than has yet been written.

BULLS AND BEARS.

[Continued.]

CHAPTER XV.

On the morning of the day which brought the downfall of Stearine and his

indorsers, Sandford and Fayerweather, with the Vortex, whose funds

they had misappropriated, Monroe came to the counting-room unusually

cheerful. His anxiety respecting his little property was relieved, for

he thought the monetary crisis was past, and that thenceforth affairs

would improve. He had reasoned with himself that such a pressure could

not last always, and that this had certainly reached its limit. The

clear, bracing air of the morning had its full influence over his

sensitive nature. All Nature seemed to rejoice, and he, for the time,

forgot the universal distress, and sympathized with it. But the

thermometer fell rapidly as he caught the expression which the face

of his employer wore. Mr. Lindsay, of the house of Lindsay & Co., was

usually a reserved, silent man--in business almost a machine, honest

both from instinct and habit, and proud, in his quiet way, of his

position and his stainless name. He had a wife and daughter, and

therefore was presumed to have affections; but those whom he met in the

market never thought of him, save as the systematic merchant. Well as

Monroe knew him, being his confidential clerk, he never had seen more

than the case in which the buying, selling, and note-paying machinery

was inclosed. He respected the evident integrity and worth of the head

of the house, but never dreamed of a different feeling; he could as

easily have persuaded himself into cherishing an affection for the

counting-house clock.

This morning, Mr. Lindsay's face wore an unusually sleepless, anxious

look. The man of routine was but a man, after all, and, in his distress,

he longed for some intelligent, friendly sympathy. Monroe recognized the

mute appeal, but, from long habits of reticence, he was at a loss how

to approach his stately chief. Determined, however, to give him an

opportunity to speak, if he chose, Monroe asked after the news, the

day's failures, and the prospects of business. The merchant needed only

a word, and broke out at once,--

"Prospect? there is no prospect but ruin. If a whirlwind would bury the

city, or a conflagration leave it a heap of ashes, it would be better

for all of us."

"But don't you think the darkest time has past?"

"Not at all; the pressure will continue until scores more are brought

down. Better fail at once than live in dread of it."

"You surprise me! Why, you are not in danger?"

"Did you ever consider? Look at the bales of goods in our lofts,--goods

which nobody will buy and nobody can pay for. And our acceptances have

been given to the manufacturers for them,--acceptances that are maturing

daily. Up to this time I have taken up all our paper, as it became due;

but God knows how the next payments are to be made."

"I had not thought of that."

"The house of Lindsay & Co. has never known dishonor"--

The merchant wiped his spectacles,--but it was the eyes that were dim,

not the glasses. His lips quivered and his breath came hard, as he

continued,--

"But the time has come; the house must go down."

"I hope not," said Monroe, fervently. "Can nothing be done?"

"Nothing. Every resource has been used. The banks won't discount; and I

suppose they can't; they are fully as weak as their customers."

"I don't know but the offer may be useless, contemptible, even; but I

have a small sum, in good notes, that may be available."

The merchant shook his head.

"Whatever it is, you are welcome to it. Perhaps ten thousand dollars"--

"Ten thousand dollars!" exclaimed Mr. Lindsay,--"_you_ have that sum?"

"Yes,--the little property that was my father's. Let me go and get the

notes, and see if I can't get some money upon them."

Mr. Lindsay rose and took the clerk's hand with a heartiness that

astonished him.

"God bless you, Monroe," he said. "I may be saved, after all. Ten

thousand dollars will be enough for the present pinch, and before the

next acceptance is due some relief may come."

"Don't speak of thanks. I'll get the notes in a moment."

Tears stole silently down the unaccustomed furrows; the gateway of

feeling was open, but the tremulous lips refused to speak. Before he

could recover his self-possession, Monroe was gone. Mr. Lindsay tried to

read the newspapers, but the print before his eyes conveyed no idea to

his preoccupied brain. Then his thoughts turned to his beautiful villa

in Brookline, and he remembered how that morning his daughter stepped

lightly into the brougham with him at the back piazza, rode down the

winding path between the evergreen-hedges, and, after giving him a kiss,

sprang out when they reached the gate. He knew, that, when he returned

in the evening, he should find her in her place under the great

horse-chestnut, at the foot of the hill, ready to ride to the house. How

could he meet her with the news he would have to carry? how crush the

spirits of his invalid wife? Humiliating as the idea of failure was when

considered in his relations with the mercantile world, the thought of

home, with its changed feelings and circumstances, and the probable

deprivation of habitual indulgences, was far more poignant.

It was not long before Monroe returned, but with a less buoyant air. Mr.

Lindsay's spirits fell instantly. "I see it all," said he, "you can't do

anything."

"Perhaps I may, yet. The notes I spoke of, though due to me, are in the

hands of Mr. Sandford, Secretary of the Vortex Insurance Company. I have

been there, and cannot see him. His shutting himself up, I am afraid,

bodes me no good. However, I'll go again an hour hence."

"No harm in trying. Did you indorse the notes to him?"

"No. They were merely left with him for convenience' sake, as he was my

agent in loaning the money."

"Then he can't make way with them,--honestly."

Monroe seemed hurt by the implied suspicion, but did not reply, thinking

it best, if possible, to change the subject of conversation.

Mr. Lindsay sat in silence, a silence that was broken only once or twice

during the morning, and then by some friend or business acquaintance

asking, in hurried or anxious tones, "Anything over to-day?" A mournful

shake of the head was the only answer, and the merchant sunk into a

deeper gloom.

Again Monroe went to see Mr. Sandford, but with no better success. The

third time he naturally spoke in a peremptory tone, and, giving his name

and business, said, that he must and would see Mr. Sandford, or get the

notes. The weight of his employer's trouble rested on him, and gave an

unwonted force to his usually kind and modest temper. The clerk, not

daring to break his instructions, and seeing that it was not far from

two o'clock, intimated, in a half-confidential tone, that he would

do well to ask Mr. Tonsor, the broker, about them. Nervous with

apprehension, Monroe walked swiftly to Tonsor's office. At the door he

met Fletcher coming out with exultation in every feature. Within stood

Bullion, his legs more astride than usual, his chin more confidently

settled over his collar, and the head of his cane pressed against his

mouth. As Monroe entered, Tonsor ceased the conversation, and, looking

up, said, blandly, "My young friend, can I do anything for you?" Bullion

at the same time turned the eyes that might have been only glittering

petrifactions, and pointed the long eyebrow at him inquiringly.

"I hope so," was the reply. "Have you some notes in your possession

payable to Walter Monroe?"

"Who asks the question?"--very civilly.

"My name is Monroe."

"Ah! Mr. Sandford is your agent, I presume?"

"Yes. I left the notes with him."

"And you wanted to raise some money on them?"

"Yes, that is what I wish."

"Then you'll be pleased to know that Mr. Sandford has anticipated you. I

loaned him eight thousand dollars upon them this morning."

"Loaned _him_ eight thousand dollars?"

"Certainly. Is it extraordinary that your agent has done what you

desired?"

"I never asked him to borrow for me; and I never authorized him to

transfer the notes."

"He hasn't transferred them; he has only pledged them."

"He couldn't pledge them; he had no legal right in them."

"But he _has_ pledged them, and they are in my safe, subject to the

repayment of the sum I loaned."

"If you have loaned Mr. Sandford money, that is your affair."

"And yours, too, my friend, you will find, if he doesn't pay it."

"You haven't a right to detain the notes a moment."

"I have the possession, which will answer as well as the right. And let

me advise you,--don't get excited and conclude that everything is wrong.

You are not so well posted as you might be. Go and see Mr. Sandford, and

I haven't a doubt you'll find the money ready for you."

"I shall go. But I wish you to understand, that, if I am not 'posted,'

as you say, I do know my rights, and I shall take proper measures to

get possession of my property. You have no more hold upon it than a

pawnbroker has upon a stolen spoon."

Trembling with the unusual excitement, and despairing of being able to

aid his employer, Monroe did not wait for a reply, but rushed to the

Vortex again. Mr. Sandford had gone out on business, was the answer. He

had not gone far, if the truth were known; for his position commanded

the office-door, and he saw every visitor.

Time did not lag that eventful day; the hands seemed to sweep round the

dial on the Old State House as though they had been swords in pursuit

of some dilatory debtor. It now lacked only fifteen minutes of two, and

Monroe, sick at heart, turned his steps towards Milk Street, to announce

the utter failure of his plan. Mr. Lindsay received the intelligence

with more firmness than might have been expected.

"Monroe, my friend,--for I can truly call you so,--you have done what

you could. It was not your fault that your agent deceived and swindled

you. You generously offered me your all. I shall never forget it. I

can't say more now. Please stay and inform the notary, when he comes,

that he must take the usual course. Tell John, when he comes with the

brougham, that he may drive back. I shall take the cars to-day, and

shall not be at home, probably, until after tea. I pray God, Monroe,

that you may never go home as I do now. O Clara, my daisy, my darling!

how can I tell you?"

Still murmuring to himself, Mr. Lindsay slowly walked out of the

counting-room.

It was not strange, that, under the pressure of his own calamity, Mr.

Lindsay had no thought for the losses of others. He forgot that Monroe

was really in a far worse position, since, if the ten thousand dollars

were lost, it was his all. Neither did Monroe, at first, reflect upon

his own impending misfortune; he had been so intent upon preserving the

credit of the house, that his own interest had been lost sight of.

Presently the notary came with the inevitable demand. He was a cheerful

fellow in his sorry business, blithe as an old stager of an undertaker

at a first-class funeral. He chatted about the crisis, and, as a matter

of course, brought all the latest news from State Street. Monroe

listened to one piece of news, but had ears for no more. "Sandford and

Fayerweather had failed, and the old Vortex, which they had managed, was

dead broke, cleaned out."

Mr. Lindsay was not the only heart-stricken man who left the

counting-room that day.