FORMING PICTURES.
The student's persistent endeavor to impress the successive parts of his
theme upon the minds in his presence will eventually lead him to see
those parts in picturesque groupings. As he flashes these pictures upon
the mental vision of the audience, they become clearer to his own
vision. His own power of imagery is in proportion to his ability to
impart this power to others. Herein lies one of the most helpful means
of cultivating the imagination,--the eye of the intellect,--the basis of
all sympathy. Every effort to tell a story clearly so as to impress its
details upon the minds of others, every attempt to picture a landscape,
a meadow, a river, a sunset vividly to others, quickens and strengthens
the pupil's own imaging power. His attempt to make his listeners put
themselves in the place of another, see through the eyes and from the
point of view of a Wordsworth or Shakespeare, quickens his own
imagination, broadens his sympathies, and develops his intellect as
nothing else can. "The man of imagination has lived all lives, has
enjoyed all heavens, and felt the pang of every hell."
The student must continue to watch for the effect of his words in other
minds. He cannot afford to be introspective while speaking, for the mind
cannot be in the creative and in the critical state at the same time.
The pictures, then, must be formed in the minds of the hearers; they are
the only canvas upon which he can hope to paint his picturesque parts.
They are the mirror in which the pictures of his thought must be
reflected, as the stars are mirrored in the waters of the lake.
Analysis. Example: "The Chambered Nautilus." (Page 111.)
_Unit, or Whole_: The lesson of the Chambered Nautilus.
_Parts_:
(_a_) The Nautilus. Stanzas 1, 2.
(_b_) Its method of growth. Stanza 3.
(_c_) Its message to the soul. Stanzas 4, 5.
Lead the pupil to present a clear picture of "the ship of pearl," of its
own original environment and course of evolution, and of the beautiful
figure which embodies the lesson.
_CHAPTER I._
SLIDE.
TACT AND TALENT.
1. Talent is something, but tact is everything. Talent is serious,
sober, grave, and respectable; tact is all that, and more too. It is not
a sixth sense, but it is the life of all the five. It is the open eye,
the quick ear, the judging taste, the keen smell, and the lively touch;
it is the interpreter of all riddles, the surmounter of all
difficulties, the remover of all obstacles. It is useful in all places,
and at all times; it is useful in solitude, for it shows a man his way
into the world; it is useful in society, for it shows him his way
through the world.
2. Talent is power, tact is skill; talent is weight, tact is momentum;
talent knows what to do, tact knows how to do it; talent makes a man
respectable, tact will make him respected; talent is wealth, tact is
ready money.
3. For all the practical purposes of life, tact carries it against
talent, ten to one. Take them to the theatre, and put them against each
other on the stage, and talent shall produce you a tragedy that will
scarcely live long enough to be condemned, while tact keeps the house in
a roar, night after night, with its successful farces. There is no want
of dramatic talent, there is no want of dramatic tact; but they are
seldom together: so we have successful pieces which are not respectable,
and respectable pieces which are not successful.
4. Take them to the bar, and let them shake their learned curls at each
other in legal rivalry. Talent sees its way clearly, but tact is first
at its journey's end. Talent has many a compliment from the bench, but
tact touches fees from attorneys and clients. Talent speaks learnedly
and logically, tact triumphantly. Talent makes the world wonder that it
gets on no faster, tact excites astonishment that it gets on so fast.
And the secret is, that tact has no weight to carry; it makes no false
steps; it hits the right nail on the head; it loses no time; it takes
all hints; and, by keeping its eye on the weathercock, is ready to take
advantage of every wind that blows.
5. Take them into the church. Talent has always something worth hearing,
tact is sure of abundance of hearers; talent may obtain a good living,
tact will make one; talent gets a good name, tact a great one; talent
convinces, tact converts; talent is an honor to the profession, tact
gains honor from the profession.
6. Place them in the senate. Talent has the ear of the house, but tact
wins its heart, and has its votes; talent is fit for employment, but
tact is fitted for it. Tact has a knack of slipping into place with a
sweet silence and glibness of movement, as a billiard ball insinuates
itself into the pocket. It seems to know everything, without learning
anything. It has served an invisible and extemporary apprenticeship; it
wants no drilling; it never ranks in the awkward squad; it has no left
hand, no deaf ear, no blind side. It puts on no looks of wondrous
wisdom, it has no air of profundity, but plays with the details of place
as dexterously as a well-taught hand flourishes over the keys of the
pianoforte. It has all the air of commonplace, and all the force and
power of genius.
LONDON ATLAS.
SHYLOCK TO ANTONIO.
Signor Antonio, many a time and oft
In the Rialto you have rated me
About my moneys and my usances:
Still I have borne it with a patient shrug;
For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe.
You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog,
And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine,
And all for use of that which is mine own.
Well, then, it now appears, you need my help:
Go to, then; you come to me, and you say
"Shylock, we would have moneys." You say so;
You that did void your rheum upon my beard,
And foot me, as you spurn a stranger cur
Over your threshold; moneys is your suit.
What should I say to you? Should I not say--
"Hath a dog money? Is it possible
A cur can lend three thousand ducats?" or
Shall I bend low, and in a bondman's key,
With bated breath and whispering humbleness,
Say this--
"Fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last;
You spurned me such a day; another time
You called me dog; and for these courtesies
I'll lend you thus much moneys!"
SHAKESPEARE.
THE CYNIC.
1. The Cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man, and never
fails to see a bad one. He is the human owl, vigilant in darkness and
blind to light, mousing for vermin, and never seeing noble game.
2. The Cynic puts all human actions into only two classes--openly bad
and secretly bad. All virtue, and generosity, and disinterestedness, are
merely the appearance of good, but selfish at the bottom. He holds that
no man does a good thing except for profit. The effect of his
conversation upon your feelings is to chill and sear them, to send you
away sour and morose.
3. His criticisms and innuendoes fall indiscriminately upon every lovely
thing like frost upon the flowers. If Mr. A. is pronounced a religious
man, he will reply: yes, on Sundays. Mr. B. has just joined the church:
certainly, the elections are coming on. The minister of the gospel is
called an example of diligence: it is his trade. Such a man is generous:
of other men's money. This man is obliging: to lull suspicion and cheat
you. That man is upright, because he is green.
4. Thus his eye strains out every good quality, and takes in only the
bad. To him religion is hypocrisy, honesty a preparation for fraud,
virtue only a want of opportunity, and undeniable purity, asceticism.
The livelong day he will coolly sit with sneering lip, transfixing every
character that is presented.
5. It is impossible to indulge in such habitual severity of opinion upon
our fellow-men, without injuring the tenderness and delicacy of our own
feelings. A man will be what his most cherished feelings are. If he
encourage a noble generosity, every feeling will be enriched by it; if
he nurse bitter and envenomed thoughts, his own spirit will absorb the
poison, and he will crawl among men as a burnished adder, whose life is
mischief, and whose errand is death.
6. He who hunts for flowers will find flowers; and he who loves weeds
will find weeds.
Let it be remembered that no man, who is not himself morally diseased,
will have a relish for disease in others. Reject, then, the morbid
ambition of the Cynic, or cease to call yourself a man.
H. W. BEECHER.
GOOD BY, PROUD WORLD.
I.
Good by, proud world! I'm going home;
Thou'rt not my friend, and I'm not thine.
Long through the weary crowds I roam,
A river-ark on the ocean brine.
Long I've been tossed like the driven foam
And now, proud world, I'm going home.
II.
Good by to Flattery's fawning face;
To Grandeur, with his wise grimace;
To upstart Wealth's averted eye;
To supple Office, low and high;
To crowded halls, to court and street;
To frozen hearts and hasting feet;
To those who go and those who come;
Good by, proud world! I'm going home.
III.
I am going to my own hearthstone,
Bosomed in yon green hills alone--
A secret nook in a pleasant land,
Whose groves the frolic fairies planned,--
Where arches green, the livelong day,
Echo the blackbird's roundelay,
And vulgar feet have never trod,--
A spot that is sacred to thought and God.
IV.
O, when I am safe in my sylvan home,
I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome;
And when I am stretched beneath the pines
Where the evening star so holy shines,
I laugh at the lore and the pride of man,
At the sophist schools, and the learned clan;
For what are they all, in their high conceit,
When man in the bush with God may meet?
RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB.
I.
The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea
Where the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
II.
Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen;
Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strewn.
III.
For the angel of death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and forever grew still.
IV.
And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.
V.
And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow and the rust on his mail;
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.
VI.
And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!
LORD BYRON.
UNWRITTEN MUSIC.
1. There is unwritten music. The world is full of it. I hear it every
hour that I wake; and my waking sense is surpassed sometimes by my
sleeping, though that is a mystery. There is no sound of simple nature
that is not music. It is all God's work, and so harmony. You may mingle,
and divide, and strengthen the passages of its great anthem; and it is
still melody,--melody.
2. The low winds of summer blow over the waterfalls and the brooks, and
bring their voices to your ear, as if their sweetness were linked by an
accurate finger; yet the wind is but a fitful player; and you may go out
when the tempest is up and hear the strong trees moaning as they lean
before it, and the long grass hissing as it sweeps through, and its own
solemn monotony over all; and the dripple of that same brook, and the
waterfall's unaltered bass shall still reach you, in the intervals of
its power, as much in harmony as before, and as much a part of its
perfect and perpetual hymn.
3. There is no accident of nature's causing which can bring in discord.
The loosened rock may fall into the abyss, and the overblown tree rush
down through the branches of the wood, and the thunder peal awfully in
the sky; and sudden and violent as their changes seem, their tumult goes
up with the sound of wind and waters, and the exquisite ear of the
musician can detect no jar.
4. I have read somewhere of a custom in the Highlands, which, in
connection with the principle it involves, is exceedingly beautiful. It
is believed that, to the ear of the dying (which just before death
becomes always exquisitely acute,) the perfect harmony of the voices of
nature is so ravishing, as to make him forget his suffering, and die
gently, as in a pleasant trance. And so, when the last moment
approaches, they take him from the close shieling, and bear him out into
the open sky, that he may hear the familiar rushing of the streams. I
can believe that is not superstition. I do not think we know how
exquisitely nature's many voices are attuned to harmony and to each
other.
5. The old philosopher we read of might not have been dreaming when he
discovered that the order of the sky was like a scroll of written music,
and that two stars (which are said to have appeared centuries after his
death, in the very places he mentioned) were wanting to complete the
harmony. We know how wonderful are the phenomena of color, how strangely
like consummate art the strongest dyes are blended in the plumage of
birds, and in the cups of flowers; so that, to the practiced eye of the
painter, the harmony is inimitably perfect.
6. It is natural to suppose every part of the universe equally perfect;
and it is a glorious and elevating thought, that the stars of Heaven are
moving on continually to music, and that the sounds we daily listen to
are but part of a melody that reaches to the very centre of God's
illimitable spheres.
N. P. WILLIS.
LAUS MORTIS.
I.
Nay, why should I fear Death,
Who gives us life and in exchange takes breath?
He is like cordial Spring
That lifts above the soil each buried thing;--
II.
Like Autumn, kind and brief
The frost that chills the branches, frees the leaf.
Like Winter's stormy hours,
That spread their fleece of snow to save the flowers.
III.
The loveliest of all things--
Life lends us only feet, Death gives us wings!
Fearing no covert thrust,
Let me walk onward armed with valiant trust.
IV.
Dreading no unseen knife,
Across Death's threshold step from life to life!
Oh, all ye frightened folk,
Whether ye wear a crown or bear a yoke,
V.
Laid in one equal bed,
When once your coverlet of grass is spread,
What daybreak need you fear?
The love will rule you there which guides you here!
VI.
Where Life, the Sower, stands,
Scattering the ages from his swinging hands,
Thou waitest, Reaper lone,
Until the multitudinous grain hath grown.
VII.
Scythe-bearer, when thy blade
Harvest my flesh, let me be unafraid!
God's husbandman thou art!
In His unwithering sheaves, oh, bind my heart.
FREDERIC LAWRENCE KNOWLES.
TAXATION OF THE COLONIES.
1. Sir: I agree with the honorable gentleman who spoke last, that this
subject is not new to this House. Very disagreeably to this House, very
unfortunately to this nation, and to the peace and prosperity of this
whole empire, no topic has been more familiar to us. For nine long
years, session after session, we have been lashed round and round this
miserable circle of occasional arguments and temporary expedients.
2. I am sure our heads must turn and our stomachs nauseate with them. We
have had them in every shape. We have looked at them in every point of
view. Invention is exhausted; reason is fatigued; experience has given
judgment; but obstinacy is not yet conquered.
3. The act of 1767, which grants this tea-duty, sets forth in its
preamble, that it was expedient to raise a revenue in America for the
support of the civil government there, as well as for purposes still
more extensive. About two years after this act was passed, the ministry
thought it expedient to repeal five of the duties, and to leave (for
reasons best known to themselves) only the sixth standing.
4. But I hear it rung continually in my ears, now and formerly,--"The
preamble! what will become of the preamble if you repeal this tax?" The
clerk will be so good as to turn to this act, and to read this favorite
preamble.
5. "Whereas it is expedient that a revenue should be raised in your
Majesty's dominions in America, for making a more certain and adequate
provision for defraying the charge of the administration of justice and
support of civil government in such provinces where it shall be found
necessary, and towards further defraying the expenses of defending,
protecting, and securing the said dominions."
6. You have heard this pompous performance. Now, where is the
revenue which is to do all these mighty things? Five-sixths
repealed,--abandoned,--sunk,--gone,--lost forever. Does the poor
solitary tea-duty support the purposes of this preamble? Is not the
supply there stated as effectually abandoned as if the tea-duty had
perished in the general wreck? Here, Mr. Speaker, is a precious
mockery:--a preamble without an act,--taxes granted in order to be
repealed,--and the reason of the grant carefully kept up! This is
raising a revenue in America! This is preserving dignity in England!
7. Never did a people suffer so much for the empty words of a preamble.
It must be given up. For on what principle does it stand? This famous
revenue stands, at this hour, on all the debate, as a description
of revenue not as yet known in all the comprehensive (but too
comprehensive!) vocabulary of finance--a preambulary tax. It is, indeed,
a tax of sophistry, a tax of pedantry, a tax of disputation, a tax of
war and rebellion, a tax for anything but benefit to the imposers or
satisfaction to the subject.
8. Well! but whatever it is, gentlemen will force the colonists to take
the teas. You will force them? Has seven years' struggle been yet able
to force them? Oh, but it seems "we are in the right. The tax is
trifling,--in effect rather an exoneration than an imposition;
three-fourths of the duty formerly payable on teas exported to America
is taken off,--the place of collection is only shifted; instead of the
retention of a shilling from the drawback here, it is three-pence custom
paid in America."
9. All this, sir, is very true. But this is the very folly and mischief
of the act. Incredible as it may seem, you know that you have
deliberately thrown away a large duty, which you held secure and quiet
in your hands, for the vain hope of getting one three-fourths less,
through every hazard, through certain litigation, and possibly through
war.
10. Could anything be a subject of more just alarm to America, than to
see you go out of the plain high-road of finance, and give up your most
certain revenues and your clearest interest, merely for the sake of
insulting the colonies? No man ever doubted that the commodity of tea
could bear an imposition of three pence. But no commodity will bear
three pence, or will bear a penny, when the general feelings of men are
irritated, and two millions of people are resolved not to pay.
11. The feelings of the colonies were formerly the feelings of Great
Britain. Theirs were formerly the feelings of Mr. Hampden, when called
upon for the payment of twenty shillings. Would twenty shillings have
ruined Mr. Hampden's fortune? No! but the payment of half twenty
shillings, on the principle it was demanded, would have made him a
slave. It is the weight of that preamble, of which you are so fond, and
not the weight of the duty, that the Americans are unable and unwilling
to bear.
12. It is, then, sir, upon the principle of this measure, and nothing
else, that we are at issue. It is a principle of political expediency.
Your act of 1767 asserts that it is expedient to raise a revenue in
America; your act of 1769, which takes away that revenue, contradicts
the act of 1767, and by something much stronger than words, asserts that
it is not expedient. It is a reflection upon your wisdom to persist in a
solemn parliamentary declaration of the expediency of any object, for
which, at the same time, you make no provision.
13. And pray, sir, let not this circumstance escape you,--it is very
material,--that the preamble of this act which we wish to repeal, is not
declaratory of a right, as some gentlemen seem to argue it: it is only a
recital of the expediency of a certain exercise of right supposed
already to have been asserted; an exercise you are now contending for by
ways and means which you confess, though they were obeyed, to be utterly
insufficient for their purpose. You are, therefore, at this moment in
the awkward situation of fighting for a phantom,--a quiddity,--a thing
that wants not only a substance, but even a name,--for a thing which is
neither abstract right nor profitable enjoyment.
14. They tell you, sir, that your dignity is tied to it. I know not how
it happens, but this dignity of yours is a terrible incumbrance to you;
for it has of late been ever at war with your interest, your equity, and
every idea of your policy. Show the thing you contend for to be reason,
show it to be common sense, show it to be the means of attaining some
useful end, and then I am content to allow it what dignity you please.
But what dignity is derived from the perseverance in absurdity is more
than ever I could discern.
15. The honorable gentleman has said well, that this subject does not
stand as it did formerly. Oh, certainly not! Every hour you continue on
this ill-chosen ground, your difficulties thicken around you; and
therefore my conclusion is, remove from a bad position as quickly as you
can. The disgrace, and the necessity of yielding, both of them, grow
upon you every hour of your delay.
EDMUND BURKE.
MY HEART LEAPS UP.
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began,
So is it now I am a man,
So be it when I shall grow old
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man:
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
WORDSWORTH.
AS YOU LIKE IT.
ACT III. SCENE II.
_Ros._ [_Aside to Celia._] I will speak to him like a saucy lackey and
under that habit play the knave with him. Do you hear, forester?
_Orl._ Very well: what would you?
_Ros._ I pray you, what is't o'clock?
_Orl._ You should ask me what time o' day: there's no clock in the
forest.
_Ros._ Then there is no true lover in the forest; else sighing every
minute and groaning every hour would detect the lazy foot of Time as
well as a clock.
_Orl._ And why not the swift foot of Time? had not that been as proper?
_Ros._ By no means, sir: Time travels in divers paces with divers
persons. I'll tell you who Time ambles withal, who Time trots withal,
who Time gallops withal, and who he stands still withal.
_Orl._ I prithee, who doth he trot withal?
_Ros._ Marry, he trots hard with a young maid between the contract of
her marriage and the day it is solemniz'd; if the interim be but a
se'nnight, Time's pace is so hard that it seems the length of seven
years.
_Orl._ Who ambles Time withal?
_Ros._ With a priest that lacks Latin and a rich man that hath not the
gout, for the one sleeps easily because he cannot study, and the other
lives merrily because he feels no pain, the one lacking the burden of
lean and wasteful learning, the other knowing no burden of heavy tedious
penury; these Time ambles withal.
_Orl._ Who doth he galop withal?
_Ros._ With a thief to the gallows; for though he go as softly as foot
can fall, he thinks himself too soon there.
_Orl._ Who stays it still withal?
_Ros._ With lawyers in the vacation; for they sleep between term and
term, and then they perceive not how Time moves.
_Orl._ Where dwell you, pretty youth?
_Ros._ With this shepherdess, my sister; here in the skirts of the
forest, like fringe upon a petticoat.
_Orl._ Are you native of this place?
_Ros._ As the cony that you see dwell where she is kindled.
_Orl._ Your accent is something finer than you could purchase in so
remov'd a dwelling.
_Ros._ I have been told so of many: but indeed an old religious uncle of
mine taught me to speak, who was in his youth an inland man; one that
knew courtship too well, for there he fell in love. I have heard him
read many lectures against it, and I thank God I am not a woman, to be
touch'd with so many giddy offences as he hath generally tax'd their
whole sex withal.
_Orl._ Can you remember any of the principal evils laid to the charge of
women?
_Ros._ There were none principal; they were all like one another as
half-pence are, every one fault seeming monstrous till his fellow-fault
came to match it.
_Orl._ I prithee, recount some of them.
_Ros._ No, I will not cast away my physic but on those that are sick.
There is a man haunts the forest, that abuses our young plants with
carving Rosalind on their barks; hangs odes upon hawthorns and elegies
on brambles, all, forsooth, deifying the name of Rosalind: if I could
meet that fancy-monger, I would give him some good counsel, for he seems
to have the quotidian of love upon him.
_Orl._ I am he that is so love-shak'd: I pray you, tell me your remedy.
_Ros._ There is none of my uncle's marks upon you: he taught me how to
know a man in love; in which cage of rushes, I am sure, you are not
prisoner.
_Orl._ What were his marks?
_Ros._ A lean cheek, which you have not; a blue eye, and sunken, which
you have not; an unquestionable spirit, which you have not; a beard
neglected, which you have not; but I pardon you for that, for simply
your having in beard is a younger brother's revenue: then your hose
should be ungarter'd, your bonnet unbanded, your sleeve unbutton'd, your
shoe unti'd and every thing about you demonstrating a careless
desolation; but you are no such man; you are rather point-device in
your accoutrements, as loving yourself than seeming the lover of any
other.
_Orl._ Fair youth, I would I could make thee believe I love.
_Ros._ Me believe it? you may as soon make her that you love believe it;
which, I warrant, she is apter to do than to confess she does: that is
one of the points in the which women still give the lie to their
consciences. But, in good sooth, are you he that hangs the verses on the
trees, wherein Rosalind is so admired?
_Orl._ I swear to thee, youth, by the white hand of Rosalind, I am that
he, that unfortunate he.
_Ros._ But are you so much in love as your rhymes speak?
_Orl._ Neither rhyme nor reason can express how much.
_Ros._ Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well a
dark house and a whip as madmen do; and the reason why they are not so
punish'd and cured is, that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers
are in love too. Yet I profess curing it by counsel.
_Orl._ Did you ever cure any so?
_Ros._ Yes, one; and in this manner. He was to imagine me his love, his
mistress; and I set him every day to woo me: at which time would I,
being but a moonish youth, be effeminate, changeable, longing and
liking, proud, fantastical, apish, shallow, inconstant, full of tears,
full of smiles, for every passion something and for no passion truly
any thing, as boys and women are for the most part cattle of this
colour; would now like him, now loathe him; then entertain him, then
forswear him; now weep for him, then spit at him; that I drave my suitor
from his mad humour of love to a living humour of madness; which was, to
forswear the full stream of the world, and to live in a nook merely
monastic. And thus I cur'd him; and this way will I take upon me to wash
your liver as clean as a sound sheep's heart, that there shall not be
one spot of love in't.
_Orl._ I would not be cured, youth.
_Ros._ I would cure you, if you would but call me Rosalind, and come
every day to my cote and woo me.
_Orl._ Now, by the faith of my love, I will: tell me where it is.
_Ros._ Go with me to it, and I'll show it you: and by the way you shall
tell me where in the forest you live. Will you go?
_Orl._ With all my heart, good youth.
_Ros._ Nay, you must call me Rosalind. Come, sister, will you go?
_CHAPTER II._
VITAL SLIDE.
THE RISING IN 1776.
I.
Out of the north the wild news came,
Far flashing on its wings of flame,
Swift as the boreal light which flies
At midnight through the startled skies.
And there was tumult in the air,
The fife's shrill note, the drum's loud beat,
And through the wide land everywhere
The answering tread of hurrying feet;
While the first oath of Freedom's gun
Came on the blast from Lexington;
And Concord, roused, no longer tame,
Forgot her old baptismal name,
Made bare her patriot arm of power,
And swelled the discord of the hour.
II.
Within its shade of elm and oak
The church of Berkley Manor stood;
There Sunday found the rural folk,
And some esteemed of gentle blood.
In vain their feet with loitering tread
Passed 'mid the graves where rank is naught;
All could not read the lesson taught
In that republic of the dead.
III.
How sweet the hour of Sabbath talk,
The vale with peace and sunshine full
Where all the happy people walk,
Decked in their homespun flax and wool!
Where youth's gay hats with blossoms bloom,
And every maid with simple art,
Wears on her breast, like her own heart,
A bud whose depths are all perfume;
While every garment's gentle stir
Is breathing rose and lavender.
IV.
The pastor came; his snowy locks
Hallowed his brow of thought and care;
And calmly, as shepherds lead their flocks,
He led into the house of prayer.
The pastor rose; the prayer was strong;
The psalm was warrior David's song;
The text, a few short words of might,--
"The Lord of hosts shall arm the right!"
V.
He spoke of wrongs too long endured,
Of sacred rights to be secured;
Then from his patriot tongue of flame
The startling words for Freedom came.
The stirring sentences he spake,
Compelled the heart to glow or quake,
And, rising on his theme's broad wing,
And grasping in his nervous hand
The imaginary battle-brand,
In face of death he dared to fling
Defiance to a tyrant king.
VI.
Even as he spoke, his frame, renewed
In eloquence of attitude,
Rose, as it seemed, a shoulder higher;
Then swept his kindling glance of fire
From startled pew to breathless choir;
When suddenly his mantle wide
His hands impatient flung aside.
And, lo! he met their wondering eyes
Complete in all a warrior's guise.
VII.
A moment there was awful pause,--
When Berkley cried, "Cease, traitor! cease!
God's temple is the house of peace!"
The other shouted, "Nay, not so,
When God is with our righteous cause;
His holiest places then are ours,
His temples are our forts and towers,
That frown upon the tyrant foe;
In this, the dawn of Freedom's day,
There is a time to fight and pray!"
VIII.
And now before the open door--
The warrior priest had ordered so--
The enlisting trumpet's sudden roar
Rang through the chapel, o'er and o'er,
Its long reverberating blow,
So loud and clear, it seemed the ear
Of dusty death must wake and hear.
And there the startling drum and fife
Fired the living with fiercer life;
While overhead, with wild increase,
Forgetting its ancient toll of peace,
The great bell swung as ne'er before:
It seemed as it would never cease;
And every word its ardor flung
From off its jubilant iron tongue
Was, "WAR! WAR! WAR!"
IX.
"Who dares"--this was the patriot's cry,
As striding from the desk he came,--
"Come out with me, in Freedom's name
For her to live, for her to die?"
A hundred hands flung up reply,
A hundred voices answered "I!"
T. B. READ.
THE TENT-SCENE BETWEEN BRUTUS AND CASSIUS.
CASSIUS. That you have wronged me doth appear in this:
You have condemned and noted Lucius Pella,
For taking bribes here of the Sardians;
Wherein, my letters (praying on his side,
Because I knew the man) were slighted off.
BRUTUS. You wronged yourself, to write in such a case.
CAS. At such a time as this, it is not meet
That every nice offence should bear its comment.
BRU. Let me tell you, Cassius, you yourself
Are much condemned to have an itching palm;
To sell and mart your offices for gold,
To undeservers.
CAS. I an itching palm?
You know that you are Brutus that speak this,
Or, by the gods, this speech were else your last.
BRU. The name of Cassius honors this corruption,
And chastisement doth therefore hide its head.
CAS. Chastisement?
BRU. Remember March, the ides of March remember!
Did not great Julius bleed for justice's sake?
What villain touched his body, that did stab,
And not for justice?--What! shall one of us,
That struck the foremost man of all this world,
But for supporting robbers;--shall we now
Contaminate our fingers with base bribes?
And sell the mighty space of our large honors
For so much trash as may be grasped thus?
I had rather be a dog, and bay the moon,
Than such a Roman.
CAS. Brutus, bay not me:
I'll not endure it. You forget yourself,
To hedge me in: I am a soldier, I,
Older in practice, abler than yourself
To make conditions.
BRU. Go to; you're not, Cassius.
CAS. I am.
BRU. I say you are not.
CAS. Urge me no more: I shall forget myself:
Have mind upon your health: tempt me no further.
BRU. Away, slight man!
CAS. Is't possible!
BRU. Hear me, for I will speak.
Must I give way and room to your rash choler?
Shall I be frighted when a madman stares?
CAS. Must I endure all this?
BRU. All this? Ay, more! Fret till your proud heart break.
Go, show your slaves how choleric you are,
And make your bondmen tremble. Must I budge?
Must I observe you? Must I stand and crouch
Under your testy humor?
You shall digest the venom of your spleen,
Though it do split you: for, from this day forth,
I'll use you for my mirth; yea, for my laughter,
When you are waspish.
CAS. Is it come to this?
BRU. You say you are a better soldier;
Let it appear so; make your vaunting true,
And it shall please me well. For mine own part,
I shall be glad to learn of noble men.
CAS. You wrong me every way; you wrong me, Brutus;
I said an elder soldier, not a better.
Did I say better?
BRU. If you did I care not.
CAS. When Caesar lived, he durst not thus have moved me.
BRU. Peace, peace! you durst not so have tempted him!
CAS. I durst not?
BRU. No.
CAS. What! Durst not tempt him?
BRU. For your life you durst not.
CAS. Do not presume too much upon my love;
I may do that I shall be sorry for.
BRU. You have done that which you should be sorry for.
There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats!
For I am armed so strong in honesty,
That they pass by me as the idle wind,
Which I respect not. I did send to you
For certain sums of gold, which you denied me:--
For I can raise no money by vile means:
I had rather coin my heart,
And drop my blood for drachmas, than to wring
From the hard hands of peasants their vile trash
By any indirection. I did send
To you for gold to pay my legions;
Which you denied me.
Was that done like Cassius?
Should I have answered Caius Cassius so?
When Marcus Brutus grows so covetous,
To lock such rascal counters from his friends,
Be ready, gods, with all your thunderbolts;
Dash him to pieces!
CAS. I denied you not.
BRU. You did.
CAS. I did not: He was but a fool
That brought my answer back.--Brutus hath rived my heart,
A friend should bear a friend's infirmities;
But Brutus makes mine greater than they are.
BRU. I do not, till you practice them on me.
CAS. You love me not.
BRU. I do not like your faults.
CAS. A friendly eye could never see such faults.
BRU. A flatterer's would not, though they do appear
As huge as high Olympus.
CAS. Come, Antony, and young Octavius, come!
Revenge yourselves alone on Cassius:
For Cassius is a-weary of the world--
Hated by one he loves; braved by his brother;
Checked like a bondman; all his faults observed,
Set in a note-book, learned, and conned by rote,
To cast into my teeth.
O, I could weep
My spirit from my eyes!--There is my dagger,
And here my naked breast; within, a heart
Dearer than Plutus' mine, richer than gold:
If that thou be'st a Roman, take it forth:
I, that denied thee gold, will give my heart.
Strike, as thou didst at Caesar; for I know,
Then thou didst hate him worst, thou lovedst him better
Than ever thou lovedst Cassius.
BRU. Sheath your dagger;
Be angry when you will, it shall have scope:
Do what you will, dishonor shall be humor.
O Cassius, you are yoked with a lamb,
That carries anger, as the flint bears fire;
Who, much enforced, shows a hasty spark,
And straight is cold again.
CAS. Hath Cassius lived
To be but mirth and laughter to his Brutus,
When grief and blood ill-tempered vexeth him?
BRU. When I spoke that, I was ill-tempered too.
CAS. Do you confess so much? Give me your hand
BRU. And my heart, too.
CAS. O Brutus!
BRU. What's the matter?
CAS. Have you not love enough to bear with me,
When that rash humor which my mother gave me,
Makes me forgetful?
BRU. Yes, Cassius; and from henceforth,
When you are over-earnest with your Brutus,
He'll think your mother chides, and leave you so.
SHAKESPEARE.
THE FORGING OF THE ANCHOR.
I.
Come, see the Dolphin's anchor forged; 'tis at a white heat now;
The bellows ceased, the flames decreased; though on the forge's brow
The little flames still fitfully play through the sable mound;
And fitfully you still may see the grim smiths ranking round,
All clad in leathern panoply, their broad hands only bare;
Some rest upon their sledges here, some work the windlass there.
II.
The windlass strains the tackle chains, the black mound heaves below,
And red and deep a hundred veins burst out at every throe;
It rises, roars, rends all outright--O Vulcan, what a glow!
'Tis blinding white, 'tis blasting bright; the high sun shines not so:
The high sun sees not, on the earth, such fiery, fearful show;
III.
The roof-ribs swarth, the candent hearth, the ruddy, lurid row
Of smiths, that stand, an ardent band, like men before the foe;
As, quivering through his fleece of flame, the sailing monster slow
Sinks on the anvil--all about the faces fiery grow--
"Hurrah!" they shout--"leap out!--leap out!" bang, bang,
the sledges go.
IV.
Leap out, leap out, my masters! leap out and lay on load!
Let's forge a goodly anchor, a bower, thick and broad
For a heart of oak is hanging on every blow, I bode,
And I see the good ship riding, all in a perilous road;
The low reef roaring on her lee, the roll of ocean poured
From stem to stern, sea after sea, the main-mast by the board;
V.
The bulwarks down, the rudder gone, the boats stove at the chains;
But courage still, brave mariners, the bower yet remains,
And not an inch to flinch he deigns save when ye pitch sky-high.
Then moves his head, as though he said, "Fear nothing--here am I!"
VI.
Swing in your strokes in order, let foot and hand keep time,
Your blows make music sweeter far than any steeple's chime;
But while ye swing your sledges, sing, and let the burden be,
The anchor is the anvil king, and royal craftsmen we.
VII.
Strike in, strike in; the sparks begin to dull their rustling red;
Our hammers ring with sharper din, our work will soon be sped;
Our anchor soon must change his bed of fiery, rich array,
For a hammock at the roaring bows, or an oozy couch of clay;
Our anchor soon must change the lay of merry craftsmen here,
For the yeo-heave-o, and the heave away, and the sighing seaman's
cheer.
VIII.
In livid and obdurate gloom, he darkens down at last,
A shapely one he is and strong, as e'er from cat was cast.
A trusted and trustworthy guard, if thou had'st life like me,
What pleasures would thy toils reward beneath the deep-green sea!
IX.
O deep-sea-diver, who might then behold such sights as thou?
The hoary monster's palaces! methinks what joy 'twere now
To go plump, plunging down amid the assembly of the whales,
And feel the churned sea round me boil beneath their scourging tails!
Then deep in tanglewoods to fight the fierce sea-unicorn,
And send him foiled and bellowing back, for all his ivory horn;
To leave the subtle sworder-fish, of bony blade forlorn,
And for the ghastly grinning shark, to laugh his jaws to scorn.
X.
O broad-armed fisher of the deep, whose sports can equal thine?
The Dolphin weighs a thousand tons, that tugs thy cable line;
And night by night 'tis thy delight, thy glory day by day,
Through sable sea and breaker white, the giant game to play;
But, shamer of our little sports, forgive the name I gave;
A fisher's joy is to destroy--thine office is to save.
XI.
O lodger in the sea-king's halls, couldst thou but understand
Whose be the white bones by thy side, or who that dripping band,
Slow swaying in the heaving wave, that round about thee bend,
With sounds like breakers in a dream, blessing their ancient friend;
O couldst thou know what heroes glide with larger steps round thee,
Thine iron side would swell with pride, thou'dst leap within the sea!
XII.
Give honor to their memories, who left the pleasant strand
To shed their blood so freely for the love of Fatherland--
Who left their chance of quiet age and grassy churchyard grave
So freely for a restless bed amid the tossing wave--
O, though our anchor may not be all I have fondly sung,
Honor him for their memory, whose bones he goes among!
S. FERGUSON.
SUPPOSED SPEECH OF JOHN ADAMS.
1. Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand and my
heart to this vote. It is true, indeed, that in the beginning we aimed
not at independence. But there's a divinity which shapes our ends. The
injustice of England has driven us to arms; and, blinded to her own
interest for our good, she has obstinately persisted, till independence
is now within our grasp. We have but to reach forth to it, and it is
ours. Why, then, should we defer the Declaration?
2. Is any man so weak as now to hope for a reconciliation with England,
which shall leave either safety to the country and its liberties, or
safety to his own life and his own honor? Are not you, sir, who sit in
that chair, is not he, our venerable colleague near you, are you not
both already the prescribed and predestined objects of punishment and of
vengeance? Cut off from all hope of royal clemency, what are you, what
can you be, while the power of England remains, but outlaws?
3. If we postpone independence, do we mean to carry on or give up the
war? Do we mean to submit to the measures of Parliament, Boston Port
Bill, and all? Do we mean to submit, and consent that we ourselves shall
be ground to powder, and our country and its rights trodden down in the
dust?
4. I know we do not mean to submit. We never shall submit. Do we intend
to violate that most solemn obligation ever entered into by men, that
plighting before God, of our sacred honor to Washington, when, putting
him forth to incur the dangers of war, as well as the political hazards
of the times, we promised to adhere to him, in every extremity, with our
fortunes and our lives?
5. I know there is not a man here, who would not rather see a general
conflagration sweep over the land, or an earthquake sink it, than one
jot or tittle of that plighted faith fall to the ground. For myself,
having, twelve months ago, in this place, moved you that George
Washington be appointed commander of the forces raised, or to be raised,
for the defence of American liberty, may my right hand forget her
cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I hesitate or
waver in the support I give him.
6. The war, then, must go on. We must fight it through. And if the war
must go on, why put off longer the Declaration of Independence? That
measure will strengthen us. It will give us character abroad. The
nations will then treat with us, which they never can do while we
acknowledge ourselves subjects in arms against our sovereign. Nay, I
maintain that England herself will sooner treat for peace with us on the
footing of independence, than consent, by repealing her acts, to
acknowledge that her whole conduct towards us has been a course of
injustice and oppression.
7. Her pride will be less wounded by submitting to that course of things
which now predestinates our independence, than by yielding the points in
controversy to her rebellious subjects. The former she would regard as
the result of fortune; the latter she would feel as her own deep
disgrace. Why then, why then, sir, do we not as soon as possible change
this from a civil to a national war? And since we must fight it through,
why not put ourselves in a state to enjoy all the benefits of victory,
if we gain the victory?
8. If we fail, it can be no worse for us. But we shall not fail. The
cause will raise up armies; the cause will create navies. The people,
the people, if we are true to them, will carry us, and will carry
themselves, gloriously through this struggle. I care not how fickle
other people have been found. I know the people of these colonies, and I
know that resistance to British aggression is deep and settled in their
hearts, and cannot be eradicated. Every colony, indeed, has expressed
its willingness to follow, if we but take the lead.
9. Sir, the Declaration will inspire the people with increased courage.
Instead of a long and bloody war for the restoration of privileges, for
redress of grievances, for chartered immunities held under a British
king, set before them the glorious object of entire independence and it
will breathe into them anew the breath of life.
10. Read this Declaration at the head of the army; every sword will be
drawn from its scabbard, and the solemn vow uttered, to maintain it, or
to perish on the bed of honor. Publish it from the pulpit; religion will
approve it, and the love of religious liberty will cling round it,
resolved to stand with it, or fall with it. Send it to the public halls;
proclaim it there; let them hear it who heard the first roar of the
enemy's cannon; let them see it who saw their brothers and their sons
fall on the field of Bunker Hill, and in the streets of Lexington and
Concord, and the very walls will cry out in its support.
11. Sir, I know the uncertainty of human affairs, but I see, I see
clearly through this day's business. You and I, indeed, may rue it. We
may not live to the time when this Declaration shall be made good. We
may die; die colonists; die slaves; die, it may be, ignominiously, and
on the scaffold. Be it so. Be it so. If it be the pleasure of Heaven
that my country shall require the poor offering of my life, the victim
shall be ready at the appointed hour of sacrifice, come when that hour
may. But while I do live, let me have a country, or at least the hope of
a country, and that a free country.
12. But whatever may be our fate, be assured, be assured that this
Declaration will stand. It may cost treasure and it may cost blood; but
it will stand, and it will richly compensate for both. Through the thick
gloom of the present, I see the brightness of the future as the sun in
heaven. We shall make this a glorious, an immortal day. When we are in
our graves, our children will honor it. They will celebrate it with
thanksgiving, with festivity, with bonfires, and illuminations. On its
annual return, they will shed tears, copious, gushing tears, not of
subjection and slavery, not of agony and distress, but of exultation, of
gratitude, and of joy.
13. Sir, before God, I believe the hour is come. My judgment approves
this measure, and my whole heart is in it. All that I have, and all that
I am, and all that I hope in this life, I am now ready here to stake
upon it; and I leave off as I began, that, live or die, survive or
perish, I am for the Declaration. It is my living sentiment, and by the
blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment,--independence now, and
INDEPENDENCE FOREVER!
DANIEL WEBSTER.
LIFE AND SONG.
I.
If life were caught by a clarionet,
And a wild heart throbbing in the reed,
Should thrill its joy and trill its fret,
And utter its heart in every deed,
II.
Then would this breathing clarionet
Type what the poet fain would be;
For none o' the singers ever yet
Has wholly lived his minstrelsy;
III.
Or clearly sung his true, true thought;
Or utterly bodied forth his life,
Or out of life and song has wrought
The perfect one of man and wife;
IV.
Or lived and sung, that Life and Song
Might each express the other's all,
Careless if life or art were long
Since both were one, to stand or fall.
V.
So that the wonder struck the crowd,
Who shouted it about the land:
His song was only living aloud,
His work, a singing with his hand!
SIDNEY LANIER.
GATHERING SONG OF DONALD THE BLACK.
I.
Pibroch of Donuil Dhu
Pibroch of Donuil
Wake thy wild voice anew,
Summon Clan Conuil.
Come away, come away,
Hark to the summons!
Come in your war-array,
Gentles and commons.
II.
Come from deep glen, and
From mountain so rocky;
The war-pipe and pennon
Are at Inverlocky.
Come every hill-plaid, and
True heart that wears one,
Come every steel blade, and
Strong hand that bears one.
III.
Leave untended the herd,
The flock without shelter;
Leave the corpse uninterr'd,
The bride at the altar;
Leave the deer, leave the steer,
Leave nets and barges:
Come with your fighting gear,
Broadswords and targes.
IV.
Come as the winds come, when
Forests are rended,
Come as the waves come, when
Navies are stranded:
Faster come, faster come,
Faster and faster,
Chief, vassal, page and groom,
Tenant and master.
V.
Fast they come, fast they come;
See how they gather!
Wide waves the eagle plume
Blended with heather.
Cast your plaids, draw your blades,
Forward each man set!
Pibroch of Donuil Dhu
Knell for the onset!
SIR WALTER SCOTT.
NUTTING.
I.
It seems a day
(I speak of one from many singled out)
One of those heavenly days that cannot die;
When, in the eagerness of boyish hope,
I left our cottage-threshold, sallying forth
With a huge wallet o'er my shoulders slung,
A nutting-crook in hand; and turned my steps
Tow'rd some far-distant wood, a Figure quaint,
Tricked out in proud disguise of cast-off weeds
Which for that service had been husbanded,
By exhortation of my frugal Dame--
Motley accoutrement, of power to smile
At thorns, and brakes, and brambles,--and, in truth,
More ragged than need was!
II.
O'er pathless rocks,
Through beds of matted fern, and tangled thickets,
Forcing my way, I came to one dear nook
Unvisited, where not a broken bough
Drooped with its withered leaves, ungracious sign
Of devastation; but the hazels rose
Tall and erect, with tempting clusters hung,
A virgin scene!--A little while I stood,
Breathing with such suppression of the heart
As joy delights in; and, with wise restraint
Voluptuous, fearless of a rival, eyed
The banquet;--or beneath the trees I sate
Among the flowers, and with the flowers I played;
A temper known to those, who, after long
And weary expectation, have been blest
With sudden happiness beyond all hope.
III.
Perhaps it was a bower beneath whose leaves
The violets of five seasons re-appear
And fade, unseen by any human eye;
Where fairy water-breaks do murmur on
Forever; and I saw the sparkling foam,
And--with my cheek on one of those green stones
That, fleeced with moss, under the shady trees,
Lay round me, scattered like a flock of sheep--
I heard the murmur and the murmuring sound,
In that sweet mood when pleasure loves to pay
Tribute to ease; and, of its joy secure,
The heart luxuriates with indifferent things,
Wasting its kindliness on stocks and stones,
And on the vacant air.
IV.
Then up I rose,
And dragged to earth both branch and bough, with crash
And merciless ravage; and the shady nook
Of hazels, and the green and mossy bower,
Deformed and sullied, patiently gave up
Their quiet being: and, unless I now
Confound my present feelings with the past;
Ere from the mutilated bower I turned
Exulting, rich beyond the wealth of kings,
I felt a sense of pain when I beheld
The silent trees, and saw the intruding sky--
Then, dearest Maiden, move along these shades
In gentleness of heart; with gentle hand
Touch--for there is a spirit in the woods.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
THE DODSON FAMILY.
_From Mill on the Floss._
PART I.
1. The Dodsons were certainly a handsome family, and Mrs. Glegg was not
the least handsome of the sisters. As she sat in Mrs. Tulliver's
arm-chair, no impartial observer could have denied that for a woman of
fifty she had a very comely face and figure. It is true she despised the
advantages of costume, for though, as she often observed, no woman had
better clothes, it was not her way to wear her new things out before her
old ones. Other women, if they liked, might have their best thread-lace
in every wash; but when Mrs. Glegg died, it would be found that she had
better lace laid by in the right-hand drawer of her wardrobe, in the
Spotted Chamber, than ever Mrs. Wooll of St. Ogg's had bought in her
life, although Mrs. Wooll wore her lace before it was paid for.
2. So of her curled fronts: to look out on the week-day world from under
a crisp and glossy front, would be to introduce a most dreamlike and
unpleasant confusion between the sacred and the secular. Occasionally,
indeed, Mrs. Glegg wore one of her third-best fronts on a week-day
visit, but not at a sister's house; especially not at Mrs. Tulliver's,
who, since her marriage, had hurt her sisters' feelings greatly by
wearing her own hair. But Bessy was always weak!
3. So if Mrs. Glegg's front to-day was more fuzzy and lax than usual,
she had a design under it: she intended the most pointed and cutting
allusion to Mrs. Tulliver's bunches of blond curls, separated from each
other by a due wave of smoothness on each side of the parting. Mrs.
Tulliver had shed tears several times at sister Glegg's unkindness on
the subject of these unmatronly curls, but the consciousness of looking
the handsomer for them, naturally administered support.
4. Mrs. Glegg chose to wear her bonnet in the house to-day--untied and
tilted slightly, of course--a frequent practice of hers when she was on
a visit, and happened to be in a severe humor: she didn't know what
draughts there might be in strange houses. For the same reason she wore
a small sable tippet, which reached just to her shoulders, and was very
far from meeting across her well-formed chest, while her long neck was
protected by a _chevaux-de-frise_ of miscellaneous frilling. One would
need to be learned in the fashions of those times to know how far in the
rear of them Mrs. Glegg's slate-colored silk gown must have been; but
from certain constellations of small yellow spots upon it, and a mouldy
odor about it suggestive of a damp clothes-chest, it was probable that
it belonged to a stratum of garments just old enough to have come
recently into wear.
5. Mrs. Glegg held her large gold watch in her hand with the
many-doubled chain round her fingers, and observed to Mrs. Tulliver, who
had just returned from a visit to the kitchen, that whatever it might be
by other people's clocks and watches, it was gone half-past twelve by
hers.
6. "I don't know what ails sister Pullet," she continued. "It used to be
the way in our family for one to be as early as another,--I'm sure it
was so in my poor father's time,--and not for one sister to sit half an
hour before the others came. But if the ways o' the family are altered,
it shan't be _my_ fault--_I'll_ never be the one to come into a house
when all the rest are going away. I wonder _at_ sister Deane--she used
to be more like me. But if you'll take my advice, Bessy, you'll put the
dinner forrard a bit, sooner than put it back, because folks are late as
ought to ha' known better."
7. "Oh dear, there's no fear but what they'll be all here in time,
sister," said Mrs. Tulliver, in her mild-peevish tone. "The dinner won't
be ready till half-past one. But if it's long for you to wait, let me
fetch you a cheesecake and a glass o' wine."
"Well, Bessy!" said Mrs. Glegg, with a bitter smile, and a scarcely
perceptible toss of her head, "I should ha' thought you'd known your own
sister better. I never _did_ eat between meals, and I'm not going to
begin. Not but what I hate that nonsense of having your dinner at
half-past one, when you might have it at one. You was never brought up
in that way, Bessy."
8. "Why, Jane, what can I do? Mr. Tulliver doesn't like his dinner
before two o'clock, but I put it half an hour earlier because o' you."
"Yes, yes, I know how it is with husbands--they're for putting
everything off--they'll put the dinner off till after tea, if they've
got wives as are weak enough to give in to such work; but it's a pity
for you, Bessy, as you haven't got more strength o' mind. It'll be well
if your children don't suffer for it. And I hope you've not gone and got
a great dinner for us. A boiled joint, as you could make broth of for
the kitchen," Mrs. Glegg added, in a tone of emphatic protest, "and a
plain pudding, with a spoonful o' sugar, and no spice, 'ud be far more
becoming."
9. With sister Glegg in this humor, there was a cheerful prospect for
the day. Mrs. Tulliver never went the length of quarrelling with her,
but this point of the dinner was a tender one, and not at all new, so
that she could make the same answer she had often made before.
"Mr. Tulliver says he always _will_ have a good dinner for his friends
while he can pay for it," she said, "and he's a right to do as he likes
in his own house, sister."
10. "Well, Bessy, _I_ can't leave your children enough out o' my
savings, to keep 'em from ruin. And you mustn't look to having any o'
Mr. Glegg's money, for it's well if I don't go first--he comes of a
long-lived family; and if he was to die and leave me well for my life,
he'd tie all the money up to go back to his own kin."
11. The sound of wheels while Mrs. Glegg was speaking was an
interruption highly welcome to Mrs. Tulliver, who hastened out to
receive sister Pullet--it must be sister Pullet, because the sound was
that of a four-wheel.
PART II.
1. Sister Pullet was in tears when the one-horse chaise stopped before
Mrs. Tulliver's door, and it was apparently requisite that she should
shed a few more before getting out, for though her husband and Mrs.
Tulliver stood ready to support her, she sat still and shook her head
sadly, as she looked through her tears at the vague distance. "Why,
whativer is the matter, sister?" said Mrs. Tulliver.
2. There was no reply but a further shake of the head, as Mrs. Pullet
slowly rose and got down from the chaise, not without casting a glance
at Mr. Pullet to see that he was guarding her handsome silk dress from
injury. Mr. Pullet was a small man with a high nose, small twinkling
eyes, and thin lips, in a fresh-looking suit of black and a white
cravat, that seemed to have been tied very tight on some higher
principle than that of mere personal ease.
3. It is a pathetic sight and a striking example of the complexity
introduced into the emotions by a high state of civilization--the sight
of a fashionably drest female in grief. Perceiving that the tears are
hurrying fast, she unpins her strings and throws them languidly
backward--a touching gesture, indicative, even in the deepest gloom, of
the hope in future dry moments when cap-strings will once more have a
charm.
4. Mrs. Pullet brushed each doorpost with great nicety, about the
latitude of her shoulders (at that period a woman was truly ridiculous
to an instructed eye if she did not measure a yard and a half across the
shoulders), and having done that, sent the muscles of her face in quest
of fresh tears as she advanced into the parlor where Mrs. Glegg was
seated.
5. "Well, sister, you're late; what's the matter?" said Mrs. Glegg,
rather sharply, as they shook hands.
Mrs. Pullet sat down--lifting up her mantle carefully behind, before she
answered--
"She's gone. Died the day before yesterday, an' her legs was as thick as
my body," she added, with deep sadness, after a pause. "They'd tapped
her no end o' times, and the water--they say you might ha' swum in it,
if you'd liked."
6. "Well, Sophy, it's a mercy she's gone, then, whoever she may be,"
said Mrs. Glegg, with the promptitude and emphasis of a mind naturally
clear and decided; "but I can't think who you're talking of, for my
part."
"But _I_ know," said Mrs. Pullet, sighing and shaking her head; "and
there isn't another such a dropsy in the parish. _I_ know as its old
Mrs. Sutton o' the Twentylands."
"Well, she's no kin o' yours, nor much acquaintance as I've ever heared
of," said Mrs. Glegg, who always cried just as much as was proper when
anything happened to her own "kin," but not on other occasions.
7. "She said to me, when I went to see her last Christmas, she said,
'Mrs. Pullet, if ever you have the dropsy, you'll think o' me.' She
_did_ say so," added Mrs. Pullet, beginning to cry bitterly again;
"those were her very words. And she's to be buried o' Saturday, and
Pullet's bid to the funeral."
"Sophy," said Mrs. Glegg, unable any longer to contain her spirit of
rational remonstrance--"Sophy, I wonder _at_ you, fretting and injuring
your health about people as don't belong to you. Your poor father never
did so, nor your aunt Frances neither, nor any o' the family as I ever
heard of. You couldn't fret no more than this, if we'd heared as our
cousin Abbott had died sudden without making his will."
8. Mrs. Pullet was silent, having to finish her crying, and rather
flattered than indignant at being upbraided for crying too much.
"Ah!" she sighed, shaking her head at the idea that there were but few
who could enter fully into her experiences. "Sister, I may as well go
and take my bonnet off now. Did you see as the cap-box was put out?" she
added, turning to her husband.
Mr. Pullet, by an unaccountable lapse of memory, had forgotten it, and
hastened out, with a stricken conscience, to remedy the omission.
9. "They'll bring it up-stairs, sister," said Mrs. Tulliver, wishing to
go at once, for she was fond of going up-stairs with her sister Pullet,
and looking thoroughly at her cap before she put it on her head, and
discussing millinery in general. This was part of Bessy's weakness, that
stirred Mrs. Glegg's sisterly compassion: Bessy went far too well drest,
considering.
But when Mrs. Pullet was alone with Mrs. Tulliver up-stairs, the remarks
were naturally to the disadvantage of Mrs. Glegg, and they agreed, in
confidence, that there was no knowing what sort of fright sister Jane
would come out next.
GEORGE ELIOT.
AFTER THE MARCH RAIN.
I.
The Cock is crowing,
The stream is flowing,
The small birds twitter,
The lake doth glitter,
The green field sleeps in the sun;
The oldest and youngest
Are at work with the strongest;
The cattle are grazing,
Their heads never raising;
There are forty feeding like one!
II.
Like an army defeated
The snow hath retreated,
And now doth fare ill
On the top of the bare hill;
The ploughboy is whooping--anon--anon:
There's joy in the mountains;
There's life in the fountains;
Small clouds are sailing,
Blue sky prevailing;
The rain is over and gone!
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
_CHAPTER III._
SLIDE IN VOLUME.
FIRST BATTLES OF THE REVOLUTION.
I.
1. We have cause for honest complacency, that when the distant citizen
of our own republic, when the stranger from foreign lands, inquires for
the spots where the noble blood of the Revolution began to flow, where
the first battle of that great and glorious contest was fought, he is
guided through the villages of Middlesex, to the plains of Lexington and
Concord. It is a commemoration of our soil, to which ages, as they pass,
will add dignity and interest; till the names of Lexington and Concord
in the annals of freedom, will stand by the side of the most honorable
names in Roman or Grecian story.
2. It was one of those great days, one of those elemental occasions in
the world's affairs, when the people rise and act for themselves. Some
organization and preparation had been made; but from the nature of the
case, with scarce any effect on the events of that day.
3. It may be doubted whether there was an efficient order given, the
whole day, to any body of men as large as a regiment. It was the people,
in their first capacity, as citizens and as freemen, starting from their
beds at midnight, from their firesides and from their fields, to take
their own cause into their own hands.
4. Such a spectacle is the height of the moral sublime; when the want of
everything is fully made up by the spirit of the cause, and the soul
within stands in place of discipline, organization, and resources. In
the prodigious efforts of a veteran army, beneath the dazzling splendor
of their array, there is something revolting to the reflective mind.
5. The ranks are filled with the desperate, the mercenary, the depraved;
an iron slavery, by the name of subordination, merges the free will of
one hundred thousand men in the unqualified despotism of one; the
humanity, mercy, and remorse, which scarce ever desert the individual
bosom, are sounds without a meaning to that fearful, ravenous,
irrational monster of prey, a mercenary army. It is hard to say who are
most to be commiserated, the wretched people on whom it is let loose, or
the still more wretched people whose substance has been sucked out to
nourish it into strength and fury.
6. But in the efforts of the people,--of the people struggling for their
rights, moving, not in organized, disciplined masses, but in their
spontaneous action, man for man, and heart for heart,--there is
something glorious. They can then move forward without orders, act
together without combination, and brave the flaming lines of battle,
without intrenchments to cover or walls to shield them.
7. No dissolute camp has worn off from the feelings of the youthful
soldier the freshness of that home, where his mother and his sister sit
waiting, with tearful eyes and aching hearts, to hear good news from the
wars; no long service in the ranks of a conqueror has turned the
veteran's heart into marble; their valor springs not from recklessness,
from habit, from indifference to the preservation of a life knit by no
pledges to the life of others. But in the strength and spirit of the
cause alone they act, they contend, they bleed. In this they conquer.
8. The people always conquer. They always must conquer. Armies may be
defeated, kings may be overthrown, and new dynasties imposed, by foreign
arms, on an ignorant and slavish race, that care not in what language
the covenant of their subjection runs, nor in whose name the deed of
their barter and sale is made out. But the people never invade; and,
when they rise against the invader, are never subdued.
9. If they are driven from the plains, they fly to the mountains. Steep
rocks and everlasting hills are their castles; the tangled, pathless
thicket their palisado, and God is their ally. Now he overwhelms the
hosts of their enemies beneath his drifting mountains of sand; now he
buries them beneath a falling atmosphere of polar snows; he lets loose
his tempests on their fleets; he puts a folly into their counsels, a
madness into the hearts of their leaders; and never gave, and never will
give, a final triumph over a virtuous and gallant people, resolved to be
free.
EDWARD EVERETT.
THE ANTIQUITY OF FREEDOM.