CHAPTER VII.

LITERATURE SINCE 1861.

A generation has nearly passed since the outbreak of the civil war, and

although public affairs are still mainly in the hands of men who had

reached manhood before the conflict opened, or who were old enough at

that time to remember clearly its stirring events, the younger men who

are daily coming forward to take their places know it only by

tradition. It makes a definite break in the history of our literature,

and a number of new literary schools and tendencies have appeared since

its close. As to the literature of the war itself, it was largely the

work of writers who had already reached or passed middle age. All of

the more important authors described in the last three chapters

survived the Rebellion except Poe, who died in 1849, Prescott, who died

in 1859, and Thoreau and Hawthorne, who died in the second and fourth

years of the war, respectively. The final and authoritative history of

the struggle has not yet been written, and cannot be written for many

years to come. Many partial and tentative accounts have, however,

appeared, among which may be mentioned, on the Northern side, Horace

Greeley's _American Conflict_, 1864-66; Vice-President Wilson's _Rise

and Fall of the Slave Power in America_, and J. W. Draper's _American

Civil War_, 1868-70; on the Southern side Alexander H. Stephens's

_Confederate States of America_, Jefferson Davis's _Rise and Fall of

the Confederate States of America_, and E. A. Pollard's _Lost Cause_.

These, with the exception of Dr. Draper's philosophical narrative, have

the advantage of being the work of actors in the political or military

events which they describe, and the disadvantage of being, therefore,

partisan--in some instances passionately partisan. A store-house of

materials for the coming historian is also at hand in Frank Moore's

great collection, the _Rebellion Record_; in numerous regimental

histories of special armies, departments, and battles, like W.

Swinton's _Army of the Potomac_; in the autobiographies and

recollections of Grant and Sherman and other military leaders; in the

"war papers," lately published in the _Century_ magazine, and in

innumerable sketches and reminiscences by officers and privates on both

sides.

The war had its poetry, its humors, and its general literature, some of

which have been mentioned in connection with Whittier, Lowell, Holmes,

Whitman, and others, and some of which remain to be mentioned, as the

work of new writers, or of writers who had previously made little mark.

There were war-songs on both sides, few of which had much literary

value excepting, perhaps, James R. Randall's Southern ballad,

_Maryland, My Maryland_, sung to the old college air of _Lauriger

Horatius_, and the grand martial chorus of _John Brown's Body_, an old

Methodist hymn, to which the Northern armies beat time as they went

"marching on." Randall's song, though spirited, was marred by its

fire-eating absurdities about "vandals" and "minions" and "Northern

scum," the cheap insults of the Southern newspaper press. To furnish

the _John Brown_ chorus with words worthy of the music, Mrs. Julia Ward

Howe wrote her _Battle-Hymn of the Republic_, a noble poem, but rather

too fine and literary for a song, and so never fully accepted by the

soldiers. Among the many verses which voiced the anguish and the

patriotism of that stern time, which told of partings and home-comings,

of women waiting by desolate hearths, in country homes, for tidings of

husbands and sons who had gone to the war; or which celebrated

individual deeds of heroism or sang the thousand private tragedies and

heartbreaks of the great conflict, by far the greater number were of

too humble a grade to survive the feeling of the hour. Among the best

or the most popular of them were Kate Putnam Osgood's _Driving Home the

Cows_, Mrs. Ethel Lynn Beers's _All Quiet Along the Potomac_; Forceythe

Willson's _Old Sergeant_, and John James Piatt's _Riding to Vote_. Of

the poets whom the war brought out, or developed, the most noteworthy

were Henry Timrod, of South Carolina, and Henry Howard Brownell, of

Connecticut. During the war Timrod was with the Confederate Army of

the West, as correspondent for the _Charleston Mercury_, and in 1864 he

became assistant editor of the _South Carolinian_, at Columbia.

Sherman's "march to the sea" broke up his business, and he returned to

Charleston. A complete edition of his poems was published in 1873, six

years after his death. The prettiest of all Timrod's poems is _Katie_,

but more to our present purpose are _Charleston_--written in the time

of blockade--and the _Unknown Dead_, which tells

"Of nameless graves on battle plains,

Wash'd by a single winter's rains,

Where, some beneath Virginian hills,

And some by green Atlantic rills,

Some by the waters of the West,

A myriad unknown heroes rest."

When the war was over a poet of New York State, F. M. Finch, sang of

these and of other graves in his beautiful Decoration Day lyric, _The

Blue and the Gray_, which spoke the word of reconciliation and

consecration for North and South alike.

Brownell, whose _Lyrics of a Day_ and _War Lyrics_ were published

respectively in 1864 and 1866, was private secretary to Farragut, on

whose flag-ship, the _Hartford_, he was present at several great naval

engagements, such as the "Passage of the Forts" below New Orleans, and

the action off Mobile, described in his poem, the _Bay Fight_. With

some roughness and unevenness of execution Brownell's poetry had a fire

which places him next to Whittier as the Körner of the civil war. In

him, especially, as in Whittier, is that Puritan sense of the

righteousness of his cause which made the battle for the Union a holy

war to the crusaders against slavery:

"Full red the furnace fires must glow

That melt the ore of mortal kind;

The mills of God are grinding slow,

But ah, how close they grind!

"To-day the Dahlgren and the drum

Are dread apostles of his name;

His kingdom here can only come

By chrism of blood and flame."

One of the earliest martyrs of the war was Theodore Winthrop, hardly

known as a writer until the publication in the _Atlantic Monthly_ of

his vivid sketches of _Washington as a Camp_, describing the march of

his regiment, the famous New York Seventh, and its first quarters in

the Capitol at Washington. A tragic interest was given to these papers

by Winthrop's gallant death in the action of Big Bethel, June 10, 1861.

While this was still fresh in public recollection his manuscript novels

were published, together with a collection of his stories and sketches

reprinted from the magazines. His novels, though in parts crude and

immature, have a dash and buoyancy--an out-door air about them--which

give the reader a winning impression of Winthrop's personality. The

best of them is, perhaps, _Cecil Dreeme_, a romance that reminds one a

little of Hawthorne, and the scene of which is the New York University

building on Washington Square, a locality that has been further

celebrated in Henry James's novel of _Washington Square_.

Another member of this same Seventh Regiment, Fitz James O'Brien, an

Irishman by birth, who died at Baltimore in 1862 from the effects of a

wound received in a cavalry skirmish, had contributed to the magazines

a number of poems and of brilliant though fantastic tales, among which

the _Diamond Lens_ and _What Was It?_ had something of Edgar A. Poe's

quality. Another Irish-American, Charles G. Halpine, under the

pen-name of "Miles O'Reilly," wrote a good many clever ballads of the

war, partly serious and partly in comic brogue. Prose writers of note

furnished the magazines with narratives of their experience at the seat

of war, among papers of which kind may be mentioned Dr. Holmes's _My

Search for the Captain_, in the _Atlantic Monthly_, and Colonel T. W.

Higginson's _Army Life in a Black Regiment_, collected into a volume in

1870.

Of the public oratory of the war, the foremost example is the

ever-memorable address of Abraham Lincoln at the dedication of the

National Cemetery at Gettysburg. The war had brought the nation to its

intellectual majority. In the stress of that terrible fight there was

no room for buncombe and verbiage, such as the newspapers and

stump-speakers used to dole out in _ante bellum_ days. Lincoln's

speech is short--a few grave words which he turned aside for a moment

to speak in the midst of his task of saving the country. The speech is

simple, naked of figures, every sentence impressed with a sense of

responsibility for the work yet to be done and with a stern

determination to do it. "In a larger sense," it says, "we cannot

dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The

brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far

above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor

long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did

here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the

unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly

advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task

remaining before us; that from these honored dead we take increased

devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of

devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have

died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of

freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the

people, shall not perish from the earth." Here was eloquence of a

different sort from the sonorous perorations of Webster or the polished

climaxes of Everett. As we read the plain, strong language of this

brief classic, with its solemnity, its restraint, its "brave old wisdom

of sincerity," we seem to see the president's homely features

irradiated with the light of coming martyrdom--

"The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man,

Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame,

New birth of our new soil, the first American."

Within the past quarter of a century the popular school of American

humor has reached its culmination. Every man of genius who is a

humorist at all is so in a way peculiar to himself. There is no lack

of individuality in the humor of Irving and Hawthorne and the wit of

Holmes and Lowell, but although they are new in subject and application

they are not new in kind. Irving, as we have seen, was the literary

descendant of Addison. The character-sketches in _Bracebridge Hall_

are of the same family with Sir Roger de Coverley and the other figures

of the Spectator Club. _Knickerbocker's History of New York_, though

purely American in its matter, is not distinctly American in its

method, which is akin to the mock heroic of Fielding and the irony of

Swift in the _Voyage to Lilliput_. Irving's humor, like that of all

the great English humorists, had its root in the perception of

character--of the characteristic traits of men and classes of men, as

ground of amusement. It depended for its effect, therefore, upon its

truthfulness, its dramatic insight and sympathy, as did the humor of

Shakespeare, of Sterne, Lamb, and Thackeray. This perception of the

characteristic, when pushed to excess, issues in grotesque and

caricature, as in some of Dickens's inferior creations, which are

little more than personified single tricks of manner, speech, feature,

or dress. Hawthorne's rare humor differed from Irving's in temper but

not in substance, and belonged, like Irving's, to the English variety.

Dr. Holmes's more pronouncedly comic verse does not differ specifically

from the _facetiae_ of Thomas Hood, but his prominent trait is wit,

which is the laughter of the head as humor is of the heart. The same

is true, with qualifications, of Lowell, whose _Biglow Papers_, though

humor of an original sort in their revelation of Yankee character, are

essentially satirical. It is the cleverness, the shrewdness of the

hits in the _Biglow Papers_, their logical, that is, _witty_ character,

as distinguished from their drollery, that arrests the attention. They

are funny, but they are not so funny as they are smart. In all these

writers humor was blent with more serious qualities, which gave

fineness and literary value to their humorous writings. Their view of

life was not exclusively comic. But there has been a class of jesters,

of professional humorists, in America, whose product is so indigenous,

so different, if not in essence, yet at least in form and expression,

from any European humor, that it may be regarded as a unique addition

to the comic literature of the world. It has been accepted as such in

England, where Artemus Ward and Mark Twain are familiar to multitudes

who have never read the _One Hoss-Shay_ or _The Courtin'_. And though

it would be ridiculous to maintain that either of these writers takes

rank with Lowell and Holmes, or to deny that there is an amount of

flatness and coarseness in many of their labored fooleries which puts

large portions of their writings below the line where real literature

begins, still it will not do to ignore them as mere buffoons, or even

to predict that their humors will soon be forgotten. It is true that

no literary fashion is more subject to change than the fashion of a

jest, and that jokes that make one generation laugh seem insipid to the

next. But there is something perennial in the fun of Rabelais, whom

Bacon called "the great jester of France," and though the puns of

Shakespeare's clowns are detestable the clowns themselves have not lost

their power to amuse.

The Americans are not a gay people, but they are fond of a joke.

Lincoln's "little stories" were characteristically Western, and it is

doubtful whether he was more endeared to the masses by his solid

virtues than by the humorous perception which made him one of them.

The humor of which we are speaking now is a strictly popular and

national possession. Though America has never, or not until lately,

had a comic paper ranking with _Punch_ or _Charivari_ or the _Fliegende

Blätter_, every newspaper has had its funny column. Our humorists have

been graduated from the journalist's desk and sometimes from the

printing-press, and now and then a local or country newspaper has risen

into sudden prosperity from the possession of a new humorist, as in the

case of G. D. Prentice's _Courier Journal_, or more recently of the

_Cleveland Plaindealer_, the _Danbury News_, the _Burlington Hawkeye_,

the _Arkansaw Traveller_, the _Texas Siftings_, and numerous others.

Nowadays there are even syndicates of humorists, who co-operate to

supply fun for certain groups of periodicals. Of course, the great

majority of these manufacturers of jests for newspapers and comic

almanacs are doomed to swift oblivion. But it is not so certain that

the best of the class, like Clemens and Browne, will not long continue

to be read as illustrative of one side of the American mind, or that

their best things will not survive as long as the _mots_ of Sydney

Smith, which are still as current as ever. One of the earliest of them

was Seba Smith, who, under the name of "Major Jack Downing," did his

best to make Jackson's administration ridiculous. B. P. Shillaber's

"Mrs. Partington"--a sort of American Mrs. Malaprop--enjoyed great

vogue before the war. Of a somewhat higher kind were the

_Phoenixiana_, 1855, and _Squibob Papers_, 1856, of Lieutenant George

H. Derby, "John Phoenix," one of the pioneers of literature on the

Pacific coast at the time of the California gold fever of '49. Derby's

proposal for _A New System of English Grammar_, his satirical account

of the topographical survey of the two miles of road between San

Francisco and the Mission Dolores, and his picture gallery made out of

the conventional houses, steam-boats, rail-cars, runaway Negroes, and

other designs which used to figure in the advertising columns of the

newspapers, were all very ingenious and clever. But all these pale

before Artemus Ward--"Artemus the delicious," as Charles Reade called

him--who first secured for this peculiarly American type of humor a

hearing and reception abroad. Ever since the invention of Hosea

Biglow, an imaginary personage of some sort, under cover of whom the

author might conceal his own identity, has seemed a necessity to our

humorists. Artemus Ward was a traveling showman who went about the

country exhibiting a collection of wax "figgers" and whose experiences

and reflections were reported in grammar and spelling of a most

ingeniously eccentric kind. His inventor was Charles F. Browne,

originally of Maine, a printer by trade and afterward a newspaper

writer and editor at Boston, Toledo, and Cleveland, where his

comicalities in the _Plaindealer_ first began to attract notice. In

1860 he came to New York and joined the staff of _Vanity Fair_, a comic

weekly of much brightness, which ran a short career and perished for

want of capital. When Browne began to appear as a public lecturer,

people who had formed an idea of him from his impersonation of the

shrewd and vulgar old showman were surprised to find him a

gentlemanly-looking young man, who came upon the platform in correct

evening dress, and "spoke his piece" in a quiet and somewhat mournful

manner, stopping in apparent surprise when any one in the audience

laughed at any uncommonly outrageous absurdity. In London, where he

delivered his _Lecture on the Mormons_, in 1806, the gravity of his

bearing at first imposed upon his hearers, who had come to the hall in

search of instructive information and were disappointed at the

inadequate nature of the panorama which Browne had had made to

illustrate his lecture. Occasionally some hitch would occur in the

machinery of this and the lecturer would leave the rostrum for a few

moments to "work the moon" that shone upon the Great Salt Lake,

apologizing on his return on the ground, that he was "a man short" and

offering "to pay a good salary to any respectable boy of good parentage

and education who is a good moonist." When it gradually dawned upon

the British intellect that these and similar devices of the

lecturer--such as the soft music which he had the pianist play at

pathetic passages--nay, that the panorama and even the lecture itself

were of a humorous intention, the joke began to take, and Artemus's

success in England became assured. He was employed as one of the

editors of _Punch_, but died at Southampton in the year following.

Some of Artemus Ward's effects were produced, by cacography or bad

spelling, but there was genius in the wildly erratic way in which he

handled even this rather low order of humor. It is a curious

commentary on the wretchedness of our English orthography that the

phonetic spelling of a word, as for example, _wuz_ for _was_, should be

in itself an occasion of mirth. Other verbal effects of a different

kind were among his devices, as in the passage where the seventeen

widows of a deceased Mormon offered themselves to Artemus.

"And I said, 'Why is this thus? What is the reason of this thusness?'

They hove a sigh--seventeen sighs of different size. They said:

"'O, soon thou will be gonested away.'

"I told them that when I got ready to leave a place I wentested.

"They said, 'Doth not like us?'

"I said, 'I doth--I doth.'

"I also said, 'I hope your intentions are honorable, as I am a lone

child--my parents being far--far away.'

"They then said, 'Wilt not marry us?'

"I said, 'O no, it cannot was.'

"When they cried, 'O cruel man! this is too much!--O! too much,' I told

them that it was on account of the muchness that I declined."

It is hard to define the difference between the humor of one writer and

another, or of one nation and another. It can be felt and can be

illustrated by quoting examples, but scarcely described in general

terms. It has been said of that class of American humorists of which

Artemus Ward is a representative that their peculiarity consists in

extravagance, surprise, audacity, and irreverence. But all these

qualities have characterized other schools of humor. There is the same

element of surprise in De Quincey's anti-climax, "Many a man has dated

his ruin from some murder or other which, perhaps, at the time he

thought little of," as in Artemus's truism that "a comic paper ought to

publish a joke now and then." The violation of logic which makes us

laugh at an Irish bull is likewise the source of the humor in Artemus's

saying of Jeff Davis, that "it would have been better than ten dollars

in his pocket if he had never been born;" or in his advice, "Always

live within your income, even if you have to borrow money to do so;"

or, again, in his announcement that "Mr. Ward will pay no debts of his

own contracting." A kind of ludicrous confusion, caused by an unusual

collocation of words, is also one of his favorite tricks, as when he

says of Brigham Young, "He's the most married man I ever saw in my

life;" or when, having been drafted at several hundred different places

where he had been exhibiting his wax figures, he says that if he went

on he should soon become a regiment, and adds, "I never knew that there

was so many of me." With this a whimsical understatement and an

affectation of simplicity, as where he expresses his willingness to

sacrifice "even his wife's relations" on the altar of patriotism; or

where, in delightful unconsciousness of his own sins against

orthography, he pronounces that "Chaucer was a great poet but he

couldn't spell," or where he says of the feast of raw dog, tendered him

by the Indian chief, Wocky-bocky, "It don't agree with me. I prefer

simple food." On the whole, it may be said of original humor of this

kind, as of other forms of originality in literature, that the elements

of it are old, but their combinations are novel. Other humorists, like

Henry W. Shaw ("Josh Billings") and David R. Locke ("Petroleum V.

Nasby"), have used bad spelling as a part of their machinery; while

Robert H. Newell ("Orpheus C. Kerr"), Samuel L. Clemens ("Mark Twain"),

and more recently "Bill Nye," though belonging to the same school of

low or broad comedy, have discarded cacography. Of these the most

eminent, by all odds, is Mark Twain, who has probably made more people

laugh than any other living writer. A Missourian by birth (1835), he

served the usual apprenticeship at type-setting and editing country

newspapers; spent seven years as a pilot on a Mississippi steam-boat,

and seven years more mining and journalizing in Nevada, where he

conducted the Virginia City _Enterprise_; finally drifted to San

Francisco, and was associated with Bret Harte on the _Californian_, and

in 1867 published his first book, _The Jumping Frog_. This was

succeeded by the _Innocents Abroad_, 1869; _Roughing It_, 1872; _A

Tramp Abroad_, 1880, and by others not so good.

Mark Twain's drolleries have frequently the same air of innocence and

surprise as Artemus Ward's, and there is a like suddenness in his turns

of expression, as where he speaks of "the calm confidence of a

Christian with four aces." If he did not originate, he at any rate

employed very effectively that now familiar device of the newspaper

"funny man," of putting a painful situation euphemistically, as when he

says of a man who was hanged, that he "received injuries which

terminated in his death." He uses to the full extent the American

humorist's favorite resources of exaggeration and irreverence. An

instance of the former quality may be seen in his famous description of

a dog chasing a coyote, in _Roughing It_, or in his interview with the

lightning-rod agent in Mark Twain's _Sketches_, 1875. He is a shrewd

observer, and his humor has a more satirical side than Artemus Ward's,

sometimes passing into downright denunciation. He delights

particularly in ridiculing sentimental humbug and moralizing cant. He

runs atilt, as has been said, at "copy-book texts," at the temperance

reformer, the tract distributer, the Good Boy of Sunday-school

literature, and the women who send bouquets and sympathetic letters to

interesting criminals. He gives a ludicrous turn to famous historical

anecdotes, such as the story of George Washington and his little

hatchet; burlesques the time-honored adventure, in nautical romances,

of the starving crew casting lots in the long-boat, and spoils the

dignity of antiquity by modern trivialities, saying of a discontented

sailor on Columbus's ship, "He wanted fresh shad." The fun of

_Innocents Abroad_ consists in this irreverent application of modern,

common sense, utilitarian, democratic standards to the memorable places

and historic associations of Europe. Tried by this test the Old

Masters in the picture galleries become laughable, Abelard was a

precious scoundrel, and the raptures of the guide-books are parodied

without mercy. The tourist weeps at the grave of Adam. At Genoa he

drives the _cicerone_ to despair by pretending never to have heard of

Christopher Columbus, and inquiring innocently, "Is he dead?" It is

Europe vulgarized and stripped of its illusions--Europe seen by a

Western newspaper reporter without any "historic imagination."

The method of this whole class of humorists is the opposite of

Addison's or Irving's or Thackeray's. It does not amuse by the

perception of the characteristic. It is not founded upon truth, but

upon incongruity, distortion, unexpectedness. Every thing in life is

reversed, as in opera bouffe, and turned topsy-turvy, so that paradox

takes the place of the natural order of things. Nevertheless they have

supplied a wholesome criticism upon sentimental excesses, and the world

is in their debt for many a hearty laugh.

In the _Atlantic Monthly_ for December, 1863, appeared a tale entitled

_The Man Without a Country_, which made a great sensation, and did much

to strengthen patriotic feeling in one of the darkest hours of the

nation's history. It was the story of one Philip Nolan, an army

officer, whose head had been turned by Aaron Burr, and who, having been

censured by a court-martial for some minor offense; exclaimed

petulantly, upon mention being made of the United States government,

"Damn the United States! I wish that I might never hear the United

States mentioned again." Thereupon he was sentenced to have his wish,

and was kept all his life aboard the vessels of the navy, being sent

off on long voyages and transferred from ship to ship, with orders to

those in charge that his country and its concerns should never be

spoken of in his presence. Such an air of reality was given to the

narrative by incidental references to actual persons and occurrences

that many believed it true, and some were found who remembered Philip

Nolan, but had heard different versions of his career. The author of

this clever hoax--if hoax it may be called--was Edward Everett Hale, a

Unitarian clergyman of Boston, who published a collection of stories in

1868, under the fantastic title, _If, Yes, and Perhaps_, indicating

thereby that some of the tales were possible, some of them probable,

and others might even be regarded as essentially true. A similar

collection, _His Level Best, and Other Stories_, was published in 1873,

and in the interval three volumes of a somewhat different kind, the

_Ingham Papers_ and _Sybaris and Other Homes_, both in 1869, and _Ten

Times One Is Ten_, in 187l. The author shelters himself behind the

imaginary figure of Captain Frederic Ingham, pastor of the Sandemanian

Church at Naguadavick, and the same characters have a way of

re-appearing in his successive volumes as old friends of the reader,

which is pleasant at first, but in the end a little tiresome. Mr. Hale

is one of the most original and ingenious of American story-writers.

The old device of making wildly improbable inventions appear like fact

by a realistic treatment of details--a device employed by Swift and

Edgar Poe, and more lately by Jules Verne--became quite fresh and novel

in his hands, and was managed with a humor all his own. Some of his

best stories are _My Double and How He Undid Me_, describing how a busy

clergyman found an Irishman who looked so much like himself that he

trained him to pass as his duplicate, and sent him to do duty in his

stead at public meetings, dinners, etc., thereby escaping bores and

getting time for real work; the _Brick Moon_, a story of a projectile

built and launched into space, to revolve in a fixed meridian about the

earth and serve mariners as a mark of longitude; the _Rag Man and Rag

Woman_, a tale of an impoverished couple who made a competence by

saving the pamphlets, advertisements, wedding-cards, etc., that came to

them through the mail, and developing a paper business on that basis;

and the _Skeleton in the Closet_, which shows how the fate of the

Southern Confederacy was involved in the adventures of a certain

hoop-skirt, "built in the eclipse and rigged with curses dark." Mr.

Hale's historical scholarship and his habit of detail have aided him in

the art of giving _vraisemblance_ to absurdities. He is known in

philanthropy as well as in letters, and his tales have a cheerful,

busy, practical way with them in consonance with his motto, "Look up

and not down, look forward and not back, look out and not in, and lend

a hand."

It is too soon to sum up the literary history of the last quarter of a

century. The writers who have given it shape are still writing, and

their work is therefore incomplete. But on the slightest review of it

two facts become manifest; first, that New England has lost its long

monopoly; and, secondly, that a marked feature of the period is the

growth of realistic fiction. The electric tension of the atmosphere

for thirty years preceding the civil war, the storm and stress

of great public contests, and the intellectual stir produced by

transcendentalism seem to have been more favorable to poetry and

literary idealism than present conditions are. At all events there are

no new poets who rank with Whittier, Longfellow, Lowell, and others of

the elder generation, although George H. Boker, in Philadelphia, R. H.

Stoddard and E. C. Stedman, in New York, and T. B. Aldrich, first in

New York and afterward in Boston, have written creditable verse; not to

speak of younger writers, whose work, however, for the most part, has

been more distinguished by delicacy of execution than by native

impulse. Mention has been made of the establishment of _Harper's

Monthly Magazine_, which, under the conduct of its accomplished editor,

George W. Curtis, has provided the public with an abundance of good

reading. The old _Putnam's Monthly_, which ran from 1853 to 1858, and

had a strong corps of contributors, was revived in 1868, and continued

by that name till 1870, when it was succeeded by _Scribner's Monthly_,

under the editorship of Dr. J. G. Holland, and this in 1881 by the

_Century_, an efficient rival of _Harper's_ in circulation, in literary

excellence, and in the beauty of its wood-engravings, the American

school of which art these two great periodicals have done much to

develop and encourage. Another New York monthly, the _Galaxy_, ran

from 1866 to 1878, and was edited by Richard Grant White. Within the

last few years a new _Scribner's Magazine_ has also taken the field.

The _Atlantic_, in Boston, and _Lippincott's_, in Philadelphia, are no

unworthy competitors with these for public favor.

During the forties began a new era of national expansion, somewhat

resembling that described in a former chapter, and, like that, bearing

fruit eventually in literature. The cession of Florida to the United

States in 1845, and the annexation of Texas in the same year, were

followed by the purchase of California in 1847, and its admission as a

State in 1850. In 1849 came the great rush to the California gold

fields. San Francisco, at first a mere collection of tents and board

shanties, with a few adobe huts, grew with incredible rapidity into a

great city--the wicked and wonderful city apostrophized by Bret Harte

in his poem, _San Francisco_:

"Serene, indifferent of fate,

Thou sittest at the Western Gate;

Upon thy heights so lately won

Still slant the banners of the sun. . . .

I know thy cunning and thy greed,

Thy hard, high lust and willful deed."

The adventurers of all lands and races who flocked to the Pacific

coast, found there a motley state of society between civilization and

savagery. There were the relics of the old Mexican occupation, the

Spanish missions, with their Christianized Indians; the wild tribes of

the plains--Apaches, Utes, and Navajoes; the Chinese coolies and

washermen, all elements strange to the Atlantic sea-board and the

States of the interior. The gold-hunters crossed, in stages or

caravans, enormous prairies, alkaline deserts dotted with sage-brush

and seamed by deep canons, and passes through gigantic mountain ranges.

On the coast itself nature was unfamiliar: the climate was subtropical;

fruits and vegetables grew to a mammoth size, corresponding to the

enormous redwoods in the Mariposa groves and the prodigious scale of

the scenery in the valley of the Yosemite and the snow-capped peaks of

the sierras. At first there were few women, and the men led a wild,

lawless existence in the mining camps. Hard upon the heels of the

prospector followed the dram-shop, the gambling-hell, and the

dance-hall. Every man carried his "Colt," and looked out for his own

life and his "claim." Crime went unpunished or was taken in hand, when

it got too rampant, by vigilance committees. In the diggings shaggy

frontiersmen and "pikes" from Missouri mingled with the scum of eastern

cities and with broken-down business men and young college graduates

seeking their fortune. Surveyors and geologists came of necessity,

speculators in mining stock and city lots set up their offices in the

town; later came a sprinkling of school-teachers and ministers.

Fortunes were made in one day and lost the next at poker or loo.

To-day the lucky miner who had struck a good "lead" was drinking

champagne out of pails and treating the town; to-morrow he was

"busted," and shouldered the pick for a new onslaught upon his luck.

This strange, reckless life was not without fascination, and highly

picturesque and dramatic elements were present in it. It was, as Bret

Harte says, "an era replete with a certain heroic Greek poetry," and

sooner or later it was sure to find its poet. During the war

California remained loyal to the Union, but was too far from the seat

of conflict to experience any serious disturbance, and went on

independently developing its own resources and becoming daily more

civilized. By 1868 San Francisco had a literary magazine, the

_Overland Monthly_, which ran until 1875, and was revived in 1883. It

had a decided local flavor, and the vignette on its title-page was a

happily chosen emblem, representing a grizzly bear crossing a railway

track. In an early number of the _Overland_ was a story entitled the

_Luck of Roaring Camp_, by Francis Bret Harte, a native of Albany, N.

Y. (1835), who had come to California at the age of seventeen, in time

to catch the unique aspects of the life of the Forty-niners, before

their vagabond communities had settled down into the law-abiding

society of the present day. His first contribution was followed by

other stories and sketches of a similar kind, such as the _Outcasts of

Poker Flat_, _Miggles_, and _Tennessee's Partner_; and by verses,

serious and humorous, of which last, _Plain Language from Truthful

James_, better known as the _Heathen Chinee_, made an immediate hit,

and carried its author's name into every corner of the English-speaking

world. In 1871 he published a collection of his tales, another of his

poems, and a volume of very clever parodies, _Condensed Novels_, which

rank with Thackeray's _Novels by Eminent Hands_. Bret Harte's

California stories were vivid, highly colored pictures of life in the

mining camps and raw towns of the Pacific coast. The pathetic and the

grotesque went hand in hand in them, and the author aimed to show how

even in the desperate characters gathered together there--the

fortune-hunters, gamblers, thieves, murderers, drunkards, and

prostitutes--the latent nobility of human nature asserted itself in

acts of heroism, magnanimity, self-sacrifice, and touching fidelity.

The same men who cheated at cards and shot each another down with tipsy

curses were capable on occasion of the most romantic generosity and the

most delicate chivalry. Critics were not wanting who held that, in the

matter of dialect and manners and other details, the narrator was not

true to the facts. This was a comparatively unimportant charge; but a

more serious question was the doubt whether his characters were

essentially true to human nature; whether the wild soil of revenge and

greed and dissolute living ever yields such flowers of devotion as

blossom in _Tennessee's Partner_ and the _Outcasts of Poker Flat_.

However this may be, there is no question as to Harte's power as a

narrator. His short stories are skillfully constructed and effectively

told. They never drag, and are never overladen with description,

reflection, or other lumber.

In his poems in dialect we find the same variety of types and

nationalities characteristic of the Pacific coast: the little Mexican

maiden, Pachita, in the old mission garden; the wicked Bill Nye, who

tries to cheat the Heathen Chinee at eucher and to rob Injin Dick of

his winning lottery ticket; the geological society on the Stanislaw who

settle their scientific debates with chunks of old red sandstone and

the skulls of mammoths; the unlucky Mr. Dow, who finally strikes gold

while digging a well, and builds a house with a "coopilow;" and Flynn,

of Virginia, who saves his "pard's" life, at the sacrifice of his own,

by holding up the timbers in the caving tunnel. These poems are mostly

in monologue, like Browning's dramatic lyrics, exclamatory and abrupt

in style, and with a good deal of indicated action, as in _Jim_, where

a miner comes into a bar-room, looking for his old chum, learns that he

is dead, and is just turning away to hide his emotion when he

recognizes Jim in his informant:

"Well, thar--Good-bye--

No more, sir--I--

Eh?

What's that you say?--

Why, dern it!--sho!--

No? Yea! By Jo!

Sold!

Sold! Why, you limb!

You ornery,

Derned old

Long-legged Jim!"

Bret Harte had many imitators, and not only did our newspaper poetry

for a number of years abound in the properties of Californian life,

such as gulches, placers, divides, etc., but writers further east

applied his method to other conditions. Of these by far the most

successful was John Hay, a native of Indiana and private secretary to

President Lincoln, whose _Little Breeches_, _Jim Bludso_, and _Mystery

of Gilgal_ have rivaled Bret Harte's own verses in popularity. In the

last-named piece the reader is given to feel that there is something

rather cheerful and humorous in a bar-room fight which results in "the

gals that winter, as a rule," going "alone to singing school." In the

two former we have heroes of the Bret Harte type, the same combination

of superficial wickedness with inherent loyalty and tenderness. The

profane farmer of the South-west, who "doesn't pan out on the

prophets," and who had taught his little son "to chaw terbacker, just

to keep his milk-teeth white," but who believes in God and the angels

ever since the miraculous recovery of the same little son when lost on

the prairie in a blizzard; and the unsaintly and bigamistic captain of

the _Prairie Belle_, who died like a hero, holding the nozzle of his

burning boat against the bank

"Till the last galoot's ashore."

The manners and dialect of other classes and sections of the country

have received abundant illustration of late years. Edward Eggleston's

_Hoosier Schoolmaster_, 1871, and his other novels are pictures of

rural life in the early days of Indiana. _Western Windows_, a volume

of poems by John James Piatt, another native of Indiana, had an

unmistakable local coloring. Charles G. Leland, of Philadelphia, in

his Hans Breitmann ballads, in dialect, gave a humorous presentation of

the German-American element in the cities. By the death, in 1881, of

Sidney Lanier, a Georgian by birth, the South lost a poet of rare

promise, whose original genius was somewhat hampered by his hesitation

between two arts of expression, music and verse, and by his effort to

co-ordinate them. His _Science of English Verse_, 1880, was a most

suggestive, though hardly convincing, statement of that theory of their

relation which he was working out in his practice. Some of his pieces,

like the _Mocking Bird_ and the _Song of the Chattahoochie_, are the

most characteristically Southern poetry that has been written in

America. Joel Chandler Harris's _Uncle Remus_ stories, in Negro

dialect, are transcripts from the folk-lore of the plantations, while

his collection of stories, _At Teague Poteet's_, together with Miss

Murfree's _In the Tennessee Mountains_ and her other books, have made

the Northern public familiar with the wild life of the "moonshiners,"

who distill illicit whiskey in the mountains of Georgia, North

Carolina, and Tennessee. These tales are not only exciting in

incident, but strong and fresh in their delineations of character.

Their descriptions of mountain scenery are also impressive, though, in

the case of the last-named writer, frequently too prolonged. George W.

Cable's sketches of French Creole life in New Orleans attracted

attention by their freshness and quaintness when published, in the

magazines and re-issued in book form as _Old Creole Days_, in 1879.

His first regular novel, the _Grandissimes_, 1880, was likewise a story

of Creole life. It had the same winning qualities as his short stories

and sketches, but was an advance upon them in dramatic force,

especially in the intensely tragic and powerfully told episode of "Bras

Coupé." Mr. Cable has continued his studies of Louisiana types and

ways in his later books, but the _Grandissimes_ still remains his

masterpiece. All in all, he is, thus far, the most important literary

figure of the New South, and the justness and delicacy of his

representations of life speak volumes for the sobering and refining

agency of the civil war in the States whose "cause" was "lost," but

whose true interests gained even more by the loss than did the

interests of the victorious North.

The four writers last mentioned, have all come to the front within the

past eight or ten years, and, in accordance with the plan of this

sketch, receive here a mere passing notice. It remains to close our

review of the literary history of the period since the war with a

somewhat more extended account of the two favorite novelists whose work

has done more than any thing else to shape the movement of recent

fiction. These are Henry James, Jr., and William Dean Howells. Their

writings, though dissimilar in some respects, are alike in this, that

they are analytic in method and realistic in spirit. Cooper was a

romancer pure and simple; he wrote the romance of adventure and of

external incident. Hawthorne went much deeper, and with a finer

spiritual insight dealt with the real passions of the heart; and with

men's inner experiences. This he did with truth and power; but,

although himself a keen observer of whatever passed before his eyes, he

was not careful to secure a photographic fidelity to the surface facts

of speech, dress, manners, etc. Thus the talk of his characters is

book-talk, and not the actual language of the parlor or the street,

with its slang, its colloquial ease and the intonations and shadings of

phrase and pronunciation which mark different sections of the country

and different grades of society. His attempts at dialect, for example,

were of the slenderest kind. His art is ideal, and his romances

certainly do not rank as novels of real life. But with the growth of a

richer and more complicated society in America fiction has grown more

social and more minute in its observation. It would not be fair to

classify the novels of James and Howells as the fiction of manners

merely; they are also the fiction of character, but they aim to

describe people not only as they are, in their inmost natures, but also

as they look and talk and dress. They try to express character through

manners, which is the way in which it is most often expressed in the

daily existence of a conventional society. It is a principle of

realism not to select exceptional persons or occurrences, but to take

average men and women and their average experiences. The realists

protest that the moving incident is not their trade, and that the

stories have all been told. They want no plot and no hero. They will

tell no rounded tale with a _denouement_, in which all the parts are

distributed, as in the fifth act of an old-fashioned comedy; but they

will take a transcript from life and end when they get through, without

informing the reader what becomes of the characters. And they will try

to interest this reader in "poor real life" with its "foolish face."

Their acknowledged masters are Balzac, George Eliot, Turgénieff, and

Anthony Trollope, and they regard novels as studies in sociology,

honest reports of the writers' impressions, which may not be without a

certain scientific value even.

Mr. James's peculiar province is the international novel, a field which

he created for himself, but which he has occupied in company with

Howells, Mrs. Burnett, and many others. The novelist received most of

his schooling in Europe, and has lived much abroad, with the result

that he has become half denationalized and has engrafted a cosmopolitan

indifference upon his Yankee inheritance. This, indeed, has

constituted his opportunity. A close observer and a conscientious

student of the literary art, he has added to his intellectual equipment

the advantage of a curious doubleness in his point of view. He looks

at America with the eyes of a foreigner and at Europe with the eyes of

an American. He has so far thrown himself out of relation with

American life that he describes a Boston horse-car or a New York hotel

table with a sort of amused wonder. His starting-point was in

criticism, and he has always maintained the critical attitude. He took

up story-writing in order to help himself, by practical experiment, in

his chosen art of literary criticism, and his volume on _French Poets

and Novelists_, 1878, is by no means the least valuable of his books.

His short stories in the magazines were collected into a volume in

1875, with the title, _A Passionate Pilgrim, and Other Stories_. One

or two of these, as the _Last of the Valerii_ and the _Madonna of the

Future_, suggest Hawthorne, a very unsympathetic study of whom James

afterward contributed to the "English Men of Letters" series. But in

the name-story of the collection he was already in the line of his

future development. This is the story of a middle-aged invalid

American who comes to England in search of health, and finds, too late,

in the mellow atmosphere of the mother-country, the repose and the

congenial surroundings which he has all his life been longing for in

his raw America. The pathos of his self-analysis and his confession of

failure is subtly imagined. The impressions which he and his far-away

English kinsfolk make on one another, their mutual attraction and

repulsion, are described with that delicate perception of national

differences which makes the humor and sometimes the tragedy of James's

later books, like _The American_, _Daisy Miller_, _The Europeans_, and

_An International Episode_. His first novel was _Roderick Hudson_,

1876, not the most characteristic of his fictions, but perhaps the most

powerful in its grasp of elementary passion. The analytic method and

the critical attitude have their dangers in imaginative literature. In

proportion as this writer's faculty of minute observation and his

realistic objectivity have increased upon him, the uncomfortable

coldness which is felt in his youthful work has become actually

disagreeable, and his art--growing constantly finer and surer in

matters of detail--has seemed to dwell more and more in the region of

mere manners and less in the higher realm of character and passion. In

most of his writings the heart, somehow, is left out. We have seen

that Irving, from his knowledge of England and America, and his long

residence in both countries, became the mediator between the two great

branches of the Anglo-Saxon race. This he did by the power of his

sympathy with each. Henry James has likewise interpreted the two

nations to one another in a subtler but less genial fashion than

Irving, and not through sympathy, but through contrast, by bringing

into relief the opposing ideals of life and society which have

developed under different institutions. In his novel, _The American_,

1877, he has shown the actual misery which may result from the clashing

of opposed social systems. In such clever sketches as _Daisy Miller_,

1879, the _Pension Beaurepas_, and _A Bundle of Letters_, he has

exhibited types of the American girl, the American business man, the

aesthetic feebling from Boston, and the Europeanized or would-be

denationalized American campaigners in the Old World, and has set forth

the ludicrous incongruities, perplexities, and misunderstandings which

result from contradictory standards of conventional morality and

behavior. In _The Europeans_, 1879, and _An International Episode_,

1878, he has reversed the process, bringing Old World standards to the

test of American ideas by transferring his _dramatis personae_ to

republican soil. The last-named of these illustrates how slender a

plot realism requires for its purposes. It is nothing more than the

history of an English girl of good family who marries an American

gentleman and undertakes to live in America, but finds herself so

uncomfortable in strange social conditions that she returns to England

for life, while, contrariwise, the heroine's sister is so taken with

the freedom of these very conditions that she elopes with another

American and "goes West." James is a keen observer of the physiognomy

of cities as well as of men, and his _Portraits of Places_, 1884, is

among the most delightful contributions to the literature of foreign

travel.

Mr. Howells's writings are not without "international" touches. In _A

Foregone Conclusion_ and the _Lady of the Aroostook_, and others of his

novels, the contrasted points of view in American and European life are

introduced, and especially those variations in feeling, custom,

dialect, etc., which make the modern Englishman and the modern American

such objects of curiosity to each other, and which have been dwelt upon

of late even unto satiety. But in general he finds his subjects at

home, and if he does not know his own countrymen and countrywomen more

intimately than Mr. James, at least he loves them better. There is a

warmer sentiment in his fictions, too; his men are better fellows and

his women are more lovable. Howells was born in Ohio. His early life

was that of a western country editor. In 1860 he published, jointly

with his friend Piatt, a book of verse--_Poems of Two Friends_. In

1861 he was sent as consul to Venice, and the literary results of his

sojourn there appeared in his sketches, _Venetian Life_, 1865, and

_Italian Journeys_, 1867. In 1871 he became editor of the _Atlantic

Monthly_, and in the same year published his _Suburban Sketches_. All

of these early volumes showed a quick eye for the picturesque, an

unusual power of description, and humor of the most delicate quality;

but as yet there was little approach to narrative. _Their Wedding

Journey_ was a revelation to the public of the interest that may lie in

an ordinary bridal trip across the State of New York, when a close and

sympathetic observation is brought to bear upon the characteristics of

American life as it appears at railway stations and hotels, on

steam-boats and in the streets of very commonplace towns. _A Chance

Acquaintance_, 1873, was Howells's first novel, though even yet the

story was set against a background of travel-pictures. A holiday trip

on the St. Lawrence and the Saguenay, with descriptions of Quebec and

the Falls of Montmorenci, etc., rather predominated over the narrative.

Thus, gradually and by a natural process, complete characters and

realistic novels, such as _A Modern Instance_, 1882, and _Indian

Summer_, evolved themselves from truthful sketches of places and

persons seen by the way.

The incompatibility existing between European and American views of

life, which makes the comedy or the tragedy of Henry James's

international fictions, is replaced in Howells's novels by the

repulsion between differing social grades in the same country. The

adjustment of these subtle distinctions forms a part of the problem of

life in all complicated societies. Thus in _A Chance Acquaintance_ the

heroine is a bright and pretty Western girl, who becomes engaged during

a pleasure tour to an irreproachable but offensively priggish young

gentleman from Boston, and the engagement is broken by her in

consequence of an unintended slight--the betrayal on the hero's part of

a shade of mortification when he and his betrothed are suddenly brought

into the presence of some fashionable ladies belonging to his own

_monde_. The little comedy, _Out of the Question_, deals with this

same adjustment of social scales; and in many of Howells's other

novels, such as _Silas Lapham_ and the _Lady of the Aroustook_, one of

the main motives may be described to be the contact of the man who eats

with his fork with the man who eats with his knife, and the shock

thereby ensuing. In _Indian Summer_ the complications arise from the

difference in age between the hero and heroine, and not from a

difference in station or social antecedents. In all of these fictions

the misunderstandings come from an incompatibility of manners rather

than of character, and, if any thing were to be objected to the

probability of the story, it is that the climax hinges on delicacies

and subtleties which, in real life, when there is opportunity for

explanations, are readily brushed aside. But in _A Modern Instance_

Howells touched the deeper springs of action. In this, his strongest

work, the catastrophe is brought about, as in George Eliot's great

novels, by the reaction of characters upon one another, and the story

is realistic in a higher sense than any mere study of manners can be.

His nearest approach to romance is in _The Undiscovered Country_, 1880,

which deals with the Spiritualists and the Shakers, and in its study of

problems that hover on the borders of the supernatural, in its

out-of-the-way personages and adventures, and in a certain ideal poetic

flavor about the whole book, has a strong resemblance to Hawthorne,

especially to Hawthorne in the _Blithedale Romance_, where he comes

closer to common ground with other romancers. It is interesting to

compare the _Undiscovered Country_ with Henry James's _Bostonians_, the

latest and one of the cleverest of his fictions, which is likewise a

study of the clairvoyants, mediums, woman's rights advocates, and all

varieties of cranks, reformers, and patrons of "causes," for whom

Boston has long been notorious. A most unlovely race of people they

become under the cold scrutiny of Mr. James's cosmopolitan eyes, which

see more clearly the charlatanism, narrow-mindedness, mistaken

fanaticism, morbid self-consciousness, disagreeable nervous intensity,

and vulgar or ridiculous outside peculiarities of the humanitarians,

than the nobility and moral enthusiasm which underlie the surface.

Howells is almost the only successful American dramatist, and this in

the field of parlor comedy. His little farces, the _Elevator_, the

_Register_, the _Parlor-Car_, etc., have a lightness and grace, with an

exquisitely absurd situation, which remind us more of the _Comedies et

Proverbes_ of Alfred de Musset, or the many agreeable dialogues and

monologues of the French domestic stage, than of any work of English or

American hands. His softly ironical yet affectionate treatment of

feminine ways is especially admirable. In his numerous types of

sweetly illogical, inconsistent, and inconsequent womanhood he has

perpetuated with a nicer art than Dickens what Thackeray calls "that

great discovery," Mrs. Nickleby.

1. Theodore Winthrop. _Life in the Open Air_. _Cecil Dreeme_.

2. Thomas Wentworth Higginson. _Life in a Black Regiment_.

3. _Poetry of the Civil War_. Edited by Richard Grant White. New

York. 1866.

4. Charles Farrar Browne. _Artemus Ward--His Book_. _Lecture on the

Mormons_. _Artemus Ward in London_.

5. Samuel Langhorne Clemens. _The Jumping Frog_. _Roughing It_. _The

Mississippi Pilot_.

6. Charles Godfrey Leland. _Hans Breitmann's Ballads_.

7. Edward Everett Hale. _If, Yes, and Perhaps_. _His Level Best, and

Other Stories_.

8. Francis Bret Harte. _Outcasts of Poker Flat, and Other Stories_.

_Condensed Novels_. _Poems in Dialect_.

9. Sidney Lanier. _Nirvana_. _Resurrection_. _The Harlequin of

Dreams_. _Song of the Chattahoochie_. _The Mocking Bird_. _The

Stirrup-Cup_. _Tampa Robins_. _The Bee_. _The Revenge of Hamish_.

_The Ship of Earth_. _The Marshes of Glynn_. _Sunrise_.

10. Henry James, Jr. _A Passionate Pilgrim_. _Roderick Hudson_.

_Daisy Miller_. _Pension Beaurepas_. _A Bundle of Letters_. _An

International Episode_. _The Bostonians_. _Portraits of Places_.

11. William Dean Howells. _Their Wedding Journey_. _Suburban

Sketches_. _A Chance Acquaintance_. _A Foregone Conclusion_. _The

Undiscovered Country_. _A Modern Instance_.

12. George W. Cable. _Old Creole Days_. _Madame Delphine_. _The

Grandissimes_.

13. Joel Chandler Harris. _Uncle Remus_. _Mingo, and Other Sketches_.

14. Charles Egbert Craddook (Miss Murfree). _In the Tennessee

Mountains_.

APPENDIX.

COTTON MATHER.

CAPTAIN PHIPS AND THE SPANISH WRECK.

[From _Magnalia Christi Americana_.]

Captain Phips, arriving with a ship and a tender at Port de la Plata,

made a stout canoe of a stately cotton-tree, so large as to carry eight

or ten oars, for the making of which periaga (as they call it) he did,

with the same industry that he did every thing else, employ his own

hand and adze, and endure no little hardship, lying abroad in the woods

many nights together. This periaga with the tender, being anchored at

a place convenient, the periaga kept busking to and again,[1] but could

only discover a reef of rising shoals thereabouts, called "The

Boilers," which, rising to be within two or three feet of the surface

of the sea, were yet so steep that a ship striking on them would

immediately sink down, who could say how many fathom, into the ocean.

Here they could get no other pay for their long peeping among the

Boilers, but only such as caused them to think upon returning to their

captain with the bad news of their total disappointment. Nevertheless,

as they were upon their return, one of the men, looking over the side

of the periaga into the calm water, he spied a sea-feather growing, as

he judged, out of a rock; whereupon he bade one of their Indians to

dive and fetch this feather, that they might, however, carry home

something with them, and make at least as fair a triumph as

Caligula's.[2] The diver, bringing up the feather, brought therewithal

a surprising story, that he perceived a number of great guns in the

watery world where he had found his feather; the report[3] of which

great guns exceedingly astonished the whole company, and at once turned

their despondencies for their ill success into assurances that they had

now lit upon the true spot of ground which they had been looking for;

and they were further confirmed in these assurances when, upon further

diving, the Indian fetched up a sow, as they styled it, or a lump of

silver worth perhaps two or three hundred pounds. Upon this they

prudently buoyed the place that they might readily find it again; and

they went back unto their captain, whom for some while they distressed

with nothing but such bad news as they formerly thought they must have

carried him. Nevertheless, they so slipped in the sow of silver on one

side under the table, where they wore now sitting with the captain, and

hearing him express his resolutions to wait still patiently upon the

providence of God under these disappointments, that when he should look

on one side he might see that odd thing before him. At last he saw it.

Seeing it he cried out with some agony, "Why! what is this? Whence

comes this?" And then, with changed countenances, they told him how

and where they got it. "Then," said he, "thanks be to God! We are

made," and so away they went all hands to work; wherein they had this

one further piece of remarkable prosperity, that whereas if they had

first fallen upon that part of the Spanish wreck where the pieces of

eight[4] had been stowed in bags among the ballast they had seen a more

laborious and less enriching time of it; now, most happily, they first

fell upon that room in the wreck where the bullion had been stored up;

and they so prospered in this new fishery that in a little while they

had, without the loss of any man's life, brought up thirty-two tuns of

silver; for it was now come to measuring of silver by tuns. Besides

which, one Adderly, of Providence, who had formerly been very helpful

to Captain Phips in the search of this wreck, did, upon former

agreement, meet him now with a little vessel here; and he with his few

hands, took up about six tuns of silver; whereof, nevertheless, he made

so little use that in a year or two he died at Bermudas, and, as I have

heard, he ran distracted some while before he died.

Thus did there once again come into the light of the sun a treasure

which had been half an hundred years groaning under the waters; and in

this time there was grown upon the plate a crust-like limestone, to the

thickness of several inches; which crust being broken open by iron

contrived for that purpose, they knocked out whole bushels of rusty

pieces of eight; which were grown thereinto. Besides that incredible

treasure of plate in various forms thus fetched up from seven or eight

fathom under water, there were vast riches of gold, and pearls, and

jewels, which they also lit upon; and, indeed, for a more comprehensive

invoice, I must but summarily say, "All that a Spanish frigate uses to

be enriched withal."

[1] Passing to and fro.

[2] The Roman emperor who invaded Britain unsuccessfully and made his

legionaries gather sea-shells to bring back with them as evidences of

victory.

[3] One of Mather's puns.

[4] Spanish piasters, formerly divided into eight reals. The

piaster=an American dollar.

JONATHAN EDWARDS.

THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS.

[From the author's Personal Narrative.]

Holiness, as I then wrote down some of my contemplations on it,

appeared to me to be of a sweet, pleasant, charming, serene, calm

nature; which brought an inexpressible purity, brightness,

peacefulness, and ravishment to the soul. In other words, that it made

the soul like a field or garden of God, with all manner of pleasant

flowers; enjoying a sweet calm and the gently vivifying beams of the

sun. The soul of a true Christian, as I then wrote my meditations,

appeared like such a little white flower as we see in the spring of the

year; low and humble on the ground, opening its bosom to receive the

pleasant beams of the sun's glory; rejoicing, as it were, in a calm

rapture; diffusing around a sweet fragrancy; standing peacefully and

lovingly in the midst of other flowers round about; all in like manner

opening their bosoms to drink in the light of the sun. There was no

part of creature-holiness that I had so great a sense of its loveliness

as humility, brokenness of heart, and poverty of spirit; and there was

nothing that I so earnestly longed for. My heart panted after this--to

lie low before God, as in the dust; that I might be nothing, and that

God might be all; that I might become as a little child.

THE WRATH OF GOD.

[From _Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God_.]

Unconverted men walk over the pit of hell on a rotten covering, and

there are innumerable places in this covering so weak that they will

not bear their weight, and these places are not seen. The arrows of

death fly unseen at noonday; the sharpest sight cannot discern them.

God has so many different, unsearchable ways of taking wicked men out

of the world and sending them to hell that there is nothing to make it

appear that God had need to be at the expense of a miracle, or go out

of the ordinary course of his providence, to destroy any wicked man at

any moment. . . . Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead

and to tend downward with great weight and pressure toward hell; and,

if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly

descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy

constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and

all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and

keep you out of hell than a spider's web would have to stop a falling

rock. . . . There are the black clouds of God's wrath now hanging

directly over your heads, full of the dreadful storm and big with

thunder; and were it not for the restraining hand of God it would

immediately burst forth upon you. The sovereign pleasure of God, for

the present, stays his rough wind; otherwise it would come with fury,

and your destruction would come like a whirlwind, and you would be like

the chaff of the summer threshing-floor. The wrath of God is like

great waters that are dammed for the present; they increase more and

more, and rise higher and higher, till an outlet is given; and the

longer the stream is stopped, the more rapid and mighty is its course

when once it is let loose. . . .

Thus it will be with you that are in an unconverted state, if you

continue in it; the infinite might and majesty and terribleness of the

omnipotent God shall be magnified upon you in the ineffable strength of

your torments; you shall be tormented in the presence of the holy

angels and in the presence of the Lamb; and, when you shall be in this

state of suffering, the glorious inhabitants of heaven shall go forth

and look on the awful spectacle, that they may see what the wrath and

fierceness of the Almighty is; and when they have seen it they will

fall down and adore that great power and majesty. "And it shall come

to pass, that from one moon to another, and from one Sabbath to

another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the Lord.

And they shall go forth and look upon the carcasses of the men that

have transgressed against me; for their worm shall not die, neither

shall their fire be quenched, and they shall be an abhorring unto all

flesh."

It is everlasting wrath. It would be dreadful to suffer this

fierceness and wrath of Almighty God one moment: but you must suffer it

to all eternity; there will be no end to this exquisite, horrible

misery; when you look forward you shall see along forever, a boundless

duration before you, which will swallow up your thoughts and amaze your

soul; and you will absolutely despair of ever having any deliverance,

any end, any mitigation, any rest at all; you will know certainly that

you must wear out long ages, millions of millions of ages, in wrestling

and conflicting with this Almighty merciless vengeance; and then, when

you have so done, when so many ages have actually been spent by you in

this manner, you will know that all is but a point to what remains. So

that your punishment will indeed be infinite. . . . If we knew that

there was one person, and but one, in the whole congregation, that was

to be the subject of this misery, what an awful thing it would be to

think of! If we knew who it was, what an awful sight would it be to

see such a person! How might all the rest of the congregation lift up

a lamentable and bitter cry over him! But alas! Instead of one, how

many is it likely will remember this discourse in hell! And it would

be a wonder if some that are now present should not be in hell in a

very short time, before this year is out. And it would be no wonder if

some persons, that now sit here in some seats of this meeting-house in

health, and quiet, and secure, should be there before to-morrow morning.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

FRANKLIN'S ARRIVAL AT PHILADELPHIA.

[From _The Life of Benjamin Franklin, Written by Himself_.]

I was in my working dress, my best clothes being to come round by sea.

I was dirty from my journey; my pockets were stuffed out with shirts

and stockings, and I knew no soul nor where to look for lodging. I was

fatigued with traveling, rowing, and want of rest; I was very hungry;

and my whole stock of cash consisted of a Dutch dollar and about a

shilling in copper. The latter I gave the people of the boat for my

passage, who at first refused it, on account of my rowing; but I

insisted on their taking it, a man being sometimes more generous when

he has but a little money than when he has plenty, perhaps through fear

of being thought to have but little.

Then I walked up the street, gazing about, till near the market-house I

met a boy with bread. I had made many a meal on bread, and, inquiring

where he got it, I went immediately to the baker's he directed me to,

in Second Street, and asked for biscuit, intending such as we had in

Boston; but they, it seems, were not made in Philadelphia. Then I

asked for a three-penny loaf, and was told they had none such. So, not

considering or knowing the difference of money, and the greater

cheapness, nor the names of his bread, I had him give me three-penny

worth of any sort. He gave me, accordingly, three great puffy rolls.

I was surprised at the quantity, but took it, and, having no room in my

pockets, walked off with a roll under each arm, and eating the other.

Thus I went up Market Street as far as Fourth Street, passing by the

door of Mr. Read, my future wife's father, when she, standing at the

door, saw me, and thought I made, as I certainly did, a most awkward,

ridiculous appearance. Then I turned and went down Chestnut Street and

part of Walnut Street, eating my roll all the way and, coming round,

found myself again at Market Street wharf, near the boat I came in, to

which I went for a draught of the river water; and, being filled with

one of my rolls, gave the other two to a woman and her child that came

down the river in the boat with us, and were waiting to go farther.

Thus refreshed, I walked again up the street, which by this time had

many clean-dressed people in it, who were all walking the same way. I

joined them, and thereby was led into the great meeting-house of the

Quakers near the market. I sat down among them, and, after looking

'round a while and hearing nothing said, being very drowsy through

labor and want of rest the preceding night, I fell fast asleep, and

continued so till the meeting broke up, when one was kind enough to

rouse me. This was, therefore, the first house I was in, or slept in,

in Philadelphia.

Walking down again toward the river, and looking in the faces of the

people, I met a young Quaker man whose countenance I liked, and,

accosting him, requested he would tell me where a stranger could get

lodging. We were near the sign of the Three Mariners. "Here," says

he, "is one place that entertains strangers, but it is not a reputable

house; if thee wilt walk with me, I'll show thee a better." He brought

me to the Crooked Billet in Water Street. Here I got a dinner.

PAYING TOO DEAR FOR THE WHISTLE.

[From Correspondence with Madame Britton.]

I am charmed with your description of Paradise, and with your plan of

living there; and I approve much of your conclusion, that, in the

meantime, we should draw all the good we can from this world. In my

opinion we might all draw more good from it than we do, and suffer less

evil, if we would take care not to give too much for _whistles_, for to

me it seems that most of the unhappy people we meet with are become so

by neglect of that caution.

You ask what I mean? You love stories, and will excuse my telling one

of myself.

When I was a child of seven years old my friends, on a holiday, filled

my pocket with coppers. I went directly to a shop where they sold toys

for children, and, being charmed with the sound of a _whistle_, that I

met by the way in the hands of another boy, I voluntarily offered and

gave all my money for one. I then came home, and went whistling all

over the house, much pleased with my _whistle_, but disturbing all the

family. My brothers and sisters and cousins, understanding the bargain

I had made, told me I had given four times as much for it as it was

worth; put me in mind what good things I might have bought with the

rest of the money, and laughed at me so much for my folly that I cried

with vexation; and the reflection gave me more chagrin than the

_whistle_ gave me pleasure.

This, however, was afterward of use to me, the impression continuing on

my mind, so that often when I was tempted to buy some unnecessary

thing, I said to myself, _Don't give too much for the whistle_; and I

saved my money.

As I grew up, came into the world, and observed the actions of men, I

thought I met with many, very many, who _gave too much for the whistle_.

When I saw one too ambitious of court favor, sacrificing his time in

attendance on levees, his repose, his liberty, his virtue, and perhaps

his friends to attain it, I have said to myself, _This man gives too

much for his whistle_.

When I saw another fond of popularity, constantly employing himself in

political bustles, neglecting his own affairs, and ruining them by that

neglect, _He pays, indeed_, said I, _too much for his whistle_. . . .

If I see one fond of appearance or fine clothes, fine houses, fine

furniture, fine equipages, all above his fortune, for which he

contracts debts and ends his career in a prison, _Alas_! say I, _he has

paid dear, very dear for his whistle_. . . .

In short, I conceive that a great part of the miseries of mankind are

brought upon them by the false estimates they have made of the value of

things and by their _giving too much for their whistles_.

Yet I ought to have charity for these unhappy people, when I consider

that with all this wisdom of which I am boasting, there are certain

things in the world so tempting, for example, the apples of King John,

which happily are not to be bought; for if they were put to sale by

auction I might very easily be led to ruin myself in the purchase, and

find that I had once more given too much for the _whistle_.

PHILIP FRENEAU.

THE INDIAN BURYING-GROUND.

In spite of all the learned have said,

I still my old opinion keep:

The posture that we give the dead

Points out the soul's eternal sleep.

Not so the ancients of these lands:

The Indian, when from life released,

Again is seated with his friends,

And shares again the joyous feast.

His imaged birds and painted bowl

And venison, for a journey dressed,

Bespeak the nature of the soul,

Activity that knows no rest.

His bow for action ready bent,

And arrows with a head of stone,

Can only mean that life is spent,

And not the finer essence gone.

Thou, stranger that shalt come this way.

No fraud upon the dead commit--

Observe the swelling turf and say,

They do not _lie_, but here they _sit_.

Here still a lofty rock remains,

On which the curious eye may trace

(Now wasted half by wearing rains)

The fancies of a ruder race.

Here still an aged elm aspires,

Beneath whose far-projecting shade

(And which the shepherd still admires)

The children of the forest played.

There oft a restless Indian queen

(Pale Sheba with her braided hair),

And many a barbarous form is seen

To chide the man that lingers there.

By midnight moons, o'er moistening dews,

In vestments for the chase arrayed,

The hunter still the deer pursues,

The hunter and the deer--a shade!

And long shall timorous Fancy see

The painted chief and pointed spear,

And Reason's self shall bow the knee

To shadows and delusions here.

DANIEL WEBSTER.

THE UNION.

[From the _Reply to Hayne_, January 25, 1830.]

I profess, sir, in my career hitherto, to have kept steadily in view

the prosperity and honor of the whole country, and the preservation of

our Federal Union. It is to that Union we owe our safety at home and

our consideration and dignity abroad. It is to that Union that we are

chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our country. That

Union we readied only by the discipline of our virtues in the severe

school of adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of

disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its

benign influences these great interests immediately awoke as from the

dead and sprang forth with newness of life. Every year of its duration

has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its blessings; and

although our territory has stretched out wider and wider and our

population spread farther and farther, they have not outrun its

protection or its benefits. It has been to us all a copious fountain

of national, social, and personal happiness.

I have not allowed myself, sir, to look beyond the Union to see what

might lie hidden in the dark recess behind. I have not coolly weighed

the chances of preserving liberty when the bonds that unite us together

shall be broken asunder. I have not accustomed myself to hang over the

precipice of disunion to see whether with my short sight I can fathom

the depth of the abyss below, nor could I regard him as a safe

counselor in the affairs of this government whose thoughts should be

mainly bent on considering not how the Union may be best preserved, but

how tolerable might be the condition of the people when it should be

broken up and destroyed. While the Union lasts we have high, exciting,

gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children.

Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant that in my day

at least that curtain may not rise! God grant that on my vision never

may be opened what lies beyond! When my eyes shall be turned to behold

for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the

broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States

dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds,

or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and

lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the Republic, now

known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its

arms and trophies streaming in their original luster, not a stripe

erased or polluted, not a single star obscured, bearing for its motto

no such miserable interrogatory as "What is all this worth?" nor those

other words of delusion and folly, "Liberty first; and Union

afterward;" but every-where, spread all over in characters of living

light, blazing on all its ample folds as they float over the sea and

over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other

sentiment dear to every true American heart--Liberty and Union, now and

forever, one and inseparable!

SOUTH CAROLINA AND MASSACHUSETTS.

[From the same.]

When I shall be found, sir, in my place here in the Senate, or

elsewhere, to sneer at public merit because it happens to spring up

beyond the little limits of my own State or neighborhood; when I

refuse, for any such cause, or for any cause, the homage due to

American talent, to elevated patriotism, to sincere devotion to liberty

and the country; or, if I see an uncommon endowment of Heaven, if I see

extraordinary capacity and virtue, in any son of the South; and if,

moved by local prejudices or gangrened by State jealousy, I get up here

to abate the tithe of a hair from his just character and just fame, may

my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!

Sir, let me recur to pleasing recollections; let me indulge in

refreshing remembrances of the past; let me remind you that, in early

times, no States cherished greater harmony, both of principle and

feeling, than Massachusetts and South Carolina. Would to God that

harmony might again return! Shoulder to shoulder they went through the

Revolution, hand in hand they stood round the administration of

Washington, and felt his own great arm lean on them for support.

Unkind feeling, if it exist, alienation and distrust are the growth,

unnatural to such soils, of false principle; since sown. They are

weeds, the seeds of which that same great arm never scattered.

Mr. President, I shall enter upon no encomium of Massachusetts; she

needs none. There she is. Behold her and judge for yourselves. There

is her history; the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is

secure. There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill;

and there they will remain forever. The bones of her sons, falling in

the great struggle for independence, now lie mingled with the soil of

every State from New England to Georgia, and there they will lie

forever. And, sir, where American liberty raised its first voice, and

where its youth was nurtured and sustained, there it still lives, in

the strength of its manhood, and full of its original spirit. If

discord and disunion shall wound it, if party strife and blind ambition

shall hawk at and tear it, if folly and madness, if uneasiness under

salutary and necessary restraint shall succeed in separating it from

that Union by which alone its existence is made sure, it will stand, in

the end, by the side of that cradle in which its infancy was rocked; it

will stretch forth its arm with whatever of vigor it may still retain,

over the friends who gather round it; and it will fall at last, if fall

it must, amidst the profoundest monuments of its own glory, and on the

very spot of its origin.

WASHINGTON IRVING.

THE STORM SHIP.

[From _Bracebridge Hall_.]

In the golden age of the province of the New Netherlands, when under

the sway of Wouter Van Twiller, otherwise called the Doubter, the

people of the Manhattoes were alarmed one sultry afternoon, just about

the time of the summer solstice, by a tremendous storm of thunder and

lightning. The rain fell in such torrents as absolutely to spatter up

and smoke along the ground. It seemed as if the thunder rattled and

rolled over the very roofs of the houses; the lightning was seen to

play about the Church of St. Nicholas, and to strive three times in

vain to strike its weather-cock. Garrett Van Horne's new chimney was

split almost from top to bottom; and Boffne Mildeberger was struck

speechless from his bald-faced mare just as he was riding into

town. . . . At length the storm abated; the thunder sank into a growl,

and the setting sun, breaking from under the fringed borders of the

clouds, made the broad bosom of the bay to gleam like a sea of molten

gold.

The word was given from the fort that a ship was standing up the

bay. . . . She was a stout, round, Dutch-built vessel, with high bow

and poop, and bearing Dutch colors. The evening sun gilded her

bellying canvas as she came riding over the long waving billows. The

sentinel who had given notice of her approach declared that he first

got sight of her when she was in the center of the bay; and that she

broke suddenly on his sight, just as if she had come out of the bosom

of the black thunder-clouds. . . . The ship was now repeatedly hailed,

but made no reply, and, passing by the fort, stood on up the Hudson. A

gun was brought to bear on her, and, with some difficulty, loaded and

fired by Hans Van Pelt, the garrison not being expert in artillery.

The shot seemed absolutely to pass through the ship, and to skip along

the water on the other side; but no notice was taken of it! What was

strange, she had all her sails set, and sailed right against wind and

tide, which were both down the river. . . . Thus she kept on, away up

the river, lessening and lessening in the evening sunshine, until she

faded from sight like a little white cloud melting away in the summer

sky. . . .

Messengers were dispatched to various places on the river, but they

returned without any tidings--the ship had made no port. Day after

day, week after week elapsed, but she never returned down the Hudson.

As, however, the council seemed solicitous for intelligence they had it

in abundance. The captains of the sloops seldom arrived without

bringing some report of having seen the strange ship at different parts

of the river--sometimes near the Palisades, sometimes off Croton Point,

and sometimes in the Highlands; but she never was reported as having

been seen above the Highlands. The crews of the sloops, it is true,

generally differed among themselves in their accounts of these

apparitions; but that may have arisen from the uncertain situations in

which they saw her. Sometimes it was by the flashes of the

thunder-storm lighting up a pitchy night, and giving glimpses of her

careering across Tappan Zee or the wide waste of Haverstraw Bay. At

one moment she would appear close upon them, as if likely to run them

down, and would throw them into great bustle and alarm, but the next

flash would show her far off, always sailing against the wind.

Sometimes, in quiet moonlight nights, she would be seen under some high

bluff of the Highlands; all in deep shadow, excepting her top-sails

glittering in the moonbeams; by the time, however, that the voyagers

reached the place no ship was to be seen; and when they had passed on

for some distance and looked back, behold! there she was again with her

top-sails in the moonshine! Her appearance was always just after or

just in the midst of unruly weather; and she was known among the

skippers and voyagers of the Hudson by the name of "The Storm Ship."

These reports perplexed the governor and his council more than ever;

and it would be useless to repeat the conjectures and opinions uttered

on the subject. Some quoted cases in point of ships seen off the coast

of New England navigated by witches and goblins. Old Hans Van Pelt,

who had been more than once to the Dutch Colony at the Cape of Good

Hope, insisted that this must be the _Flying Dutchman_ which had so

long haunted Table Bay, but being unable to make port had now sought

another harbor. Others suggested that if it really was a supernatural

apparition, as there was every natural reason to believe, it might be

Hendrik Hudson and his crew of the _Half-Moon_, who, it was well known,

had once run aground in the upper part of the river in seeking a

north-west passage to China. This opinion had very little weight with

the governor, but it passed current out of doors; for indeed it had

always been reported that Hendrik Hudson and his crew haunted the

Kaatskill Mountains; and it appeared very reasonable to suppose that

his ship might infest the river where the enterprise was baffled, or

that it might bear the shadowy crew to their periodical revels in the

mountain. . . .

People who live along the river insist that they sometimes see her in

summer moonlight, and that in a deep still midnight they have heard the

chant of her crew, as if heaving the lead; but sights and sounds are so

deceptive along the mountainous shores, and about the wide bays and

long reaches of this great river, that I confess I have very strong

doubts upon the subject. It is certain, nevertheless, that strange

things have been seen in these Highlands in storms, which are

considered as connected with the old story of the ship. The captains

of the river craft talk of a little bulbous-bottomed Dutch goblin, in

trunk hose and sugar-loafed hat, with a speaking-trumpet in his hand,

which, they say, keeps about the Dunderberg. They declare that they

have heard him, in stormy weather, in the midst of the turmoil, giving

orders in Low Dutch for the piping up of a fresh gust of wind or the

rattling off of another thunder-clap; that sometimes he has been seen

surrounded by a crew of little imps in broad breeches and short

doublets, tumbling head-over-heels in the rack and mist, and playing a

thousand gambols in the air, or buzzing like a swarm of flies about

Anthony's Nose; and that, at such times, the hurry-scurry of the storm

was always greatest. One time a sloop, in passing by the Dunderberg,

was overtaken by a thunder-gust that came scouring round the mountain,

and seemed to burst just over the vessel. Though light and well

ballasted she labored dreadfully, and the water came over the gunwale.

All the crew were amazed when it was discovered that there was a little

white sugar-loaf hat on the masthead, known at once to be the hat of

the Herr of the Dunderberg. Nobody, however, dared to climb to the

mast-head and get rid of this terrible hat. The sloop continued

laboring and rocking, as if she would have rolled her mast overboard,

and seemed in continual danger either of upsetting or of running on

shore. In this way she drove quite through the Highlands, until she

had passed Pollopol's Island, where, it is said, the jurisdiction of

the Dunderberg potentate ceases. No sooner had she passed this bourn

than the little hat spun up into the air like a top, whirled up all the

clouds into a vortex, and hurried them back to the summit of the

Dunderberg, while the sloop righted herself and sailed on as quietly as

if in a mill-pond. Nothing saved her from utter wreck but the

fortunate circumstance of having a horse-shoe nailed against the

mast--a wise precaution against evil spirits, since adopted by all the

Dutch captains that navigate this haunted river.

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER.

THE RENDEZVOUS.

[From _The Deerslayer_.]

In the position in which the ark had now got, the castle was concealed

from view by the projection of a point, as, indeed, was the northern

extremity of the lake itself. A respectable mountain, forest-clad, and

rounded like all the rest, limited the view in that direction,

stretching immediately across the whole of the fair scene,[1] with the

exception of a deep bay that passed its western end, lengthening the

basin for more than a mile. The manner in which the water flowed out

of the lake, beneath the leafy arches of the trees that lined the sides

of the stream, has already been mentioned, and it has also been said

that the rock, which was a favorite place of rendezvous throughout all

that region, and where Deerslayer now expected to meet his friend,

stood near this outlet and no great distance from the shore. It was a

large isolated stone that rested on the bottom of the lake, apparently

left there when the waters tore away the earth from around it, in

forcing for themselves a passage down the river, and which had obtained

its shape from the action of the elements during the slow progress of

centuries. The height of this rock could scarcely equal six feet, and,

as has been said, its shape was not unlike that which is usually given

to bee-hives or to a hay-cock. The latter, indeed, gives the best

idea, not only of its form, but of its dimensions. It stood, and still

stands, for we are writing of real scenes, within fifty feet of the

bank, and in water that was only two feet in depth, though there were

seasons in which its rounded apex, if such a term can properly be used,

was covered by the lake. Many of the trees stretched so far forward as

almost to blend the rock with the shore, when seen from a little

distance; and one tall pine in particular overhung it in a way to form

a noble and appropriate canopy to a seat that had held many a forest

chieftain, during the long succession of ages in which America and all

it contained existed apart in mysterious solitude, a world by itself,

equally without a familiar history and without an origin that the

annals of man can catch.

When distant some two or three hundred feet from the shore Deerslayer

took in his sail, and he dropped his grapnel as soon as he found the

ark had drifted in a line that was directly to windward of the rock.

The motion of the scow was then checked, when it was brought head to

wind by the action of the breeze. As soon as this was done Deerslayer

"paid out line," and suffered the vessel to "set down" upon the rock as

fast as the light air would force it to leeward. Floating entirely on

the surface, this was soon affected, and the young man checked the

drift when he was told that the stern of the scow was within fifteen or

eighteen feet of the desired spot.

In executing this maneuver, Deerslayer had proceeded promptly; for

while he did not in the least doubt that he was both watched and

followed by the foe, he believed he had distracted their movements by

the apparent uncertainly of his own, and he knew they could have no

means of ascertaining that the rock was his aim, unless, indeed, one of

the prisoners had betrayed him--a chance so improbable in itself as to

give him no concern. Notwithstanding the celerity and decision of his

movements, he did not, however, venture so near the shore without

taking due precautions to effect a retreat, in the event of its

becoming necessary. He held the line in his hand, and Judith was

stationed at a loop on the side of the cabin next the shore, where she

could watch the beach and the rocks and give timely notice of the

approach of either friend or foe. Hetty was also placed on watch, but

it was to keep the trees overhead in view, lest some enemy might ascend

one, and, by completely commanding the interior of the scow, render the

defenses of the hut or cabin useless.

The sun had disappeared from the lake and valley when Deerslayer

checked the ark in the manner mentioned. Still it wanted a few minutes

to the true sunset, and he knew Indian punctuality too well to

anticipate any unmanly haste in his friend. The great question was,

whether, surrounded by enemies as he was known to be, he had escaped

their toils. The occurrences of the last twenty-four hours must be a

secret to him, and, like himself, Chingachgook was yet young on a

war-path. It was true he came prepared to encounter the party that

withheld his promised bride, but he had no means of ascertaining the

extent of the danger he ran or the precise positions occupied by either

friends or foes. In a word, the trained sagacity and untiring caution

of an Indian were all he had to rely on amid the critical risks he

unavoidably ran.

"Is the rock empty, Judith?" inquired Deerslayer, as soon as he had

checked the drift of the ark, deeming it imprudent to venture

unnecessarily near. "Is any thing to be seen of the Delaware chief?"

"Nothing, Deerslayer. Neither rock, shore, tree, nor lake seems to

have ever held a human form."

"Keep close, Judith--keep close, Hetty--a rifle has a prying eye, a

nimble foot, and a desperate fatal tongue. Keep close, then, but keep

up act_y_ve looks, and be on the alart. 'Twould grieve me to the heart

did any harm befall either of you."

"And _you_, Deerslayer!" exclaimed Judith, turning her handsome face

from the loop, to bestow a gracious and grateful look on the young man;

"do _you_ 'keep close' and have a proper care that the savages do not

catch a glimpse of you! A bullet might be as fatal to you as to one of

us, and the blow that you felt would be felt by all."

"No fear of me, Judith--no fear of me, my good gal. Do not look

this-a-way, although you look so pleasant and comely, but keep your

eyes on the rock and the shore and the--"

Deerslayer was interrupted by a slight exclamation from the girl, who,

in obedience to his hurried gestures, as much as in obedience to his

words, had immediately bent her looks again in the opposite direction.

"What is't?--what is't, Judith?" he hastily demanded. "Is any thing to

be seen?"

"There is a man on the rock!--an Indian warrior in his paint, and

armed!"

"Where does he wear his hawk's feather?" eagerly added Deerslayer,

relaxing his hold of the line, in readiness to drift nearer to the

place of rendezvous. "Is it fast to the warlock, or does he carry it

above the left ear?"

"'Tis as you say, above the left ear; he smiles, too, and mutters the

word 'Mohican.'"

"God be praised, 'tis the Sarpent at last!" exclaimed the young man,

suffering the line to slip through his hands until, hearing a light

bound in the other end of the craft, he instantly checked the rope and

began to haul it in again under the assurance that his object was

effected.

At that moment the door of the cabin was opened hastily, and a warrior

darting through the little room stood at Deerslayer's side, simply

uttering the exclamation "Hugh!" At the next instant Judith and Hetty

shrieked, and the air was filled with the yell of twenty savages, who

came leaping through the branches down the bank, some actually falling

headlong into the water in their haste.

"Pull, Deerslayer," cried Judith, hastily barring the door, in order to

prevent an inroad by the passage through which the Delaware had just

entered; "pull for life and death--the lake is full of savages wading

after us!"

The young men--for Chingachgook immediately came to his friend's

assistance--needed no second bidding, but they applied themselves to

their task in a way that showed how urgent they deemed the occasion.

The great difficulty was in suddenly overcoming the _vis inertiae_ of

so large a mass; for, once in motion, it was easy to cause the scow to

skim the water with all the necessary speed.

"Pull, Deerslayer, for heaven's sake!" cried Judith, again at the loop.

"These wretches rush into the water like hounds following their prey!

Ah! The scow moves! and now the water deepens to the armpits of the

foremost; still they rush forward and will seize the ark!"

A slight scream and then a joyous laugh followed from the girl; the

first produced by a desperate effort of their pursuers, and the last by

its failure, the scow, which had now got fairly in motion, gliding

ahead into deep water with a velocity that set the designs of their

enemies at naught. As the two men were prevented by the position of

the cabin from seeing what passed astern, they were compelled to

inquire of the girls into the state of the chase.

"What now, Judith?--what next? Do the Mingoes still follow, or are we

quit of 'em for the present?" demanded Deerslayer when he felt the rope

yielding, as if the scow was going fast ahead, and heard the scream and

the laugh of the girl almost in the same breath.

"They have vanished!--one, the last, is just burying himself in the

bushes of the bank--there! he has disappeared in the shadows of the

trees! You have got your friend and we are all safe!"

[1] Otsego Lake.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

TO A WATERFOWL.

Whither, 'midst falling dew,

While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,

Far through their rosy depths dost thou pursue

Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler's eye

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,

As, darkly seen against the crimson sky,

Thy figure floats along.

Seek'st thou the plashy brink

Of weedy lake or marge of river wide,

Or where the rocking billows rise and sink

On the chafed ocean side?

There is a power whose care

Teaches thy way along that pathless coast--

The desert and illimitable air--

Lone wandering but not lost.

All day thy wings have fanned,

At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere

Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,

Though the dark night is near.

And soon, that toil shall end;

Soon, shalt thou find a summer home and rest,

And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend

Soon o'er thy sheltered nest.

Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven

Hath swallowed up thy form; yet on my heart

Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,

And shall not soon depart.

He who, from zone to zone,

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,

In the long way that I must tread alone,

Will lead my steps aright.

THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS.

The melancholy days are come,

The saddest of the year,

Of wailing winds and naked woods,

And meadows brown and sere.

Heaped in the hollows of the grove,

The autumn leaves lie dead;

They rustle to the eddying gust,

And to the rabbit's tread.

The robin and the wren are flown,

And from the shrubs the jay,

And from the wood-top calls the crow

Through all the gloomy day.

Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers,

That lately sprang and stood

In brighter light and softer airs,

A beauteous sisterhood?

Alas! they all are in their graves;

The gentle race of flowers

Are lying in their lowly beds

With the fair and good of ours.

The rain is falling where they lie,

But the cold November rain

Calls not, from out the gloomy earth,

The lovely ones again.

The wind-flower and the violet,

They perished long ago,

And the brier-rose and the orchis died

Amid the summer glow;

But on the hill the golden-rod,

And the aster in the wood,

And the yellow sun-flower by the brook

In autumn beauty stood,

Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven,

As falls the plague on men,

And the brightness of their smile was gone

From upland, glade, and glen.

And now when comes the calm, mild day,

As still such days will come,

To call the squirrel and the bee

From out their winter home;

When the sound of dropping nuts is heard,

Though all the trees are still,

And twinkle in the smoky light

The waters of the rill,

The south wind searches for the flowers

Whose fragrance late he bore,

And sighs to find them in the wood

And by the stream no more.

And then I think of one who in

Her youthful beauty died,

The fair meek blossom that grew up

And faded by my side;

In the cold, moist earth we laid her,

When the forest cast the leaf,

And we wept that one so lovely

Should have a life so brief.

Yet not unmeet it was that one,

Like that young friend of ours,

So gentle and so beautiful,

Should perish with the flowers.

THE UNIVERSAL TOMB.

[From _Thanatopsis_.]

Yet not to thine eternal resting-place

Shalt thou retire alone, nor could'st thou wish

Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down

With patriarchs of the infant world--with kings,

The powerful of the earth--the wise, the good,

Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,

All in one mighty sepulcher. The hills,

Rock-ribb'd and ancient as the sun,--the vales

Stretching in pensive quietness between;

The venerable woods--rivers that move

In majesty, and the complaining brooks

That make the meadows green; and, poured round all,

Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste,--

Are but the solemn decorations all

Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,

The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,

Are shining on the sad abodes of death,

Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread

The globe are but a handful to the tribes

That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings

Of morning, traverse Barca's desert sands,

Or lose thyself in the continuous woods

Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound

Save his own dashings--yet the dead are there:

And millions in those solitudes, since first

The flight of years began, have laid them down

In their last sleep--the dead reign there alone.

* * * * * *

So live, that when thy summons comes to join

The innumerable caravan, which moves

To that mysterious realm, where each shall take

His chamber in the silent halls of death,

Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,

Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed

By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,

Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch

About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

NATURE'S MINISTRY OF BEAUTY.

[From _Nature_.]

To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not

see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun

illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the

heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward

senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the

spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with

heaven and earth becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of

nature a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows.

Nature says, He is my creature, and mauger all his impertinent griefs,

he shall be glad with me. Not the sun or the summer alone, but every

hour and season yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and

change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind,

from breathless noon to grimmest midnight. Nature is a setting that

fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece. In good health, the air

is a cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing a bare common, in snow

puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my

thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a

perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods,

too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what

period soever of life is always a child. In the woods is perpetual

youth. Within these plantations of God a decorum and sanctity reigns,

a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should

tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods we return to reason and

faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life--no disgrace,

no calamity (leaving me my eyes), which nature cannot repair. Standing

on the bare ground--my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into

infinite space--all mean egotism vanishes, I become a transparent

eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being

circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. The name of the

nearest friend sounds there foreign and accidental; to be brothers, to

be acquaintances--master or servant, is then a trifle and a

disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In

the wilderness I find something more dear and connate than in streets

or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant

line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own

nature.

The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister is the

suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am

not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I to them. The

waving of the boughs in the storm is new to me and old. It takes me by

surprise, and yet is not unknown. . . .

I see the spectacle of morning from the hill-top over against my house,

from daybreak to sunrise, with emotions which an angel might share.

The long slender bars of cloud float like fishes in the sea of crimson

light. From the earth, as a shore, I look out into that silent sea. I

seem to partake its rapid transformations; the active enchantment

reaches my dust, and I dilate and conspire with the morning wind. How

does Nature deify us with a few and cheap elements! Give me health and

a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous. The dawn is my

Assyria; the sunset and moonrise my Paphos, and unimaginable realms of

faerie; broad noon shall be my England of the senses and the

understanding; the night shall be my Germany of mystic philosophy and

dreams.

Not less excellent, except for our less susceptibility in the

afternoon, was the charm, last evening, of a January sunset. The

western clouds divided and subdivided themselves into pink flakes

modulated with tints of unspeakable softness; and the air had so much

life and sweetness that it was a pain to come within doors. What was

it that Nature would say? Was there no meaning in the live repose of

the valley behind the mill, and which Homer or Shakespeare could not

re-form for me in words? The leafless trees become spires of flame in

the sunset, with the blue east for their background, and the stars of

the dead calices of flowers, and every withered stem and stubble ruined

with frost, contribute something to the mute music.

IDEALISM.

[From the same.]

To the senses and the unrenewed understanding belongs a sort of

instinctive belief in the absolute existence of nature. In their view

man and nature are indissolubly joined. Things are ultimates, and they

never look beyond their sphere. The presence of Reason mars this

faith. . . . Nature is made to conspire with spirit to emancipate us.

Certain mechanical changes, a small alteration in our local position,

apprises us of a dualism. We are strangely affected by seeing the

shore from a moving ship, from a balloon, or through the tints of an

unusual sky. The least change in our point of view gives the whole

world a pictorial air. A man who seldom rides needs only to get into a

coach and traverse his own town, to turn the street into a puppet-show.

The men, the women--talking, running, bartering, fighting--the earnest

mechanic, the lounger, the beggar, the boys, the dogs are unrealized at

once, or at least wholly detached from all relation to the observer,

and seen as apparent, not substantial, beings. What new thoughts are

suggested by seeing a face of country quite familiar, in the rapid

movement of the railway car! Nay, the most wonted objects (make a very

slight change in the point of vision) please us most. In a camera

obscura the butcher's cart and the figure of one of our own family

amuse us. So a portrait of a well-known face gratifies us. Turn the

eyes upside down, by looking at the landscape through your legs, and

how agreeable is the picture, though you have seen it any time these

twenty years!

In these cases, by mechanical means, is suggested the difference

between the observer and the spectacle, between the man and nature.

Hence arises a pleasure mixed with awe; I may say, a low degree of the

sublime is felt from the fact, probably, that man is hereby apprised,

that whilst the world is a spectacle, something in himself is stable.

THE RHODORA.[1]

In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,

I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,

Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,

To please the desert and the sluggish brook.

The purple petals, fallen in the pool,

Made the black water with their beauty gay;

Here might the red bird come his plumes to cool,

And court the flower that cheapens his array.

Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why

This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,

Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,

Then Beauty is its own excuse for being:

Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose,

I never thought to ask, I never knew:

But, in my simple ignorance, suppose

The self-same power that brought me there brought you.

[1] On being asked, Whence is the flower?

HYMN.

[Sung at the completion of the Concord Monument, April 19, 1836.]

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,

Here once the embattled farmers stood,

And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;

Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;

And time the ruined bridge has swept

Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,

We set to-day a votive stone;

That memory may their deed redeem,

When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare

To die, and leave their children free,

Bid time and nature gently spare

The shaft we raise to them and thee.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

THE HAUNTED MIND.

What a singular moment is the first one, when you have hardly begun to

recollect yourself, after starting from midnight slumber! By unclosing

your eyes so suddenly you seem to have surprised the personages of your

dream in full convocation round your bed and catch one broad glance at

them before they can flit into obscurity. Or, to vary the metaphor,

you find yourself, for a single instant, wide awake in that realm of

illusions whither sleep has been the passport, and behold its ghostly

inhabitants and wondrous scenery with a perception of their strangeness

such as you never attain while the dream is undisturbed. The distant

sound of a church clock is borne faintly on the wind. You question

with yourself, half seriously, whether it has stolen to your waking ear

from some gray tower that stood within the precincts of your dream.

While yet in suspense, another clock flings its heavy clang over

the slumbering town with so full and distinct a sound, and such a

long murmur in the neighboring air, that you are certain it must

proceed from the steeple at the nearest corner. You count the

strokes--one--two, and there they cease, with a booming sound, like the

gathering of a third stroke within the bell.

If you could choose an hour of wakefulness out of the whole night it

would be this. Since your sober bed-time, at eleven, you have had rest

enough to take off the pressure of yesterday's fatigue; while before

you till the sun comes from "far Cathay" to brighten your window there

is almost the space of a summer night; one hour to be spent in thought,

with the mind's eye half shut, and two in pleasant dreams, and two in

that strangest of enjoyments, the forgetfulness alike of joy and woe.

The moment of rising belongs to another period of time, and appears so

distant that the plunge out of a warm bed into the frosty air cannot

yet be anticipated with dismay. Yesterday has already vanished among

the shadows of the past; to-morrow has not yet emerged from the future.

You have found an intermediate space, where the business of life does

not intrude, where the passing moment lingers and becomes truly the

present; a spot where Father Time, when he thinks nobody is watching

him, sits down by the way-side to take breath, O that he would fall

asleep and let mortals live on without growing older!

Hitherto you have lain perfectly still, because the slightest motion

would dissipate the fragments of your slumber. Now, being irrevocably

awake, you peep through the half-drawn window-curtain and observe that

the glass is ornamented with fanciful devices in frost-work, and that

each pane presents something like a frozen dream. There will be time

enough to trace out the analogy while waiting the summons to breakfast.

Seen through the clear portion of the glass, where the silvery mountain

peaks of the frost scenery do not ascend, the most conspicuous object

is the steeple, the white spire of which directs you to the wintry

luster of the firmament. You may almost distinguish the figures on the

clock that has just tolled the hour. Such a frosty sky, and the

snow-covered roofs, and the long vista of the frozen street, all white,

and the distant water hardened into rock, might make you shiver, even

under four blankets and a woolen comforter. Yet look at that one

glorious star! Its beams are distinguishable from all the rest, and

actually cast the shadow of the casement on the bed with a radiance of

deeper hue than moonlight, though not so accurate an outline.

You sink down and muffle your head in the clothes, shivering all the

while, but less from bodily chill than the bare idea of a polar

atmosphere. It is too cold even for the thoughts to venture abroad.

You speculate on the luxury of wearing out a whole existence in bed,

like an oyster in its shell, content with the sluggish ecstasy of

inaction, and drowsily conscious of nothing but delicious warmth, such

as you now feel again. Ah! that idea has brought a hideous one in its

train. You think how the dead are lying in their cold shrouds and

narrow coffins through the drear winter of the grave, and cannot

persuade your fancy that they neither shrink nor shiver when the snow

is drifting over their little hillocks and the bitter blast howls

against the door of the tomb. That gloomy thought will collect a

gloomy multitude and throw its complexion over your wakeful hour.

In the depths of every heart there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the

lights, the music, and revelry above may cause us to forget their

existence, and the buried ones or prisoners whom they hide. But

sometimes, and oftenest at midnight, these dark receptacles are flung

wide open. In an hour like this, when the mind has a passive

sensibility, but no active strength; when the imagination is a mirror,

imparting vividness to all ideas without the power of selecting or

controlling them, then pray that your griefs may slumber and the

brotherhood of remorse not break their chain. It is too late! A

funeral train comes gliding by your bed, in which Passion and Feeling

assume bodily shape and things of the mind become dim specters to the

eye. There is your earliest Sorrow, a pale young mourner, wearing a

sister's likeness to first love, sadly beautiful, with a hallowed

sweetness in her melancholy features and grace in the flow of her sable

robe. Next appears a shade of ruined loveliness, with dust among her

golden hair and her bright garments all faded and defaced, stealing

from your glance with drooping head, as fearful of reproach; she was

your fondest Hope, but a delusive one; so call her Disappointment now.

A sterner form succeeds, with a brow of wrinkles, a look and gesture of

iron authority; there is no name for him unless it be Fatality, an

emblem of the evil influence that rules your fortunes; a demon to whom

you subjected yourself by some error at the outset of life, and were

bound his slave forever, by once obeying him. See! those fiendish

lineaments graven on the darkness, the writhed lip of scorn, the

mockery of that living eye, the pointed finger, touching the sore place

in your heart! Do you remember any act of enormous folly, at which you

would blush, even in the remotest cavern of the earth? Then recognize

your Shame.

Pass, wretched band! Well for the wakeful one if, riotously miserable,

a fiercer tribe do not surround him, the devils of a guilty heart, that

holds its hell within itself. What if Remorse should assume the

features of an injured friend? What if the fiend should come in

woman's garments, with a pale beauty amid sin and desolation, and lie

down by your side? What if he should stand at your bed's foot, in the

likeness of a corpse, with a bloody stain upon the shroud? Sufficient

without such guilt is this nightmare of the soul; this heavy, heavy

sinking of the spirits; this wintry gloom about the heart; this

indistinct horror of the mind, blending itself with the darkness of the

chamber. . . . Now comes the peal of the distant clock, with fainter

and fainter strokes as you plunge farther into the wilderness of sleep.

It is the knell of a temporary death. Your spirit has departed, and

strays like a free citizen, among the people of a shadowy world,

beholding strange sights, yet without wonder or dismay. So calm,

perhaps, will be the final change, so undisturbed, as if among familiar

things. The entrance of the soul to its eternal home!

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

THE BELEAGUERED CITY.

I have read, in some old marvelous tale,

Some legend strange and vague,

That a midnight host of specters pale

Beleaguered the walls of Prague.

Beside the Moldau's rushing stream,

With the wan moon overhead,

There stood, as in an awful dream,

The army of the dead.

White as a sea-fog, landward-bound,

The spectral camp was seen,

And, with a sorrowful deep sound,

The river flowed between.

No other voice nor sound was there,

No drum, nor sentry's pace;

The mist-like banners clasped the air,

As clouds with clouds embrace.

But when the old cathedral bell

Proclaimed the morning prayer,

The white pavilions rose and fell

On the alarmèd air.

Down the broad valley fast and far

The troubled army fled;

Up rose the glorious morning star,

The ghastly host was dead.

I have read in the marvelous heart of man,

That strange and mystic scroll,

That an army of phantoms vast and wan

Beleaguer the human soul.

Encamped beside Life's rushing stream,

In Fancy's misty light,

Gigantic shapes and shadows gleam

Portentous through the night.

Upon its midnight battle-ground

The spectral camp is seen,

And, with a sorrowful deep sound,

Flows the River of Life between.

No other voice nor sound is there,

In the army of the grave;

No other challenge breaks the air,

But the rushing of life's wave.

And when the solemn and deep church-bell

Entreats the soul to pray,

The midnight phantoms feel the spell,

The shadows sweep away.

Down the broad Vale of Tears afar

The spectral camp is fled;

Faith shineth as a morning star,

Our ghastly fears are dead.

THE OCCULTATION OF ORION.

I saw, as in a dream sublime,

The balance in the hand of Time.

O'er East and West its beam impended;

And day, with all its hours of light,

Was slowly sinking out of sight,

While, opposite, the scale of night

Silently with the stars ascended.

Like the astrologers of eld,

In that bright vision I beheld

Greater and deeper mysteries.

I saw, with its celestial keys,

Its chords of air, its frets of fire,

The Samian's great Aeolian lyre,

Rising through all its sevenfold bars,

From earth unto the fixèd stars.

And through the dewy atmosphere,

Not only could I see, but hear,

Its wondrous and harmonious strings,

In sweet vibration, sphere by sphere,

From Dian's circle light and near,

Onward to vaster and wider rings,

Where, chanting through his beard of snows,

Majestic, mournful Saturn goes,

And down the sunless realms of space

Reverberates the thunder of his bass.

Beneath the sky's triumphal arch

This music sounded like a march,

And with its chorus seemed to be

Preluding some great tragedy.

Sirius was rising in the east;

And, slow ascending one by one,

The kindling constellations shone.

Begirt with many a blazing star,

Stood the great giant, Algebar,

Orion, hunter of the beast!

His sword hung gleaming by his side,

And, on his arm, the lion's hide

Scattered across the midnight air

The golden radiance of its hair.

The moon was pallid, but not faint;

And beautiful as some fair saint,

Serenely moving on her way

In hours of trial and dismay.

As if she heard the voice of God,

Unharmed with naked feet she trod

Upon the hot and burning stars,

As on the glowing coals and bars

That were to prove her strength, and try

Her holiness and her purity.

Thus moving on, with silent pace,

And triumph in her sweet, pale face,

She reached the station of Orion.

Aghast he stood in strange alarm!

And suddenly from his outstretched arm

Down fell the red skin of the lion

Into the river at his feet.

His mighty club no longer beat

The forehead of the bull; but he

Reeled as of yore beside the sea,

When, blinded by Oenopion,

He sought the blacksmith at his forge,

And, climbing up the mountain gorge,

Fixed his blank eyes upon the sun,

Then through the silence overhead,

An angel with a trumpet said,

"Forever more, forever more,

The reign of violence is o'er."

And, like an instrument that flings

Its music on another's strings,

The trumpet of the angel cast

Upon the heavenly lyre its blast,

And on from sphere to sphere the words

Re-echoed down the burning chords,--

"For evermore, for evermore,

The reign of violence is o'er!"