CHAPTER V.

THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY,

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. V.--JANUARY, 1860.--NO. XXVII.

OUR ARTISTS IN ITALY.

HIRAM POWERS.

Antique Art, beside affording a standard by which the modern may be

measured, has the remarkable property-giving it a higher value--of

testing the genuineness of the Art-impulse.

Even to genius, that is, to the artist, a true Art-life is difficult

of attainment. In the midst of illumination, there is the mystery: the

subjective mystery, out of which issue the germs--like seeds floated

from unknown shores--of his imaginings; the objective mystery, which

yields to him, through obvious, yet unexplained harmonies, the means of

manifestation.

Behind the consciousness is the power; behind the power, that which

gives it worth and occupation.

To the artist definite foresight is denied. His life is full of

surprises at new necessities. When the present demand shall have been

fulfilled, what shall follow? Shall it be Madonna, or Laocoön? His

errand is like that of the commander who bears sealed instructions; and

he may drift for years, ere he knows wherefore. Thorwaldsen waited,

wandering by the Tiber a thousand days,--then in one, uttered his

immortal "Night."

Not even the severest self-examination will enable one in whom the

Art-impulse exists to understand thoroughly its aim and uses; yet to

approximate a clear perception of his own nature and that of the art to

which he is called is one of his first duties. What he is able to do,

required to do, and permitted to do, are questions of vital importance.

Possession of himself, of himself in the highest, will alone enable the

student in Art to solve the difficulties of his position. His habitual

consciousness must be made up of the noblest of all that has been

revealed to it; otherwise those fine intuitions, akin to the ancient

inspirations, through whose aid genius is informed of its privileges,

are impossible.

Therefore the foremost purpose of an artist should be to claim and take

possession of self. Somewhere within is his inheritance, and he must not

be hindered of it. Other men have other gifts,--gifts bestowed under

different conditions, and subject in a great degree to choice. Talent is

not fastidious. It is an instrumentality, and its aim is optional with

him who possesses it. Genius is exquisitely fastidious, and the man whom

it possesses must live its life, or no life.

In view of these considerations, the efforts of an artist to assume his

true position must be regarded with earnest interest, and importance

must be attached to that which aids him in attaining to his true plane.

Such aid may be, and is, derived from the influences of Italy. Of those

agencies which have a direct influence upon the action of the artist,

which serve to assist him in manifesting his idea and fulfilling his

purpose, mention will be made in connection with the works which have

been produced in Italian studios. They have less importance than that

great element related to the innermost of the artist's life,--to that

power of which we have spoken, making Art-action necessary.

It is not, however, exclusively antique Art which exercises this power

of elevation. Ancient Art may be a better term; as all great Art bears

a like relation to the student. In Florence the mediaeval influences

predominate. Rome exercises _its_ power through the medium of the

antique.

There is much Christian Art in Rome. Yet its effect is insignificant,

compared with that of the vast collection of Greek sculptures to be

found within its walls. Instinctively, as the vague yearnings and

prophecies of youth lift him in whom they quicken away from youth's

ordinary purposes and associations, his thought turns to that far city

where are gathered the achievements of those who were indeed the gods of

Hellas. To be there, and to demand from those eloquent lips the secret

of the golden age, is his dream and aim, and there shall be solved the

problem of his life.

But antique Art, waiting so patiently twenty centuries to afford aid to

the artist, waits also to sit in judgment upon his worth and acts. Woe

to him who cannot pass the ordeal of its power, and explain the enigma

of its speech!

Nothing can be more pitiful and sad than the condition of one who,

having been subjected to the influence of ancient Art, has not had the

ability to recognize or the earnestness of purpose essential to the

apprehension of the truths which it has for his soul instead of his

hands. But if, through truthfulness of aim, and a sense of the divine

nature of the errand to which he seems appointed, he reach the law

of Art, then henceforth its pursuit becomes the sign of life; if the

impulse bear him no farther than rules, then all he produces goes forth

as a proclamation of death. There is no middle path. Art is high or low:

high, if it be the profoundest life of an earnest man, uttering itself

in the _real_, even though it be awkwardly, and in violation of all

accepted methods of expression; low, if it be not such utterance, even

though consummate in obedience to the finest rules of all Art-science.

There can be no other way. The life is in the man, and not in the stone;

and no affectation of vitality can atone for the absence of that soul

which should have been breathed into existence from his own divine life.

As was said, possession of self is the only condition under which the

quantity and quality of the Art-impulse may be determined. It is only

when a man stands face to face with himself, in the stillness of his own

inner world, that his possibilities become apparent; and it is only when

conscious of these, and inspired by a just sense of their dignity, that

he can achieve that which shall be genuine success. _Once_ he must be

lifted away and isolated from worldly surroundings, relieved from all

objective influences, from the pressure of all human relations; once the

very memory of all these must be blotted out; once he must be alone.

This is possible to a Mendelssohn in the awful solitude of Beethoven's

"Sonate Pathétique," to a painter in the presence of Leonardo's "Last

Supper," and to a sculptor in the hushed halls of the Vatican.

But that which lifts the true artist above externals, the externals of

his own individual being, crushes the false, to whom the marble and the

paint are in themselves the ultimate.

This train of thought has been suggested by the fact of the dominion

which classic Art has acquired over sculptors, and by the influence of

the sixteenth and seventeenth century schools upon painters. It is due,

however, to our sculptors in Italy that credit should be given them

for having resisted the influence of forms, of the mere letter of the

classic, to a greater extent than the students of any other nation.

Whether or not they have been receptive of the spirit of the antique

remains to be seen.

American painters have been less fortunate. Too often the lessons of the

old masters, and especially those of the earliest, the Puritan Fathers

of Art, have been unheeded; or the rules and practices which served them

temporarily, subject to the phase of the ideal for the time uppermost,

have passed into permanent laws, to be obeyed under all conditions of

Art-utterance.

The United States have had within the last twenty years as many as

thirty sculptors and painters resident in Italy. At the beginning of the

present year ten sculpture studios in Rome and Florence were occupied

by Americans. We will speak of these artists in the order in which they

entered the profession of an art which they have served to develop

in this first period of its history in America. The eldest bears the

honored name of Hiram Powers.

Three parties have been remarkably unjust to this man,--namely, his

friends, his enemies, and himself.

Neither the artist nor his friends need feel solicitude for his fame.

The exact value of his excellence shall be estimated, and the height of

his genius fully recognized, when the right man comes. Other award than

that from an age on a level with his own life can be of small worth to

one who has attained to the true level of Art. Fame must come to him of

that vision which can pierce the external of his work and penetrate to

the presence of his very soul. His action must be traced to its finest

ideal motive,--as chemist-philosophers pursue the steps of analysis

until opaque matter is resolved to pure, ethereal elements. His fame

must be from such vision, and it will approach the universal just in

proportion as his pulse beats in unison with the heart of mankind.

Whatever may be an artist's plans, or those of his friends, in regard to

his valuation by the world, while he is living, ultimately he himself,

divested of all save his own individuality, must stand revealed.

Those who in other departments of action are necessarily governed

somewhat, or it may be entirely, by rules of conduct general in nature

and universal in application, may fail to receive or may escape justice.

They are to a great degree involuntary agents, and subject to the laws

of science, to the operations of which they are obliged to conform.

The private fact of the man is hidden by the public general truth. If,

however, the energies of the individual overtop the science, enabling

him to assert himself above the summit of its history, then is he

accessible to all generations, and can in no wise avoid or forfeit his

just fame.

In Art, this intimate relation of the result of action to the actor is

complete,--inasmuch as, to _be_ Art, to rise above being something

else, the shadow and mockery of Art, it must be of and from the man, a

spontaneity, a reflection, light for light, shade for shade, color for

color, of his entire being; and with this effect his will has little to

do. Therefore, unless he be an impostor, he need give himself no trouble

regarding his future. His works shall serve as a clue, produced century

after century, along which posterity shall feel its way back to his

studio and heart. No need of thought for _his_ morrow.

But for his to-day he may well be solicitous. If fame be his reflection,

he has also the shadow of himself, his reputation.

It is a great error to assume that these two effects are so related that

the augmentation of the one must increase the other, and as great a

mistake to confound the two. The truth is, that reputation and fame are

rarely coincident. They are not unfrequently in direct opposition,--so

much so, that some names, which the world cannot give up, have to

be filtered through a thick mass of years, to purify them of their

reputations, and leave them simply famous.

No name has suffered more than that of Powers. His friends, blind to the

laws which govern these matters, have wrought bravely to construct for

him a reputation commensurate with his vaguely imagined worth; but upon

his real worth they have evinced no desire to lay their foundation. No

accurate survey has been made of his abilities, no definite plan of

his artist-nature. Often a place has been demanded for his name in the

history of Art, and the first place too, because of his fine frank eye,

or the simplicity of his manners,--because his workmen cut the chain of

the Greek slave out of one piece of stone, or the marble of the statue

itself had no spot as big as a pin-head,--because he himself chooses to

rasp and scrape plaster, rather than model in plastic clay,--because he

tinkered up the "infernal regions" of the Cincinnati Museum years ago,

or spends his time now in making perforating-machines and perforated

files; in fine, for _any_ reason rather than for the right legitimate

one of artistic merit, they have demanded room for their favorite.

Even those who look deeper than this, appreciating Mr. Powers as

a gentleman, an ingenious mechanic, and a skillful manipulator in

sculpture, have been content or constrained to urge his claims to

attention upon false considerations. We have heard it gravely remarked,

as a matter of astonishment, that there were individuals--refined men,

apparently--who looked upon the Venus de' Medici as a finer work than

the Greek Slave. In the files of a New York paper may be found an

article, written by a highly cultivated man, in which Powers's busts are

asserted to be rather the effect of miracles than the results of _human_

effort. The spirit which has prompted these and many kindred expressions

cannot be too much deplored by those who love Art and know the artist.

It has succeeded in creating for him a reputation broad and remarkable,

but most unfortunate, because not his own, because not the reputation

which should have formed about his name here, as fame will yonder;

unfortunate, because, though broad, it is the breadth of an inverted

pyramid, which must naturally topple over of itself, and incumber his

path with ruins.

The false position in which Mr. Powers has been placed by his friends

has of course won him many enemies.

Bold, sincere, working enemies are highly useful in developing an

artist's character, especially if he be a law-abiding follower of the

art. But enemies must be dealers of fair blows, wagers of honorable

warfare; no assassin is worthy of the name of enemy. Sometimes, however,

those who are worthy of the name, and entitled to respect, may make

injudicious and unfair use of censure and invective. It is unwise, when

the necessity arises to set aside a worthless or an imperfect image, to

turn Iconoclast and demolish those surrounding it which are worthy of a

place in the temple. True criticism, for its own sake, if prompted by no

higher motive, deals justly.

The friends of Mr. Powers have, in their estimate of his ability, given

him credit for that which he does not possess, and claimed recognition

for merit unsupported by the value of his works. His enemies have

labored assiduously, not only to deprive the estimate of its unwarranted

quantity, but to overthrow the whole, and leave him merely a mechanic,

a dexterous mechanic, with small views, but large ambition, trying

to pass himself off as an artist. His busts are asserted to be

but more elaborate examples of his skill in the

"perforated-file-and-patent-punch" line.

But as the struggles to elevate this artist's reputation above its

proper level have proved signal failures, so the effort to depreciate

it must ultimately be defeated. Only one kind of injustice ever proves

irreparable wrong: that which a man exercises towards himself. Mr.

Powers _had_ a specialty.

So constituted that the most difficult executive operations are to him

but play and pleasure, he has also, to govern and inform this rare

organization, a broad, manly, and most genial human nature. This

combination decided the question of his proper mission, and in virtue of

it he has been enabled to model a series of most remarkable busts, the

true excellence of which must be recognized in spite of friends and

foes, and the epithets "miraculous" and "mechanical."

It is possible that the highest type of portrait-sculpture is beyond the

limit of this specialty; indeed, it is almost impossible that with the

elements constituting it there should be associated the still rarer

power to achieve the most exalted ideal Art; and such Art we believe the

highest portraiture to be.

A consummate representation of a man in his divinest development, the

last refined ideal of him _then_, would be indeed somewhat miraculous!

The world asks less. It claims to know of a man what the face of him

became under the influences of human, temporal relations. It wants

preserved of the statesman the statesman's face, of the merchant the

merchant's face; and this demand, when governed by a cultivated taste,

is a legitimate one,--as legitimate as is the demand for any history.

The public requires the image of the man whom the public knew, and

they regard as valuable that which can be received as a definite and

trustworthy statement of a great man, or of one whom it esteemed great.

It requires this, has a right to such information; and the generation

which fails to demand of its artists a true record of its prominent men

fails utterly in its duty. The bust of a man goes down to posterity, not

only the history which it is in itself, but as an interpreter of the

history of its age. Were it not for Art, an age would recede into the

unknown, to be recorded as dark, or into the shadowy world of myth.

Portraiture, more than aught else, serves to elucidate the tradition or

story of a people. How impossible to explain to the twentieth century

the bad mystery of our present, without the aid of Powers's head of

Calhoun, the less adequate bust of Stephen A. Douglas, and the one which

_should_ be modelled of Mr. Buchanan! A faithful delineation of the

features of some men is needful. We should be thankful for that black

frown of Nero, for the bald pate of Scipio, for those queer eyes of

Marius, and for the long neck of Cicero, as seen in the newly discovered

bust. These are the signs of the men, and explain them.

Mr. Powers has succeeded in reporting more accurately than any other

recent artist the physical facts of the individual face. From one of his

marbles we derive definite ideas of the human character of its subject,

what its ambition is, and what its weakness; what have been its loves

and its antipathies, its struggles and its victories, its joys and its

sorrows, may be revealed to him who has learned what the human face

becomes under the influence of these incessant forces. No mere _talent_

can accomplish such results. Behind all that kind of strength lies

the fact of peculiar sympathies, relating the artist to this phase of

Art-representation; and within certain limits, which should have been

undebatable, his rule was absolute.

The great mistake with Mr. Powers has been his oversight regarding these

limits. There has been debate, hesitation, and a continual wandering

away from the duties of his errand. Years have been devoted to those

ghosts of sculpture, allegorical figures; other years wasted in the

elaboration of machinery. Not that his ideal statues are worthless, or

fall short of great beauty and exquisite delicacy; not that his skill

as a mechanician is other than great. But the age cannot afford these

things, nor can the sculptor afford them. A year is too great a sum to

give for a statue of California. Better than that, the several portraits

of valued men which might have been acquired,--one bust, even, like

those which surprised and compelled the reverence of Thorwaldsen. Better

the perfected ability which would have given his country the Webster he

should and might have made than a hundred "Americas."

There are two considerations which may have misled Mr. Powers. One, a

pecuniary one, which he should have disposed of as did Agassiz, when

such was advanced to induce him to give lyceum lectures:--"Sir, I

cannot afford to make money!" The other may have been the weight of the

prevailing error that portrait-sculpture is a less honorable branch of

Art.

Less than what? The historical? What finer history than Titian's Paul

III., Raphael's Leo X., Albert Dürer's head of himself? What finer than

the Pericles, the Marcus Aurelius of the Capitol, the Demosthenes of the

Vatican, Chantrey's Scott, Houdon's Voltaire, Powers's Jackson?--Heroic?

what more heroic than the Lateran Sophocles, the Venetian Colleoni, or

Rauch's statue of Frederick the Great?--Poetical? What picture more

sweetly poetical than Raphael's head of himself in the Uffizi, or

Giotto's Dante in the Bargello? What _ideal_ statue surpasses in

poetical power Michel Angelo's De' Medici in the San Lorenzo Chapel?

What ideal head is more beautiful than the Townley Clytie of the British

Museum, or the Young Augustus of the Vatican? What grander than Da

Vinci's portrait of himself?

No,--when the sculptor has wrought the adequate representation of the

individual in its best estate, he may rest assured that he has achieved

"high Art."

Let us not be unjust to Mr. Powers's ideal works. In the qualities of

chasteness of conception, delicacy of treatment, temperate grace, and

that rarer, finer quality of dignified repose, they have not been

surpassed since the time of Greek Art. When the subject chosen has not

been foreign to the artist's nature, as in the "Eve," nor foreign to the

Art's province, as in the "California," his success has been very like a

triumph.

But the success has not been that which he was entitled to grasp; the

seeming triumph has precluded a real victory. We must believe that

the highest lessons of ancient Art have, in a great measure, been

unrecognized by Mr. Powers. The external has been studied. No man can

talk more justly of that exquisite line of the Venus de' Medici's temple

and cheek, or point out more discriminatingly the beauties of the Milo

statue, or detect more quickly the truths of the antique busts. He has

discovered, also, somewhat of the great secret of repose,--has perceived

that it is essential, in some wise, to all greatness in Art, more

particularly in his own department of sculpture. But beyond that simple

recognition of the fact, what? That repose is dependent on power to act,

and must be great in proportion to mightiness of power? No, he could not

have seen this; else had his Webster come to us less questionable in

intent, less remote in its merits from the massive self-possession of

the man.

For what Mr. Powers became before he left America he cannot be praised

too greatly. He carried with him to Europe just that knowledge of Nature

and that executive power which prepared him to take advantage of the aid

that all great Art was waiting to afford. Had he won "the large truth,"

he would have found the scope and purpose of his genius, as in America

he had found that of his talent. He would have seen his specialty to be

worthy of all reverence, for he would have attained to an appreciation

of the high possibilities of portrait-Art. There would have been

developed, under the influence of great principles, the power to make

_statues_ of great men,--colossal, instead of big,--reposeful, instead

of paralyzed,--grand, instead of arrogant,--statues worthy of the hand

that wrought the busts of Calhoun, Jackson, and Webster, worthy to rank

with the few mighty embodiments of power, the Sophocles, the Aristides,

and the Demosthenes. This he might have done; and this he may yet

accomplish.

THE AMBER GODS.

STORY FIRST.

_Flower o' the Peach._

We've some splendid old point-lace in our family, yellow and fragrant,

loose-meshed. It isn't every one has point at all; and of those who

have, it isn't every one can afford to wear it. I can. Why? Oh, because

it's in character. Besides, I admire point any way,--it's so becoming;

and then, you see, this amber! Now what is in finer unison, this old

point-lace, all tags and tangle and fibrous and bewildering, and this

amber, to which Heaven knows how many centuries, maybe, with all their

changes, brought perpetual particles of increase? I like yellow things,

you see.

To begin at the beginning. My name, you're aware, is Giorgione

Willoughby. Queer name for a girl! Yes; but before papa sowed his wild

oats, he was one afternoon in Fiesole, looking over Florence nestled

below, when some whim took him to go into a church there, a quiet place,

full of twilight and one great picture, nobody within but a girl and

her little slave,--the one watching her mistress, the other saying

dreadfully devout prayers on an amber rosary, and of course she didn't

see him, or didn't appear to. After he got there, he wondered what

on earth he came for, it was so dark and poky, and he began to feel

uncomfortably,--when all of a sudden a great ray of sunset dashed

through the window, and drowned the place in the splendor of the

illumined painting. Papa adores rich colors; and he might have been

satiated here, except that such things make you want more. It was a

Venus;--no, though, it couldn't have been a Venus in a church, could it?

Well, then, a Magdalen, I guess, or a Madonna, or something. I fancy the

man painted for himself, and christened for others. So, when I was born,

some years afterward, papa, gratefully remembering this dazzling little

vignette of his youth, was absurd enough to christen me Giorgione.

That's how I came by my identity; but the folks all call me Yone,--a

baby name.

I'm a blonde, you know,--none of your silver-washed things. I wouldn't

give a _fico_ for a girl with flaxen hair; she might as well be a wax

doll, and have her eyes moved by a wire; besides, they've no souls.

I imagine they were remnants at our creation, and somehow scrambled

together, and managed to get up a little life among themselves; but it's

good for nothing, and everybody sees through the pretence. They're glass

chips, and brittle shavings, slender pinkish scrids,--no name for them;

but just you say blonde, soft and slow and rolling,--it brings up

a brilliant, golden vitality, all manner of white and torrid

magnificences, and you see me! I've watched little bugs--gold

rose-chafers--lie steeping in the sun, till every atom of them must have

been searched with the warm radiance, and have felt, that, when they

reached that point, I was just like them, golden all through,--not dyed,

but created. Sunbeams like to follow me, I think. Now, when I stand in

one before this glass, infiltrated with the rich tinge, don't I look

like the spirit of it just stepped out for inspection? I seem to myself

like the complete incarnation of light, full, bounteous, overflowing,

and I wonder at and adore anything so beautiful; and the reflection

grows finer and deeper while I gaze, till I dare not do so any longer.

So, without more words, I'm a golden blonde. You see me now: not too

tall,--five feet four; not slight, or I couldn't have such perfect

roundings, such flexible moulding. Here's nothing of the spiny Diana and

Pallas, but Clytie or Isis speaks in such delicious curves. It don't

look like flesh and blood, does it? Can you possibly imagine it will

ever change? Oh!

Now see the face,--not small, either; lips with no particular outline,

but melting, and seeming as if they would stain yours, should you touch

them. No matter about the rest, except the eyes. Do you meet such eyes

often? You wouldn't open yours so, if you did. Note their color now,

before the ray goes. Yellow hazel? Not a bit of it! Some folks say

topaz, but they're fools. Nor sherry. There's a dark sardine base, but

over it real seas of light, clear light; there isn't any positive color;

and once when I was angry, I caught a glimpse of them in a mirror, and

they were quite white, perfectly colorless, only luminous. I looked like

a fiend, and, you may be sure, recovered my temper directly,--easiest

thing in the world, when you've motive enough. You see the pupil is

small, and that gives more expansion and force to the irides; but

sometimes in an evening, when I'm too gay, and a true damask settles in

the cheek, the pupil grows larger and crowds out the light, and under

these thick, brown lashes, these yellow-hazel eyes of yours, they are

dusky and purple and deep with flashes, like pansies lit by fire-flies,

and then common folks call them black. Be sure, I've never got such eyes

for nothing, any more than this hair. That is Lucrezia Borgian, spun

gold, and ought to take the world in its toils. I always wear these

thick, riotous curls round my temples and face; but the great braids

behind--oh, I'll uncoil them before my toilet is over.

Probably you felt all this before, but didn't know the secret of it.

Now, the traits being brought out, you perceive nothing wanting; the

thing is perfect, and you've a reason for it. Of course, with such an

organization, I'm not nervous. Nervous! I should as soon fancy a dish of

cream nervous. I am too rich for anything of the kind, permeated utterly

with a rare golden calm. Girls always suggest little similitudes to me:

there's that brunette beauty,--don't you taste mulled wine when you see

her? and thinking of yourself, did you ever feel green tea? and find me

in a crust of wild honey, the expressed essence of woods and flowers,

with its sweet satiety?--no, that's too cloying. I'm a deal more like

Mendelssohn's music,--what I know of it, for I can't distinguish

tunes,--you wouldn't suspect it,--but full harmonics delight me as they

do a wild beast; and so I'm like a certain adagio in B flat, that Papa

likes.

There now! you're perfectly shocked to hear me go on so about myself;

but you oughtn't to be. It isn't lawful for any one else, because praise

is intrusion; but if the rose please to open her heart to the moth, what

then? You know, too, I didn't make myself; it's no virtue to be so fair.

Louise couldn't speak so of herself: first place, because it wouldn't

be true; next place, she couldn't, if it were; and lastly, she made her

beauty by growing a soul in her eyes, I suppose,--what you call good.

I'm not good, of course; I wouldn't give a fig to be good. So

it's not vanity. It's on a far grander scale; a splendid

selfishness,--authorized, too; and papa and mamma brought me up to

worship beauty,--and there's the fifth commandment, you know.

Dear me! you think I'm never coming to the point. Well, here's this

rosary;--hand me the perfume-case first, please. Don't you love heavy

fragrances, faint with sweetness, ravishing juices of odor, heliotropes,

violets, water-lilies,--powerful attars and extracts, that snatch your

soul off your lips? Couldn't you live on rich scents, if they tried to

starve you? I could, or die on them: I don't know which would be best.

There! there's the amber rosary! You needn't speak; look at it!

Bah! is that all you've got to say? Why, observe the thing; turn it

over; hold it up to the window; count the beads,--long, oval, like some

seaweed bulbs, each an amulet. See the tint; it's very old; like clots

of sunshine,--aren't they? Now bring it near; see the carving, here

corrugated, there faceted, now sculptured into hideous, tiny, heathen

gods. You didn't notice that before! How difficult it must have been,

when amber is so friable! Here's one with a chessboard on his back, and

all his kings and queens and pawns slung round him. Here's another

with a torch, a flaming torch, its fire pouring out inverted. They are

grotesque enough;--but this, this is matchless: such a miniature woman,

one hand grasping the round rock behind, while she looks down into some

gulf, perhaps, beneath, and will let herself fall. Oh, you should see

_her_ with a magnifying-glass! You want to think of calm, satisfying

death, a mere exhalation, a voluntary slipping into another element?

There it is for you. They are all gods and goddesses. They are all here

but one; I've lost one, the knot of all, the love of the thing. Well!

wasn't it queer for a Catholic girl to have at prayer? Don't you wonder

where she got it? Ah! but don't you wonder where I got it? I'll tell

you.

Papa came in, one day, and with great mystery commenced unrolling,

and unrolling, and throwing tissue papers on the floor, and scraps of

colored wool; and Lu and I ran to him,--Lu stooping on her knees to look

up, I bending over his hands to look down. It was so mysterious! I began

to suspect it was diamonds for me, but knew I never could wear them, and

was dreadfully afraid that I was going to be tempted, when slowly, bead

by bead, came out this amber necklace. Lu fairly screamed; as for me, I

just drew breath after breath, without a word. Of course they were for

me;--I reached my hands for them.

"Oh, wait!" said papa. "Yone or Lu?"

"Now how absurd, papa!" I exclaimed. "Such things for Lu!"

"Why not?" asked Lu,--rather faintly now, for she knew I always carried

my point.

"The idea of you in amber, Lu! It's too foreign; no sympathy between

you!"

"Stop, stop!" said papa. "You shan't crowd little Lu out of them. What

do you want them for, Lu?"

"To wear," quavered Lu,--"like the balls the Roman ladies carried for

coolness."

"Well, then, you ought to have them. What do you want them for, Yone?"

"Oh, if Lu's going to have them, I _don't_ want them."

"But give a reason, child."

"Why, to wear, too,--to look at,--to have and to hold for better, for

worse,--to say my prayers on," for a bright idea struck me, "to say

my prayers on, like the Florence rosary." I knew that would finish the

thing.

"Like the Florence rosary?" said papa, in a sleepy voice. "Why, this

_is_ the Florence rosary."

Of course, when we knew that, we were both more crazy to obtain it.

"Oh, Sir," just fluttered Lu, "where did you get it?"

"I got it; the question is, Who's to have it?"

"I must and will, potential and imperative," I exclaimed, quite on fire.

"The nonsense of the thing! Girls with lucid eyes, like shadowy shallows

in quick brooks, can wear crystallizations. As for me, I can wear

only concretions and growths; emeralds and all their cousins would

be shockingly inharmonious on me; but you know, Lu, how I use Indian

spices, and scarlet and white berries and flowers, and little hearts and

notions of beautiful copal that Rose carved for you,--and I can wear

sandal-wood and ebony and pearls, and now this amber. But you, Lu,

you can wear every kind of precious stone, and you may have Aunt

Willoughby's rubies that she promised me; they are all in tone with you;

but I must have this."

"I don't think you're right," said Louise, rather soberly. "You strip

yourself of great advantages. But about the rubies, I don't want

anything so flaming, so you may keep them; and I don't care at all about

this. I think, Sir, on the whole, they belong to Yone for her name."

"So they do," said papa. "But not to be bought off! That's my little

Lu!"

And somehow Lu, who had been holding the rosary, was sitting on papa's

knee, as he half knelt on the floor, and the rosary was in my hand. And

then he produced a little kid box, and there lay inside a star with a

thread of gold for the forehead, circlets for wrist and throat, two

drops, and a ring. Oh, such beauties! You've never seen them.

"The other one shall have these. Aren't you sorry, Yone?" he said.

"Oh, no, indeed! I'd much rather have mine, though these are splendid.

What are they?"

"Aqua-marina," sighed Lu, in an agony of admiration.

"Dear, dear! how did you know?"

Lu blushed, I saw,--but I was too much absorbed with the jewels to

remark it.

"Oh, they are just like that ring on your hand! You don't want two rings

alike," I said. "Where did you get that ring, Lu?"

But Lu had no senses for anything beyond the casket.

If you know aqua-marina, you know something that's before every other

stone in the world. Why, it is as clear as light, white, limpid, dawn

light; sparkles slightly and seldom; looks like pure drops of water,

sea-water, scooped up and falling down again; just a thought of its

parent beryl green hovers round the edges; and it grows more lucent and

sweet to the centre, and there you lose yourself in some dream of vast

seas, a glory of unimagined oceans; and you say that it was crystallized

to any slow flute-like tune, each speck of it floating into file with

a musical grace, and carrying its sound with it. There! it's very

fanciful, but I'm always feeling the tune in aqua-marina, and trying to

find it,--but I shouldn't know it was a tune, if I did, I suppose. How

magnificent it would be, if every atom of creation sprang up and said

its one word of abracadabra, the secret of its existence, and fell

silent again. Oh, dear! you'd die, you know; but what a pow-wow! Then,

too, in aqua-marina proper, the setting is kept out of sight, and you

have the unalloyed stone with its sea-rims and its clearness and steady

sweetness. It wasn't the stone for Louise to wear; it belongs rather

to highly-nervous, excitable persons; and Lu is as calm as I, only so

different! There is something more pure and simple about it than about

anything else; others may flash and twinkle, but this just glows with an

unvarying power, is planetary and strong. It wears the moods of the sea,

too: once in a while a warm amethystine mist suffuses it like a blush;

sometimes a white morning fog breathes over it: you long to get into the

heart of it. That's the charm of gems, after all! You feel that they are

fashioned through dissimilar processes from yourself,--that there's a

mystery about them, mastering which would be like mastering a new life,

like having the freedom of other stars. I give them more personality

than I would a great white spirit. I like amber that way, because I know

how it was made, drinking the primeval weather, resinously beading each

grain of its rare wood, and dripping with a plash to filter through and

around the fallen cones below. In some former state I must have been a

fly embalmed in amber.

"Oh, Lu!" I said, "this amber's just the thing for me, such a great

noon creature! And as for you, you shall wear mamma's Mechlin and that

aqua-marina; and you'll look like a mer-queen just issuing from the

wine-dark deeps and glittering with shining water-spheres."

I never let Lu wear the point at all; she'd be ridiculous in it,--so

flimsy and open and unreserved; that's for me;--Mechlin, with its

whiter, closer, chaste web, suits her to a T.

I must tell you, first, how this rosary came about, any way. You know

we've a million of ancestors, and one of them, my great-grandfather, was

a sea-captain, and actually did bring home cargoes of slaves; but once

he fetched to his wife a little islander, an Asian imp, six years old,

and wilder than the wind. She spoke no word of English, and was full

of short shouts and screeches, like a thing of the woods. My

great-grandmother couldn't do a bit with her; she turned the house

topsy-turvy, cut the noses out of the old portraits, and chewed the

jewels out of the settings, killed the little home animals, spoiled the

dinners, pranced in the garden with Madam Willoughby's farthingale and

royal stiff brocades rustling yards behind,--this atom of a shrimp,--or

balanced herself with her heels in the air over the curb of the well,

scraped up the dead leaves under one corner of the house and fired

them,--a favorite occupation,--and if you left her stirring a mess in

the kitchen, you met her, perhaps, perched in the china-closet and

mumbling all manner of demoniacal prayers, twisting and writhing and

screaming over a string of amber gods that she had brought with her

and always wore. When winter came and the first snow, she was furious,

perfectly mad. One might as well have had a ball of fire in the house,

or chain-lightning; every nice old custom had been invaded, the ancient

quiet broken into a Bedlam of outlandish sounds, and as Captain

Willoughby was returning, his wife packed the sprite off with him,--to

cut, rip, and tear in New Holland, if she liked, but not in New

England,--and rejoiced herself that she would find that little brown

skin cuddled up in her best down beds and among her lavendered sheets no

more. She had learned but two words all that time,--Willoughby, and the

name of the town.

You may conjecture what heavenly peace came in when the Asian went out,

but there is no one to tell what havoc was wrought on board ship; in

fact, if there could have been such a thing as a witch, I should believe

that imp sunk them, for a stray Levantine brig picked her--still agile

as a monkey--from a wreck off the Cape de Verdes and carried her into

Leghorn, where she took--will you mind, if I say?--leg-bail, and

escaped from durance. What happened on her wanderings I'm sure is of

no consequence, till one night she turned up outside a Fiesolan villa,

scorched with malaria fevers and shaken to pieces with tertian and

quartan and all the rest of the agues. So, after having shaken almost to

death, she decided upon getting well; all the effervescence was gone;

she chose to remain with her beads in that family, a mysterious tame

servant, faithful, jealous, indefatigable. But she never grew; at ninety

she was of the height of a yard-stick,--and nothing could have been

finer than to have a dwarf in those old palaces, you know.

In my great-grandmother's home, however, the tradition of the Asian

sprite with her string of amber gods was handed down like a legend, and,

no one knowing what had been, they framed many a wild picture of the

Thing enchanting all her spirits from their beads about her, and calling

and singing and whistling up the winds with them till storm rolled round

the ship, and fierce fog and foam and drowning fell upon her capturers.

But they all believed, that, snatched from the wreck into islands of

Eastern archipelagoes, the vindictive child and her quieted gods might

yet be found. Of course my father knew this, and when that night in the

church he saw the girl saying such devout prayers on an amber rosary,

with a demure black slave so tiny and so old behind her, it flashed

back on him, and he would have spoken, if, just then, the ray had not

revealed the great painting, so that he forgot all about it, and when at

last he turned, they were gone. But my father had come back to America,

had sat down quietly in his elder brother's house, among the hills where

I am to live, and was thought to be a sedate young man and a good match,

till a freak took him that he must go back and find that girl in Italy.

How to do it, with no clue but an amber rosary? But do it he did,

stationing himself against a pillar in that identical church and

watching the worshippers, and not having long to wait before in she

came, with little Asian behind. Papa isn't in the least romantic; he is

one of those great fertilizing temperaments, golden hair and beard, and

hazel eyes, if you will. He's a splendid old fellow! It's absurd to

delight in one's father,--so bread-and-buttery,--but I can't help it.

He's far stronger than I; none of the little weak Italian traits that

streak me, like water in thick, syrupy wine. No,--he isn't in the least

romantic, but he says he was fated to this step, and could no more have

resisted than his heart could have refused to beat. When he spoke to the

devotee, little Asian made sundry belligerent demonstrations; but he

confronted her with the two words she had learned here, Willoughby and

the town's name. The dwarf became livid, seemed always after haunted by

a dreadful fear of him, pursued him with a rancorous hate, but could not

hinder his marriage. The Willoughbys are a cruel race. Her only revenge

was to take away the amber beads, which had long before been blessed

by the Pope for her young mistress, refusing herself to accompany my

mother, and declaring that neither should her charms ever cross the

water,--that all their blessing would be changed to banning, and that

bane would burn the bearer, should the salt-sea spray again dash round

them. But when, in process of Nature, the Asian died,--having become

classic through her longevity, taking length of days for length of

stature,--then the rosary belonged to mamma's sister, who by-and-by sent

it, with a parcel of other things, to papa for me. So I should have had

it at all events, you see;--papa is such a tease I The other things were

mamma's wedding-veil, that point there, which once was her mother's, and

some pearls.

I was born upon the sea, in a calm, far out of sight of land, under

sweltering suns; so, you know, I'm a cosmopolite, and have a right to

all my fantasies. Not that they are fantasies at all; on the contrary,

they are parts of my nature, and I couldn't be what I am without them,

or have one and not have all. Some girls go picking and scraping odds

and ends of ideas together, and by the time they are thirty get quite a

bundle of whims and crotchets on their backs; but they are all at sixes

and sevens, uneven and knotty like fagots, and won't lie compactly,

don't belong to them, and anybody might surprise them out of them. But

for me, you see, mine are harmonious, in my veins; I was born with them.

Not that I was always what I am now. Oh, bless your heart! plums and

nectarines, and luscious things that ripen and develop all their

rare juices, were green once, and so was I. Awkward, tumble-about,

near-sighted, till I was twenty, a real raw-head-and-bloody-bones to all

society; then mamma, who was never well in our diving-bell atmosphere,

was ordered to the West Indies, and papa said it was what I needed, and

I went, too,--and oh, how sea-sick! Were you ever? You forget all about

who you are, and have a vague notion of being Universal Disease. I have

heard of a kind of myopy that is biliousness, and when I reached the

islands my sight was as clear as my skin; all that tropical luxuriance

snatched me to itself at once, recognized me for kith and kin; and mamma

died, and I lived. We had accidents between wind and water, enough to

have made me considerate for others, Lu said; but I don't see that I'm

any less careful not to have my bones spilt in the flood than ever

I was. Slang? No,--poetry. But if your nature had such a wild, free

tendency as mine, and then were boxed up with proprieties and civilities

from year's end to year's end, may-be you, too, would escape now and

then in a bit of slang.

We always had a little boy to play with, Lu and I, or rather

Lu,--because, though he never took any dislike to me, he was absurdly

indifferent, while he followed Lu about with a painful devotion. I

didn't care, didn't know; and as I grew up and grew awkwarder, I was the

plague of their little lives. If Lu had been my sister instead of my

orphan cousin, as mamma was perpetually holding up to me, I should have

bothered them twenty times more; but when I got larger and began to be

really distasteful to his fine artistic perception, mamma had the sense

to keep me out of his way; and he was busy at his lessons, and didn't

come so much. But Lu just fitted him then, from the time he daubed

little adoring blotches of her face on every barn-door and paling, till

when his scrap-book was full of her in all fancies and conceits, and he

was old enough to go away and study Art. Then he came home occasionally,

and always saw us; but I generally contrived, on such occasions, to do

some frightful thing that shocked every nerve he had, and he avoided me

instinctively as he would an electric torpedo; but--do you believe?--I

never had an idea of such a thing, till, when sailing from the South,

so changed, I remembered things, and felt intuitively how it must have

been. Shortly after I went away, he visited Europe. I had been at home a

year, and now we heard he had returned; so for two years he hadn't seen

me. He had written a great deal to Lu,--brotherly letters they were,--he

is so peculiar,--determining not to give her the least intimation of

what he felt, if he did feel anything, till he was able to say all. And

now he had earned for himself a certain fame, a promise of greater; his

works sold; and if he pleased, he could marry. I merely presume this

might have been his thought; he never told me. A certain fame! But

that's nothing to what he will have. How can he paint gray, faint,

half-alive things now? He must abound in color,--be rich, exhaustless:

wild sea-sketches,--sunrise,--sunset,--mountain mists rolling in turbid

crimson masses, breaking in a milky spray of vapor round lofty peaks,

and letting out lonely glimpses of a melancholy moon,--South American

splendors,--pomps of fruit and blossom,--all this affluence of his

future life must flash from his pencils now. Not that he will paint

again directly. Do you suppose it possible that I should be given

him merely for a phase of wealth and light and color, and then

taken,--taken, in some dreadful way, to teach him the necessary and

inevitable result of such extravagant luxuriance? It makes me shiver.

It was that very noon when papa brought in the amber, that he came for

the first time since his return from Europe. He hadn't met Lu before. I

ran, because I was in my morning wrapper. Don't you see it there, that

cream-colored, undyed silk, with the dear palms and ferns swimming all

over it? And all my hair was just flung into a little black net that

Lu had made me; we both had run down as we were when we heard papa. I

scampered; but he saw only Lu; and grasped her hands. Then, of course, I

stopped on the baluster to look. They didn't say anything, only seemed

to be reading up for the two years in each other's eyes; but Lu dropped

her kid box, and as he stooped to pick it up, he held it, and then took

out the ring, looked at her and smiled, and put it on his own finger.

The one she had always worn was no more a mystery. He has such little

hands! they don't seem made for anything but slender crayons and

watercolors, as if oils would weigh them down with the pigment; but

there is a nervy strength about them that could almost bend an ash.

Papa's breezy voice blew through the room next minute, welcoming him;

and then he told Lu to put up her jewels, and order luncheon, at which,

of course, the other wanted to see the jewels nearer; and I couldn't

stand that, but slipped down and walked right in, lifting my amber, and

saying, "Oh, but this is what you must look at!"

He turned, somewhat slowly, with such a lovely indifference, and let his

eyes idly drop on me. He didn't look at the amber at all; he didn't look

at me; I seemed to fill his gaze without any action from him, for

he stood quiet and passive; my voice, too, seemed to wrap him in a

dream,--only an instant; though then I had reached him.

"You've not forgotten Yone," said papa, "who went persimmon and came

apricot?"

"I've not forgotten Yone," answered he, as if half asleep. "But who is

this?"

"Who is this?" echoed papa. "Why, this is my great West Indian magnolia,

my Cleopatra in light colors, my"----

"Hush, you silly man!"

"This is she," putting his hands on my shoulders,--"Miss Giorgione

Willoughby."

By this time he had found his manners.

"Miss Giorgione Willoughby," he said, with a cool bow, "I never knew

you."

"Very well, Sir," I retorted. "Now you and my father have settled the

question, know my amber!" and lifting it again, it got caught in that

curl.

I have good right to love my hair. What was there to do, when it snarled

in deeper every minute, but for him to help me? and then, at the

friction of our hands, the beads gave out slightly their pungent smell

that breathes all through the Arabian Nights, you know; and the perfumed

curls were brushing softly over his fingers, and I a little vexed and

flushed as the blind blew back and let in the sunshine and a roistering

wind;--why, it was all a pretty scene, to be felt then and remembered

afterward. Lu, I believe, saw at that instant how it would be, and moved

away to do as papa had asked; but no thought of it came to me.

"Well, if you can't clear the tangle," I said, "you can see the beads."

But while with delight he examined their curious fretting, he yet saw

me.

I am used to admiration now, certainly; it is my food; without it I

should die of inanition; but do you suppose I care any more for those

who give it to me than a Chinese idol does for--whoever swings incense

before it? Are you devoted to your butcher and milkman? We desire only

the unpossessed or unattainable, "something afar from the sphere of

our sorrow." But, though unconsciously, I may have been piqued by this

manner of his. It was new; not a word, not a glance; I believed it

was carelessness, and resolved--merely for the sake of conquering, I

fancied, too--to change all that. By-and-by the beads dropped out of the

curl, as if they had been possessed of mischief and had held there of

themselves. He caught them.

"Here, Circe," he said.

That was the time I was so angry; for, at the second, he meant all it

comprehended. He saw, I suppose, for he added at once,--

"Or what was the name of the Witch of Atlas,

'The magic circle of whose voice and eyes

All savage natures did imparadise?'"

I wonder what made me think him mocking me. Frequently since then he has

called me by that name.

"I don't know much about geography," I said. "Besides, these didn't come

from there. Little Asian--the imp of my name, you remember--owned them."

"Ah?" with the utmost apathy; and turning to my father, "I saw the

painting that enslaved you, Sir," he said.

"Yes, yes," said papa, gleefully. "And then why didn't you make me a

copy?"

"Why?" Here he glanced round the room, as if he weren't thinking at all

of the matter in hand. "The coloring is more than one can describe,

though faded. But I don't think you would like it so much now. Moreover,

Sir, I cannot make copies."

I stepped towards them, quite forgetful of my pride. "Can't?" I

exclaimed. "Oh, how splendid! Because then no other man comes between

you and Nature; your ideal hangs before you, and special glimpses open

and shut on you, glimpses which copyists never obtain."

"I don't think you are right," he said, coldly, his hands loosely

crossed behind him, leaning on the corner of the mantel, and looking

unconcernedly out of the window.

Wasn't it provoking? I remembered myself,--and remembered, too, that I

never had made a real exertion to procure anything, and it wasn't worth

while to begin then, beside not being my forte; things must come to me.

Just then Lu reentered, and one of the servants brought a tray, and we

had lunch. Then our visitor rose to go.

"No, no," said papa. "Stay the day out with the girls. It's Mayday, and

there are to be fireworks on the other bank to-night."

"Fireworks for Mayday?"

"Yes, to be sure. Wait and see."

"It would be so pleasant!" pleaded Lu.

"And a band, I forgot to mention. I have an engagement myself, so you'll

excuse me; but the girls will do the honors, and I shall meet you at

dinner."

So it was arranged. Papa went out. I curled up on a lounge,--for Lu

wouldn't have liked to be left, if I had liked to leave her,--and soon,

when he sat down by her quite across the room, I half shut my eyes and

pretended to sleep. He began to turn over her work-basket, taking up her

thimble, snipping at the thread with her scissors: I see now he wasn't

thinking about it, and was trying to recover what he considered a proper

state of feeling, but I fancied he was very gentle and tender, though I

couldn't hear what they said, and I never took the trouble to listen in

my life. In about five minutes I was tired of this playing 'possum, and

took my observations.

What is your idea of a Louise? Mine is dark eyes, dark hair, decided

features, pale, brown pale, with a mole on the left cheek,--and that's

Louise. Nothing striking, but pure and clear, and growing always better.

For him,--he's not one of those cliff-like men against whom you are

blown as a feather, I don't fancy that kind; I can stand of myself, rule

myself. He isn't small, though; no, he's tall enough, but all his frame

is delicate, held to earth by nothing but the cords of a strong will,

--very little body, very much soul. He, too, is pale, and has dark eyes

with violet darks in them. You don't call him beautiful in the least,

but you don't know him. I call him beauty itself, and I know him

thoroughly. A stranger might have thought, when I spoke of those copals

Rose carved, that Rose was some girl. But though he has a feminine

sensibility, like Correggio or Schubert, nobody could call him womanish.

"_Les races se féminisent_." Don't you remember Matthew Roydon's

Astrophill?

"A sweet, attractive kind of grace,

A full assurance given by looks,

Continual comfort in a face."

I always think of that flame in an alabaster vase, when I see him; "one

sweet grace fed still with one sweet mind"; a countenance of another

sphere: that's Vaughan Rose. It provokes me that I can't paint him

myself, without other folk's words; but you see there's no natural image

of him in me, and so I can't throw it strongly on any canvas. As for his

manners, you've seen them;--now tell me, was there ever anything so

winning when he pleases, and always a most gracious courtesy in his

air, even when saying an insufferably uncivil thing? He has an art, a

science, of putting the unpleasant out of his sight, ignoring or looking

over it, which sometimes gives him an absent way; and that is because he

so delights in beauty; he seems to have woven a mist over his face then,

and to be shut in on his own inner loveliness; and many a woman thinks

he is perfectly devoted, when, very like, he is swinging over some

lonely Spanish sierra beneath the stars, or buried in noonday Brazilian

forests, half stifled with the fancied breath of every gorgeous blossom

of the zone. Till this time, it had been the perfection of form rather

than tint that had enthralled him; he had come home with severe ideas,

too severe; he needed me, you see.

But while looking at him and Lu, on that day, I didn't perceive half of

this, only felt annoyed at their behavior, and let them feel that I

was noticing them. There's nothing worse than that; it is a very

upas-breath, it puts on the brakes, and of course a chill and a

restraint overcame them till Mr. Dudley was announced.

"Dear! dear!" I exclaimed, getting upon my feet. "What ever shall we do,

Lu? I'm not dressed for him." And while I stood, Mr. Dudley came in.

Mr. Dudley didn't seem to mind whether I was dressed in cobweb or

sheet-iron; for he directed his looks and conversation so much to Lu,

that Rose came and sat on a stool before me and began to talk.

"Miss Willoughby"--

"Yone, please."

"But you are not Yone."

"Well, just as you choose. You were going to say?"

"Merely to ask how you liked the Islands."

"Oh, well enough."

"No more?" he said. "They wouldn't have broken your spell so, if that

had been all. Do you know I actually believe in enchantments now?"

I was indignant, but amused in spite of myself.

"Well," he continued, "why don't you say it? How impertinent am I? You

won't? Why don't you laugh, then?"

"Dear me!" I replied. "You are so much on the

'subtle-souled-psychologist' line, that there's no need of my speaking

at all."

"I can carry on all the dialogue? Then let _me_ say how you liked the

Islands."

"I shall do no such thing. I liked the West Indies because there is life

there; because the air is a firmament of balm, and you grow in it like

a flower in the sun; because the fierce heat and panting winds wake and

kindle all latent color, and fertilize every germ of delight that might

sleep here forever. That's why I liked them; and you knew it just as

well before as now."

"Yes; but I wanted to see if you knew it. So you think there is life

there in that dead Atlantis."

"Life of the elements, rain, hail, fire, and snow."

"Snow thrice bolted by the northern blast, I fancy, by which time it

becomes rather misty. Exaggerated snow."

"Everything there is an exaggeration. Coming here from England is like

stepping out of a fog into an almost exhausted receiver; but you've no

idea what light is, till you've been in those inland hills. You think a

blue sky the perfection of bliss? When you see a white sky, a dome of

colorless crystal, with purple swells of mountain heaving round you, and

a wilderness of golden greens royally languid below, while stretches of

a scarlet blaze, enough to ruin a weak constitution, flaunt from the

rank vines that lace every thicket, and the whole world, and you with

it, seems breaking into blossom,--why, then you know what light is and

can do. The very wind there by day is bright, now faint, now stinging,

and makes a low, wiry music through the loose sprays, as if they were

tense harp-strings. Nothing startles; all is like a grand composition

utterly wrought out. What a blessing it is that the blacks have been

imported there,--their swarthiness is in such consonance!"

"No; the native race was in better consonance. You are so enthusiastic,

it is pity you ever came away."

"Not at all. I didn't know anything about it till I came back."

"But a mere animal or vegetable life is not much. What was ever done in

the tropics?"

"Almost all the world's history,--wasn't it?"

"No, indeed; only the first, most trifling, and barbarian movements."

"At all events, you are full of blessedness in those climates, and that

is the end and aim of all action; and if Nature will do it for you,

there is no need of your interference. It is much better to be than

to do;--one is a strife, the other is possession."

"You mean being as the complete attainment? There is only one Being,

then. All the rest of us are"----

"Oh, dear me! that sounds like metaphysics! Don't!"

"So you see, you are not full of blessedness there."

"You ought to have been born in Abelard's time,--you've such a

disputatious spirit. That's I don't know how many times you have

contradicted me to-day."

"Pardon."

"I wonder if you are so easy with all women."

"I don't know many."

"I shall watch to see if you contradict Lu this way."

"I don't need. How absorbed she is! Mr. Dudley is 'interesting'?"

"I don't know. No. But then, Lu is a good girl, and he's her

minister,--a Delphic oracle. She thinks the sun and moon set somewhere

round Mr. Dudley. Oh! I mean to show him my amber."

And I tossed it into Lu's lap, saying,--

"Show it to Mr. Dudley, Lu,--and ask him if it isn't divine!"

Of course, he was shocked, and wouldn't go into ecstasies at all;

tripped on the adjective.

"There are gods enough in it to be divine," said Rose, taking it from

Lu's hand and bringing it back to me. "All those very Gnostic deities

who assisted at Creation. You are not afraid that the imprisoned things

work their spells upon you? The oracle declares it suits your cousin

best," he added, in a lower tone.

"All the oaf knows!" I responded. "I wish you'd admire it, Mr. Dudley.

Mr. Rose don't like amber,--handles it like nettles."

"No," said Rose, "I don't like amber."

"He prefers aqua-marina," I continued. "Lu, produce yours!" For she had

not heard him.

"Yes," said Mr. Dudley, rubbing his finger over his lip while he gazed,

"every one must prefer aqua-marina."

"Nonsense! It's no better than glass. I'd as soon wear a set of

window-panes. There's no expression in it. It isn't alive, like real

gems."

Mr. Dudley stared. Rose laughed.

"What a vindication of amber!" he said.

He was standing now, leaning against the mantel, just as he was before

lunch. Lu looked at him and smiled.

"Yone is exultant, because we both wanted the beads," she said. "I like

amber as much as she."

"Nothing near so much, Lu!"

"Why didn't you have them, then?" asked Rose, quickly.

"Oh, they belonged to Yone; and uncle gave me these, which I like

better. Amber is warm, and smells of the earth; but this is cool and

dewy, and"----

"Smells of heaven?" asked I, significantly.

Mr. Dudley began to fidget, for he saw no chance of finishing his

exposition.

"As I was saying, Miss Louisa," he began, in a different key.

I took my beads and wound them round my wrist. "You haven't as much eye

for color as a poppy-bee," I exclaimed, in a corresponding key, and

looking up at Rose.

"Unjust. I was thinking then how entirely they suited you."

"Thank you. Vastly complimentary from one who 'don't like amber'!"

"Nevertheless, you think so."

"Yes and no. Why don't you like it?"

"You mustn't ask me for my reasons. It is not merely disagreeable, but

hateful."

"And you've been beside me, like a Christian, all this time, and I had

it!"

"The perfume is acrid; I associate it with the lower jaw of St. Basil

the Great, styled a present of immense value, you remember,--being hard,

heavy, shining like gold, the teeth yet in it, and with a smell more

delightful than amber,"--making a mock shudder at the word.

"Oh, it is prejudice, then."

"Not in the least. It is antipathy. Besides, the thing is unnatural;

there is no existent cause for it. A bit that turns up on certain

sands,--here at home, for aught I know, as often as anywhere."

"Which means Nazareth. We must teach you, Sir, that there are some

things at home as rare as those abroad."

"I am taught," he said, very low, and without looking up.

"Just tell me, what is amber?"

"Fossil gum."

"Can you say those words and not like it? Don't it bring to you a

magnificent picture of the pristine world,--great seas and other

skies,--a world of accentuated crises, that sloughed off age after age,

and rose fresher from each plunge? Don't you see, or long to see, that

mysterious magic tree out of whose pores oozed this fine solidified

sunshine? What leaf did it have? what blossom? what great wind shivered

its branches? Was it a giant on a lonely coast, or thick low growth

blistered in ravines and dells? That's the witchery of amber,--that it

_has_ no cause,--that all the world grew to produce it,--may-be died

and gave no other sign,--that its tree, which must have been beautiful,

dropped all its fruits; and how bursting with juice must they have

been"----

"Unfortunately, coniferous."

"Be quiet. Stripped itself of all its lush luxuriance, and left for a

vestige only this little fester of its gashes."

"No, again," he once more interrupted. "I have seen remnants of the wood

and bark in a museum."

"Or has it hidden and compressed all its secret here?" I continued,

obliviously. "What if in some piece of amber an accidental seed were

sealed, we found, and planted, and brought back the lost aeons? What a

glorious world that must have been, where even the gum was so precious!"

"In a picture, yes. Necessary for this. But, my dear Miss Willoughby,

you convince me that the Amber Witch founded your family," he said,

having listened with an amused face. "Loveliest amber that ever the

sorrowing sea-birds have wept," he hummed. "There! isn't that kind of

stuff enough to make a man detest it?"

"Yes."

"And you are quite as bad in another way."

"Oh!"

"Just because, when we hold it in our hands, we hold also that furious

epoch where rioted all monsters and poisons,--where death fecundated

and life destroyed,--where superabundance demanded such existences, no

souls, but fiercest animal fire;--just for that I hate it."

"Why, then, is it fitted for me?"

He laughed again, but replied,--"The hues harmonize,--the substances;

you both are accidents; it suits your beauty."

So, then, it seemed I had beauty, after all.

"You mean that it harmonizes with me, because I am a symbol of its

period. If there had been women then, they would have been like me,--a

great creature without a soul, a"----

"Pray, don't finish the sentence. I can imagine that there is something

rich and voluptuous and sating about amber, its color, and its lustre,

and its scent; but for others, not for me. Yea, you have beauty, after

all," turning suddenly, and withering me with his eye,--"beauty, after

all, as you didn't _say_ just now.--Mr. Willoughby is in the garden. I

must go before he comes in, or he'll make me stay. There are some to

whom you can't say, No."

He stopped a minute, and now, without looking,--indeed, he looked

everywhere but at me, while we talked,--made a bow as if just seating

me from a waltz, and, with his eyes and his smile on Louise all the way

down the room, went out. Did you ever know such insolence?

[To be continued.]

SONG OF NATURE.

Mine are the night and morning,

The pits of air, the gulf of space,

The sportive sun, the gibbous moon,

The innumerable days.

I hide in the blinding glory,

I lurk in the pealing song,

I rest on the pitch of the torrent,

In death, new-born and strong.

No numbers have counted my tallies,

No tribes my house can fill,

I sit by the shining Fount of life,

And pour the deluge still.

And ever by delicate powers

Gathering along the centuries

From race on race the fairest flowers,

My wreath shall nothing miss.

And many a thousand summers

My apples ripened well,

And light from meliorating stars

With firmer glory fell.

I wrote the past in characters

Of rock and fire the scroll,

The building in the coral sea,

The planting of the coal.

And thefts from satellites and rings

And broken stars I drew,

And out of spent and aged things

I formed the world anew.

What time the gods kept carnival,

Tricked out in star and flower,

And in cramp elf and saurian forms

They swathed their too much power.

Time and Thought were my surveyors,

They laid their courses well,

They boiled the sea, and baked the layers

Of granite, marl, and shell.

But him--the man-child glorious,

Where tarries he the while?

The rainbow shines his harbinger,

The sunset gleams his smile.

My boreal lights leap upward,

Forthright my planets roll,

And still the man-child is not born,

The summit of the whole.

Must time and tide forever run?

Will never my winds go sleep in the West?

Will never my wheels, which whirl the sun

And satellites, have rest?

Too much of donning and doffing,

Too slow the rainbow fades;

I weary of my robe of snow,

My leaves, and my cascades.

I tire of globes and races,

Too long the game is played;

What, without him, is summer's pomp,

Or winter's frozen shade?

I travail in pain for him,

My creatures travail and wait;

His couriers come by squadrons,

He comes not to the gate.

Twice I have moulded an image,

And thrice outstretched my hand,

Made one of day, and one of night,

And one of the salt-sea-sand.

I moulded kings and saviours,

And bards o'er kings to rule;

But fell the starry influence short,

The cup was never full.

Yet whirl the glowing wheels once more,

And mix the bowl again,

Seethe, Fate! the ancient elements,

Heat, cold, dry, wet, and peace and pain

Let war and trade and creeds and song

Blend, ripen race on race,--

The sunburnt world a man shall breed

Of all the zones and countless days.

No ray is dimmed, no atom worn,

My oldest force is good as new,

And the fresh rose on yonder thorn

Gives back the bending heavens in dew.

NEMOPHILY

An earnest plea was once entered in Maga's pages for the bodies

of saints. Yet it is to be hoped that others not included in that

respectable class may have physical needs also, and it is to be feared

that they may not be above the necessity of a little of the same

invigorating tonic. For there are not a few on this continent of ours,

whom the _Avvocata del Diavolo_ would certainly expect to enter a _nolo

contendere_, who stand in much need of a healthy animalism. That these

sinners would be benefited by what Mr. Kingsley's critics call "muscular

Christianity" cannot be denied. For they are not sinners beyond all hope

of amendment, by any means; and their offences being rather against

the laws and light of Nature than against any of the commands of the

Decalogue, it is earnestly desired that they be brought within the pale

of promise, even if they never reach the sacred fane of canonization.

Indeed, at the outset, let there be a protest entered on behalf of the

sinner against this unnecessary pity of the saint. It is a part of that

false halo with which enthusiastic admiration (reckless of gilding and

ruinously prodigal of ochre) delights to endue the favored heads of the

_beati_. The saint himself countenances the folly, and meekly inclines

his head (sideways) to the rays. It is a part of the capital of the

calling to look interesting. The revered and reverend Charles Honeyman,

in the hands of that acute manager, Mr. Sherrick, was bidden to sit in

his pew at evening service and _cough_. A qualified consumption and a

moderate bronchitis are no bad substitutes for eloquence, learning, and

that indiscreet piety which is so careless of feminine favor as to

bring into the pulpit a robust person and to the dinner-table a healthy

appetite.

But the saint, if he have a reasonable sense of his pastoral duty, gets,

_malgré lui_, a very fair share of that open-air medicine which is

supposed to be the great lack of his profession. For if he be a

clergyman in a rural parish of tolerable extent and with no great

superfluity of wealth, he will not want for either air or exercise. The

George Herbert so situated finds by no means his whole round of duty in

the study. Old Mrs. Smith, sick and bedridden, lives a couple of miles

from the parsonage; but the thoughtless creature actually expects a

weekly visit and half-hour's reading of certain old familiar English

literature, and will remind her pastor of it, if the expected day pass

without his coming. Jones and his wife, who live in just the other

direction, are wantonly apt, upon the insufficient plea of a long walk,

to be missed from their wonted pew on a stormy Sunday, and must be

looked up. Little Mary Gray has not been to Sunday-school. Cause

suspected,--insufficient shoes. Bessy Bell, up the cross-road, quite

over beyond Beman's Farms, is likewise delinquent, from the opposite

want of a bonnet. Wilson, the cross-grained vestryman, has an idea,

which never fails by Saturday night to break out into a positive rush of

conviction, that the minister is neglecting his studies and "going to

Rome," if he doesn't in the course of the week go to Wilson and carry

him the Church papers and take a look at the Wilson prize-pigs. So good

Mr. Herbert never fails, in due attestation of his "abhorrence of the

Bishop of Rome and his detestable enormities," to foot it over the rocky

hill and down across the rickety little bridge and past the poor-house

farm, (where he stops on a little private business of his own, that

perhaps makes a few old hearts and certainly one old coat-pocket the

lighter,) and so on, a good piece, through the woods, to where Vestryman

Wilson is bending over the hoe or swinging the axe, and thinking the

while what an easy life the parson has of it.

Then Mr. Herbert gets the occasional tonic of a brisk walk over the

hard-beaten snow, of a moonlight winter's night. A walk-only think of

it!--over the crisp, crunching snow, to the distant outlying hamlet of

Paton's Corner, where a few are gathered in the little school-house to

hear him preach, and to give him the happy relief of a five-mile tramp

home again.

It is really doubtful if dumb-bells, a gymnasium, and a pickerel-back

racing-wherry would meet precisely the case of Mr. Herbert, however

desirable for city saints who have plenty of spare sixpences for the

omnibuses.

But the miserable sinner,--"where," as the shepherd exclaimed, to Mr.

Weller's indignation, "is the miserable sinner?" Keeping school,

keeping books, making books, standing behind counters when busy and on

street-corners when disengaged, doing anything or everything but taking

care of his precious body, and thereby giving his precious soul the

chance of being in very bad company, and following the fate of poor

Tray, and of the well-meaning stork in Dr. Aesop's fable. What shall he,

or rather, what can he, do with his leisure? For leisure more or less

almost every young man has,--and it is of young men, and especially of

the _very_ young men, that we are benevolently writing. If he dwell

in an inland town, the boat-club is hopeless,--and boat-clubs, though

capital things for the young gentlemen of Harvard and Yale and Trinity,

have also their drawbacks. One cannot always be ready to move in

complete unison with a dozen fellow-mortals. Pendennis is never ready

when the club are desirous to row; Newcome is perpetually anxious to

tempt the wave when the wave tempts nobody else. The gymnasium gets to

be a wearisome round of very mill-horse-like work, after the varieties

of possible dislocation of all one's bones have been exhausted. Climbing

ropes and poles with nothing but cobwebs at the top, and leaping horses

with only tan at the bottom, grow monotonous after six months' steady

dissipation thereat. Base-ball clubs do not always find desirable

commons, and the municipal fathers of the towns have a prejudice against

them in the streets. What shall youth, conscious of muscle and eager for

fresh air, do? Even the gloves are not fancy-free, but are very apt to

bring with them the slang of the ring and the beastly associations

of professional pugilism. Youth looks up to its teachers; but if its

teachers in the manly art be the Game-Chicken, the Pet, the Slasher,

youth, in learning to respect the brute strength of such men, will

hardly learn to respect itself.

But--and here lies the purport of this article--there is hardly a town

or village of New England which has not within a quarter of a mile of

its suburbs a patch of woodland or a strip of sandy beach. What is to

hinder the sinner, if he repent him of the foul air and cramped posture

of which he has been the victim, from a little pedestrianism? Do

American men and boys ever walk? Drive, it is known they do; they can

always get time for that. But to walk, certainly to scramble and to

climb, must be added by Mr. Phillips, in the new editions of his

exquisite and inexhaustible Lecture, to the catalogue of the "Lost

Arts."

Yet Nature never grows outworn,--is unwearied in the bounty which she

bestows on the seeker. I said a strip of sandy beach, just now. For that

I beg leave to refer the reader to Mr. Kingsley's fascinating "Glaucus,"

and to the delightful papers which appeared in "Blackwood" a year or two

ago. My business is with the woods and fields. Certainly some who read

my pages will have leisure to climb a stone wall now and then, and for

them the following sketches of New England wood-walks may serve to show

how much enjoyment may be got with but little outlay of appliances. Of

course the most tempting thing to seek is sport. But the gun and the

fishing-rod are useless in many towns, from the disappearance of all

worthy objects for their exercise. The birds are wild and shy; the trout

have been _coculus-indicused_ out of the mountain-brooks to supply

metropolitan hotel-tables and Delmonican larders. Let us go after more

attainable things. And first, being a true nemophilist, I protest

against botany. A flower worth a five-mile walk and a wet foot is worthy

of something better than dissection with the Linnaean classification,

afterward adding insult to injury. The botanist is not a discoverer; he

is only a pedant. He finds out nothing about the plant; he serves it

as we might fancy a monster doing, who should take this number of the

"Atlantic" and sit down, not to read it, not to inhale the delicate

fragrance of its thought, but to count its articles, examine their

titles, and, having compared them with the newspaper advertisement,

sweep the whole contentedly into the dust-heap. To study the plant, to

see how it gets its living, why it will grow on one side of a brook in

profusion, and yet refuse to seek the other bank, is not his care. It

is simply to see whether he can abuse its honest English or New-English

simplicity by calling it by one set or another of barbarous Latin and

Greek titles. Pray, my good Sir, does a man go to see the elephant only

to call him a pachydermatous quadruped?

But we are wasting time and shall never get into the woods. In the

winter wild you will hardly get far into them, except at the Christmas

season for greenery. Gathering this by deputy is poor business. It is

all very well, if you can do no better, to engage Mr. Brown to engage

some one else to bring in the needed spruce, fir, and hemlock with which

to obscure the fresco deformities of St. Boniface's; but it is far

better to hunt for them yourself. There is something intensely

delightful in the changes of the search; for it begins dull enough. You

start in the drear December weather, with a gray sky and leaden clouds

softly shaded in regular billows, like an India-ink ocean, overhead,

and a somewhat muddy lane before you. Then to pick one's way across the

plashy meadows, and, after a ticklish pass of jumping from one reedy

tussock to another, to get once more upon the firm soil, while the

grass, dry and crisp under your feet, gives a pleasant _whish, whish_,

as it does the duty of street-door-mat to your mud-beclogged sandals.

Now for the stone wall. On the other side are thick set the thorny

stalks of last summer's "high-bush" blackberries. A plunge and a

scramble take you through in comparative safety; and stopping only to

disengage your skirts from a too-fond bramble, you are in the woodland.

Thick-strewn the dead leaves lie under foot. What music there is in the

rustling murmur with which they greet your invading step! On, deeper and

deeper into the wood,--now dodging under the green and snaky cat-briers,

with their retractile thorns and vicious clinging grasp,--now dashing

along the woodman's paths,--now struggling among the opposing

underwood. At last a little sprig of feathery green catches the eye.

It is a tuft of moss. No,--it is the running ground-pine; and clearing

away, with both eager hands, leaves, sticks, moss, and all the fallen

_exuciae_ of the summertime, you tear up long wreaths of that most

graceful of evergreens. Then, in another quarter of the woodland, where

the underbrush has been killed by the denser shade, there rise the

exquisite fan-shaped plumes of the feather-pine, of deepest green, or

brown-golden with the pencil of the frost;--for cross or star or thick

festoon, there is nothing so beautiful. And again you are attracted

into the thickets of laurel, and wage fierce war upon the sturdy and

tenacious, yet brittle branches, till you are transformed into a walking

jack-o'-the-green. The holly of the English Christmas, all-besprent with

crimson drops, is hard to be found in New England, and you will have to

thread the courses of the brooks to seek the swamp-loving black alder,

which will furnish as brilliant a berry, but without the beautiful

thorny leaf. Only in one patch of woodland do I know of the holly. In

the southeastern corner of Massachusetts,--if you will take the trouble

to follow up a railroad-track for a couple of miles and then plunge

into the pine woods, you will come upon a few lonely, stunted scraps of

it. The warmer airs which the Gulf Stream sends upon that coast have,

it is said, something to do therewith. Of course, if I am wrong, the

botanists will take vengeance upon me; but I can only say what has been

said to me. We nemophilists are apt to be careless of solemn science and

go upon all sorts of uncertain tradition.

But "Christmas comes but once a year." After chancel and nave have been

duly adorned, and again disrobed against the coming sobrieties of Lent,

there are other temptations to the woods. Before the snow has wholly

vanished from the shelter of the wood-lots, the warm, hazy, wooing days

of April come upon us. On such a day,--how well in this snow-season I

remember it!--I have been lured out by the hope of the Mayflower, the

delicate _epigae repens_, miscalled the trailing arbutus. Up the rocky

hill-side, from whose top you catch glimpses of the far-off sparkling

sea, with a blue haze of island ranges belting it,--up among the rocks,

into warm, sheltered, sunny nooks, you go upon your quest. For the

Mayflower, though found in almost every township in New England, has

secret and unaccountable whims of its own,--will persist in blooming

in just one spot, where you ought not to expect it, and in avoiding all

likely places. Yet when you come to its traditionary habitat, it is not

there. Round and round we pace, hoping and despairing, till a faint,

most delicate odor, indescribably suggestive of woodland freshness,

catches the roused sense; or else one silvery star peeps out from under

an upturned birch-leaf. Then down on hands and knees; tear up brush to

right and left, the brown skeletons of the withered foliage. The ground

is white with stars. Some are touched with delicate pink, some creamy

white,--but all breathing out the evanescent secret of the early spring.

Such the children of Plymouth used to hang in garlands about the Pilgrim

stone, in honor of the never-to-be-forgotten name of the New England

Argo.

Later in the year come the beautiful blue violets, which are, I am sorry

to say, scentless. Yet their little white cousin, which delights in all

swampy places, is sometimes, in the first days of its appearing, more

regardful of the prime duty of all flowers. I have gathered tufts of

them which (botanists to the contrary notwithstanding) were wellnigh as

odorous as if reared in the sunniest Warwickshire lane; but, as with a

perfect specimen of the cast skin of a snake, such a boon is to be hoped

for only once in a lifetime. With the violets, the beautiful blush-bells

of the anemone come garlanded with their graceful leaves, plentifully

enough. But did the rambler ever find the sensitive fern, which resented

the intrusive hand with all Mimosa's coyness? I never did but once. I

have wooed many a delicate frond of all varieties of fern since, but

never one so conscious. Now, too, ere the trees come into leaf, is the

time to seek the boxwood, called, I hope improperly, by the ominous name

of the Southern dogwood. It is worth an afternoon's ramble to come upon

one of those trees, standing in an open glade of the forest, a pyramid

of white or cream-colored blossoms. Before a leaf is on the tree, it

clothes itself in this lovely livery, and at a little distance seems

like a snowy cloud rather than a shrub.

But with June comes the most exquisite of our New England wild-flowers,

the arethusa, or swamp-pink, as it is often styled, to the great

confusion of its delicate, high-born nature with the great, vulgar,

flaunting azalea. When June comes,--when the clethra is heaped with its

bee-beloved blossoms, and the grass is green and bright as never again

in the year, then the arethusa is to be sought. A most unaccountable

flower, of all shades, from pale pink to a deep purple, with a lovely

shape that I can liken to nothing so nearly as the _fleur-de-lis_ on

French escutcheons, it has a delicate, yet powerful, aromatic scent, as

if it were an estray from the tropics. One specimen, snowy white, I have

seen, and can tell you where to find another. You are to go out along

the President's highway, due northward from a certain seaport of

Massachusetts. Take the eastward turn at the little village which lies

at the head of its harbor, and so north again by the old Friends'

meeting-house, which looks in brown placidity away toward the distant

shipping and the wicked steeple-houses, into the which so many of its

lost lambs have been inveigled. Then be not tempted to strike off down

yonder lane, to see the curious old farm-house, relic of Colony times,

with its odd stone chimney, its projecting upper story and carved wooden

pendants, and its shingles all pierced into decorative hearts and

rounds. Its likeness is not in Barber's book,--no, nor its visible form,

I believe, (it is many a year since I went that way,) on earth. It

became a constellation long ago,--being translated to the stars. Keep on

with good heart along the highway ridge, whence you can look down on the

solemn, close-set, pine forest, which hides from you the windings of the

river, and the beautiful lakelet, where the water-lilies float in

the summer. Go on down the valley, past the old tavern,--relic

of stage-coaching days, the square, three-story, deserted-looking

tavern,--up again a couple of miles or so, till the river has dwindled

to a brook and then to a marsh. Here is the place of our seeking. For

under the shade of one of those huge granite rocks over which the thin

soil of ---- County is sprinkled, and which here and there have shaken

off the superincumbent dust in indignation at the presumption of man in

attempting to farm them,--under that rock--of course I shall not tell

you which--you will find the White Arethusa, if you are born under a

lucky star.

A little later, the crimson lady-slipper loves to spring up in pine

clearings, around the base of the wood-piles which the cutters have

stacked in the winter to season. To one born by the salt water there is

an especial forest delight in the pine woods. For that best-loved sound

of the ceaseless fall of plunging seas upon the beach comes to him

there. Many a time I have walked from Harvard's leafy shades and

cheerful halls out to the quiet of the Botanic Garden for the sake of

hearing the wind in the pine tree-tops. Shut your eyes, and the inward

vision sees once more the long line of sandy and shingly beaches, the

green curving-up of the surges tipped with dazzling foam,--sees the

motionless and blackened timbers of the wreck on the shore, the white

wings dipping and turning along the combing tops of the waves racing in

upon the sands,--sees the dry tufted beach-grass, and the wet, shining,

compact slope down which slides swiftly the under-tow. And what a

healthful exhilaration it is to breathe the balm-laden breath of the

pine forest, and to tread the elastic slippery-soft carpet of the fallen

spiny leaves! Here is the haunt of the lady-slipper, (_cypripedium_,)

a shy, rare flower, like a little sack delicately veined, with a faint

musky scent, and large-flapped leaves shading its flower.

In the hot July and August, the scarlet lobelia, the cardinal-flower, is

to be found. Never was cardinal so robed. If Herbert's rose, in poetic

hyperbole, with its "hue angry and brave, bids the rash gazer wipe his

eye," certainly such a bed of lobelia as I once saw on the road to

"Rollo's Camp" was anything but what the Scotch would call "a sight for

sair een." For the space of a dozen or twenty yards grew a patch of

absolutely nothing but lobelia. At a little distance it was like a

scarlet carpet flung out by the roadside. If you desire to twine the

threefold chord of color, as Mr. Ruskin calls it, I know of no lovelier

foil for the lobelia than the white orchis, which haunts the same marshy

spots. Those long spikes of feathery and balanced blossoms are the most

absolute white of anything in Nature. They positively insist upon the

very refinement of purity, as you look at them.

Did you ever see a pond-lily?--not the miserable draggled

green-and-mud-colored buds which enterprising boys bring into the cars

for sale; but the white water-lily, floating on the silent brooks, or

far out in the safe depths of the mill-ponds. The "Autocrat" knows what

pond-lilies are, having visited Prospero's Isle and seen the pink-tinged

sisterhood of a certain mere that lies embosomed in its hills. But to

know them, you must hunt for them,--tramp off to the distant stream, and

then, not stand on the bank and wish and sigh, but off hose and shoon,

and, careless of water-snake and snapping-turtle, wade in up to their

virgin bower, and bear off the dripping, fragrant prize. None but the

brave deserve--lady or lily.

But if the stream be too deep and wide, and the lilies are anchored far

out among their broad pads,--a floral Venice, with the blue spikes and

arrowy leaves of the pickerel-weed for campaniles and towers,--there

are yet "lilies of the field" over which you may profitably meditate,

remembering that Solomon Ben-David was not so arrayed. Two kinds there

are,--one like the tiger-lily of the gardens, the petals curled back

and showing the whole leopard-spotted corolla,--the other bell-shaped,

rarer, and growing one only on a stalk. Both are to be found in open

spaces, bush-grown fields, and airy, sunny spots. It is worth a hot and

dusty June walk to get into one of those nooks. You can spend days and

not exhaust the study which one little triangular bit of overgrown

pasture affords,--spend them, not as a naturalist in close, patient

study, because to such a one a square yard of moss is as exhaustless as

the forests of Guiana to a Waterton, but as a nemophilist, taking simple

delight in mere observation and individual discovery.

"Many haps fall in the field

Seldom seen by watchful eyes."

And so all sorts of curious ways are discoverable by the mere

wood-lounger. At one time your way is barred by the great portcullis of

the strong threaded web of the field spider, who sits like a porter in

king's livery of black and gold at his gate. Then you have a peep into

the winding maelström-funnel of another of the spider family. Poe must

have suffered metempsychosis into the body of a blue-bottle, when he

wrote his "Descent into the Maelström"; for such an insect, hanging

midway down that treacherous, sticky descent, and seeing Death creeping

up from the bottom to grasp him, might have a clear idea of what was

undergone by the fisherman of Lofoden.

Or, if one tire of the open meadows, and the sun be too hot, think of

the laurel groves,--not now, as in the Christmas-time, white with snow,

but white again with thousands on thousands of argent cups, loaded with

blossoms, meeting over your head in arches of flowery tracery, and one

solitary tree standing deep in the woods, like a frigate packed with her

silver canvas lying out to windward of the fleet of merchantmen she is

convoying. The cool laurel groves! Often as one sees that sight, it is

always with a fresh shock of pleasure to the frame.

Then, when autumn comes and the leaves change, there is still endless

variety for the little basket or botanical-case which swings lightly on

your arm or hangs across your shoulder. Owen Jones never devised any

ornaments for wall or niche one half so brilliant as the color of those

leaves which a dexterous hand will readily group upon a sheet of white

paper, where your eye may catch it, as, after achieving a successful

sentence, you look up from your study-table. Speaking of leaves, who

knows how large an oak-loaf will grow in this New England? I have just

sat down after measuring one gathered in a bit of copse hard by the town

of M----, a bit of copse which skirts a beautiful wild ravine, with a

superb hemlock and pine grove creeping down its steep bank. I have just

honestly measured my leaf, and it shows _fourteen_ inches in length by a

trifle of _nine and a half_ in breadth.

In the same ravine I found--and in any patch of woodland you may do the

like--a perfect treasury of mosses. A shallow tin box or a wooden bowl

filled with these and duly watered will give a winter-garden to

the smallest lodging. Sun and light are, as Mr. Toots says, of "no

consequence" to the moss family. But if one be above such trifles as

mosses, and with Young American loftiness aspire to full-grown trees,

there is still plenty to do in the most ordinary woodlands. After a

chapter of Mr. Ruskin upon Claude and Poussin and Turner, there is

nothing like going to the original documents. In default of the National

Gallery from London and the Pitti Palace from the other side of Arno,

which cannot be summoned into court at a moment's notice, we can solve

at least half the problem. Mr. Ruskin may or may not be right about the

Claudes; but it is very easy to see if he be right as to the trees. And

if we prove him right with his theory of branches and bark, we have a

fair presumption that he has eyes to see the alleged falsehoods in him

of Lorraine. Now here is a chance to do a little bit of Art-criticism

quite unexpensively. Discontented young gentlemen murmur about the

education of this people being too practical, unaesthetic, and all that,

and sigh for the culture which a foreign land only can give. But a man

who has no eye for Nature will hardly learn to love her at second-hand

through the mediation of canvas and colors. I should like very much to

be able to walk into a Turner Gallery once a week; but, for all that, I

would not give up a Connecticut Valley sunset, such as last summer could

be had for the looking at. Not Turner, even, could paint those level

shadows, all interfused with trembling light, that filled the hollows

of the hills across the river, and brought out their wavy contour, and

showed the depth and distance of the valley opening miles away. Could he

throw athwart the dark mirror of the sleeping water in the gorge, which

led the imprisoned river stealthily to the sea, the gliding snows of the

sails rosy-white that stole swan-like from behind the bluffs? Could he

bring down the rainbow till its hither abutment rested on the centre of

the stream in a transparent mist of driving rain, while its keystone was

lost in the stooping cloud above? Art is good, as well as long; but time

is also fleeting, and, not being millionnaires, with the luxury of a run

across the Atlantic at command, let us make what we can out of what we

have. It is very probable that architecture, too, is a sore subject to

aspiring Young America, who turns discontentedly from the stucco and

pine-plank tracery of the new cathedral of St. Aërian. But let Young

America go out to the meadows, and discover for himself a group of

young elms. There is one I know of, not unattainable by very moderate

pedestrianism from the same seaport before alluded to, where a most

exquisite arrangement of arches and tracery can be seen. Six or eight

elms, their long bending boughs clothed with thick, clinging leafage,

mingle their tops, forming a sort of vaulted roof, such as at the

intersection of nave and transepts occurs in every Gothic church which

has no central tower. More exquisite curves, better studies for a

healthy-minded and original architect, could hardly be found. The

interlacing branches are suggestive of tracery-patterns, not to be

outdone even in the flamboyant windows of York and Rouen. There is no

excuse for the squat, ugly, and stupid arches one sees in almost every

attempt at pointed architecture, when the elm-tree springs by every

riverside in the land.

But it is time to conclude our desultory rambles. It would be pleasant

to me to recall many another of my old haunts, spots which, perhaps,

were never called beautiful before now, and may not be again for many a

day. For they all lie in a very tame and prosaic country, nearly level,

the utmost elevation getting hardly a couple of hundred feet above

tidewater mark; a country with less natural beauty than belongs to most

New England towns,--bare, bleak, rocky, with stunted vegetation and

ungenial soil. Yet within its limits there are brooks and marshes and

copses and woodlands,--rocks over which the wild columbine hangs its

fuchsia-like pendants, and dells where nestle the earliest and sweetest

of the wood-flowerets.

And now to come back to the miserable sinner. As schoolboy, as

bank-clerk, as teacher, as worker in many ways, he has unemployed

leisure in the hours of daylight,--not so many as he should have,

perhaps, but still many hours in the course of the month. Shall he go to

the livery-stable, the bowling-alley, or the billiard-saloon? Not being

a saint, of course he can plead no high-toned sense of need of physical

culture, to warrant these indulgences. He goes because he likes it, gets

enjoyment, exercise, rest for a mind tasked to the full with the day's

work. This he ought to have; and if butting little ivory balls about or

propelling big wooden ones will give it him, let him have it, if so be

that it cannot be got otherwise. There is no contamination in the cue or

the ten-pin; but there is in the habits and associations of the places

where they are found. Let us not be maw-wormish about it, but tell the

truth as it is. The quasi-gambling principle upon which all such places

are conducted stimulates the love of hazard and makes way for the

betting propensity to become full-blown. Of course, one can bet, if one

have money; two lumps of sugar and a few flies will enable a man to lose

the fortune of the Rothschilds, if he will. That is not the question.

The billiard-saloons do educate men for the gambling-house, simply

because they cannot go to them without either losing their money or

winning their games. Beside that, the gaseous, dusty, confined, and

tobacco-scented air of those places is not to be compared with our free,

open, out-doors hills and meadows, for any hygienic purposes.

But, argument apart, there is a sad New England story, so often repeated

as to be almost wearisome, were it not so sad. It is of the fresh,

frank, honest-hearted boy, who may be seen behind many a bank-counter.

At first, so active, trustworthy, and trusted,--yet with the constant

temptation of unemployed time and energies demanding supply of action.

Little by little these are supplied,--supplied by the billiard-table

and its concomitants. It is the same story,--first, rumors, then

equivocation, then exposure. Perhaps a petty sum is all; but, to the

austere justice of banking, this is as bad, nay, worse than millions.

And then a brief paragraph in the newspaper, and one more ruined young

man, sulking beside the family-hearthstone, his father's shame, his

mother's unextinguishable sorrow,--a candidate for crime, if he have

power of mind and spirit to feel, or an imbecile dependant, if he have

not.

Now preaching, whether lay or clerical, will not do much to prevent

this, especially if it be pitched (as it commonly is) upon too high a

key. _Preventing_ means, or used to mean, when words had a meaning,

_getting beforehand with anything._ And if young Homespun have from the

outset something he likes better, he will not take to the ivory balls in

pleasant weather, and in rainy weather will be apt to prefer even quite

a stupid book to the board of green cloth. Therefore, boys, go,--and

girls, too, for that matter,--on flower and moss hunts!--and ye, dear

middle-aged people, send them, and go also upon the same! Find something

that will tempt you into the woods,--something neither berries nor

sassafras,--something which cannot be eaten or sold, but which will

simply give you a sense and a love of beauty. These pages have been

written to show that it lies at your very doors,--that nothing but stout

boots, an old coat or jacket, and an observant eye, is needed. When you

come to be saints, or even to be men, there will be plenty of active

work to do, if so be that you will only do it. Then, in careful regard

to your bodies, you may have hard-trotting (not fast-trotting) horses,

pickerel-backed boats, and a billiard-room over the stable,--if your

canonization seem to require it. But the saint, if he be true saint,

needs no such care. He will get work enough, hard, physical work, if

only in trotting up and down the steep stairs of tenant-houses, to keep

his digestion in tolerable order. It is only your pseudo-saint,

who cuddles himself for the pulpit and the platform, and keeps the

safety-valve down with midnight sittings while "rosining up" the

furnaces with strong coffee, that will come to grief by collapse of

flues. If a man, whether sinner or saint, will run races for the honor

of being the fastest boat in the river of popular favor, he must take

the consequences.

But for the poor, benighted, heathen sinner, desiring enjoyment that

shall be honest, cheap, satisfying, and attainable, I say, in the full

faith of the creed of Nemophily,--Get into the woods! No matter what

you expect to find there,--go and see what you can find. Don't walk for

"constitutionals," without an object at the end or on the way. Keep your

feet well shod and your eyes open. Bring home all the flowers and pretty

wood-growths you can, and you may find that you have been entertaining

angels unawares. Find out about them all you can yourself, and then (in

spite of a previous tirade against botany, be it said) go to BIGELOW'S

"PLANTS OF BOSTON" and learn more.

SUBSTANCE AND SHADOW.

A fatiguing journey up six long, winding flights of smoothly-waxed

stairs carried me to the door of the room I occupied in the Place ----.

But no matter for the name of the Place; no one, I am confident, will

visit Paris for the express purpose of satisfying himself that I am to

be depended upon, and that there is a house of so many stones in the

Place Maubert. Here I lived, _au premier au dessous du soleil_, in the

enjoyment of no end of fresh air, especially in winter, and a brilliant

prospect up and down the street and over the roofs of the houses across

the way, which reached from the Pantheon on the one side, to the peaked

roofs and factory-like chimneys of the Tuileries on the other, the dome

of the Hôtel des Invalides occupying the centre of the picture. I was

studying painting at that time,--learning to paint the much-admired

landscapes and figure-pieces which I produce with so much ease now and

dispose of with so little,--and, as a general thing, was busy, (though I

had my fits of abstraction, like other men of genius, during which I did

nothing but lie on my bed and smoke pipes over French novels, or join

parties of pleasure into the country or within the barriers,) through

the day, and often till late in the evening, in the atelier of one or

another of the most renowned artists of the city.

At the head of the last flight of stairs in this house was a narrow

passage-way in which I was always obliged to stop and recover my breath,

after finishing the one hundred and thirty-nine steps that led to

my paradise, before I could get my key into its lock; and into this

passage-way opened two doors, one of which, of course, belonged to my

room, and the other to some one's else. But who this some one else was I

was unable to find out. Was _it_--and how convenient a word is _ça_ in

such a case!--male or female? I was persuaded it must be a woman, and as

a woman I always used to think of her and speak of her, to myself,--and

I thought and spoke of her often enough. Of course, I could have settled

the question at once by knocking at her door and asking for a match, but

I scorned resorting to such weak subterfuges. But how quiet she was!

Occasionally, when, contrary to my usual custom, I took another nap

after waking in the morning, instead of going out for exercise and a

glimpse of early Paris street-life,--occasionally I used to hear her

moving about on the other side of the thin partition which separated

our rooms, as stealthily as though she feared she might disturb me. She

would light her charcoal-stove, and perhaps glide softly by my door and

down stairs, to return soon with the paper of coffee, the, bit of bread,

and the egg or two which were to serve her for breakfast, and now and

then she would sing to herself, but so gently that I never could hear

the words of her song, nor scarcely the air. An evil spirit put gimlets

into my head, but I shook them out like so much powder, and resolved to

be honorable, if I was an artist. I found, however, that my curiosity

was an abominable nuisance, that my morning walks were almost entirely

neglected, and that I could not bear to leave my room until I had heard

her go out and lock her door behind her. Every day, after her departure,

I resolved that she should not go out again without being seen by me,

and every time I attempted to follow her in such a way as to escape

detection I lost sight of her. I nearly fell into the street as I

attempted to reach far enough out of my window to see her as she came

out at the street-door.

At last, one morning, when it happened, that, just as I had finished

dressing myself and was ready to go out, she opened her door and ran

down stairs without closing it behind her, carried away by my curiosity,

I stepped out into the narrow passage-way and looked into her sanctuary.

The room was a smaller one than mine,--but how much neater! The muslin

curtains in her window were as white as snow; her wardrobe, which hung

against the wall, was protected from the dust by a linen cloth; the

floor shone like a mirror. Her canary hung in the window, and greeted me

with a perfect whirlwind of _roulades_ as I stepped into the room. Her

fire was burning briskly under a pot of water, which was just coming

to the boiling-point, and singing as gayly and almost as loudly as her

bird. Over the back of a chair was thrown the work she had been busied

with; and on the bed, almost hid by the curtains, was a pair of the

prettiest little blue garters I ever saw, even in Paris,--span-new they

were, and had evidently been bought no longer ago than the evening

before,--and some other articles of feminine apparel, which I will not

attempt to describe. I looked into her glass, I really believe, with the

hope of finding there a faint reflection of her face and figure. She

must have looked into it but a minute before going out. A book, like

a Testament, lay on the table. I knew I should find her name on the

fly-leaf, and was just on the point of satisfying myself with regard to

that particular when I heard her feet upon the stairs; and, with a start

which nearly carried away the curtains of her bed, I rushed from her

room into my own.

How my heart beat, after I had gently closed my door and was sitting

on the side of my bed, listening to the movements in the next room! It

didn't seem to me as though I had been guilty of a high misdemeanor,

and yet, though I had been prepared for her return, I was as much

discomposed as though I had been caught peeping.

So far from being satisfied with this resolution of my doubts with

regard to the sex of my neighbor, I now found myself more uneasy and

curious than before. Was she young and pretty and good? and what did she

do? and what was her name? My thoughts were perpetually running up those

six flights and stopping baffled at her close-shut door. I drew

ideal portraits of her, and introduced them into all my pictures as

pertinaciously as Rubens did his wives, and would often finish out an

accidental face in a study of rocks, much to my instructor's surprise

and my fellow-students' amusement. It was very remarkable, however,

that all these fancy sketches bore a striking resemblance to another

acquaintance of mine, who will shortly be introduced, and in whom, until

I moved into my now room, I had been exclusively interested,--so much

so, in fact, that----But I will not anticipate.

Most of my days were spent on the opposite side of the Seine; and, as

I crossed that river, by the Pont Royal, at about five o'clock, every

evening, on my way to the Laiterie, at which I usually took what I

called my dinner, I always stopped to buy a bunch of flowers, of violets

in their season, of a charming little flower-girl, who had her stand, on

the Quai Voltaire, and who, by the time my turn to be served came, had

usually disposed of nearly her whole stock. Every one who looked at her

bought of her. She possessed something that was more attractive even

than her beauty; though I question, if, without her glossy brown hair,

her soft, dark eyes, her glorious complexion, her round, dimpled cheek

and chin, her gentle winning smile, and her exquisite taste in dress--I

question, if, without all these, her quiet, modest demeanor and

unaffected simplicity and propriety would have attracted quite as much

attention as they always did.

I had not bought many bouquets of Thérèse before she began to recognize

me as I came up, and to greet me with a smile and a _"Bon jour,

Monsieur,"_ sweeter in tone and accent than any I had ever heard before.

What a voice hers was! Its tones were like those of a silver bell; and I

found that she always had my bunch of violets or heliotrope ready for me

by the time I reached her.

My frugal meal over, I was in the habit of visiting a neighboring

_café,_ where I read the papers, drank my evening cup of coffee, and, as

I smoked my cigar or pipe and twirled my posies in my fingers or held

them to my nose, would wonder who she was who sold them to me, if she

ever thought of those who bought them of her, and if she distinguished

me above her other customers. It seemed to me, that, if she had the same

angelic smile and happy greeting for them as she always bestowed upon

me, they must one and all be her slaves; and yet I couldn't decide

whether I really loved her or was only touched by a passing fancy for

her.

I looked forward, however, through the day, to my interview with her

with a great deal of impatience, and found myself making short cuts

in the long walk which led me to her. I used to arrange, on my way,

well-turned sentences with which to please her, and by which I expected

to startle her into some intimation of her feelings toward me. I was

angry that she was obliged to stand in so public a place, exposed to the

gaze and remarks of all who chose to stop and buy of her. In fine, I

was jealous, or rather was piqued, that she should receive all others

exactly as she received me, and almost flattered myself that necessity

forced her to meet them with the same sweet smile inclination led her to

bestow on me.

This was the state of affairs at the time I moved into my new lodgings,

before referred to, in the Place Maubert, and I was suffering these

mental torments for Thérèse's sake, when the appearance, or rather the

non-appearance, of my mysterious neighbor aggravated and complicated the

symptoms and converted my slow fever into an intermittent. I had called

my fair unknown Hermine;--the pronoun _she_, as it applied equally to

every individual of the female sex, and in the French language to many

things besides, soon became insufficient, and I took the liberty of

calling her Hermine. I was so ashamed of my foolish passion, that I

could not make up my mind even to question the porter at the door with

regard to her, nor to consult any of my better initiated acquaintances

as to the proper course to be pursued, but lived out a wretched

succession of days and nights of feverish anxiety and expectation,--of

what I knew not.

I was on my way over the Pont Royal, one evening, at my usual hour,

and was just coming in sight of my bewitching flower-merchant, when

a sudden, and, as I believed, a happy thought occurred to me, and I

resolved to put it into instant execution. I am sure I blushed and

stammered wofully as I asked for _two_ bunches of flowers instead of my

usual one, and I was confident, that, as she handed them to me without a

word, but with such a look, Thérèse's brow was shaded by something more

than the dark bands of her brown hair or the edge of her becoming cap,

and that her lip quivered rather with a suppressed sigh than with her

usual happy smile. I didn't stop to speak with her that night, but

hurried away towards my room, conscious--for I did not dare to look

behind me, or I am sure I should have relinquished my design--that her

large, sorrowful eyes were full of the tears she had kept back while I

had stood before her.

I reached my room as soon as possible, and, after assuring myself that

my neighbor was still absent, carefully inserted my second nosegay

into her keyhole, and rushed from the house as though I had committed

burglary.

I was very young then, very romantic, and wholly wanting in assurance.

I must have been, or I should never have regarded it as a crime, not

against myself, but others, that I was making my days miserable and my

nights sleepless on account of two young girls, one of whom I had never

seen, and the other of whom was merely a flower-merchant.

When I clambered up to my room late that night, the flowers were no

longer where I had put them. I had been torturing myself all the evening

with the thought that Hermine might have felt offended, and that I

should find them torn in pieces and thrown down at my door, or that she

would be waiting for me with a severe reprimand for my boldness and

impertinence. But I could find no trace of them, and went to sleep,

soothed by the conviction that they had been carefully put by in a glass

of water, or were occupying a place on her pillow by the side of her

dainty cheek. I feared to meet Thérèse's sorrowful face again the next

night, and was troubled so much by the thought of it through the day,

that I fairly deserted her that evening and bought my two bouquets

elsewhere. With one of these, which I had taken care should be of a

finer quality than before, I repeated my experiment of the preceding

night and with the same gratifying result. But the day after,

forgetting, until it was too late, that I had given Thérèse fair cause

to be seriously angry with me, habit carried me to my old resort again,

though I had fully determined to reach home by another way, and to

patronize, for the future, my new _bouquetière,_ who was not only old

and ugly, but of the masculine gender. Habit--and perhaps wish had

something to do with it--was too strong, however, and I found myself

turning down the Quai Voltaire at the customary hour the next evening.

Much to my surprise, and somewhat to my mortification, Thérèse greeted

me with her old sunny smile. Her _"Bon jour, Monsieur,"_ was as cordial

as ever; and it even seemed to me--and that didn't in the least tend to

compose me--that her eyes sparkled with an archness which I had never

seen in them before, and that her voice had in it a tinge of malice, as

she held out to me two of her finest bunches, saying,--

_"Est-ce que, Monsieur en desire deux encore ce soir?"_

I was very angry with her for being in such good-humor, and believe I

was anything but aimable or polite with her. Why did she not look

hurt or offended and reproach me for my desertion, instead of almost

disarming my senseless anger by her gentleness?

"It seems that Monsieur forgets his old friends, sometimes," she

continued, as I took the flowers she had been holding towards me, and

was fumbling in my pocket for the change.

"Forget!" I stammered; for the temper I found her in had so completely

ruffled mine, that I was hardly sufficiently master of myself to be able

to answer her at all,--"what makes you think I forget? Am I not here

this evening, as usual?"

"This evening, yes,--but last night you did not come; or were you here

too late to find me? I"----she paused, and, with her color a little

heightened, as though she had narrowly escaped making a disclosure,

looked another way,--"Monsieur must have bought his flowers elsewhere,

yesterday. Were they as fresh and sweet as mine?"

"But how do you know, Mademoiselle,"--I answered, after I had given

her a long opportunity to add what I had hoped would follow that

long-drawn-out "I"; (she was going to say, I was sure, that she had

waited for me to come as long as was possible;)--"How do you know that I

bought my flowers elsewhere, or that I bought any? And where can I find

finer ones than you give me?"

"Monsieur is kind enough to say so," she returned. "Can you excuse my

indiscretion? I only thought, that, as you never miss carrying a bunch

of flowers home with you, and sometimes two," she added, with a wicked

twinkle in the corner of her mouth, "you must have found some better

than mine, last night. But Monsieur will, of course, act his own

pleasure."

Thérèse had never appeared to me more charming than at that moment. I

wondered afterwards how I had been able to tear myself away from her,

and was almost angry that I had not thrown down my second bunch, had not

vowed to her that I would never desert her again, and had not confessed

that the pain I had suffered from my folly had more than equalled hers,

since I was never so happy as when I could be near and see her and hear

the music of her voice.

And this was my life, and these the pains I used to suffer. Two tender

passions held alternate possession of my fickle heart, and a constant

struggle was always waging between them for the mastery; and the

impossibility of deciding in favor of either of them, which to accept

and which deny, prevented my yielding to either. Thérèse, however, whose

real presence I could enjoy, upon whose delicious beauty I could feast

my eyes whenever the fancy seized me, and whose voice I could hear,

even when separated from her, possessed a fearful advantage over her

invisible rival, who maintained her position in my interest only by

preserving her incognito and maintaining my curiosity strained to the

highest pitch. My acquaintance with Thérèse became daily more intimate,

and was soon upon such a footing as seemed to authorize my asking her

to accompany me on a Sunday jaunt to one of the thousand resorts of

Parisian pleasure-seekers just beyond the barriers of the city.

She accepted,--of course she did,--and the matter was finally arranged

one Saturday evening for the next day. I was to find her at the house of

her aunt, who lived in my neighborhood, and who, to my surprise, turned

out to be the proprietress of the Laiterie I frequented. Here we were to

breakfast, and afterwards take the proper conveyance to our destination,

which I think was Belleville.

Sunday came, and with it came such weather as the gods seldom vouchsafe

to mortals who contemplate visiting the country. It was one of those

cloudless days in early June when all Nature, and yourself more

than anything else in Nature, seems as though it had been taking

Champagne,--not too warm, but sufficiently so to make out-of-door life a

luxury, and an excursion like ours into the country almost a necessity.

Thérèse, like everything else in Nature on that summer's day, was more

gloriously beautiful, in my eyes, than ever before. Hermine's ideal

beauty, and with it her chance of success, faded out from my memory like

an unfixed photograph, before this charming reality, and Thérèse ruled

supreme. She had dressed herself with a taste which surprised even

me, who had so long regarded her as irreproachable, as she was

unapproachable, in that particular; and the joy she felt at the thought

of a whole day's ramble in the country showed itself in every feature

of her countenance, in every movement, and in every tone of her voice.

There didn't live a prouder or a happier man than I was, as we made our

way arm in arm towards the Place Dauphine, where we were to take the

omnibus for Belleville.

We ran wild in the woods and fields all that day, we fed the fishes in

the ponds, we made ourselves dizzy on the seesaws and merry-go-rounds,

and at last, fairly tired out, and feeling desperately and most

unromantically hungry, turned into the neatest and least frequented

restaurant we could find and ordered our dinner.

Thérèse was no _gourmande_, luckily. Her tastes were simple and

harmonized admirably with my slender means. We dined, however, like

princes, and drank a bottle of _Château Margeaux_, instead of the _vin

ordinaire_, which was my ordinary wine. Thérèse's gayety had fairly

inoculated me, and, forgetting my usual reserve, we laughed and chatted

as noisily as a couple of children.

"Upon my word," cried I, as I caught sight of a bouquet of flowers in

the room we occupied, "what a couple of ninnies we have been! We have

forgotten to get any flowers to carry home with us. But I suppose you

see too many of them through the week to care for them to-day."

"Oh, no!" replied Thérèse. "I could never see too much of flowers;

and besides, you must have a bunch to carry home to Mademoiselle this

evening. She will never forgive you, if you neglect her to-day. And what

would she think or say, if she knew where you are now and whom you are

with? She is very fond of flowers,--when they come from you, I mean."

"Well," I stammered, and my face burned like fire. "What Mademoiselle?

And what makes you think that I make presents of the flowers I get of

you? I only get them for myself, and as an excuse for seeing you."

"_Ah! menteur_!" cried Thérèse, shaking her finger at me with mock

solemnity. "_Fi donc! c'est vilain._ Do you think I have no eyes, or

that you have none that speak as plainly as your mouth, and more truly?

You try to deceive me, Monsieur!" and the little hypocrite assumed so

injured and heart-broken an expression and tone, that I was almost wild

with remorse, and cursed the wretch who had placed the flowers in the

room, and myself for having noticed them. I should have been hurried

into I don't know what expressions of attachment to her and of

indifference towards every other individual of her sex, if she had not

prevented me by the following startling remark.

"I know to whom you give the flowers you value so much as coming from

me. It is to your next-door neighbor, who pleases you more than I do,

and whom you have known, perhaps, longer than you have me. Why didn't

you invite her, and not me, to come with you to-day? It would have been

better."

"Ah!" cried I, "do you know her? She told you about it? Why doesn't she

let me see her? Is her name Hermine?"

And almost before I knew it, I had told her the whole story of my

passion for my invisible neighbor.

Thérèse pouted, and turned her back. She put her handkerchief to her

face, and called me all sorts of hard names for having brought her there

to listen to the confession of my love for another; and turned a deaf

ear, or I thought she did, to my expostulations and my protestations

that I didn't really care for Hermine,--that it was only a passing

fancy, more curiosity than anything else,--and that I really loved no

one but her.

She began to relent at last, though I was half inclined to be sorry, for

her resentment became her even better than her good-humor.

"Well," she said, finally, "it is too tiresome to quarrel, and I will

forgive; for, although you say you have never seen Hermine,--(that is a

prettier name than Thérèse, isn't it?)--she has, perhaps, seen you, and

may really love you "--

"But I don't love her," I cried. "I don't want to love her. I don't want

to see her. Her name isn't Hermine, I know. I will never think of her

again, nor make a fool of myself by putting nose-gays into her keyhole,

if you will only not look so sober any more."

"She will be very sorry for that, I am sure," returned Thérèse, with a

smile I could not translate; "and she will miss them very much. I judge

her by myself. I always find a bunch at my door when I go home at

night"--

"You! You find flowers at your door? And who puts them there?" And I

took my turn at being provoked. "You haven't used me fairly, Thérèse, to

make me understand all this time that you cared for no one but me. There

is some one, then, whom you love and who loves you?"

"Oh, yes!" she answered, her whole face beaming with a pleasure which

made me feel like committing a murder or a suicide; "oh, yes! I believe

he does; he has almost told me so. And--and I know that I do. But he is

so droll! He is my next-door neighbor, and has never seen me yet, and

has never tried to, I believe; but he leaves a bunch of flowers at my

door every evening, and calls me--Hermine."

"Hermine! You Hermine? Hurrah!"

And before she could prevent me, I held her in my arms, and, in spite

of her struggles, had kissed her forehead, eyes, hair, nose, and lips

before she could extricate herself, and then went round the room in a

wild dance of perfect joy and relief.

"I knew I could love no one else, Thérèse-Hermine, or Hermine-Thérèse! I

knew there must be some good and sufficient reason for the unaccountable

attraction my neighbor was exercising over me. Why didn't you tell me

sooner, _méchante_? I suppose you never would have done so at all, if we

had not come out here to-day. Suppose I had not asked you to come with

me?"

"Wouldn't you have asked me?" she answered, with so much winning grace

and in such a pleading tone that I found myself obliged to repeat the

operation of a few lines above. "Wouldn't you have asked me? I don't

know what I should have done," she continued, sadly and thoughtfully.

"Oh, yes!" she exclaimed, jumping up and clapping her hands, while her

whole face was radiant with triumph. "Oh, yes! then I should have been

Hermine, and you would have asked her."

Two happier young people than Thérèse and myself never, I am confident,

returned by rail from a day's excursion in the country. Our happy faces,

our rapid talking, and our devotion to each other, which we took no

pains to conceal, attracted the attention of all about us,--and I heard

one father of a family, who was returning to Paris with a half score of

cross, tired, and crying children, whisper to his wife, as he pointed

towards us,--"That is a couple in their honey-moon, or else lovers; how

happy they are!"

And that is the way in which I stumbled into wedlock. How many others,

in their pursuit of what has seemed to them the substance, have failed

to discover, perhaps too late, that they were following a flitting

shadow,--while I, favored mortal, in my chase of a dream, stumbled upon

the greatest real good of my whole life!

* * * * *

THROUGH THE FIELDS TO SAINT PETER'S.

There's a by-road to Saint Peter's. First you swing across the Tiber

In a ferry-boat that floats you in a minute from the crowd;

Then through high-hedged lanes you saunter; then by fields and sunny

pastures;

And beyond, the wondrous dome uprises like a golden cloud.

And this morning,--Easter morning,--while the streets were thronged

with people,

And all Rome moved toward the Apostle's temple by the usual way,

I strolled by the fields and hedges,--stopping now to view the

landscape,

Now to sketch the lazy cattle in the April grass that lay.

Galaxies of buttercups and daisies ran along the meadows,--

Rosy flushes of red clover,--blossoming shrubs and sprouting vines;

Overhead the larks were singing, heeding not the bells a-ringing,--

Little knew they of the Pasqua, or the proud Saint Peter's shrines.

Contadini, men and women, in their very best apparel,

Trooping one behind another, chatted all along the roads;

Boys were pitching quoits and coppers; old men in the sun were basking:

In the festive smile of Heaven all laid aside their weary loads.

Underneath an ancient portal, soon I passed into the city;

Entered San Pietro's Square, now thronged with upward crowding forms;

Past the Cardinals' gilded coaches, and the gorgeous scarlet lackeys,

And the flashing files of soldiers, and black priests in gloomy swarms.

All were moving to the temple. Push aside the ponderous curtain!

Lo! the glorious heights of marble, melting in the golden dome,

Where the grand mosaic pictures, veiled in warm and misty softness,

Swim in faith's religious trances,--high above all heights of Rome.

Grand as Pergolesi chantings, lovely as a dream of Titian,

Tones and tints and chastened splendors wreathed and grouped in sweet

accord;

While through nave and transept pealing, soar and sink the choral

voices,

Telling of the death and glorious resurrection of the Lord.

But, ah, fatal degradation for this temple of the nations!

For the soul is never lifted by the accord of sights and sound;

But yon priest in gold and satin, murmuring with his ghostly Latin,

Drags it from its natural flights, and trails its plumage on the ground.

And to-day the Pope is heading his whole army of gay puppets,

And the great machinery round us moving with an extra show:

Genuflexions, censers, mitres, mystic motions, candle-lighters,

And the juggling show of relics to the crowd that gapes below,

Till at last they show the Pontiff, a lay figure stuffed and tinselled;

Under canopy and fan-plumes he is borne in splendor proud

To a show-box of the temple overlooking the Piazza;

There he gives his benediction to the long-expectant crowd.

Benediction! while the people, blighted, cursed by superstition,

Steeped in ignorance and darkness, taxed and starved, looks up and begs

For a little light and freedom, for a little law and justice,--

That at least the cup so bitter it may drain not to the dregs!

Benediction! while old error keeps alive a nameless terror!

Benediction! while the poison at each pore is entering deep,

And the sap is slowly withered, and the wormy fruit is gathered,

And a vampire sucks the life out while the soul is fanned asleep!

Oh, the splendor gluts the senses, while the spirit pines and dwindles!

Mother Church is but a dry-nurse, singing while her infant moans;

While anon a cake or rattle gives a little half-oblivion,

And the sweetness and the glitter mingle with her drowsy tones.

But the infant moans and tosses with a nameless want and anguish,

While, with coarse, unmeaning bushings, louder sings the hireling

nurse,--

Knows no better, in her dull and superannuated blindness,--

Tries no potion,--seeks no nurture,--but consents to worse and worse.

If such be thy ultimation, Church of infinite pretension,--

Such within thy chosen garden be the flowers and fruits you bear,--

Oh, give me the book of Nature, open wide to every creature,

And the unconsecrated thoughts that spring like daisies everywhere!

Send me to the woods and waters,--to the studio,--to the market!

Give me simple conversation, books, arts, sports, and friends sincere!

Let no priest be e'er my tutor! on my brow no label written!

Coin or passport to salvation, rather none, than beg it here!

Give me air, and not a prison,--love for Heart, and light for Reason!

Let me walk no slave or bigot,--God's untrammelled, fearless child!

Yield me rights each soul is born to,--rights not given and not taken,--

Free to Cardinals and Princes and Campagna shepherds wild.

Like these Roman fountains gushing clear and sweet in open spaces,

Where the poorest beggar stoops to drink, and none can say him nay,--

Let the Law, the Truth, be common, free to man and child and woman,

Living waters for the souls that now in sickness waste away!

Therefore are these fields far sweeter than yon temple of Saint Peter;

Through this grander dome of azure God looks down and blesses all;

In these fields the birds sing clearer, to the Eternal Heart are nearer,

Than the sad monastic chants that yonder on my ears did fall.

Never smiled Christ's holy Vicar on the heretic and sinner

As this sun--true type of Godhead--smiles o'er all the peopled land!

Sweeter smells this blowing clover than the perfume of the censer,

And the touch of Spring is kinder than the Pontiff's jewelled hand!

THE EXPERIENCE OF SAMUEL ABSALOM, FILIBUSTER.

[Concluded.]

Some time after the departure of the riflemen, a detail of eight or nine

men from our company was ordered off towards the lake shore, and soon

afterward another smaller one to Potosí, a little village four or five

miles to the northward of Rivas, bearing orders to Captain Finney's

rangers, who had gone to scout in that direction. The rest of us ate

supper, and then lay listening for the boom of the little field-piece,

which should tell us that the rifles had met the enemy. But the

extraordinary toils and watchings of the last fortnight were too

overpowering, and we were all soon buried in dreamless sleep.

In an hour or two I was awakened by horses' feet clattering over the

stony pavement of the _portería_, or gateway to the square courtyard,

in one of whose surrounding corridors we usually slept,--on blankets,

cow-hides, or hard tiles, according as each man was able to furnish

himself. It was the party returning from their scout on the lake. They

unsaddled and fed their animals in the yard, and afterward set about

frying plantains and fresh stolen pork for supper. As they talked over

their provant in the room behind me, I caught most of their adventure,

without the discomfort of rising or asking questions. Near the lake they

had chased and captured some natives, whose behavior was suspicious and

showed no good-will toward the Americans. The officer of the party,

thinking them spies, had carried them part of the way to Rivas to be

examined; but, fortunately, perhaps, for the captives, he afterwards

relented and set them at liberty. They also talked of a small boy who

had peeped out of the bushes as they rode by, and shouted to them,

"_Quieren for Walker_?" (Are you for Walker?) and then adding

energetically, "_Yo no quiero filibustero god-damn!_" darted away out

of sight, before any one, who was so minded, could have shot the little

rebel.

"Be sure," said one of the men at supper,--a noted croaker and tried

coward, against whom I bear a private grudge,--"the boys have learned

this from the _old_ greasers; and we are going to have all the people of

Nicaragua to fight."

Later in the night, the other party, which had been sent to Potosí, came

in with panting mules, excited countenances, and one of their number

stained with blood from a wound on his thigh. They told us, that,

failing to find Captain Finney at Potosí, they had stretched their

orders, and gone forward to Obraja, unaware that it was occupied by the

enemy. At the entrance of the village, whilst riding on in complete

darkness, they were challenged suddenly in Spanish. Taken by surprise,

they replied in English, and, before they could turn their animals, were

stunned with the glare and crash of a musket-volley, a few feet ahead of

them. They recoiled, and fled with such precipitation that one of the

riders was tossed over his horse's head;--however, scrambling to his

feet, he found sense and good-luck to remount; and the whole party made

good their flight to Rivas, with no further damage than two slight

flesh-wounds,--one on the trooper, and one on his mule.

The excitement upon this arrival soon subsided, and I had again fallen

into unconsciousness, when a rough shake of the shoulder aroused me, and

the voice of the old sergeant dinned in my ear,--"Come here! saddle up!

saddle up! You are detailed for Obraja." In a few moments I was mounted,

and, with two others of the company, rode out of the gateway into the

street. There we found awaiting us a fourth horseman, charged with

orders for the riflemen at Obraja, and whom it was our duty to accompany

as guard.

After clearing Rivas, we clattered over the road at a fast pace, rousing

all the dogs at the _haciendas_ as we passed, and leaving them baying

behind us, until we came to where the Potosí road forked off to the

right; thenceforward, fearing an ambush, we rode slowly and with great

caution, stopping often to dismount and reconnoitre moon-lit fields

beyond the roadside hedges. At length, after passing a picket of our

riflemen, we came to a large _adobe_ house directly on the roadside,

where we found the main body of the detachment encamped and sleeping.

The house stood something under half a mile from Obraja, and was the

residence of that friendly alcalde who on the approach of the enemy

had removed with his family to Rivas, and placed General Walker on his

guard. As we rode into the yard, we had some ado to keep our horses

from treading on the sleeping soldiers, who lay scattered all round

the building, and also in its open corridor fronting toward Obraja.

Dismounting here, our courier went into the house to communicate with

Colonel O'Neal, the commander of the detachment,--leaving it to us

either to tie up, and lie where we were until morning, or pass farther

up the road, where Captain Finney's rangers were stationed. I chose to

go forward and hear the rangers' story, who, we were told, had had a

slight brush with the enemy in the beginning of the night.

After riding near quarter of a mile, I came to another _adobe_ building

on the roadside, occupied by a small party, and forming Colonel O'Neal's

advanced post, at the distance of four hundred yards or more from

Obraja. Here they told me that Captain Finney's company, whilst riding

into Obraja early in the night, had been hotly fired upon, and Captain

Finney himself was brought off struck in the breast, wounded mortally.

The riflemen had as yet made no attack, but awaited daylight. The number

of the enemy was not known; though rumor placed it between one thousand

and fifteen hundred. Whatever it was, they were apprehensive; for

throughout the night we heard them barricading the town with great hurry

and clatter; and it gave us sad discomfort to think that in the morning

there would be these walls to climb before our men could get at them. It

was the occasion of much bitter cursing that there should be delay until

this was accomplished, and of one man's protesting seriously that it

was, and had been, General Walker's endeavor, not to whip the greasers,

but to get as many Americans killed in Nicaragua as possible,--he

nourishing secret and implacable hatred against them for some cause.

However, I think this judgment weak and improbable, though plausible

enough from some points of view.

During the night there was some firing between our party and the enemy

from under cover in front, with some few wounds, and one man on our

side shot through the hat,--who thereupon, pulling off the injured

head-piece, and looking at it gravely, declared he would always

thenceforward wear his hat with a high crown; for, said he, had this one

been half an inch lower, the bullet must have struck the head:--which

drollery, in consideration of the circumstances, was allowed to pass for

an exceeding good stroke.

We passed a disturbed and rather uneasy night, fearful all the time of

being cut off or overwhelmed. But morning breaking at length, a party

of riflemen came up from Colonel O'Neal's camp below, and affairs were

immediately changed for the offensive. The riflemen moved forward

against the town, whilst the rangers were posted at several points along

the road to guard against surprise from the bushes. Among these latter

I took my stand. The squad which went forward could not have numbered

above sixty men, and was armed with Mississippi rifles only,--without

wheel-piece of any kind, or even bayonets. I took them for a party of

skirmishers, sent ahead to clear the way; yet they were not followed or

supported by any additional force that I saw then or afterwards.

As they passed up the road, I observed that the most listless and dead

amongst them were at length stirred up and thoroughly awake,--though not

with enthusiasm or martial impatience. Some seemed uneasy and careworn,

and glanced about nervously; had their countenances not been unalterably

yellow, they would certainly have been white. One fellow near the

rear was trembling sadly, and carried his rifle in an unreasonable

manner,--promising aimless discharges, and, perhaps, dodgings into the

bushes. But this one was excusable, and I may have slandered him; for

ague had shaken the life almost out of him so often that shaking

was become natural, and little else could be expected of him; and,

furthermore, a pale face or unsteady joints are not always weathercock

to a fainting spirit. In some constitutions these may come from other

emotions than fear; and it often happens that your most lamentable

shaker will stand you longer at the breach than the man of iron nerve,

with a white liver. I have seen such. However, the majority of these

were resolute and dangerous-looking men, and, though without any marks

of inordinate zeal, seemed willing enough to fight whatever appeared.

They held their rifles in the hand cocked, and, as they advanced, threw

their eyes sharply into the bushes on either side the road,--having

received orders to shoot the first greaser that showed himself, without

awaiting the word.

In a few moments after, the party having disappeared behind a turn of

the road, we suddenly heard the cracking of their rifles, mingled

with the deeper crash of more numerous musketry; and it was a vivid

sensation, new to me, that some of those bullets were surely finding

billets in the bodies of men. This seemed an encounter with a force

of the enemy outside of the town; and directly we thought, from the

movement of the noise, that our riflemen were driving them in. Then

there was a louder and more rapid volleying of musketry, which

completely drowned the rifles, and seemed to tell us that our men were

come in sight of the barricades. This lasted but a moment, when it was

succeeded by a scattered fire of fewer guns, and finally by irregular

volleys. We knew that our men had fallen back; and we had not once

thought it would be otherwise. Indeed, it had been a rarely preposterous

enemy who should allow himself to be driven from behind a rampart by

that handful of dispirited, men.

Whilst things were on this foot, the courier of last night came up with

his guard, having been sent by Colonel O'Neal, who had remained at the

alcalde's house below, to get news of the attacking party. As I was

still under his orders, I joined him, and rode forward towards the

combatants,--not without sundry misgivings, known to most men who are

about to enter a fray for the first time,--or the twentieth time,

perhaps, if the truth were confessed. We found the riflemen drawn up in

the road, protected by the raised side-bank and cactus-hedge from an

enemy concealed amongst some trees and bushes, a little distance to the

right of the road in front. Above the trees, within pistol-shot, was

visible the red roof of a church which stood on the _plaza_ of Obraja,

where were barricaded, as they said, over a thousand greaser soldiers.

All other sign of the town than this one roof was shut in from view by

the abundant foliage which embowered it. As we approached the riflemen,

we dismounted and led our horses, fearing to attract a shower from the

enemy, who lay in the bushes firing irregularly. The officer of the

party told us to report to Colonel O'Neal that he had advanced within

sight of the _plaza_, and, finding it strongly barricaded, and "swarming

with greasers," he held it folly to assail it with fifty men, and so had

retreated. He mentioned some loss,--very small for the noise that had

been made,--of which I remember the name of one Lieutenant Webster, shot

through the head. He charged us to ask Colonel O'Neal's permission to

fall back on the _adobe_ where we had passed the night, as the enemy

appeared to be moving around his right, and he was fearful of being

surrounded in the open road. But, directly after, seeing the enemy were

in earnest to cut him off, he concluded to fall back on the house upon

his own responsibility, and did so, and with the _adobe_ walls around

him probably felt secure enough against such an enemy.

We returned to the lower camp, and delivered our report to a

boyish-looking person, in unepauletted red flannel shirt, but who was

no other than Colonel O'Neal, the officer in command. He was popular

amongst his men, and reputed a brave and energetic officer. He probably

mistrusted from the first that his force was too small; and hence the

delay in the attack, and the dispatch of the little party of riflemen

merely to satisfy General Walker. Be that as it may, upon hearing our

report, he recalled the advanced party, and immediately sent off

to Rivas to say he could do nothing against the town without a

reinforcement.

In the mean time those of the men who were off guard lay about under

the trees and ate oranges, with which the alcalde's yard was stocked

plentifully, whilst such wounded as had been brought in were laid on the

floor of the house, and their wounds probed by the surgeon; whereupon,

being but young soldiers mostly, there arose loud outcries and dismal

bellowings. For my own part, I set about comforting my mule, who had

been under saddle since leaving Rivas. I unsaddled him, brought him an

armful of _tortilla_ corn from the alcalde's kitchen-loft, some water

from the well, and left him making merry as if he had nothing worse

ahead of him.

Some time after mid-day the rest of our company came out from Rivas, and

we immediately had orders to ride up the road and fire upon the enemy's

outpost,--which, as the riflemen had been withdrawn and our advanced

picket was now nearly half a mile from the town, promised to be a

service of some danger. Therefore one of our commissioned officers,

afterwards dismissed the service for cowardice, was here seized suddenly

with the colic,--so badly, that he was unable to ride with us at his

post. Other sick men being left in quarters at Rivas, we counted now but

little over twenty men,--armed with Mississippi or Sharpe's rifles, and

some of us with the revolvers we had brought from California. After

passing the _adobe_ building, garrisoned last night, but now empty, we

advanced with great care, our leader taking often the precaution to

dismount and peer with bared head over the cactus-hedge which crowned

the right-hand bank of the road and shut us in on that side completely.

At every turn of the road he repeated his reconnoissance, so that our

advance was very slow, giving a watchful enemy almost time to place an

ambush, if they had none ready prepared. It was as sweet a place for a

trap as greaser's heart could wish. On our right was the impenetrable

cactus-hedge, with an open space beyond, terminated at the distance of

a few yards by a wood or plantain-patch. On the left was another wood,

matted with tangled underbrush and vines which no horseman could

penetrate. On either side half a dozen men might couch in ambush and

shoot us down in perfect security.

We passed on, however, without disturbance, or sight of an enemy, until

we came nearly to the edge of the town and saw the glistening roof of

the church appear above the foliage,--where sat sundry carrion-loving

buzzards, elbowing each other, shuffling to and fro with outspread

wings, and chuckling, doubtless, over the promise of glorious times.

As we go on, suddenly heads appear over the bushes less than a hundred

yards in front, and we hear the vindictive whistle of Minié-balls above

us. Our leader, calling upon us to fire, began himself to blaze away

rapidly with his Colt's revolver. We huddled forward, with little care

for order, and delivered some dozen Mississippi and Sharpe's rifles.

There were nervous men in the crowd; for, after the discharge, dust

was flying from the road within thirty feet of us. However, some aimed

higher; and when we looked again, the heads had disappeared. One bold

greaser stepped out into the road and sent his Minié-ball singing

several yards above us, then darted back quickly, before any of us

could have him. We waited a moment to see others, but they seemed to be

satisfied;--and we were satisfied,--with prospect of a swarm bursting

out on us from the town; so, sinking spurs into our weary animals, we

made good pace back to the camp,--not without an alarm that a troop of

well-mounted lancers was behind us.

In the course of the afternoon, General Henningsen arrived, bringing a

fine brass howitzer, and a small reinforcement of infantry--as those

armed with rifled muskets and bayonets were called--and artillerymen;

and, after some hours' rest, he ordered a fresh attempt with the

howitzer, supported by somewhere near two hundred men. This party was

received with so fierce a fire at the barricade that they shrank back,

leaving the howitzer behind in the road,--so that the enemy were on the

point of capturing it, when a brave artilleryman touched off the piece,

loaded with grape-shot, almost in their faces, and, strewing the

earth with dead, sent the others flying back to the barricade. This

artilleryman told me that an old officer amongst the enemy stood his

ground alone after the discharge, and swore manfully at the fugitives,

but they were panic-struck and took no heed; and it was his assertion,

that, had a small part of the riflemen rallied and charged at this time,

they might have gone over the barricade without difficulty or hindrance.

As it was, the howitzer was scarcely brought off, and the attack failed

ingloriously. Whether this story of the artilleryman were true or false,

we heard in other ways, by general report, that the riflemen had behaved

badly, and quailed as the filibusters had scarcely done before; though,

after all, it will seem unreasonable to blame these two hundred or less,

disease-worn and spiritless men, for not whipping ten hundred out of a

barricaded town. It may be worth saying here, that, seeing things in

Nicaragua from a common soldier's befogged view-point, and having only

general rumor, or the tales of privates like myself, for parts of an

engagement where I was not present, I may easily make mistakes in

the numbers, and otherwise do Walker and his officers, or the enemy,

injustice. Yet I may be excused, since I am not attempting a history

of the war, but merely some account of my own experience, passive and

active.

Late in the evening our company assisted to carry some wounded to Rivas.

Amongst them was Captain Finney, mentioned before as the first man

struck by the enemy. He seemed to be a brave and uncommonly considerate

officer, and whilst being carried in on a chair, suffering with his

death-wound, he showed concern for his supporters, and insisted on

having them relieved upon the smallest sign of fatigue. He was taken to

the quarters of a friend, where he died a few days afterward. The other

wounded were carried to the hospital, and, finding no one there to take

charge of them, we left them to themselves, lying or sitting upon the

floor, dismal and uncared-for enough.

After dark we were again in the saddle and riding out to Obraja, in

charge of a commissary's party, with provisions for the detachment of

foot. But after getting a little way from the town, we were overtaken by

an order from General Walker, stopping the provisions, and directing us

to ride on and recall the detachment to Rivas; he having changed his

mind about dislodging the enemy at this tardy hour. We reached the camp

some hours into the night, and, after a little delay, calling in the

pickets, and securing some native women who lived in the vicinity, to

prevent their carrying word of our movement to the enemy, the detachment

commenced its retrograde march,--leaving the enemy victorious, and free

to go where they wished.

I remember, several times on this march, when the detachment had made

some temporary halt, seeing a grim-faced dog, of the terrier species,

trot along the line to the front of the column, where we rangers stood,

and then, satisfied seemingly that all was well ordered, turn himself

round and trot back to the rear again.

He did this with such a look and air, that it struck me he felt himself

in some way responsible for our party. He was, indeed, if the tales

current about him were true, the most remarkable character in all that

very variegated conglomerate of characters which made up the filibuster

army. He had appeared in the camp long before, coming, some said, from

the Costa Ricans, with whom he became disgusted on account of their bad

behavior in battle on several occasions when he was there to see. After

this desertion, if it were thus, he followed the Americans faithfully,

through good and bad fortune, retreat or victory; always going into

battle with them,--where he actually seemed to enjoy himself,--trotting

about amidst the whewing of bullets, the uptossing of turf, and the

outcries of wounded men, with calm heart, and tail erect,--envied by

the bravest even. On an occasion when General Walker was attacking the

Costa-Ricans in Rivas, the dog entered the _plaza_ ahead of the rest,

and, finding there one of his own species, he forthwith seized him, and

shook him, and put him to flight howling,--giving an omen so favorable,

that the greasers were driven out of the town with ease by the others.

Even his every-day life was sublime, and elevated above the habit of

vulgar dogs. He allowed no man to think himself his master, or attach

him individually by liberal feeding or kind treatment, but quartered

indiscriminately amongst the foot, sometimes with one company, sometimes

with another,--taking food from whoever gave it, but showing little

gratitude, and despising caresses or attempts at familiarity. He seemed,

indeed, to consider himself one amongst the rest,--one and somewhat, as

they say; and his sole apparent tie with his human friends seemed to

be the delight which he took in seeing them kill or killed. With this

_penchant_, it was said, he never missed a battle, and went out with

every detachment that left the camp to see that none should escape him

unaware.--But enough of him,--strange dog, or devil.

The withdrawal from Obraja was opposed, so rumor said, by Henningsen and

other officers; and it certainly had a most depressing effect upon the

men, whilst it elated the enemy correspondingly, giving them a degree of

confidence which they had never attained to before. It was agreed on

all hands, by all critics whom I heard, that, having once begun this

attempt, General Walker should have carried it through successfully,

even if it required his whole force. However, as only part of the

enemy's force was on land, the other part being supposed to be

still aboard the steamers or on the island, General Walker

possibly feared an attack on Rivas, should he send out a very large

detachment,--remembering, too vividly, a former blunder, when he left

Granada with all his army to attack the enemy at Masaya, and the enemy,

making a _détour_, came upon his camp in Granada, and destroyed

baggage, ammunition, and all it contained.

The next day the foot lay quiet in Rivas, and had rest. The rangers,

however, were in the saddle almost continuously, and, what with

foraging, broken sleep, and expeditions by day and night, those of us

who had garrisoned Virgin Bay were become worried nearly past grumbling.

On this day our own company rode out to Obraja, to visit the enemy's

picket again, and afterwards to San Jorge on the lake, to guard the

transportation of a row-boat thence to Rivas. The boat was one of those

borrowed from the vessels in San Juan harbor for the purpose of retaking

the steamers, and had been rowed up to San Jorge, and was now removed to

Rivas, to prevent its seizure by the enemy,--the garrison at Virgin

Bay having burnt the brig, and marched to Rivas, when the enemy first

appeared on land at Obraja. So that the whole American force (except

the crew of the little schooner in which General Walker and his fifty

original followers first came to Nicaragua, and which was lying at this

time in San Juan harbor) was now concentrated at Rivas; the enemy being

eight or nine miles behind them at Obraja, or on the lake with the two

steamers. As we rode through the town of San Jorge, the place seemed

almost deserted, and I remember lingering with others to haversack some

bunches of yellow plantains which hung in an empty house on the _plaza_.

The delay may have come near being fatal to us, for we heard afterwards

that we had been gone but a little while, when a troop of the enemy's

horse rode into the place, reconnoitred, and returned in the direction

in which they came. Their reconnoissance in San Jorge was explained soon

afterwards.

Some time in the last half of the night following, I was detailed, along

with a considerable detachment from two mounted companies, to ride on a

scout toward Obraja. On the outward ride I was but half-awake, and

my recollection of our course is confused: however, I think it was

somewhere between Potosí and Obraja that we came to a halt, and I was

aroused by some excitement in the party. Pickets were hastily posted

in several directions, whilst the officers gathered about some natives

awakened from a neighboring hut, and seemed to question them earnestly.

We soon heard that the enemy were on the road moving from Obraja, and

that a large force had a little while before passed this place going

eastward. The natives, prone to exaggeration, declared that this force

had been an hour in passing,--with baggage, eight pieces of cannon

mounted on ox-carts, several hundred pressed native Nicaraguans, tied

and guarded to prevent their running away, and a long train of women to

nurse the wounded. The Chamorristas, it seemed, had been around pressing

all the native men they could find into service against the Americans;

and whilst we were here, two, who had been hiding all day in the bushes

to avoid the conscription, came out and asked us to take them with us to

Rivas,--they preferring, if forced to take sides, to join _el valiente_

Walker.

This is the stripe of most Central American soldiers. The lower classes

are lazy and cowardly, little concerned about politics, and must

generally be impressed, let the cause of war be what it may. And I am

persuaded, that, since General Walker never harnessed them into his

service, as their own chiefs were doing perpetually, but let them swing

in their hammocks and eat their plantains, (provided they lived beyond

his forage-ground,) un-called-for, they were so far well satisfied with

his government. However, their sympathy, supposing he had it, were worth

little to him; since it takes a stronger impulsion than this to put them

in motion to do anything,--a strong pulling by the nose, indeed,--such

as their native rulers know how to apply.--But this is speculative, and

neither here nor there.

After getting all the information concerning the enemy that was to be

had from these people, the detachment returned to Rivas at a fast trot,

with the two friendly natives mounted behind, on such stronger animals

as were able to carry double burden. We all supposed, that, now the

enemy were again out of cover and on the open road, or, leastwise, in

the confusion of a new camp, there would be an immediate attack on them.

But General Walker followed his own head; and, after making our report,

we saw no stir, and heard nothing until morning,--when it was known that

the enemy were all moved into San Jorge, with only some two miles' space

between us. This place, being on the lake, was more convenient for

provisions, which were easily brought by the steamers from the island of

Ometepec and the towns and _haciendas_ along the shore,--and the enemy

had gained boldness to go there by our repulse at Obraja: or it may be

that the force at Obraja had come down from Granada by land, and so only

continued their march to San Jorge,--though the rumor was, that they had

landed from the lake, as I have said.

But be that as it may, time was given them to barricade at San Jorge,

till near the middle of the forenoon, and then Generals Henningsen and

Sanders were sent out with some four hundred riflemen and infantry to

drive them into the lake, which lay some few hundred yards behind them.

During the first part of the attack, our company remained in Rivas,

listening anxiously to the uproar at San Jorge,--every volley fired by

the combatants being borne distinctly to us by the east wind. For some

time there was a continuous rattle of musketry, with rapid detonations

of deeper-mouthed cannon,--at each roar shaking our suspended

hearts,--for we knew that our own men were using small arms only. After

a while this abated, grew irregular, and almost ceased. An order then

came for our company to mount and join the combatants. We galloped down

the broad and almost level highway which passes between Rivas and

San Jorge, bordered a great part of its length, on either side, by

cactus-hedges, broken at various intervals by the grassy by-lanes that

run out to the neighboring _haciendas_ or parallel roads. At places

where there is a slight elevation, the bottom of the road is worn

several feet below the level by the carts which ply between Rivas and

the lake. Opposite one of these, where the banks sloped at a sharp

angle, we came upon General Henningsen and a detachment of musketeers

resting on the right bank of the road, and halted beside them. The men

were sitting under the shade of an _adobe_, refreshing themselves with

oranges; and those in the nearest rank were close enough to hand us

fruit and keep their seats on the grass. Five or six hundred yards up

the road, the large church which stood on the _plaza_ of San Jorge, with

the door facing us, and a low wall of white stone running squarely from

its side across to the right, ended the vista between banks of green

foliage. Our view stretched across the _plaza_, which seemed to be empty

and unbarricaded; and I remember the painted door of the church beyond,

the red-tiled roof, the low, flanking wall of white stone, all dazily

trembling in the unsteady atmosphere radiating from the heated

road,--whilst a cloud of white smoke was sailing slowly away to the

west. It was a hot and tranquil scene. But I always think of it with the

same secret disgust with which the shipwrecked traveller looks upon the

placid ocean the day after the angry storm has passed over it; for it

was here I first saw the cruelty of a round shot.

When we came to a halt, there seemed to be a lull in the struggle, and

no enemy was anywhere visible, nor was firing heard from any direction.

The infantry, though within range of small arms from the town, were

concealed by the bushes, and the enemy were scarcely aware of their

presence. But when our company came galloping up the road, in full view,

their attention was aroused, and we had scarcely checked our animals and

exchanged a few words with the foot-soldiers, when a column of smoke

shot up from the wall in front.--"Now look out!" exclaimed some one.

I looked, but saw nothing to follow, and had turned my attention

elsewhere, when I heard a hissing noise, as of something rushing swiftly

past, and at the same time turf is thrown into the air, the horses start

aside in affright, and outcries of pain and terror assail the ear.

After a confused moment, I saw that the shot had struck in the line of

infantry a few feet on our right. One man, the drummer of the party, was

running about in the fluttered crowd with his hand hanging by a shred,

crying, "Cut it off! cut it off! D--your souls, why don't some of you

cut it off?" Another lay struggling on the ground, with the fleshy part

of his thighs torn abruptly off, calling upon some one for God's sake to

take him away from there. But the dismallest sight was a bloody shape,

with face to the ground, fingers clutching the grass with aimless

eagerness, and shivering silently with an invisible wound. Twisting

convulsively, it rolled down into the road under our horses' feet,--and

there this human form, which some call godlike, writhed and floundered

like a severed worm, and disguised itself in blood and dust.

But it is dangerous to look long upon the wounded; an old soldier never

rests his eye there; it is the greatest mistake of the raw one; and it

was well enough for some of us that our attention was timely drawn away

by alarm of another shot from the town. We spurred our horses up the

bank on the left; the foot-soldiers rushed behind the _adobe;_ and this

time the shot passed harmlessly down the road. Before another, General

Henningsen had ordered us all to move forward and get to cover. The foot

stopped in the right branch of a by-lane which crossed the road a little

way ahead. The rangers moved into the same lane,--but on the left, and

divided by the highway from the foot. Here we were entirely hidden from

the town by a belt of small trees and bushes. Nevertheless, the

enemy's round shot, tearing through the trees, still pursued, and the

Minié-balls, though thrown from smooth-bored guns, sang above and far

beyond us. At this place, as near as I recollect, above a dozen men were

killed and wounded,--most of them by that first round shot.

Our company shortly after was separated, and placed, for the most part,

as videttes, at various points near the town. Some hours after our

arrival, (which time was spent by the filibusters in drinking spirits

and resting from the late unsuccessful assault,--by the enemy in

barricading their position, and drinking spirits, perhaps, likewise,)

General Henningsen led an attack with part of the foot,--taking several

of us rangers along in the capacity of couriers, to ride off to Rivas at

any important turn of the fight and report to General Walker. The enemy

had taken position about the _plaza,_ in the church, and behind the

stone wall at its side, where they had by this time strengthened

themselves with barricades. They had cannon looking towards every

assailable point; and also on top of the church, in the cupola, they

had mounted a small piece, from which they threw grape against our men

advancing on any side. It proved a great source of annoyance throughout

the day. Their number was not certainly known, at least among the ranks,

but was rumored as high as two thousand men,--Costa-Ricans, Guatemalans,

and Chamorristas.

General Henningsen moved up by a straggling street, with an _adobe_ here

and there, and the intervals filled up with fruit-trees, bushes, and

cactus-hedges. Grape-shot, which may be the saddest thing, touching the

body, on earth, made miserable noise above us and miserable work among

us; and we couriers had leave to dismount and crawl nearer the ground.

General Henningsen gained respect from us by sitting his horse alone.

He was a soldier, it is said, from a boy, in European wars,--where this

were a feeble skirmish; yet he wore his life here, perhaps, more

loosely than in many a noisier battle. However, he seemed calm and easy

enough,--never moving his head, even slightly, when the shot whizzed

nearest him. General Walker, though a brave man, and cool in battle,

will nevertheless dodge when a bullet hisses him fiercely. So would

almost all his officers or soldiers, that I had an opportunity to

notice. Yet, after all, it is a mere trick of the nerves, and only

indicates familiarity and long service, or a deaf ear,--and not want of

self-possession or strength of heart. The advance at length became so

harassing that the party halted under cover on the roadside, whilst yet

some distance from the _plaza,_ and from this lodgment the couriers were

sent off to report progress at Rivas.

My post thenceforward was, with that of others, at the head of a lane

not far from the town, where we heard the voices of the combatants

and the whistling of balls, but could see nothing. After some hours'

comparative quiet, the drums began beating a charge again, and every gun

on the ground seemed awakened and doing its best. Then there was a loud,

heart-lifted shout, which rose above the din, and gave us too much joy;

and, a moment after, Colonel Casey, a hard-faced, one-armed man, spurred

past towards Rivas, saying, as he went, that our men were in the

_plaza,_ the greasers were running, and "we had 'em, sure as hell!" I

recollect some one observing, that it were of no use to believe Colonel

Casey, for he was the greatest liar in the army of Nicaragua. And

shortly after, the firing having ceased, another officer, Baldwin, I

think it was, came past and told us, with curses of vexation, that the

men had been checked, by command, in the heat of the assault, when the

greasers were already wavering,--and that the latter, recovering, had

rebarricaded so strongly, that we might now all go back to Rivas and

whistle.

However, this failure was not the end. Towards evening, another

detachment renewed the assault, and the uproar commenced again. It

seems, that, during the whole day, there was no simultaneous attack by

all the detachments. Now, it was the infantry who charged,--with the

riflemen in reserve, probably to prevent a rout, in case the enemy

pursued a repulse; then, it was the riflemen, with the infantry in

reserve; and so alternating through three or four charges;--so that

there never could have been more than a very contemptible force facing

the enemy at one time.

As it grew late, the wagons began to jolt past, removing the wounded to

Rivas. Some were drunk and merry in spite of their wounds; and their

laughter and drunken sport made strange concert with the cries and

curses of the others. I remember one man going by on foot, with a small

cut on the brow, from which blood was flowing copiously. He said the

wound was a mere scratch,--too slight to have sent him out of the fight,

had not the blood run down into his eyes and blinded him, preventing his

aim. Yet this small affair brought his death shortly afterwards. The

surgeons at Rivas gave him no care,--not so much as to wash his wound,

or have him wash it; and the climate is so malignant to strangers, that

the smallest cut, with the best care, heals only after long hesitation.

At length night came on, and our men drew off,--foiled at every attempt,

having sustained great loss, and, apparently, made little impression on

the enemy. They lay on their arms, however, in the outskirts, expecting

to renew the attack during the night; and, to assist at this, a party of

rangers had orders to leave their horses in quarters, and march on foot

to join the others. Quitting our horses with regret, we walked to San

Jorge, where the foot lay, awaiting the hour of attack. We found them

stomach-qualmed with hunger, weary of fighting, thoroughly disheartened,

and provoked against their officers. One told how an officer, whose duty

it was to lead the charge, took shelter behind an orange-tree no bigger

than his wrist, and shouted, "Go on, men! go on!" when he should

have been saying, "Come on!" and how another, become stupid with

_aguardiente_, had tried to force his men to a barricade, when their

cartridge-boxes were empty, and their unbayonetted arms useless.

There seemed also to have been slackness among the men; and some

were lamenting, that the First Rifles were not what they used to

be;--anciently they only wanted to _see_ the greasers; to-day they were

found taking to the bushes. They all agreed that no great number of the

enemy had been killed,--whilst the filibusters, they doubted, must

have lost nearly one-third of their men and many of their best

officers;--among the number I recollect Major Dusenbury, highly praised.

There was one affair, however, over which they crowed and took fierce

satisfaction. They told it thus:--A detached party, of about thirty of

them, were seated on the roadside drinking _aguardiente_, preparatory

to advancing. On one side was a cactus-hedge, and a grove of plantain

a little in front. Whilst they sat here deeply absorbed in the

_aguardiente_, a considerable party of the enemy got amongst the

plantain-trees, and fired a hundred muskets into them at the distance of

a few rods. Strange to say, the greasers were so nervous at finding no

barricade between them, or were such contemptible marksmen, that not

a shot took serious effect; only the demijohn of _aguardiente_ was

shivered into a thousand pieces, and the liquor ran out into the grass.

The filibusters jumped up astounded and disordered; but, seeing so much

good liquor running away wastefully into the grass, they grew terrible.

It was an insult and injury which both men and officers appreciated. It

gave every man in the troop a personal quarrel with the enemy. "Charge

'em!" shouted the captain; "we'll pay the scoundrels for the miserable

trick!" At full speed they swept through a gap in the hedge, and rushed

into the plantain-grove before the enemy had time to reload. But when

the greasers saw them coming on fiercely, their hearts failed them, and,

turning their backs, they fled towards the town. Never were filibusters

or men-of-war better pleased than now! They rattled on furiously behind

the nimble greasers. They sent howling death into their midst at every

step of the chase. They passed bloody forms stretched here and there

upon the earth. They followed the flying foe even to the edge of

the town, and saw its hostile swarm running hither and thither in

alarm.--Alas! General William Walker, why were you not here at this

propitious moment, with all your brave spirits, invincible with rum,

behind you? Then might you have rushed with the fugitives into the town,

and hurled the yellow-skinned invaders into the lake! Then might the

flag of Regeneration have waved even at this day over the hills and

valleys of Nicaragua,--and the unfortunate author of this history have

received a reward for his services!--_Ay de mí!_ Even now, reposing in

the shade of the palm-tree, fanned by the orange-scented breeze that

blows over the lake, I might drink the immortal juice of the sugarcane,

called _aguardiente_, and dream, and gaze at the cloud-wrapped cone of

Ometepec!--But I must forget this.

The dead killed in this plantain-patch were all that our men obtained

sight of. How many fell behind the barricades, where all the serious

fighting took place, it was impossible to tell; though there was no

reason to think that the enemy, fighting under cover, had suffered at

all proportionably with our men, or, indeed, had suffered equally,

losing man for man, except that ours were the better marksmen.

We passed a cold and sleepless night, awaiting the word to take up

arms and advance; but in the mean time General Walker had changed

his intention, and, when morning broke, the whole force quitted the

outskirts and marched back into Rivas. The killed and wounded by

the whole affair were reported officially at one hundred, or

thereabout,--underrated, most probably, for effect upon the men. It

was enough, however, considering the filibusters had no more than

four hundred engaged. Amongst them, though not reported, was that

devil-hearted dog which I have mentioned heretofore. He fell, shot

through the head, whilst advancing with the others toward the barricade.

He was lamented by the whole army,--by many superstitiously, even,--who

said he had gone through all Walker's hard stresses so far untouched,

and his end was prophetic of downfall.

And it is even true, that from this battle General Walker's prospects

clouded rapidly. A proclamation, issued by the Costa-Rican government,

promising fugitive filibusters free passage to the United States, found

its way into Rivas, and immediately worked immense mischief, and was,

indeed, the instrument of his overthrow. The men had no sooner seen it

than they began to leave as fast as they found opportunities to escape.

Guards were placed around the town, and spies in every company; but it

was of no avail; and every morning it was rumored through the camp that

this or that number had got off for Costa Rica during the night. General

Walker, in a speech which he made a few days after to infuse new spirit,

said that these were the cowards,--whose absence was beneficial, and

from whom it was well that the army should be purged. However, this was

exaggerated. It is true, doubtless, that there were many leaving merely

from fear, who would have chosen to stay with him, rather than trust

to the promises of a people believed to be treacherous and

promise-breaking, and whose hatred they had incurred,--had the battles

of San Jorge and Obraja been successful. And, indeed, the filibuster

ranks were not wanting in cowards. Cowards might be induced to come on

a desperate enterprise like this, through misrepresentation by Walker's

own agents; through mere thoughtlessness, or mistake,--not knowing what

soldier's metal was in them; or, with the bayonet of Hunger against

their backs at home, they might be unmindful of any other bayonet on the

distant shore of Nicaragua. (It should be musket-shot, however; for the

greasers never found heart to use the bayonet.) And then again, many,

who, when they first reached Nicaragua, were no cowards, after a few

months' stay, became changed,--by the depressing effects of fever, by

loss of confidence in their drunken officers, and by the absence of all

incentive to fight stoutly for a leader so unpopular as Walker. It was a

common saying, that in this army an old rule was reversed,--the veterans

were worse fighters than the recruits. The soldier was at his best

when he first landed upon the Isthmus, raw and healthy. After that, he

rapidly deteriorated, losing spirit with every battle, until he became

at last a thoroughbred coward. Seven or eight greasers to one filibuster

was said to be good fighting, at one time; but now three or four to one

was thought to be great odds; and before the game ended, I hear, they

were become equally matched, man for man, almost. But, whatever General

Walker said in his speech, this class of weak ones were not always the

deserters. It required some little energy or strength of legs, with

which these were unfurnished, to go over to the enemy at San Jorge, or

walk down to Costa Rica; and the fact was, that from the first many of

the healthiest and liveliest men, whose defection could least be borne,

were leaving,--not from fear, mainly, but because by this proclamation

they were offered the first opportunity to escape from a disagreeable

service to which they thought themselves bound by no tie of love or

honor.

It was now about time for a steamer to arrive at San Juan on the Pacific

with the California passengers; and the next day, or the second day,

perhaps, succeeding the battle at San Jorge, General Walker said to

General Sanders, in his quiet, whining way,--"General Sanders, I am

going to take two hundred and fifty riflemen and the rangers and go down

to San Juan to bring up our recruits to Rivas; and if three thousand

greasers are on the Transit road, I intend to go through them."

Accordingly, the riflemen, the ranger regiment, and a small party of

artillerymen with one of the two brass howitzers, met in the _plaza_,

and set out on this expedition at midnight, with Generals Walker and

Sanders both in the party.

The route of the detachment was the one I have mentioned before as

inland through the forest, and striking the Transit road some miles west

of the lake and Virgin Bay. It was firmly believed that we should meet

the enemy somewhere on the Transit road,--since the hills through which

it passed offered many excellent barricading-points, and it would seem a

matter of great importance to them to cut us off from junction with any

fresh recruits the steamer might land at San Juan. So there was much

preparatory drinking amongst the officers, (yet I say it not in slander,

for many were brave enough for any deed, and drank before battle only

because they drank always,)--and less amongst the men solely because

spirits had become scarce around Rivas, and dear; and there were very

few, truly, who had not ceased long since to carry coin in their

pockets. The captain of our company, who was an incautious man, and was

frequently drinking more than was needful, on this occasion drank more

than he was fitted to bear; and whilst the detachment was stopped some

time getting the wheel-piece over a hard place in the road, his strong

friend Aguardiente brought him to the ground, as he sat on his mule near

the front with his company,--where he lay in eruptive state like a

young toper, and so falling asleep lost his mule, which strayed into the

forest to browse, causing him much embarrassment and confused search

when the detachment was ready to start. Being up again, however, the

sleep and stomachic alleviation proved beneficial, and we, his soldiers,

followed after him in much greater comfort and confidence.

Such delays by the howitzer, and a wagon transporting spare muskets for

the expected recruits, were so frequent, that we made but slow progress,

and when we emerged from the woods the sun was already shining upon

the broad Transit road,--I might have said like a glory on the brow of

Ometepec, but my memory is bad, and I doubt whether the fact may not be

that the sun rises upon this point from lower down on the lake. After

entering the Transit road, the rangers were sent ahead to discover if

there were an enemy in the way. Our regiment, as we called it, now

together for the first time since I joined it, consisted of some

seventy men, divided into three companies, all under command of Colonel

Waters,--a soldierly-looking man, and, moreover, brave, and not without

training in the Mexican War. Some time before the regiment had numbered

one hundred, but had become thus reduced by disease and the enemy.

On this ride I remember a feeble infusion of that excellent spirit

which, since the days of Sir Walter Scott, ought to belong to all

horse-soldiers, moss-troopers, or mounted rangers, but which I had

despaired of ever finding in General Walker's service. It is true we had

no bugler, or standard-bearer, or piece of feather in the troop, or,

indeed, any circumstance of war, save our revolvers and Sharpe's rifles,

vermin and dirty shirts. Nevertheless the morning was splendid, with a

fresh breeze behind us; the road was hard and smooth, and rang under

our horses' feet; and withal I felt, that, if we should see a troop

of greaser lancers ahead, in good uniform, we might run 'em down, and

bullet 'em, and strip 'em, with good romantic spirit, even.

But this is a most hollow cheat which Sir Walter Scott and other

book-men have played off on some weak-headed young men of our low-minded

generation. There is no doubt but a man seated amongst ten thousand

cavalry, who shake the earth as they charge, ought to feel himself

swell, as part of an avalanche or mighty Niagara,--as part of the

mightiest visible force which feeble man can enter or his spirit

commingle with. This were no contemptible joy, which the thin-blooded

philosopher might laugh at,--better, indeed, than most to be found here

on this fog-rounded flat of ours, where some few melodies from heaven

and countless blasts from hell meet, and make such strange, unequal

dissonance. But, alack! alack! it is not for the feeble, or the young

soldier, fresh from his plough or his yardstick, his briefs or his

pestle. For how shall we who have all our lives been standing guard

against the approach of death, who start horror-shaken from the dropping

of a tile, whose small wounds are quickly bound up by tender mother or

sister, and lamented over,--how shall we feel romantic in the midst of a

shower of bullets? Enough done, if our vanity or sense of duty hold us

there in any spirit, so that we do the needed trigger-work, and not turn

tail and disgrace ourselves. Even the veteran's satisfaction, since the

laying aside of steel armor, is not much, to be sure, or is gathered

after the battle. There is some savage ecstasy, perhaps, when he sees

his enemy fall, or when he sees his back; this last, indeed, a glorious

sight for any soldier,--worth rushing at the cannon's mouth to look

at, almost. But the man, be he veteran or other, who tells me he found

pleasure on the field where the Minié-balls kill afar off, in cold

blood,--I know him for one of the eccentric, stupid, or talkers for

purposes of vanity.--But this will suffice.

There were three places on the road, amongst the Cordillera ridges,

where, in former wars, a Costa-Rican force, flying before the

filibusters, had stopped to barricade, and gathered heart to withstand

their pursuers awhile,--long enough to bark the surrounding trees with

musket-shot,--some of them, indeed, amid their topmost branches; for it

is a greaser-failing to shoot inordinately high. Each of these sites we

approached with caution, expecting to see an enemy there; but there was

none, and we came down safely at length to our old shed-camp. Here we

halted, and made our station, as it was more convenient for pasturage,

whilst the foot passed on to San Juan, two miles beyond.

The steamer not arriving, we remained at this place several days,

employed as before, with the sugar-cane and the wood-ticks, miserable

enough.

In the mean time, the foot at San Juan, finding unusual temptation to

escape from this place, so much nearer the Costa-Rican line, were

leaving in large parties; and unwilling service was made of the rangers

to intercept the fugitives, by posting them below on all the paths

leading through the forest to Costa Rica. General Walker esteemed these

more faithful, because they had been more considerately treated, better

fed, allowed greater freedom and privilege,--having no drill, loose

discipline, and exemption from guard-duty when with the foot; and,

above all, their part of the service being healthier, and, though more

fatiguing, far preferable, on the whole, to the other. One night I was

detailed, with others, on this disagreeable duty, and remember it,

for other reasons, as the most wretched night of all that I passed in

Nicaragua. Our station was on the bank of a little wooded stream, some

miles below San Juan. After the guard had been posted, I lay down to get

some hours' sleep, which I needed,--but was no sooner on the ground than

a swarm of infinitesimally small creatures, of the tick genus, whose den

I had invaded, came over me, and the rest was merely one sensation of

becrawled misery; so that, notwithstanding great previous loss of sleep,

I went again unrefreshed. I asked an old filibuster who lay near me, how

he could sleep through it. "Oh," said he, "I've got my skin dirty and

callous, and this easy-walking species, that can't bite, never troubles

me." On this subject I read the following in Mr. Irving's "History

of Columbus" with some emotion:--"Nor is the least beautiful part of

animated nature [in those tropical regions] the various tribes of

insects that people every plant, displaying brilliant coats-of-mail,

which sparkle to the eye like precious gems." It seems strange to me

that any good should be recognized in these children of despair, which

have caused me more unhappiness than all the world's vermin beside.

I think this praise must be from Mr. Irving himself, looking up the

picturesque. It is not possible that Columbus would have had the heart

to flatter and polish up these mailed insects, who, in his day, ate him,

turned him over and over, and harried him more than ever was Job by

Satan.

Next morning, whilst we were roasting green plantains in

the fire for breakfast, a man dressed in General Walker's

blue-shirt-and-cotton-breeches uniform came upon us suddenly

from out of the woods beyond the stream. He was evidently going

south,--but seeing our party, with startled look, he turned, and

went in the direction of San Juan. We knew him at once for a deserter,

but had no zeal to arrest him; and he had already got past us, when

some one ejaculated,--"D--- him, why don't he go right? That's not

the road to Costa Rica!" Upon this unlucky speech, the officer in

command of the detail, who, either through inattention or design,

was suffering the man to pass unquestioned, ordered him to be

followed and seized. He was a German, and either a dull, heavy

fellow, or else stupefied by his terrible misfortune; and being

unable to say a consistent word for himself, the officer sent him

off under guard to San Juan, where it was well known what General Walker

would do with him.

Some hours after this misadventure, as most of us took it, our detail

was relieved and we rode back to camp. The man who had been taken in the

act of deserting was condemned to be shot at San Juan this same evening,

in presence of the whole detachment. He was led down to the beach, and

seated in a chair at the water's edge. He bore himself carelessly, or

with an absent, almost unconscious air, like one who felt himself acting

a part in a dream. A squad of drafted riflemen was brought up in front

of him, and the word was given by a sergeant. They made their aim false

purposely, and but one shot took effect on the doomed man. He fell back

into the water, where he lay struggling, and stained the waves red with

his blood. It was a wrenching sight, too brutal far, to see the sergeant

place his gun against the poor wretch's head, and end his agony!

It seemed so abominable to every spectator there that General Walker

should thus seek to enforce Devil's service from his men, entrapped

mostly in the first place, without wages or half maintenance, and with

no claim upon them whatever, but by a contract without consideration

on the one part, on the other hard labor to the death,--that this

exhibition, which in another army were calculated to strengthen just

authority, here only aroused indignation and disgust. This very night,

after witnessing the deserter's punishment, eleven men left the company

to which he belonged in a body, and were seen no more in Nicaragua. And

though for selfish reasons I was concerned to see the army falling to

pieces, and the load of toil and danger increasing upon the rest of us,

yet both I and the rest acknowledged that there was no tie of honor or

honesty to keep any man with us who wished to escape; and this deed

seemed to us without decent sanction.

The steamer at length made its appearance, and, after landing us about

forty recruits, departed south with the States passengers for Panamá;

and afterwards, the new soldiers being all furnished with muskets, the

detachment started on its return to Rivas. On the way, it was rumored

amongst the men, that a reinforcement to the enemy, marching from Costa

Rica, were halted at Virgin Bay, and that General Walker was going to

attack them. We hurried over the Transit road as fast as the foot were

able,--General Sanders, I recollect, riding far in advance, sometimes

out of sight, and thus giving himself to an ambush, had the enemy placed

any. By repute he was a man of extreme courage, and held his life so

contemptuously that he would scarce hesitate to charge an enemy's line

by himself. But I fear that this time he had other impulse than his

innate valor; for there was no occasion for a solitary man, riding in

these gloomy woods, to be singing and hallooing, and whirling his sword

about his head, and swaying to and fro on his horse, unless he were

strongly worked by _aguardiente_.

Reaching Virgin Bay some time after dark, we found the report of an

enemy there untrue; but the pickets were got out in remarkable haste,

and all the native population--some dozen women and children--were

seized, to prevent discovery of us to the enemy, and I suppose there was

some expectation of an attack. However, liquor being plenty amongst the

hotel-keepers at Virgin Bay, the officers thought it a good place to get

drunk in,--and many spent the night in that endeavor, and in playing

poker; so that in the morning, walking down to the lake to water my

mule, I met a colonel and a general staggering into quarters, rubbing

their eyes sullenly, having just lifted themselves from the street,

where the honest god Bacchus, as a poet calls him, had put them to bed

the night before.

The steamer "San Carlos" still lay over at the island, under shadow of

the volcano. The other probably lay at San Jorge, by the enemy. The old

brig formerly anchored at Virgin Bay having been burned, there was now

no hope of retaking these steamers, unless the party of Texans, which we

had by this time heard was fighting its way up the Rio San Juan, should

succeed in getting upon the lake with a boat from the river. But to-day

we came near reaching the top of this hope unexpectedly. For whilst we

still delayed in Virgin Bay, smoke began to rise from the chimneys of

the "San Carlos," and in proper time she turned her prow and came across

the water directly toward us. It was scarcely possible that she knew

anything of our presence in Virgin Bay; and it was doubted by no one but

she was coming to land there for some purpose; and then her recapture,

were she full of the enemy, was certain, in the spirit we then were in:

for all felt, that, could we once get the steamer into our hands, and

reach the four hundred fresh Texans on the river, the filibuster star

would have shot up so high that it were ill-management indeed that would

ever pull it down again. Accordingly all were quickly driven into the

houses, and told to lie there close, and be ready to burst forth when

the steamer touched her pier. But we were miserably disappointed. She

came steadily up within half a mile of land, and then, catching an

alarm, turned, and put swiftly back to the island. I afterward heard

that two drunken officers had rushed out into the street, and so

apprised her of the danger.

After this the detachment set out towards Rivas. We advanced along the

lake shore some distance, fording the mouth of the little Rio Lajas,

whose waters had lost much depth since I first, passed over this road,

crossing the stream in a bungo. In the forest we found, at one point,

trees felled across the road, as if the enemy had here been minded to

oppose us; but we passed by, seeing no one, and reached Rivas in good

time, unmolested.

Arrived at Rivas, we found that a change was taking place in the

character of the war. The town had been threatened by the enemy during

our absence, and General Henningsen was busy putting it into a state

better suited to repel any sudden attack. Pieces of artillery looked

down all the principal approaches, from behind short walls of _adobe_

blocks, raised in the middle of the street with open passage-ways on

either side. Native men with _machetes_, watched by armed guards, were

clearing away the fine groves of orange, mango, and plantain, which

everywhere surrounded Rivas, and were fitted to cover the approach of an

enemy. Others were tearing down or burning the houses in the outskirts,

to narrow the circle of defence. The tenants of these houses--when they

had any--were moved up nearer the _plaza_, or, if native, sometimes

into the country. The native population of Rivas, however, was scanty,

consisting mostly of a few women,--of the kindest and most affable sort.

In what direction the men had all, or nearly all, gone, I am unable to

say. Doubtless some of them were with the Chamorristas.

So many of the houses were marked out to be pulled down, that General

Walker was obliged to quarter his new recruits in the church, a large

stone building, and curious from the head of Washington, easily

identified, carved in relief on its _facade_. Hitherto some native women

had been accustomed to assemble in this church and worship, under care

of a fat, unctuous little _padre_, very obsequiously courteous toward

filibusters;--and well he might be; for General Walker was suspicious

of all _padres_, and kept a stern eye upon them. Once he caught one of

them, who had preached treason against him within reach of his arm, and

released him again only upon payment of five thousand _pesos_. Another,

for a like offence, was put into the guard-house, and required to ransom

himself at twenty-five hundred. What became of this one, whether he paid

his ransom and got out, or whether he stayed there until he lost oil and

became lean on the small ration furnished him, was not rumored. Yet,

with all this in his memory, when the present _padre_ came again with

his flock of women and found the church occupied by soldiers, he went

away scowling, and never even lifted his shovel-hat to me when I met

him.

On the night succeeding our return from San Juan, General Walker

determined to try a night attack on San Jorge, hoping much from the

fresh spirit and muscle of his forty Californians. To assist in this,

our company had orders to be on the _plaza_ at two o'clock, afoot, with

clean rifles and forty rounds of ammunition. At one o'clock we arose

and went down on the _plaza_, in number about twenty, the rest of the

company remaining behind on account of sickness. On the way, however,

the number was augmented by a second company of near twenty dismounted

rangers, with Colonel Waters at their head.

Whilst we stood, in rather low spirits, waiting the hour of departure,

our captain procured us a calabash of _aguardiente_, which, thinking

upon the desperate work ahead of us and the infinite toil and

sleeplessness of the last few weeks, we considered excellent, and not to

be spared. Discomfort in battle is a positive evil, felt, perhaps, by

all sons of Adam; and he who will use means to get rid of it and leave

himself free to work is no more a coward, so far, than he who takes

chloroform to prevent the pain of a tooth-pulling,--mere positive evil,

likewise. _Aguardiente_ will serve a good purpose;--provided the head be

not essentially weak, or too inflammable, it ascends you into the brain,

and dries you there, as one hath said, all the nervous, crudy vapors

that environ it. But this captain of ours drank too injudiciously, and,

indeed, so obscured himself with his drink, often, that we his men were

loath to trust and follow him,--doubting that he knew where he was about

to take us, or for what purpose. To-night he strapped a large canteen of

_aguardiente_ about his neck and wore it into battle,--and many times,

as the danger staggered, we saw him draw courageous spirit through the

neck of it, and go on befogged and reassured. Yet, withal, he was no

greater coward than other men,--indeed, much braver than most,--had been

wounded whilst leading a forlorn hope over a barricade,--and would, I

doubt not, have fought well without _aguardiente_, had drinking been a

mark of cowardice in the army.

At length all was ready, and, with something above three hundred

riflemen and infantry, under command of Generals Walker and Sanders, we

started out on the San Jorge road some hours after midnight. We kept

along the highway until we began to approach the town, and then turned

aside into a by-lane crossing to the left. The by-lane was interrupted

at one place by a deep pool of water, through which the detachment

plunging, half-leg deep, some of the weak-legged stumbled and fell,

getting their cartridge-boxes under, and spoiling their ammunition.

At the end of this lane we came into another highway running toward San

Jorge, along which we advanced rapidly. After a while we came to a halt,

and a party was sent off; then forward again, a corner turned, and

another halt,--when I heard General Walker asking some one, in composed

voice, "Does he know exactly where we are?" Whilst we stood there, a

sudden and hot rattle of musketry began from the front, and we again

advanced swiftly, by scattered _adobes_, turning corners, and came in

full view of a barricade some distance ahead spitting flashes of fire

crosswise into the right-hand side of the street. We crossed over from

left to right, and halted behind an _adobe_. On our right hand stood

a grove of small trees, through which the assailants had probably

advanced, and in which, just ahead, hot work was now going on

loudly,--with Minié-balls, grape-shot, shouts, outcries, and blood

enough doubtless. After some delay here, part of us rangers, led by

Colonel Waters, recrossed the street, and advanced, crouching, toward

the barricade spitting flames in front. We crept, double file, along a

palisade of tall cactus which bordered this part of the street, against

whose thorns my neighbor on the right would frequently thrust me, as the

shot nipped him closely,--inconvenient, but without pain, so intense was

the distraction of the moment. We had crept within a few rods of the

barricade, where we had glimpse of faces through embrasures, amidst the

smoke and flame, and our leader, as he afterwards said, had it on his

lips to order the forward rush,--when the party attacking on our right,

behind the trees, gave back, and our own mere handful was checked, and

retraced its steps running. A moment later, and we had gone upon that

high barricade, some score of us, without backers in the street, to

draw on us the enemy's whole fire,--and very likely--unless they had

foolishly fled at our first rush--to be all killed there.

On the retreat, I with some others was ordered out of the ranks to pick

up a wounded officer and carry him off the ground. We took him down the

street, turned a corner, and laid him on the floor of a church some

distance beyond. He had an arm broken and a bad wound in his body,--a

hopeless man; but upborne and defiant through _aguardiente_ and native

strength. After getting him off our hands, we returned to our company,

which we found sheltering behind the _adobe_ where we had halted when on

the advance. Here we remained some time, with instructions from General

Walker (whom, at this time, we seemed to follow as personal guard) to

keep ourselves out of reach of the missiles flying on either side of the

house. The darkness was so thick that we could see only what was passing

immediately around us, and therefore were ignorant as to the position

of the foot, and what was now doing amongst them. It was said, however,

afterwards, that their officers strove to rally and bring them up to

another charge, but that they proved mutinous, and refused to move.

They had suffered, indeed, discouragement enough. Colonel O'Neal, who

had led them, was mortally wounded; the barricade was too high and

dangerous; they had tried to fire it without success. Some of the forty

recruits, who were in front of the party, had climbed over it; and these

afterwards affirmed, that, had the others followed then, the barricade

had been gained; but the older soldiers had degenerated, possessed

little of these men's zeal or spirit, hesitated, and, their colonel

falling, gave back. Those who had gone over the barricade were killed

there, or came back with wounds,--one with a bayonet-thrust through the

arm,--a most remarkable wound, in which, perhaps, Central-Americans

fleshed a bayonet for the first time.

Our company, or part of it,--for most had been placed about on pickets

when the attack failed,--after a while fell farther back, turned the

corner before mentioned, faced about, and came to a stand in the street,

with an _adobe_ house on the left. The street in which we stood ran

straight forward, and crossed the one down which we had just receded at

right angles, a few feet ahead of us, so that there was here a junction

of four streets, or, I might better say, roads; for there were no more

than four disconnected houses in the immediate vicinity,--the one on the

corner beside us, one on the corner diagonally opposite, the one up the

street running left, on the far side, behind which we had a little while

ago taken shelter, and the square stone church, whither we had carried

the wounded man, and which stood on the far side of the street some

yards behind us. The rest of the space was covered with fruit-trees and

a heavy growth of hushes; and concealed behind these lay the barricades

and the _plaza_ of San Jorge. But all this was seen later; then the

whole was wrapped in thick darkness, it yet lacking some short time of

daybreak.

Whilst our detached company was standing there, with the foot drawn up

in the road a little way before us, a single horseman came out from the

enemy and galloped past our picket, stationed up the road some distance

ahead of the detachment. The picket fired upon him after he had passed;

he dropped under his horse's side, and galloped back, apparently

unharmed; but, from the direction of their fire, the picket was

naturally mistaken for the enemy by the detachment in front, who could

see only the flashes through the darkness. Some stood their ground, and

returned the fire, placing the picket in great danger; but the bulk,

already well scared by their repulse, broke away panic-stricken, and

came rushing down the road toward us, thinking the enemy were charging

behind them. Our company was suddenly overwhelmed, or borne along by the

current, ignorant of the cause of alarm. I brought myself up behind the

corner house, where many of the others were taking shelter. But hearing

some one cry out, "To the church! to the church! make a stand in the

church!" I immediately ran across the road and entered the church by a

side-door. As I crossed the entrance, with two or three others,

General Walker came running up from the interior, with his sword out,

crying,--"Where's that man came into the church? Show me that man!"

There were cocked revolvers with some of us, and it was, perhaps, well

for General Walker that the crowd now pouring in strongly at both front

and side doors diverted him. Turning to these, he threw himself first on

one, then on another, battered, tugged, and thrust them out at the door

with such force as I hardly thought was in him. He was soon assisted

by Sanders, Waters, and other officers, and, with the curses and

vociferations of these men, the confused rush of the panic-stricken

crowd in the dark, and the outcries of the wounded, who lay about

on the floor, as the fugitives trampled over them, there was such a

pressure as might unchart a young soldier, and strand him among his

fears.

After seeing enough of it, I ran out again into the street, sore

bestead, indeed, to know what I should do. Day was beginning to break,

and in the gray dawn I saw the men ejected from the church running

hither and thither, trying to rejoin their officers. And, there being

neither standards nor drums to collect by, the sergeants stood at divers

points shouting at the top of their voices the number and letter

of their companies, and calling the fugitives to come into ranks.

Minié-balls whizzed about in the air or knocked up the dust from

the street, and firing was now and then heard near by in uncertain

directions, where perhaps the enemy were vexing our pickets. I believe

it had been a helter-skelter day for us all, had the enemy got in then

and attacked us in the midst of this confusion. They might surely have

driven us into irretrievable rout, flying on the road to Rivas, by a

spirited charge of fifty good men, or much less.

Whilst I stood in doubt what course to take, I saw our captain, followed

by three or four of the company, looking over the ground for the

missing, and I forthwith made up and joined him. Others came in, one by

one; and at length, the foot being gathered together in the _adobes_,

and things brought to order outside, the captain led his company into

the church. General Walker was still there, talking earnestly with

Sanders and Waters, having cleared the church of the fugitives. As we

approached, he asked the captain, who by this time had emptied his

canteen of _aguardiente_, how many of his men were killed. The captain

began cursing the foot, and telling how he had been run over, having

tried to stand,--and would have made a long talc, but Colonel Waters

touched him on the shoulder, and said in undertone,--"Lead your company

off. You are too drunk to talk now."

Our post thenceforward was at the several doors of the church, where we

kept guard for the wounded, who lay about the floor in miserable plight

for lack of water. Outside, drop-shooting was still kept up by the enemy

in the bushes, and returned by ours from the doors.

It was an ill-looking situation for our small, panic-shaken party,

resting here within pistol-shot of an overwhelming and victorious enemy.

The enemy's respect for us was too great and unreasonable. It behooved

them certainly, as honest soldiers, to come forth now and drive us out

of their town, in which, I think, if well commenced, there had been but

little difficulty. Afterwards, indeed, when I was amongst them in Costa

Rica, they declared concerning this affair that they knew we were in

their power then, but refrained because they were unwilling to shed more

filibuster blood, preferring rather to conquer us by proclamation, and

send us back to our homes unhurt,--more expensive, to be sure, but

recommended by humanity. Yet I laugh at this when I remember how they

crept snake-like in the bushes, and tried to pick us off at the doors,

and how they strove, without much danger to themselves, to run our

pickets in on us, and get to see our backs turned, whereupon, doubtless,

humanity would have been little thought of, and filibuster blood cheap

enough. Indeed, once that morning, with little less than four-score

horse, they came charging with hope to pass a picket of ten men; but

saddles being emptied, they recoiled, and their leader being slain,

whilst attempting to rally them, they fled contemptibly,--seven or eight

from one. However, this is only my revenge for much exasperation and

deploration that they would never come away from their pestiferous

walls,--where, after all, they had a right to stay, and will not be

blamed by the candid and unbebullet-whizzed reader that they did stay.

We kept our post at the doors, annoyed and apprehensive, until the sun

was an hour or so high, when a party of rangers arrived from Rivas

with led horses to transport the wounded,--which incumbrance it was, I

suppose, that prevented our withdrawal earlier. The wounded were carried

out and mounted, some with a soldier behind to support them. Colonel

O'Neal, however, who had both legs broken, was carried on a litter, with

a cocked revolver on each side of him; for, though he had lost much

blood, there was yet spirit in him, and he wanted revenge for these

death-wounds. The pickets were now all brought in hastily, and the

detachment began its march, leaving, I remember, one stark form propped

against the church wall, with staring eyeballs fixed, and soul wandered

somewhither. This, from his clean looks, had been one of the fresh

California recruits, who, indeed, had found miserable entertainment on

their arrival in Nicaragua, land of oranges and sunshine,--being first

and longest this night at the barricade, and leaving many of their

number there.

A little way from the church we crossed a road running into San Jorge,

and, looking up, saw a high log-barricade, some fifty rods off, with

embrasures and black-mouthed cannon frowning down on us. Why we were not

fired upon I know not, unless on that same score of humanity, or because

the enemy had abandoned it during last night's assault. Farther on,

whilst passing through a plantain-patch, we saw the greasers some

way off in our rear, watching us, running to and fro, and seemingly

exercised with preparation for attacking. However, we passed out into

the road, and went on undisturbed, yet still with the enemy hovering

behind us.

Coming to a place where an abrupt little mound rose at a fork in the

road, our company, which brought up the rear of the detachment, had

orders to conceal itself behind this, and await the pursuers, and give

them check. In a moment they came galloping up the slope of a hill some

two or three hundred yards back, their heads only appearing at first,

then the rest down to the saddle, when we arose suddenly and gave them a

volley of rifle-bullets. They dropped down quickly, either to the ground

or under their horses' bellies, in which manoeuvre some of them rival

the prairie Indians. Others coming up from behind, we gave them more,

until they all disappeared finally. After this we saw no more of them,

and arrived at Rivas without further alarm.

This was now the third repulse we had sustained within a few days, with

an aggregate loss, perhaps, counting wounded, (who, as I have said, were

more regretted than the dead,) not very far under two hundred men,--and

it became apparent that the filibuster day was over, unless General

Walker could find some stratagem in his head, or some better mode of

fighting than this confident rushing upon an overwhelming enemy, under

strong cover, and grown bold with success. The prospect, truly, began

to look black enough. The men had lost confidence in themselves and in

their officers, no longer despised the enemy, and dreaded the barricades

at San Jorge so deeply that they would be led against them no more.

Those who intended to desert avoided every exposure to danger, and

feigned sickness whenever detailed for service. One of the rifle

regiments had grown mutinous, upon some quarrel with its officers, and

refused to do duty of any kind, and it was absurd to attempt to compel

it by aid of the others. The natives, who had charge of the beef cattle,

turned them all out of the _corral_, and ran away in the night, leaving

the army without meat, and the commissary force, some forty horsemen,

to seek for prey wherever it was to be found. And then there were ill

reports heard about the party on the Rio San Juan, and its success began

to be doubted. But worse than all was the fast-spreading spirit of

desertion, which all saw would prove ruinous of itself, unless shortly

stopped in some way.

At this juncture it might have been worth while for General Walker to

form a corps for one attack of all the men in his army who felt an

earnest interest in driving the enemy out, and were willing to fight

desperately for the sake of it. There were scores of stout men acting

as lieutenants, captains, majors, etc., of slight performance in those

capacities, but who, had they been formed into companies, and asked to

fight now one night, at this desperate juncture, for the _haciendas_

General Walker had promised them, would have done willing, perhaps, and

excellent service. To these might be added all those among the ranks

to whom, from any cause, desertion or expulsion from Nicaragua was

disagreeable,--those who distrusted the Costa-Rican promises, or feared

disgrace at home, or had sick or wounded friends at Rivas, or were

desperate, broken men without other home, or with what other peculiar

motives there might be. With this force gathered to themselves by call

for volunteers, allowed to choose their own officers, furnished with

Colt's revolvers, or bayonets, or both, and led in advance, as a forlorn

hope, with ladders to scale the barricades by,--it is likely the enemy

might have been driven out, and the cause of Regeneration set up once

more. So, at least, it was thought by some. And, indeed, it must have

been extremely discouraging for one of better will to be fearful at

every step that his comrades would dart aside into the bushes and leave

him unsupported; it must have served to cripple the efforts of all the

well-intentioned in the army, and should have been remedied. However,

no call for volunteers was ventured by General Walker,--he, probably,

thinking it too unreasonable to ask his men to do anything for him

unforced.

There were some others who thought affairs might be retrieved, if

General Walker were displaced, at least from his military command,

and Henningsen, or some other, put in his stead. He was exceedingly

unpopular, hated, indeed, by a great many, (I have known more than one

who professed to nourish the intent of shooting him during his next

battle, when the deed could be covered,) was respected only for his

strong will and personal bravery, and had never been superseded, solely,

perhaps, because the great majority of his men were either without

energy, or were careless about everything but escape, and so felt no

interest in dethroning him and setting up another, when thereby they

were not helping their chance of getting out of the Isthmus. However,

there was now a conspiracy commenced by some who were unwilling to leave

Nicaragua, and who distrusted General Walker's ability to save the

filibusters much longer.

But these underworkers had made us no sign up to the night attack on

San Jorge, and the day succeeding that the writer lost sight of the

filibuster camp, and knew what took place in it no more. I will tell how

the withdrawal was brought about, and then extinguish my story. Near the

middle of the day, after returning from San Jorge, the company rode out,

under command of the sergeant, to gather forage for the animals. In

order to give my own mule a respite, I mounted for this occasion a

bad-winded animal, long before used up, and discarded by one of the

company, and left to run about the yard. As we rode out at the gateway,

one of the men advised me with some pointedness to go back and get my

own animal, assuring me the one I had would fail me on this expedition.

Yet, knowing he was good for the distance we usually rode foraging, I

paid him no heed, and thought nothing of his somewhat singular manner

until afterwards. When we had gone some distance, the same man asked me

if I had heard that forty deserters had left last night for Costa Rica,

adding, that it was his opinion the whole army would soon be on the same

road. "Well," said I, "I suppose we'll be among the last." "I don't

think I will," rejoined he, "nor the rest of this company." He said no

more; but it flashed upon me then that we were even now on the road for

Costa Rica; and it soon became certainty, as the sergeant turned down

toward the Transit road, a direction in which we had never been

allowed to forage, probably because the natives on that side had more

communication with San Juan and Virgin Bay, and General Walker was

unwilling that the States passengers should hear too many complaints

from them. I was before aware that many of the company had been for some

time revolving desertion, and had myself been sounded by one a day or

two previously; but could have had no suspicion that this was to be the

occasion, because several of the most forward in the matter had made

excuses, and remained behind in quarters.

At length we halted in a little stream, some miles from Rivas, to water

our animals, and it was here openly announced that the party was on its

way to Costa Rica to take the benefit of the government proclamation. I

rode back toward the rear, where I saw a dispute going on between one of

the company who wanted to return to Rivas and others who insisted that

he must go forward. One of them met me in the path, and told me I must

go with them until they had got beyond the Transit road. They had no

wish, he said, to force men to desert; but this much was needed to save

themselves from danger of pursuit. I told him my mule would never carry

me back from the Transit road. "We will catch you another," said he,

"when we reach the Jocote _rancho_." The whole crowd, save two or three,

were with him, and it was useless to persist. So I turned and rode

forward with the rest.

At the Jocote _rancho_ we succeeded in catching a mule, but he was given

to another of the company, whose animal showed worse signs than my own,

which, indeed, had borne me much better than I expected, and was not yet

seriously fatigued.

We came out upon the Transit road, passed over the Cordillera ridges,

and, just beyond the little river which crosses the road, two miles from

San Juan, turned aside into a forest-trail leading down the coast to

Costa Rica. Those of us who had been pressed thus far, after crossing

the Transit road, gave over all design of returning. The bonds which

drew us back were not strong, and the danger of return was considerable.

We had heard that the enemy was at Virgin Bay, and that their lancers

frequently passed backward and forward on the Transit road, and between

San Jorge and Virgin Bay. If we returned, we should be confined to the

path nearly all the way to Rivas by the impenetrable forest, and easily

taken, should we meet the enemy, or liable even, one or two only, to be

shot down from ambush by the hostile natives who lived on the route.

For my own part, I decided to go on with hesitation and regret, and I

believe, had one been ready to return, I should have borne him willing

company. I preferred even the hard service and dubious chance of General

Walker to the alternative of going amongst the Costa-Ricans, where

a cowardly populace would probably kick and spit upon us as dirty

filibusters and deserters; and should their government even keep its

promises, I had no stomach for being set ashore in the city of New York,

without money in my pocket, or home that I wished to go to. My health

had been good in Nicaragua, and, I believed, would remain good. The

motive which sent me there was still in force; and, withal, I wished to

see the filibuster game played out,--with Henningsen, or some other man

than General Walker, as military director. I believed it might even

take a turn so, and a _sans-culotte_ man be furnished at last with a

two-hundred-and-fifty-acre home in Nicaragua,--

"'Mid sandal bowers and groves of spice,

Might be a Peri's paradise";

and plantain food without sweat, and the elixir of joy called

_aguardiente!_ Nevertheless it was all left behind; and Samuel Absalom

tore the large, dirty canvas letters M.R., signifying Mounted Ranger,

off from his blue flannel shirt-breast; and his experience as filibuster

in Nicaragua closed,--somewhat ingloriously.

* * * * *

ROBA DI ROMA.

[Continued.]

CHAPTER V.

CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS.

The Christmas Holidays have come, and with them various customs and

celebrations quite peculiar to Rome. They are ushered in by the festive

clang of a thousand bells from all the belfries in Rome at Ave Maria of

the evening before the august day. At about nine o'clock of the same

evening the Pope performs High Mass in some one of the great churches,

generally at Santa Maria Maggiore, when all the pillars of this fine old

basilica are draped with red hangings, and scores of candles burn in the

side chapels, and the great altar blazes with light. The fuguing chants

of the Papal choir sound into the dome and down the aisles, while the

Holy Father ministers at the altar, and a motley crowd parade and jostle

and saunter through the church. Here, mingled together, may be seen

soldiers of the Swiss guard, with their shining helmets, long halberds,

and party-colored uniforms, designed by Michel Angelo,--chamberlains of

the Pope, all in black, with their high ruffs, Spanish cloaks, silken

stockings, and golden chains,--_contadini_ from the mountains, in their

dully brilliant costumes and white _tovaglie_,--common laborers from the

Campagna, with their black mops of tangled hair,--_forestieri_ of

every nation,--Englishmen, with long, light, pendant whiskers, and an

eye-glass stuck in one eye,--Germans, with spectacles, frogged coats,

and long, straight hair put behind their ears and cut square in the

neck,--then Americans, in high-heeled patent-leather boots, a black

dress-coat, and a black satin waistcoat,--and wasp-waisted French

officers, with baggy trousers, a goat-beard, and a pretentious swagger.

Nearer the altar are crowded together in pens a mass of women in black

dresses and black veils, who are determined to see and hear all,

treating the ceremony purely as a spectacle, and not as a religious

rite. Meantime the music soars, the organ groans, the censer clicks,

steams of incense float to and fro. The Pope and his attendants kneel

and rise,--he lifts the Host, and the world prostrates itself. A great

procession of dignitaries with torches bears a fragment of the original

cradle of the Holy Bambino from its chapel to the high altar, through

the swaying crowd that gape and gaze and stare and sneer and adore. And

thus the evening passes. When the clock strikes midnight all the bells

ring merrily, Mass commences at the principal churches, and at San Luigi

dei Francesi and the Gesù there is a great illumination (what the French

call _un joli spectacle_) and very good music. Thus Christmas is ushered

in at Rome.

The next day is a great _festa_. All classes are dressed in their best

and go to Mass,--and when that is over, they throng the streets to chat

and lounge and laugh and look at each other. The Corso is so crowded in

the morning, that a carriage can scarcely pass. Everywhere one hears the

pleasant greeting of "_Buona Festa,_" "_Buona Pasquà_." All the _basso

popolo_, too, are out,--the women wearing their best jewelry, heavy

gold ear-rings, three-rowed _collane_ of well-worn coral and gold, long

silver and gold pins and arrows in their hair, and great worked brooches

with pendants,--and the men of the Trastevere in their peaked hats,

their short jackets swung over one shoulder in humble imitation of the

Spanish cloak, and with rich scarfs tied round their waists. Most of

the ordinary cries of the day are missed. But the constant song of

"_Arancie! arancie dolci_!" is heard in the crowd; and everywhere

are the _sigarari_, carrying round their wooden tray of tobacco, and

shouting, "_Sigari! sigari dolci! sigari scelti_!" at the top of their

lungs; the _nocellaro_ also cries sadly about his dry chestnuts and

pumpkin-seeds. The shops are all closed, and the shopkeepers and clerks

saunter up and down the streets, dressed better than the same class

anywhere else in the world,--looking spick-and-span, as if they had just

come out of a bandbox, and nearly all of them carrying a little cane.

One cannot but be struck by the difference in this respect between the

Romans on a _festa_-day in the Corso and the Parisians during _fête_ in

the Champs Élysées,--the former are so much better dressed, and so much

happier, gayer, and handsomer.

During the morning, the Pope celebrates High Mass at San Pietro, and

thousands of spectators are there,--some from curiosity, some from

piety. Few, however, of the Roman families go there to-day;--they perform

their religious services in their private chapel or in some minor

church; for the crowd of _forestieri_ spoils St. Peter's for prayer.[A]

At the elevation of the Host, the guards, who line the nave, drop to

their knees, their side-arms ringing on the pavement,--the vast crowd

bends,--and a swell of trumpets sounds through the dome. Nothing can be

more impressive than this moment in St. Peter's. Then the choir from its

gilt cage resumes its chant, the high falsetti of the soprani soaring

over the rest, and interrupted now and then by the clear musical voice

of the Pope,--until at last he is borne aloft in his Papal chair on the

shoulders of his attendants, crowned with the triple crown, between

the high, white, waving fans; all the cardinals, monsignori, canonici,

officials, priests, and guards going before him in splendid procession.

The Pope shuts his eyes, from giddiness and from fasting,--for he has

eaten nothing for twenty-four hours, and the swaying motion of the chair

makes him dizzy and sick. But he waves at intervals his three fingers to

bless the crowd that kneel or bend before him, and then goes home to the

Vatican to dine with a clean conscience and a good appetite.

[Footnote A: "How," says Marforio to Pasquino, "shall I, being a true

son of the Holy Church, obtain admittance to her services?" To which

Pasquino returns for answer: "Declare that you are an Englishman, and

swear that you are a heretic."]

It is the universal rule among priests to fast before saying Mass, and

never to take the wafer or body of Christ upon a full stomach. The

law is _de rigueur_, and is almost never broken. But sometimes the

temptation of the appetite, it may be supposed, will overcome even a

pious man; for priest though one be, one is also flesh-and-blood. An

anecdote lately told me by the Conte Cignale (dei Selvaggi) may not

be out of place in this connection, and I instance it as an undoubted

exception to the general rule. A friend of his, an English artist,

enamored of Italian life, was spending the summer in one of the mountain

towns. Finding little society there except the physician and the parish

priest, he soon became on intimate terms with them. One morning the

priest called on him before he had finished breakfast. A savory dish was

smoking on the table, and the fumes of the hot coffee filled the room.

"I wish you could take breakfast with me," said he; "but I know you are

to say Mass, and that it would be contrary to rule for you to eat

until it is performed." The priest shrugged his shoulders and looked

deprecatorily at the artist and at the breakfast. "Still," continued the

latter, "if your scruples would allow you, I should be delighted if you

would help me with this capital dish." The temptation was great; the

smell was savory. The priest made a strong internal defence, but the

garrison was forced at last to capitulate. _"Eh!"_ said he, as he took

his seat, _"in fatto è il costume generale di non mangiare prima di dire

la messa e di prendere l'ostia. Ma--in queste circostanze_,"--here

he looked to see that the door was well fastened,--_"mi pare che si

potrebbe far un letto per nostro Signore, Gesù Cristo."_

It is the custom in Rome at the great _festas,_ of which Christmas is

one of the principal ones, for each parish to send round the sacrament

to all its sick; and during these days a procession of priest and

attendants may be seen, preceded by their cross and banner, bearing the

holy wafer to the various houses. As they march along, they make the

streets resound with the psalm they sing. Everybody lifts his hat as

they pass, and many among the lower classes kneel upon the pavement.

Frequently the procession is followed by a rout of men, women, and

children, who join in the chanting and responses, pausing with the

priest before the door of the sick person, and accompanying it as it

moves from house to house.

At Christmas, all the Roman world which has a _baiocco_ in its pocket

eats _torone_ and _pan giallo._ The shops of the pastry-cooks and

confectioners are filled with them, mountains of them incumber the

counters, and for days before Christmas crowds of purchasers throng to

buy them. _Torone_ is a sort of hard candy, made of honey and almonds,

and crusted over with crystallized sugar; or in other words, it is a

_nuga_ with a sweet frieze coat;--but _nuga_ is a trifle to it for

consistency. _Pan giallo_ is perhaps so called _quasi lucus,_ it being

neither bread nor yellow. I know no way of giving a clearer notion of

it than by saying that its father is almond-candy and its mother a

plum-pudding. It partakes of the qualities of both its parents. From its

mother it inherits plums and citron, while its father bestows upon it

almonds and consistency. In hardness of character it is half-way between

the two,--having neither the maternal tenderness on the one hand, nor

the paternal stoniness on the other. One does not break one's teeth on

it as over the _torone,_ which is only to be cajoled into masticability

by prolonged suction, and often not then; but the teeth sink into it as

the wagoner's wheels into clayey mire, and every now and then receive a

shock, as from sunken rocks, from the raisin-stones, indurated almonds,

pistachio-nuts, and pine-seeds, which startle the ignorant and innocent

eater with frightful doubts. I carried away one tooth this year over my

first piece; but it was a tooth which had been considerably indebted to

California, and I have forgiven the _pan giallo._ My friend the Conte

Cignale, who partook at the same time of _torone,_ having incautiously

put a large lump into his mouth, found himself compromised thereby to

such an extent as to be at once reduced to silence and retirement behind

his pocket-handkerchief. An unfortunate jest, however, reduced him to

extremities, and, after a vehement struggle for politeness, he was

forced to open the window and give his _torone_ to the pavement--and

the little boys, perhaps. _Chi sa?_ But, despite these dangers and

difficulties, all the world at Rome eats _pan giallo_ and _torone_ at

Christmas,--and a Christmas without them would be an egg without salt.

They are at once a penance and a pleasure. Not content with the _pan

giallo,_ the Romans also import the _pan forte di Siena,_ which is a

blood cousin of the former, and suffers almost nothing from time and

age.

On Christmas and New Year's day all the servants of your friends present

themselves at your door to wish you a _"buona festa,"_ or a _"buon capo

d'anno."_ This generous expression of good feeling is, however, expected

to be responded to by a more substantial expression on your part, in the

shape of four or five pauls, so that one peculiarly feels the value of a

large visiting-list of acquaintances at this season. To such an extent

is this practice carried, that in the houses of the cardinals and

princes places are sought by servants merely for the vails of the

_festas,_ no other wages being demanded. Especially is this the case

with the higher dignitaries of the Church, whose _maestro di casa_, in

hiring domestics, takes pains to point out to them the advantages of

their situation in this respect. Lest the servants should not be aware

of all these advantages, the times when such requisitions may be

gracefully made and the sums which may be levied are carefully

indicated,--not by the cardinal in person, of course, but by his

underlings; and many of the fellows who carry the umbrella and cling

to the back of the cardinal's coach, covered with shabby gold-lace and

carpet-collars, and looking like great beetles, are really paid by

everybody rather than the _padrone_ they serve. But this is not confined

to the _Eminenze,_ many of whom are, I dare say, wholly ignorant that

such practices exist. The servants of the embassies and all the

noble houses also make the circuit of the principal names on the

visiting-list, at stated occasions, with good wishes for the family. If

one rebel, little care will be taken that letters, cards, and messages

arrive promptly at their destination in the palaces of their _padroni;_

so it is a universal habit to thank them for their politeness, and to

request them to do you the favor to accept a piece of silver in order

to purchase a bottle of wine and drink your health. I never knew one of

them refuse; probably they would not consider it polite to do so. It is

curious to observe the care with which at the embassies a new name is

registered by the servants, who scream it from anteroom to _salon,_ and

how considerately a deputation waits on you at Christmas and New

Year's, or, indeed, whenever you are about to leave Rome to take your

_villeggiatura,_ for the purpose of conveying to you the good wishes of

the season or of invoking for you a _"buon viaggio."_ One young Roman,

a teacher of languages, told me that it cost him annually some twenty

_scudi_ or more, to convey to the servants of his pupils and others his

deep sense of the honor they did him in inquiring for his health at

stated times. But this is a rare case, and owing, probably, to his

peculiar position. A physician in Rome, whom I had occasion to call in

for a slight illness, took an opportunity on his first visit to put a

very considerable _buona mano_ into the hands of my servant, in order to

secure future calls. I cannot, however, say that this is customary; on

the contrary, it is the only case I know, though I have had other Roman

physicians; and this man was in his habits and practice peculiarly

un-Roman. I do not believe it, therefore, to be a Roman trait. On the

other hand, I must say, for my servant's credit, that he told me the

fact with a shrug, and added, that he could not, after all, recommend

the gentleman as a _medico,_ though I was _padrone,_ of course, to do as

I liked.

On Christmas Eve, a _Presepio_ is exhibited in several of the churches.

The most splendid is that of the Ara Celi, where the miraculous Bambino

is kept. It lasts from Christmas to Twelfth Night, during which period

crowds of people flock to see it; and it well repays a visit. The simple

meaning of the term _Presepio_ is a manger, but it is also used in the

Church to signify a representation of the birth of Christ. In the Ara

Celi the whole of one of the side-chapels is devoted to this exhibition.

In the foreground is a grotto, in which is seated the Virgin Mary, with

Joseph at her side and the miraculous Bambino in her lap. Immediately

behind are an ass and an ox. On one side kneel the shepherds and kings

in adoration; and above, God the Father is seen surrounded by clouds of

cherubs and angels playing on instruments, as in the early pictures of

Raphael. In the background is a scenic representation of a pastoral

landscape, on which all the skill of the scene-painter is expended.

Shepherds guard their flocks far away, reposing under palm-trees or

standing on green slopes which glow in the sunshine. The distances and

perspective are admirable. In the middle ground is a crystal fountain of

glass, near which sheep, preternaturally white, and made of real wool

and cotton-wool, are feeding, tended by figures of shepherds carved in

wood. Still nearer come women bearing great baskets of real oranges and

other fruits on their heads. All the nearer figures are full-sized,

carved in wood, painted, and dressed in appropriate robes. The

miraculous Bambino is a painted doll swaddled in a white dress, which is

crusted over with magnificent diamonds, emeralds, and rubies. The Virgin

also wears in her ears superb diamond pendants. Joseph has none; but he

is not a person peculiarly respected in the Church. As far as the Virgin

and Child are concerned, they are so richly dressed that the presents of

the kings and wise men seem rather supererogatory,--like carrying coals

to Newcastle,--unless, indeed, Joseph come in for a share, as it is to

be hoped he does. The general effect of this scenic show is admirable,

and crowds flock to it and press about it all day long. Mothers and

fathers are lifting their little children as high as they can, and until

their arms are ready to break; little maids are pushing, whispering,

and staring in great delight; _contadini_ are gaping at it with a mute

wonderment of admiration and devotion; and Englishmen are discussing

loudly the value of the jewels, and wanting to know, by Jove, whether

those in the crown can be real.

While this is taking place on one side of the church, on the other is a

very different and quite as singular an exhibition. Around one of the

antique columns of this basilica--which once beheld the splendors and

crimes of the Caesars' palace--a staging is erected, from which little

maidens are reciting, with every kind of pretty gesticulation, sermons,

dialogues, and speechifications, in explanation of the _Presepio_

opposite. Sometimes two of them are engaged in alternate question and

answer about the mysteries of the Incarnation and the Redemption.

Sometimes the recitation is a piteous description of the agony of the

Saviour and the sufferings of the Madonna,--the greatest stress being,

however, always laid upon the latter. All these little speeches have

been written for them by their priest or some religious friend, been

committed to memory, and practised with the appropriate gestures over

and over again at home. Their little piping voices are sometimes guilty

of such comic breaks and changes, that the crowd about them rustles into

a murmurous laughter. Sometimes also one of the very little preachers

has a _dispitto_, pouts, shakes her shoulders, and refuses to go on with

her part;--another, however, always stands ready on the platform to

supply the vacancy, until friends have coaxed, reasoned, or threatened

the little pouter into obedience. These children are often very

beautiful and graceful, and their comical little gestures and

intonations, their clasping of hands and rolling up of eyes, have a very

amusing and interesting effect. The last time I was there, I was sorry

to see that the French costume had begun to make its appearance. Instead

of the handsome Roman head, with its dark, shining, braided hair, which

is so elegant when uncovered, I saw on two of the children the deforming

bonnet, which could have been invented only to conceal a defect, and

which is never endurable, unless it be perfectly fresh, delicate, and

costly. Nothing is so vulgar as a shabby bonnet. Yet the Romans, despite

their dislike of the French, are beginning to wear it. Ten years ago it

did not exist here among the common people. I know not why it is that

the three ugliest pieces of costume ever invented, the dress-coat, the

trousers, and the bonnet, all of which we owe to the French, have been

accepted all over Europe, to the exclusion of every national costume.

Certainly it is not because they are either useful, elegant, or

commodious.[B]

[Footnote B: That cultivated gentleman, John Evelyn, two centuries ago

wrote some amusing words on this subject. After quoting the witty saying

of Malvezzi,--"I vestimenti negli animali sono molto securi segni della

loro natura, negli nomini del lor cervello,"--he goes on to say, "Be it

excusable in the French to alter and impose the mode on others, 'tis

no less a weakness and a shame in the rest of the world, who have no

dependence on them, to admit them, at least to that degree of levity as

to turn into all their shapes without discrimination; so as when the

freak takes our Monsieurs to appear like so many farces or Jack Puddings

on the stage, all the world should alter shape and play the pantomimes

with them. Methinks a French tailor, with an ell in his hand, looks like

the enchantress Circe over the companions of Ulysses, and changes them

into as many forms.... Something I would indulge to youth; something to

age and humor. But what have we to do with these foreign butterflies? In

God's name, let the change be our own, not borrowed of others; for why

should I dance after a Monsieur's flageolet, that have a set of English

viols for my concert? We need no French inventions for the stage or for

the back."--From a pamphlet entitled _Tyrannus, or the Mode_.

"Si le costume bourgeois," says George Sand, in _Le Péché de M.

Antoine_, "de notre époque est le plus triste, le plus incommode et

le plus disgracieux, que la mode ait jamais inventé, c'est surtout au

milieu des champs que tous ses inconvénients et toutes ses laideurs

révoltent.... Au milieu de ce cadre austère et grandiose, qui transporte

l'imagination au temps de la poésie primitive, apparaisse cette mouche

parasite, le _monsieur_ aux habits noirs, au menton rasé, aux mains

gantées, aux jambes maladroites, et ce roi de la société n'est plus

qu'un accident ridicule, une tâche importune dans le tableau. Votre

costume gênant et disparate inspire alors la pitié plus que les haillons

du pauvre, on sent que vous êtes déplacé au grand air, et que votre

livrée vous écrase."]

If one visit the Ara Celi during the afternoon of one of these _festas_,

the scene is very striking. The flight of one hundred and twenty-four

steps, which once led to the temple of Venus and Rome, is then thronged

by merchants of Madonna wares, who spread them out over the steps and

hang them against the walls and balustrades. Here are to be seen all

sorts of curious little colored prints of the Madonna and Child of the

most ordinary quality, little bags, pewter medals, and crosses stamped

with the same figures and to be worn on the neck,--all offered at once

for the sum of one _baiocco_. Here also are framed pictures of the

Saints, of the Nativity, and, in a word, of all sorts of religious

subjects appertaining to the season. Little wax dolls, clad in

cotton-wool to represent the Saviour, and sheep made of the same

materials, are also sold by the basketful. Children and _contadine_ are

busy buying them, and there is a deafening roar all up and down the

steps of "_Mezzo baiocco, bello colorito, mezzo baiocco, la

Santissima Concezione Incoronata,"--"Diario Romano, Lunario Romano

Nuovo,"--"Ritratto colorito, medaglia e quadruccio, un baiocco tutti,

un baiocco tutti,"--"Bambinelli di cera, un baiocco_."[C] None of

the prices are higher than one _baiocco_, except to strangers,--and

generally several articles are held up together, enumerated, and

proffered with a loud voice for this sum. Meanwhile men, women,

children, priests, beggars, soldiers, and _villani_ are crowding up and

down, and we crowd with them.

[Footnote C: "A half-_baiocco_, beautifully colored,--a half-_baiocco_,

the Holy Conception Crowned." "Roman Diary,--New Roman Almanac."

"Colored portrait, medal, and little picture, one _baiocco_, all."

"Little children in wax, one _baiocco_."]

At last, ascending, we reach the door which faces towards the west.

We lift the great leathern curtain and push into the church. A faint

perfume of incense salutes the nostrils. The golden sunset bursts in as

the curtain sways forward, illuminates the mosaic floor, catches on the

rich golden ceiling, and flashes here and there over the crowd on some

brilliant costume or shaven head. All sorts of people are thronging

there,--some kneeling before the shrine of the Madonna, which gleams

with its hundreds of silver votive hearts, legs, and arms,--some

listening to the preaching,--some crowding round the chapel of the

_Presepio_,--old women, haggard and wrinkled, come tottering along with

their _scaldini_ of coals, drop down on their knees to pray, and, as you

pass, interpolate in their prayers a parenthesis of begging. The church

is not architecturally handsome; but it is eminently picturesque, with

its relics of centuries, its mosaic pulpits and floor, its frescoes of

Pinturicchio and Pesaro, its antique columns, its rich golden ceiling,

its Gothic mausoleum to the Savelli, and its medieval tombs. A dim,

dingy look is over all,--but it is the dimness of faded splendor; and

one cannot stand there, knowing the history of the church, its exceeding

antiquity, and the changes it has undergone since it was a Roman temple,

without a peculiar sense of interest and pleasure.

It was here that Romulus, in the gray dawning of Rome, built the temple

of Jupiter Feretrius. Here the _spolia opima_ were deposited. Here the

triumphal processions of the Emperors and generals ended. Here the

victors paused before making their vows, until the message came from

the Mamertine Prisons below to announce that their noblest prisoner and

victim, while the clang of their triumph and his defeat rose ringing in

his ears as the procession ascended the steps, had expiated with death

the crime of being the enemy of Rome. Over these very steps,--nineteen

centuries ago, the first great Caesar climbed on his knees after his

first triumph. At their base, Rienzi, "last of the Roman tribunes,"

fell. And, if the tradition of the Church is to be trusted, it was on

the site of the present high altar that Augustus erected the "_Ara

primogenito Dei_" to commemorate the Delphic prophecy of the coming of

our Saviour. Standing on a spot so thronged with memories, the dullest

imagination takes fire. The forms and scenes of the past rise from their

graves and pass before us, and the actual and visionary are mingled

together in strange poetic confusion. Truly, as Walpole says, "memory

sees more than our eyes in this country."

And this is one great charm of Rome,--that it animates the dead figures

of its history. On the spot where they lived and acted, the Caesars

change from the manikins of books to living men; and Virgil, Horace, and

Cicero grow to be realities, as we walk down the Sacred Way and over

the very pavement they may once have trod. The conversations "De Claris

Oratoribus" and the "Tusculan Questions" seem like the talk of the last

generation, as we wander on the heights of Tusculum, or over the grounds

of that charming villa on the banks of the Liris, which the great Roman

orator so graphically describes in his treatise "De Legibus." The

landscape of Horace has not changed. Still in the winter you may see

the dazzling peak of the "_gelidus Algidus_" and "_ut alta stet

nive candidum Soracte_"; and wandering at Tivoli in the summer, his

description,

"Domus Albuneae resonantis,

Et praeceps Anio, et Tiburni lucus, et uda

Mobililius pomaria rivis,"

is as true and fresh as if his words were of yesterday. Could one better

his compliment to any Roman Lalage of to-day than to call her "_dulce

ridentem_"? In all its losses, Rome has not lost the sweet smile of its

people. Would you like to know the modern rules for agriculture in Rome,

read the "Georgics"; there is so little to alter, that it is not worth

mentioning. So, too, at Rome, the Emperors become as familiar as the

Popes. Who does not know the curly-headed Marcus Aurelius, with his

lifted brow and projecting eyes, from the full, round beauty of his

youth to the more haggard look of his latest years? Are there any modern

portraits more familiar than the pensive, wedge-like head of Augustus,

with his sharp-cut lips and nose,--or the dull phiz of Hadrian, with his

hair combed down over his low forehead,--or the vain, perking face of

Lucius Verus, with his thin nose, low brow, and profusion of curls,--or

the brutal bull head of Caracalla,--or the bestial, bloated features of

Vitellius?

These men, who were but lay-figures to us at school, mere pegs of names

to hang historic robes upon, thus interpreted by the living history of

their portraits, the incidental illustrations of the places where they

lived and moved and died, and the buildings and monuments they erected,

become like the men of yesterday. Art has made them our contemporaries.

They are as near to us as Pius VII. and Napoleon. I never drive out

of the old Nomentan Gate without remembering the ghastly flight of

Nero,--his recognition there by an old centurion,--his damp, drear

hiding-place underground, where, shuddering and quoting Greek, he waited

for his executioners,--and his subsequent terrible and cowardly death,

as narrated by Tacitus and Suetonius; and it seems nearer to me, more

vivid, and more actual, than the death of Rossi in the court of the

Cancelleria. I never drive by the Caesars' palaces, without recalling

the ghastly jest of Tiberius, when he sent for some fifteen of the

Senators at dead of night and commanded their presence; and when they,

trembling with fear, and expecting nothing less than that their heads

were all to fall, had been kept waiting for an hour, the door opened,

and he, nearly naked, appeared with a fiddle in his hand, and, after

fiddling and dancing to his quaking audience for an hour, dismissed them

to their homes uninjured. The air seems to keep a sort of spiritual

scent or trail of these old deeds, and to make them more real here than

elsewhere. The old horrors of the Amphitheatre can be made real to any

person of imaginative mind in the Colosseum. He has but to lend himself

to the contagion of the place, and he will see the circle of ten

thousand eager eyes thirsting for his blood, fill up the ruined benches

and arched tiers as of yore, and hear the savage murmur of human voices,

worse than the dull roar of the beasts below. The past still lives in

these old walls. It is in vain to say that the ghosts of history do not

haunt their ancient habitations. Places, as well as persons, have lives

and influences; and the horror of murder will not away from a spot.

Haunted by its crimes, oppressed and debilitated by the fierce excesses

of its Empire, Rome, silent, grave, and meditative, sighs over its past,

wrapped in the penitent robes of the Church.

Besides, here one feels that the modern Romans are only the children of

their ancient fathers, with the same characteristics,--softened, indeed,

and worn down by time, just as the sharp traits of the old marbles have

worn away; but still the same people,--proud, passionate, lazy, jealous,

vindictive, easy, patient, and able. The Popes are but Church

pictures of the Emperors,--a different robe, but the same nature

beneath;--Alexander the VI. was but a second Tiberius--Pius the VII.,

a modern Augustus. When I speak of the Roman people, I do not mean the

class of hangers-on upon the foreigners, but the Trasteverini and the

inhabitants of the provinces and mountains. No one can go through the

Trastevere when the people are roused, without feeling that they are the

same as those who listened to Marcus Antonius and Brutus, when the bier

of Caesar was brought into the streets,--and as those who fought with

the Colonna and stabbed Rienzi at the foot of the Capitol steps. The

Ciceruacchio of '48 was but an ancient Tribune of the People, in the

primitive sense of that title. I like, too, to parallel the anecdote of

Caius Marius, when, after his ruin, he concealed himself in the marshes,

and astonished his captors, who expected to find him weak of heart, by

the magnificent self-assertion of "I am Caius Marius," with the story

which is told of Stefano Colonna. After this great captain met with his

sad reverses, and, deprived of all his possessions, fled from Rome, an

attendant asked him,--"What fortress have you now?" He placed his hand

on his heart and answered,--"_Eccola!_" The same blood evidently ran in

the veins of both these men; and well might Petrarca call Colonna "a

phoenix risen from the ashes of the ancient Romans."

But, somehow or other, I have wandered strangely from my subject.

_Scusi_,--but what has all this to do with the Bambino?

The Santissimo Bambino is a very round-faced and expressionless doll,

carved, as the legend goes, from a tree on the Mount of Olives, by a

Franciscan pilgrim, and painted by Saint Luke while the pilgrim slept.

It is difficult to say which was the worse artist of the two, the

sculptor or the painter. But Saint Luke's pictures generally do not

give us a high idea of his skill as a painter. The legend is a

charming anachronism, unless, indeed, Saint Luke was only a spiritual

presence;--but, as the whole incident was miraculous, the greater the

anachronism, the greater the miracle. The Bambino, however he came into

existence, is invested, according to the assertions of priests and the

belief of the common people, with wonderful powers in curing the sick;

and his practice is as lucrative as any physician's in Rome. His aid is

in constant requisition in severe cases, and certain it is that a cure

not unfrequently follows upon his visit; but as the regular physicians

always cease their attendance upon his entrance, and blood-letting

and calomel are consequently intermitted, perhaps the cure is not so

miraculous as it might at first seem. He is borne by the priests in

state to his patients; and during the Triumvirate of '49, the Pope's

carriage was given to him and his attendants. I was assured by the

priest who exhibited him to me at the church, that, on one occasion,

having been stolen by some irreverent hand from his ordinary

abiding-place in one of the side-chapels, he returned alone, by himself,

at night, to console his guardians and to resume his functions. Great

honors are paid to him. He wears jewels which a Colonna might envy,

and not a square inch of his body is without a splendid gem. On festal

occasions, like Christmas, he wears a coronet as brilliant as the

triple crown of the Pope, and, lying in the Madonna's arms in the

representation of the Nativity, he is adored by the people until

Epiphany. Then, after the performance of Mass, a procession of priests,

accompanied by a band of music, makes the tour of the church and

proceeds to the chapel of the _Presepio_, where the bishop, with great

solemnity, removes him from his Mother's arms. At this moment, the music

bursts forth into a triumphant march, a jubilant strain over the birth

of Christ, and he is borne through the doors of the church to the great

steps. There the bishop elevates the Holy Bambino before the crowds

who throng the steps, and they fall upon their knees. This is thrice

repeated, and the wonderful image is then conveyed to its original

chapel, and the ceremony is over.

The Eve of Epiphany, or Twelfth-Night, is to the children of Rome what

Christmas Eve is to us. It is then that the _Bifana_ comes with her

presents. This personage is neither merry nor male, like Santa Claus,

nor beautiful and childlike, like Christ-kindchen,--but is described as

a very tall, dark woman, ugly, and rather terrible, "_d' una fisionomia

piuttosto imponente_" who comes down the chimney, on the Eve of

Epiphany, armed with a long _canna_ and shaking a bell, to put

playthings into the stockings of the good children, and bags of ashes

into those of the bad. It is a night of fearful joy for all the little

ones. When they hear her bell ring, they shake in their sheets; for the

Bifana is used as a threat to the wilful, and their hope is tempered by

a wholesome apprehension. It is supposed to be a distorted image of the

visit of the kings and wise men with their presents at the Nativity, as

Santa Claus may be of the shepherds, and the Christ-kindchen of Christ

himself. However this may be, it is curious to observe the different

characters this superstition assumes among different nations and under

different influences.

The great festival of the Bifana (a corruption, undoubtedly, of

_Epifania_) takes place on the Eve of Twelfth-Night, in the Piazza di

San Eustachio,--and a curious spectacle it is. The Piazza itself, (which

is situated in the centre of the city, just beyond the Pantheon,) and

all the adjacent streets, are lined with booths covered with every kind

of plaything for children. Most of these are of Roman make, very rudely

fashioned, and very cheap; but for those who have longer purses, there

are not wanting heaps of German and French toys. These booths are gayly

illuminated with rows of candles and the three-wicked brass _lucerne_

of Rome; and, at intervals, painted posts are set into the pavement,

crowned with pans of grease, with a wisp of tow for wick, which blaze

and flare about. Besides these, numbers of torches carried about by hand

lend a wavering and picturesque light to the scene. By eight o'clock in

the evening, crowds begin to fill the Piazza and the adjacent streets.

Long before one arrives, the squeak of penny-trumpets is heard at

intervals; but in the Piazza itself the mirth is wild and furious, and

the din that salutes one's ears on entering is almost deafening. The

object of every one is to make as much noise as possible, and every kind

of instrument for this purpose is sold at the booths. There are

drums beating, _tamburelli_ thumping and jingling, pipes squeaking,

watchmen's-rattles clacking, penny-trumpets and tin horns shrilling, and

the sharpest whistles shrieking everywhere. Besides this, there are the

din of voices, screams of laughter, and the confused burr and buzz of

a great crowd. On all sides you are saluted by the strangest noises.

Instead of being spoken to, you are whistled at. Companies of people are

marching together in platoons, or piercing through the crowd in long

files, and dancing and blowing like mad on their instruments. It is a

perfect witches' Sabbath. Here, huge dolls dressed as Polichinello or

Pantaloon are borne about for sale,--or over the heads of the crowd

great black-faced jumping-jacks, lifted on a stick, twitch themselves in

fantastic fits,--or, what is more Roman than all, men carry about long

poles strung with rings of hundreds of _giambelli_, (a light cake,

called jumble in English,) which they scream for sale at a _mezzo

baiocco_ each. There is no alternative but to get a drum, whistle, or

trumpet, and join in the racket,--and to fill one's pockets with toys

for the children and absurd presents for one's older friends. The moment

you are once in for it, and making as much noise as you can, you begin

to relish the jest. The toys are very odd,--particularly the Roman

whistles;--some of these are made of pewter, with a little wheel that

whirls as you blow; others are of terra-cotta, very rudely modelled into

every shape of bird, beast, and human deformity, each with a whistle in

its head, breast, or tail, which it is no joke to hear, when blown close

to your ears by a stout pair of lungs. The scene is very picturesque.

Above, the dark vault of night, with its far stars, the blazing and

flaring of lights below, and the great, dark walls of the Sapienza and

Church looking grimly down upon the mirth. Everywhere in the crowd are

the glistening helmets of soldiers, who are mixing in the sport, and the

_chapeaux_ of white-strapped _gendarmes_, standing at intervals to keep

the peace. At about half-past eleven o'clock the theatres are emptied,

and the upper classes flock to the Piazza. I have never been there later

than half-past twelve, but the riotous fun still continued at that hour;

and, for a week afterwards, the squeak of whistles may be heard at

intervals in the streets.

At the two periods of Christmas and Easter, the young Roman girls take

their first communion. The former, however, is generally preferred, as

it is a season of rejoicing in the Church, and the ceremonies are not so

sad as at Easter. In entering upon this religious phase of their life,

it is their custom to retire to a convent, and pass a week in prayer and

reciting the offices of the Church. During this period, no friend, not

even their parents, are allowed to visit them, and information as to

their health and condition is very reluctantly and sparingly given at

the door. In case of illness, the physician of the convent is called;

and even then neither parent is allowed to see them, except, perhaps, in

very severe cases. Of course, during their stay in the convent, every

exertion is made by the sisters to render a monastic life agreeable, and

to stimulate the religious sensibilities of the young communicant. The

pleasures of society and the world are decried, and the charms of

peace, devotion, and spiritual exercises eulogized, until the excited

imagination of the communicant leaves her no rest, before she has

returned to the convent and taken the veil as a nun. The happiness of

families is thus sometimes destroyed; and I knew one very united and

pleasant Roman family which in this way was sadly broken up. Two of

three sisters were so worked upon at their first communion, that the

prayers of family and friends proved unavailing to retain them in their

home. The more they were urged to remain, the more they desired to go,

and the parents, brothers, and remaining sister were forced to yield a

most reluctant consent. They retired into the convent and became nuns.

It was almost as if they had died. From that time forward, the home

was no longer a home. I saw them when they took the veil, and a sadder

spectacle was not easily to be seen. The girls were happy, but the

parents and family wretched, and the parting was very tearful and sad.

They do not seem since to have regretted the step they then took;

but regret would be unavailing--and even if they felt it, they could

scarcely show it. The occupation of the sisters in the monastery they

have joined is prayers, the offices of the Church, and, I believe, a

little instruction of poor children. But gossip among themselves, of the

pettiest kind, must make up for the want of wider worldly interests. In

such limited relations, little jealousies engender great hypocrisies;

a restricted horizon enlarges small objects. The repressed heart and

introverted mind, deprived of their natural scope, consume themselves in

self-consciousness, and duties easily degenerate into routine. We are

not all in all to ourselves; the world has claims upon us, which it is

cowardice to shrink from, and folly to deny. Self-forgetfulness is

a great virtue, and selfishness a great vice. After all, the best

religious service is worthy occupation. Large interests keep the heart

sound; and the best of prayers is the doing of a good act with a pure

purpose.

"He prayeth best who loveth best

All things, both great and small;

For the dear God who loveth us,

He made and loveth all."

ABDEL-HASSAN.

The compensations of calamity are made apparent after long intervals of

time.

The sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all fact.

--EMERSON.

Abdel-Hassan o'er the Desert journeyed with his caravan,--

Many a richly laden camel, many a faithful serving-man.

And before the haughty master bowed alike the man and beast;

For the power of Abdel-Hassan was the wonder of the East.

It was now the twelfth day's journey, but its closing did not bring

Abdel-Hassan and his servants to the long-expected spring.

From the ancient line of travel they had wandered far away,

And at evening, faint and weary, on a waste of Desert lay.

Fainting men and famished camels stretched them round the master's tent;

For the water-skins were empty, and the dates were nearly spent.

All the night, as Abdel-Hassan on the Desert lay apart,

Nothing broke the lifeless silence but the throbbing of his heart;

All the night he heard it beating, while his sleepless, anxious eyes

Watched the shining constellations wheeling onward through the skies.

When the glowing orbs, receding, paled before the coming day,

Abdel-Hassan called his servants and devoutly knelt to pray.

Then his words were few and solemn to the leader of his train:--

"Thirty men and eighty camels, Haroun, in thy care remain.

"Keep the beasts and guard the treasure till the needed aid I bring.

God is great! His name is mighty!--I, alone, will seek the spring."

Mounted on his strongest camel, Abdel-Hassan rode away,

While his faithful followers watched him passing, in the blaze of day,

Like a speck upon the Desert, like a moving human hand,

Where the fiery skies were sweeping down to meet the burning sand.

Passed he then their far horizon, and beyond it rode alone;--

They alone, with Arab patience, lay within its flaming zone.

Day by day the servants waited, but the master never came,--

Day by day, in feebler accents, called on Allah's holy name.

One by one they killed the camels, loathing still the proffered food,

But in weakness or in frenzy slaked their burning thirst in blood.

On unheeded heaps of treasure rested each unconscious head;

While, with pious care, the dying struggled to entomb the dead.

So they perished. Gaunt with famine, still did Haroun's trusty hand

For his latest dead companion scoop sepulture in the sand.

Then he died; and pious Nature, where he lay so gaunt and grim,

Moved by her divine compassion, did the same kind thing for him.

Earth upon her burning bosom held him in his final rest,

While the hot winds of the Desert piled the sand above his breast.--

Onward in his fiery travel Abdel-Hassan held his way,

Yielding to the camel's instinct, halting not, by night or day,

'Till the faithful beast, exhausted in her fearful journey, fell,

With her eye upon the palm-trees rising o'er the lonely well:

With a faint, convulsive struggle, and a feeble moan, she died,

While her still surviving master lay unconscious by her side.

So he lay until the evening, when a passing caravan

From the dead incumbering camel brought to life the dying man.

Slowly murmured Abdel-Hassan, as they bathed his fainting head,

"All is lost, for all have perished!--they are numbered with the dead!

"I, who had such power and treasure but a single moon ago,

Now my life and poor subsistence to a stranger's bounty owe.

"God is great! His name is mighty! He is victor in the strife!

Stripped of pride and power and substance, He hath left me faith

and life."--

Sixty years had Abdel-Hassan, since the stranger's friendly hand

Saved him from the burning Desert, lived and prospered in the land;

And his life of peaceful labor, in its pure and simple ways,

For his loss fourfold returned him, and a mighty length of days.

Sixty years of faith and patience gave him wisdom's mural crown;

Sons and daughters brought him honor with his riches and renown.

Men beheld his reverend aspect, and revered his blameless name;

And in peace he dwelt with strangers, in the fulness of his fame.

But the heart of Abdel-Hassan yearned, as yearns the heart of man,

Still to die among his kindred, ending life where it began.

So he summoned all his household, and he gave the brief command,--

"Go and gather all our substance;--we depart from out the land."

Then they journeyed to the Desert with a great and numerous train,

To his old nomadic instinct trusting life and wealth again.

It was now the sixth day's journey, when they met the moving sand,

On the great wind of the Desert, driving o'er that arid land;

And the air was red and fervid with the Simoom's fiery breath;--

None could see his nearest fellow in the stifling blast of death.

Blinded men from prostrate camels piled the stores to windward round,

And within the barrier herded, on the hot, unstable ground.

Two whole days the great wind lasted, when the living of the train

From the hot drifts dug the camels and resumed their way again.

But the lines of care grew deeper on the master's swarthy cheek,

While around the weakest fainted and the strongest waxéd weak;

And the water-skins were empty, and a silent murmur ran

From the faint, bewildered servants through the straggling caravan:--

"Let the land we left be blessed!--that to which we go, accurst!--

From our pleasant wells of water came we here to die of thirst?"

But the master stilled the murmur with his steadfast, quiet eye:--

"God is great," he said, devoutly,--"when _He_ wills it, we shall die."

As he spake, he swept the Desert with his vision clear and calm,

And along the far horizon saw the green crest of the palm.

Man and beast, with weak steps quickened, hasted to the lonely well,

And around it, faint and panting, in a grateful tumult fell.

Many days they stayed and rested, and amidst his fervent prayer

Abdel-Hassan pondered deeply that strange bond which held him there.

Then there came an aged stranger, journeying with his caravan;

And when each had each saluted, Abdel-Hassan thus began:--

"Knowest thou this well of water? lies it on the travelled ways?"

And he answered,--"From the highway thou art distant many days.

"Where thou seest this well of water, where these thorns and

palm-trees stand,

Once the Desert swept unbroken in a waste of burning sand;

"There was neither life nor herbage, not a drop of water lay,

All along the arid valley where thou seest this well to-day.

"Sixty years have wrought their changes since a man of wealth

and pride,

With his servants and his camels, here, amidst his riches, died.

"As we journeyed o'er the Desert, dead beneath the blazing sky,

Here I saw them, beasts and masters, in a common burial lie;

"Thirty men and eighty camels did the shrouding sand infold;

And we gathered up their treasure, spices, precious stones, and gold;

"Then we heaped the sand above them, and, beneath the burning sun,

With a friendly care we finished what the winds had well begun.

"Still I hold that master's treasure, and his record, and his name;

Long I waited for his kindred, but no kindred ever came.

"Time, who beareth all things onward, hither bore our steps again,

When around this spot were scattered whitened bones of beasts and men;

"And from out the heaving hillocks of the mingled sand and mould

Lo! the little palms were springing, which to-day are great and old.

"From the shrubs we held the camels; for I felt that life of man,

Breaking to new forms of being, through that tender herbage ran.

"In the graves of men and camels long the dates unheeded lay,

Till their germs of life commanded larger life from that decay;

"And the falling dews, arrested, nourished every tender shoot,

While beneath, the hidden moisture gathered to each wandering root.

"So they grew; and I have watched them, as we journeyed, year by year;

And we digged this well beneath them, where thou seest it, fresh and

clear.

"Thus from waste and loss and sorrow still are joy and beauty born,

Like the fruitage of these palm-trees and the blossom of the thorn;

"Life from death, and good from evil!--from that buried caravan

Springs the life to save the living, many a weak, despairing man."

As he ended, Abdel-Hassan, quivering through his aged frame,

Asked, in accents slow and broken, "Knowest thou that master's name?"

"He was known as Abdel-Hassan, famed for wealth and power and pride;

But the proud have often fallen, and, as he, the great have died!"

Then, upon the ground before them, prostrate Abdel-Hassan fell,

With his aged hands extended, trembling, to the lonely well,--

And the sacred soil beneath him cast upon his hoary head,--

Named the servants and the camels,--summoned Haroun from the dead,--

Clutched the unconscious palms around him, as if they were living men,--

And before him, in their order, rose his buried train again.

Moved by pity, spake the stranger, bending o'er him in his grief:--

"What affects the man of sorrow? Speak,--for speaking is relief."

Then he answered, rising slowly to that aged stranger's knee,--

"Thou beholdest Abdel-Hassan! They were mine, and I am he!"

Wondering, stood they all around him, and a reverent silence kept,

While, amidst them, Abdel-Hassan lifted up his voice and wept.

Joy and grief, and faith and triumph, mingled in his flowing tears;

Refluent on his patient spirit rolled the tide of sixty years.

As the past and present blended, lo! his larger vision saw,

In his own life's compensation, Nature's universal law.

"God is good, O reverend stranger! He hath taught me of His ways,

By this great and crowning lesson, in the evening of my days.

"Keep the treasure,--I have plenty,--and am richer that I see

Life ascend, through change and evil, to that perfect life to be,--

"In each woe a blessing folded, from all loss a greater gain,

Joy and hope from fear and sorrow, rest and peace from toil and pain.

"God is great! His name is mighty! He is victor in the strife!

For He bringeth Good from Evil, and from Death commandeth Life!"

ABOUT SPIRES.

When the children of Shem said one to another at Babel,--"Go to, let us

build us a city and a tower whose top shall reach unto heaven," they

typified a remarkable trait of the human mind,--a desire for a tangible

and material exponent of itself in its most heroic moods. In the earlier

ages of the world, when humanity, as it were, was becoming conscious of

itself and its godlike energies, it seems as if this desire could find

no nobler expression than in towers. The same spirit of enterprise which

in our own day stretches forth inquiring hands into unexplored realms of

physical and intellectual being, and acknowledges in the spoils of such

search its noblest and proudest attainments, in more primeval times

appears to have been content with the actual and visible invasion of

high building into that sky which to them was the great type of the

unknown and mysterious.

The birth of these structures was not of the practical necessities of

life, but of that fond desire of the soul which has ever haunted

mankind with intimations of immortality. Towers thus became the boldest

imaginable symbols of energy and power. And when, in the course of time,

they became exigencies of society, and familiarized by the idea of

usefulness, even then they could not but be recognized as expressions of

the more heroic elements of human nature.

Founded in superabundant massiveness, and built in prodigality of

strength, the tower seems to defy the elements and to outlive tradition.

Old age restores it to more than its primeval significance; and when

humbler erections have passed away and crumbled in ruins, it appears

once more to rise above the customary uses of men, and to become a

companion for tempests and clouds. Dismantled, deserted, and bearing,

"Inscribed upon its visionary sides,

This history of many a winter's storm,

And obscure record of the path of fire,"

Nature lays claim to it, and with moss and ivy and eld, with weeds and

flowers, she takes it to her bosom.

"Dying insensibly away

From human thoughts and purposes,"

we at length associate it with no achievements of man, and its masonry

becomes venerable to us, as shaped by mysterious beings,--Ghouls or

Titans,--no fellow-workers of ours.

Let us for a while forget the tedious realisms around us, and eat of the

dreamy Lotos. Let us look eastward over the wide waters, and behold,

along the horizon, the "dim rich cities" printing themselves against the

morning. Let us listen to their mellow chimes that come faintly to us,

and bless those deep-toned utterances so full of the tenderness of

ancient days and the melody of gray traditions. Let us bless them; for,

like lyres of Amphion, at their sound arose the bell-bearing tower,

which made cities beautiful and their people happy. O St. Chrysostom!

there were other golden mouths than thine that preached by the

Bosphorus, and their pulpits were the airy chambers of the first

Christian towers. Where the muezzin every hour from the lofty minaret

now calls the faithful Mahometan to prayer, were first heard those matin

and vesper chimes which since then throughout Catholic Europe have

accompanied the rising and the setting of the sun. Thus the Christian

tower immediately becomes associated with the tenderest and most

poetical ideas of monastic and pastoral religion. It seemed emulous from

the beginning to be the first to catch the beams of morning, and, like

the statue of Memnon, to respond to the golden touch by sounds of music.

Then the fervid heart of Italy took fire, and from her bosom uprose over

all her cities the beautiful campanile. Still and solemn it stood on

the plains of Lombardy, like a sentinel on the outskirts of our faith,

whispering to the vast of space that all was well. Over the lagunes of

Venice the weary toil of two centuries piled up the tower of St. Mark.

Ravenna, with barbaric pride, built her round-cinctured towers to the

glory of the Exarchate. Rome followed with her square campaniles, whose

arcaded chambers looked down on a hundred cloisters. Then there were

La Ghirlandina at Modena, Il Torazzo at Cremona, Torre della Mangia at

Siena, the Garisenda at Bologna, the Leaning Tower at Pisa. Everywhere

they sought the skies with emulous heights, and ere long they arose in

such number as to give a distinctive aspect to the Christian city, and

to warn the traveller from afar that he approached walls within which

religion was a pride and a power. Who has not admired the Giotto

Campanile, called "the Beautiful," at Florence? And who has not wondered

at the splendor of her citizens, whose command was, "to construct an

edifice whose magnificence should be beyond the conception even of

the _cognoscenti_, and whose height and quality of workmanship should

surpass all that has been built in any style, in Greece or Rome, even at

the most florid period of their power!"

But the spiritualization and glory of the tower are yet wanting. There

is a very human expression about it, as it stands in the midst of

those glimmering lands, with its haughty summit commanding far-distant

plains,--

"Far as the wild swan wings, to where the sky

Dips down to sea and sands,"--

a very human expression of scornful pride and imperious dominion. We

shall see how it outgrew its mere humanities and became an expression

of immortal aspirations, a symbol of our relationship with ethereal

existences.

These Italian campaniles had either flat summits, or were crowned with a

low, unimportant roof. But as they approached the North of Lombardy, and

found their way into Germany, France, and Britain, these roofs, through

the necessities of climate, became steeper and sharper. Many of the

little gray mountain-chapels in the South of Switzerland still lift up

these pointed towers amid the hamlets of the valley, having gathered

in the hardy flocks at eventide for seven or eight centuries. The same

early modifications may yet be seen on the banks of the Rhine, where the

conical, stork-haunted caps of the round towers are so picturesquely

associated with that legendary scenery. Those dear, time-worn, rugged,

red-tiled roofs, with their peaks coming in just where they are

needed,--what could the artist do without them? Then the same

necessities made the early French and Norman builders push up into the

air those gaunt, quaint old camelbacks, with spindles or pinnacles

astride. You cannot but love them for their strangeness and the surprise

they make against the quiet sky. In Britain, too, you might have beheld

this tendency, where the lordly curfew quenched the lights in castle and

cot from beneath a very extinguisher of a roof. Now, as, in the natural

growth of the human mind, the heart became more and more impregnated

with the beauty of holiness, and the prayers of men ascended with

somewhat of purer aspiration to heaven, so did they build their

tower-roofs higher and higher into the air, till at length the spire was

born. In one of those quaint antique towers of Normandy, Coutances, it

was first fully developed; and it is curious to see how in this

instance its roof-origin was still remembered: for it has tall, gabled

garret-windows rising from its base, connected by rude cross-bars to the

slope of the spire; and it has a kind of scaly mail, Ruskin says, which

is nothing more than the copying in stone of the common wooden shingles

of the house-roof. Now the proud Italian architects, disdainful though

they were of the arts of the rude Northern builders, could not but admit

the expressiveness of the pointed roof; so they placed a form of it on

some of their campaniles, as on those of Venice and Cremona, in both

these instances making it a third of the whole height. But the spire,

though an effective, was as yet an unambitious structure,--scarcely more

than an exaltation or an apotheosis of the roof. For a long time it

continued to be merely a supplementary addition in wood to the solid

masonry of the tower, and in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth

centuries was often added to substructures of the tenth, eleventh, and

twelfth.

Surely it is very dull in us, out of our present enlightenment, to

continue to distinguish the mediaeval times as the _Dark_ Ages, as if

they were glimmering and ghostly, and men groped about in them blindly,

living in a sort of dusky romance of feudality. Did you ever study De

la Roche's incarnation of Mediaeval Art in his Hemicycle,--that long

saintly robe with its still and serious folds, that fair dreamy face,

those upturned eyes, "the homes of silent prayer," the contemplative

repose? It is truly an exquisite idealization; yet there is something

wanting. I believe the piety of those days was rather a passion than a

sentiment. Their "beauty of holiness" was rather an active emotional

impulse than a passive spiritualization, and was incomplete without a

material expression, a tangible demonstration of itself. Like the fabled

Narcissus, it yearned for its own image. Hence the joy and luxury of the

ecclesiastical buildings of that period. They were the very blossoming

of the tree of knowledge. This was, indeed, an unenlightened, perhaps

a superstitious principle of worship; but it was enthusiastic,

self-sacrificing, and chivalrous. It, indeed, sent the stylite to his

pillar, the hermit to the wilderness, the ascetic to the scourge and

hair-cloth shirt; but it also led the warrior to the Holy Land, the

beggar to the castle-hearth, and the workman to the building of the

House of God. It is no wonder that a religion born thus in childlike

fervor, and seeking expression in outward signs, built upward. It is

no wonder that out of the prosaic elements of the roof it made the

spiritual essence of the spire. If we look through the whole range of

architectural forms in classic or mediaeval times, we shall find no one

so indicative of any human emotion as this simple outline is of the

highest of all emotions,--prayer. It is a significant fact, that the

sentiment of aspiration is nowhere hinted at in Classic Art, and we look

in vain for it in all pagan architectures. This is not surprising.

The worshippers who built in those schools demonstrated there all the

noblest ideas they were capable of,--intellectual beauty, dignity,

power, truth, chastity, courage, and all the other virtues cherished in

their theologies; but their personal relations with any higher sphere of

existence, vague and undefined as they were, called for no expression in

their temples, and obtained none.

The pyramidal form has ever possessed peculiar fascinations for men,

and, from its simplicity, grandeur, and power, has been used in all ages

with innumerable modifications in those structures whose object was to

impress and overawe,--as in the pyramids of Egypt, the temples of India

and Mexico, and in all the earliest funereal monuments. It involved a

rude symbolism, which recommended itself to the barbarous childhood

of nations. But it was not until the pyramid was sharpened and

spiritualized into the spire that it gained its completest triumph over

the secret emotions of men. The Egyptians made the nearest approach

to it in the obelisk. That mysterious people felt very keenly the

suggestiveness of the pyramidal form, and refined the language of

its sentiment into some very beautiful expressions. Yet between the

mausoleums of Gizeh and the hieroglyphic shafts of Luxor and Karnac

there existed a modification, the intensity of whose meaning they

were not prepared to understand. Neither their civilization nor their

religion required such an exponent; so they exhausted themselves with

their mountainous bulks of stone and their pictured monoliths.

We know not how the first view of a Christian spire would affect the

mind of an alien; but so far as our own experiences are concerned,

though perhaps familiar only with the lowliest and most unpretending of

its kind, we are conscious that it deeply impressed even the "unsunned

temper" of our childhood. The wisest among us may not be able to define

precisely these impressions, or trace to their source the admiration

and satisfaction it occasions, yet all are ready to acknowledge its

beautiful fitness to adorn and glorify the Christian temple. But to the

thoughtful mind how suggestive it is of pleasant imagery! It is "the

silent finger" that points to heaven; it is an upward aspiration of the

soul; a prayer from the depths of a troubled heart; a _suspirium de

profundis;_ a hymn of thanksgiving; a pure life, throwing of the worldly

and approaching the ethereal; a finite mind searching, till lost in the

vastness of the unknown and unapproachable; a beautiful attempt; a

voice of praise sent up from the earth, till, like the soaring lark, it

"becomes a sightless song." Indeed, our unbidden thoughts, that wild-ivy

of the mind, are trained upward by the spire, till it is hung round with

the tenderest associations and recollections of all that is sweet and

softening in our natures. Thus, when the painter has represented on his

canvas some wild phase of scenery, where the gadding vine, the tangled

underwood, the troubled brook, the black, frowning rock, the untamed

savage growth of the forest,

"Old plash of rains and refuse patched with moss,"

impress us with awe, and a sad, homeless feeling, as if we were lost

children, how eloquent is that last touch of his pencil that shows us

a simple spire peeping over the tree-tops! How it comforts us! How it

brings us home again, and bestows an air

"Of sweet civility on rustic wilds"!

But even if we were not inclined to be sentimental on the subject, even

if base utilities had crowded out from our hearts the blessed capacity

of shedding rosy light on things about us, the coldest esteem could not

but ripen into affection, when we reflected that the spire never adorned

the shrine of a pagan god, never glorified the mosque of a false

prophet, never, in purity, arose from any unconsecrated ground; but

when, at last, the Church of Christ felt the "beauty of holiness," then

it developed out of that beauty and pointed the way to God. It exhaled

from the growing perfection of the Church, as fragrance from an opening

flower. It is, therefore, peculiarly holy. It is a monitor of especial

grace. "It marshals us the way that we are going," like the visionary

dagger of Macbeth; but the knell that sounds beneath it summons only to

heaven.

Practically, it is utterly useless; and this is its honor and its

unspeakable dignity. We cannot even climb it, as we could a tower;

for it is nearly as unapproachable as the Oracle of God, save to the

innocent birds, who love to flock and wheel about it in the sunshine,

and build their nests in its "coignes of vantage," or, in the

night-time, to the troops of stars which touch it in their journey

through the skies. It is as beautifully idle as the lilies of the field;

and yet its expressiveness touches us so nearly, the propriety of its

sentiment is so striking, that, when the great test question of this

living age is applied to it, and we are asked, What is its use? what is

it good for? the heart is shocked at the impiety of the question, and

the feelings revolt, as against an insult. Upon the arches of Canterbury

Minster is carved,

NON * NOBIS * DOMINE * NON * NOBIS *

SED * NOMINI * TVO * DA * GLORIAM *

Nothing can be simpler than the composition of the pure spire. The

aesthetics of its development and growth are characteristically natural

and apparent. They are like the history of a flower from bud to bloom

under a warm sun. Let us become botanists of Art for a while, and

analyze those flowers of worship, as they opened "in that first garden

of their simpleness."

Considering the growth of the spire from the tower-roof, it might

naturally be supposed that the earliest forms would be square or round,

in plan. But no sooner had the roof passed into this new sphere of

existence, than the fine intelligence of the builders perceived that it

needed refinement. They saw that in a square spire there was so coarse a

distinction between the tapering mass of light and the tapering mass

of shadow, that the delicacy and lightness necessary to express the

sentiment they desired to convey did not exist in the new feature;--in

a round spire, on the other hand, they found that this distinction of

light and shade was too little marked; it was vapid and effeminate, and

quite without that delicious crispiness of effect which they at once

obtained by cutting off the corners of the square spire, and reducing it

to an octagon. With very rare exceptions, as in the southwest spire of

Chartres Cathedral, this form was always used. Now it will be seen that

a difficulty arises in the beginning, how to unite the octagon of the

spire with the square of the tower. There are four triangular spaces at

the summit of the tower left uncovered by the superstructure; and how

best to treat these, simple as the task may seem, constitutes what may

be called the touchstone of architectural genius in spire-building.

There are several general ways of effecting this, each of them subject

to such modifications, in individual instances, as to give them an

ever-varying character.

Perhaps the earliest method was simply to occupy those triangular spaces

with pyramidal masses of masonry, sloping back against the adjacent

faces of the tower,--an expedient which Nature herself might have

suggested in the first snow-storm. Then they boldly cut the Gordian knot

by shaving off the corners of the tower at the top, thus creating there

an octagonal platform, to which the spire would exactly correspond.

Still oftener they chamfered the spire upwards from the corners of the

tower: in other words, they placed, as it were, a square spire on

their tower, occupying the whole of its summit, and then obtained the

necessary octangularity by shaving off the angles of the spire from the

apex to a certain point near the base, where the cutting was continued

obliquely to the corners of the tower. The latest method was to build

pinnacles on the triangular territory. In such cases the spire usually

stood wholly within the outer boundaries, and parapets assisted to

conceal the first springing of the spire.

The first of these methods is usually considered the most perfect and

beautiful, on account of its simplicity and candor. This is called the

broach; and it is the only form thus far spoken of wherein the tapering

surfaces rise directly from the tower-cornice, without mutilating the

tower or violating the pure outlines of the spire. The heavenward

aspiration, as it were, ascends without effort from the solidity of the

tower. It seems to typify a certain fitness and adaptability to heavenly

things even in the gross and earthly nature of man. One cannot fail to

admire its unaffected dignity, its harmonious balance, its graceful

proportions.

It would be impossible within the limits of this article to give any

idea of the wonderful diversity of treatment these simple generic forms

received at the hands of the early builders. The changes of combination,

proportion, and ornamentation were endless. For the mediaeval spirit was

eminently earnest in its labor, and would not be content with copying an

old shape merely because it was a good shape. It would not be satisfied

with the cold repetition of a written litany of architectural forms; but

its ardent piety, its thoughtful zeal, the _life_ of its love, demanded

an ever-varying expression in these visible prayers. Emerson himself

might find nought to censure there, in the way of undue conformities and

consistencies. Its language was written with the infinite alphabet of

Nature.

We are speaking now especially of England; and we, her children, may

well be proud that these divine enthusiasms of antiquity, which we

thought so quaint, so rare, so far away from us, nowhere else found

fairer demonstrations. The English spires bear especial witness to the

zeal and aspiration of their builders. They belted them with bands of

ornament, cut at first in imitation of tiles, and afterwards beautifully

panelled with foliations. Moulded ribs began to run up the angles of

the spires, and, when they met at the summit, would exultingly curl

themselves together in the most precious cruciforms. Quaint spire-lights

began to appear. Sometimes curious dormers would project from alternate

sides; and the very ribs, as if, in this spring-time of Art, they felt,

quickening along their lengths, the mysterious movements of a new life,

sprouted out here and there with knots of leafage, timidly at first, and

then with all the wealth and profusion of the harvest. The same impulse

wreathed the crowning cross with a thousand midsummer fancies, till the

circle of Eternity, or the triangle of Trinity, which often mingled

with its arms, scarcely knew itself. The pinnacles, too, blossomed into

crockets and bud-like finials, and began to gather more thickly about

the roots of the spire, and from them often leaped flying-buttresses

against it. During this time the spire itself was growing more and more

acute, its lines becoming more and more eloquent. After the fourteenth

century, the tower began to be crowned with intricate panelled tracery

of parapets and battlements, from behind which the spire, an entirely

separate structure, shot up into the sky. In this, the period of the

perpendicular style, pinnacles, purfled to the last degree, crowded

about the base of the spire, reminding one of the admiring throng

gathered about the base of some old picture of the Ascension. But there

is another English form which perhaps conveys this sentiment even more

impressively: We refer to that whose prototype exists in the steeple of

the Church of St. Nicholas at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. This, however, has

four turrets, one on each angle, from which, with great lightness, leap

towards each other four grand flying-buttresses, which join hands over

an empty void and hold in the air a lantern and spirolet of great

elegance. This is a very bold piece of construction. It has been

imitated at St. Giles's, Edinburgh, at Linlithgow, in the college

tower of Aberdeen, and it is especially made known to the world by

Sir Christopher Wren's famous use of it in the steeple of St.

Dunstan's-in-the-East, London.

The most famous spires of England and Normandy are St. Peter's at Caen,

a very early specimen, St. Michael's at Coventry, Louth, that of

the parochial church of Boston in Lincolnshire, that of Chichester

Cathedral, the three that rise from the famous Lichfield Cathedral,

and finally and especially the magnificent spire over the cross of

Salisbury. In the judgment of most English connoisseurs, this is the

finest in the world. It was probably erected during the reign of Edward

III., a very florid period for architecture. It is the highest in

England, its summit rising four hundred and four feet from the pavement

of the church beneath. It is one of the earliest erected in stone, and

is remarkable for skilful construction, the masonry in no part being

more than seven inches thick. This spire is belted with three broad

bands of panelled tracery, and there are eight pinnacles at its base,

two on each corner of the tower. The ribs are fretted throughout the

whole height with elegant crockets, thus imparting to the sky-line an

appearance similar to the gusty spray on the borders of a rain-cloud. An

admirer has said of it, "It seems as though it had drawn down the very

angels to work over its grand and feeling simplicity the gems and

embroidery of Paradise itself!" England once boasted the loftiest spire

in the world, that of old St. Paul's, London, whose summit, five hundred

and twenty feet from the ground, seemed to sail among the highest

clouds; but the great fire of 1666 destroyed it, and Sir Christopher's

stately metropolitan dome now rises in its place.

One could believe in the "merrie" days of Old England, were her abundant

spires their only evidence. The ardent zeal that kindled so many

thousand answering beacons throughout the length and breadth of the land

is the best proof of that concord of souls which is true happiness. We

know that the decision of the Council of Clermont about the Crusades was

believed to have been instantly known through Christendom, and that the

great cry, _God willeth it!_ which shook the council-roof, was echoed

from hill to hill, and at once struck awe and astonishment to the hearts

of remotest lands. So in the birthplaces of our Pilgrim fathers, over

these cherished spots,

"Where the kneeling hamlets drained

The chalice of the grapes of God,"

arose the "star y-pointing" spire, like a voice of adoration; and then

another would be raised in unison in some neighboring village, where

they could see and communicate with each other in their silent language;

and yet another close by among the hills; and presently, in full view

from its summit, twenty more, perhaps,--till the good tidings were known

through the whole country, and from hamlet to hamlet, over the streams

and tree-tops, was thus echoed the great _Te Deum_ of the land. For it

was said among the people, in that antique spirit of worship, as Milton

exhorted the birds in his Hymn of Thanksgiving,--

"Join voices, all ye living souls! ye _spires_,

That singing up to heaven's gate ascend,

Bear on your wings and in your notes His praise!"

It is a beautiful proof of the spirit of sacrifice which actuated the

Masonic builder of the Middle Ages, that his fairest and most precious

works were not confined to the great metropolitan churches and

cathedrals, where they could be seen of men, but were frequently found

in quiet and secluded villages, nestled among pastoral solitudes, far

away from the gaze and admiration of the world. Though the spire of

Salisbury was, perhaps, an epic in Masonic poetry, yet in humble hamlets

of England, beyond her most distant hills, and amid many an unnamed

"sunny spot of greenery," were idyls sung no less exquisite than this.

Many a village-spire, of conception no less beautiful, arose above the

tree-tops among the most untrodden ways. All day long its shadow lingers

in the quiet churchyard, and points among the humble graves, as if, over

this dial of human life, it loved to preach silent homilies on "the

passing away," even to the simplest poor. It must be inexpressibly

touching to meet with these beautiful forms in the lonely wilderness,

where the ivy alone, as it throws its loving arms around them, appears

to recognize their grace and all their tender significance. It is like

the chance discovery of a good deed done in the darkness, or like a

pure life spent in the sweet and serious retirement of a little hamlet,

pointing the way to heaven for its scanty flock of cottagers.

It was the custom in those days, during the celebration of Mass, at the

moment when the Host was raised, to ring a peculiar bell in the tower,

in order that those not gathered beneath the consecrated roof might be

made aware far and wide of the awful ceremony, and be reminded to offer

up their devotion in unison. And we remember what Izaak Walton said of

quaint George Herbert,--how "some of the meaner sort of his parish did

so love and reverence Mr. Herbert, that they would let their plough rest

when his saints'-bell rung to prayer, that they might also offer their

devotion to God with him, and would then return back contented to their

plough." Now it seems to us that the spire is a perpetual elevation

of the Host, a never-ending lifting-up of the Symbol of Redemption, a

consecrating presence to field and cottage, hillside and highway, ever

ready to bless the accidental glance of wayfarer or laborer, and to make

in the desert of his daily life a momentary oasis of sweet and hallowed

thought. Its peaceful influence extends over the whole landscape and

pierces to its remotest corners.

"A gentler life spreads round the holy spires;

Where'er they rise, the sylvan waste retires,

And aëry harvests crown the fertile lea."

It may be thought that St. Peter's cock, which so often answers the

sunbeams from the spindly spire, and kindles and glitters there like a

star, is rather empty of emblematic significance and soul-language. But

what saith old Bishop Durandus?--"The cock at the summit of the church

is a type of the preacher. For the cock, ever watchful, even in the

depth of night, giveth notice how the hours pass, waketh the sleepers,

predicteth the approach of day,--but first exciteth himself to crow by

striking his sides with his wings. There is a mystery conveyed in each

of these particulars: the night is the world; the sleepers are the

children of this world, who are asleep in their sins; the cock is the

preacher who preacheth boldly, and exciteth the sleepers to cast away

the works of darkness, exclaiming, Woe to them that sleep! Awake, thou

that sleepest! and then foretell the approach of day, when they speak

of the Day of Judgment and the glory that shall be revealed, and, like

prudent messengers, before they teach others, arouse themselves from the

sleep of sin by mortifying their bodies; and as the weather-cock faces

the wind, they turn themselves boldly to meet the rebellious by threats

and arguments."

But it was on the Continent, especially in France, the Low Countries,

and Germany, that the Gothic flower opened in fullest perfection; and it

is here that we find the loftiest and most luxurious spire-forms. They

were always the last part of the church completed, the finishing-touch,

the last that was needed to perfection. The progress of the building

of a cathedral thus embodied a beautiful symbolism. In most cases,

the choir, or east end, the holiest part of the church, was the first

erected, in order to sanctify and protect the high altar; and then, as

the treasures of the church flowed in, after the expiration of years or

centuries, the builders, tutored by a legendary science, and harmonized

by a wonderful feeling of brotherhood, in the same spirit, perfected the

designs of their predecessors, by leading out westward the long naves

and attendant aisles, completing northward and southward the transepts,

adding a chapel here and a porch there, glorifying the western front

with the touches of divine genius; and when at last every niche was

occupied with its statue of angel, saint, or pious benefactor, and the

holy choir, with its apsis, had been re-adorned with the accumulated art

of centuries, and glowed with the iris-light from painted windows,--when

the mural monuments of bishops, warriors, and kings had thickened

beneath the consecrated roof, and the whole structure had been hallowed

by the prayers and chantings of generations,--then, at last, over the

ancient tower arose the lofty spire; as if an angelic messenger had

spread his wings at its base and mounted upward to heaven, shouting

out the glad tidings of the completion of the House of God, and, as he

arose, the voice grew fainter and fainter, till at length it melted into

the sky!

The finest spires of Europe were erected as late as the fourteenth,

fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, upon towers prepared for their

reception, usually, in much earlier times. This confidence of the old

builders in the final completion of their structures is remarkable. They

drew without stint on the piety of after ages,--a resource which has not

unfrequently proved too feeble to realize their generous expectations.

There are few cities in Europe which do not bear sad marks of this

misplaced confidence. This is especially witnessed in the unfinished

steeples. And, indeed, when we find that not only one, but two, three,

four, or even five spires were sometimes required to flame upward from

the same building, as in Caen Cathedral, we do not wonder that the

kindling spark is often wanting. It would seem as if another fire must

come down from heaven, as of old it did upon the first offering of Moses

and Aaron, to inflame these censers, rich in frankincense and naphtha.

Now let us see what were the distinguishing attributes of the

Continental spires. We know not why it was, but in the gray old towns

of Belgium and the Low Countries there existed such exuberance of

imagination, such an unbounded luxuriousness of conception, as created

more images of Gothic quaintness and intricacy than elsewhere can be

seen. If any architecture ever expressed the average of human thought,

that of these towns is especially eloquent in its indications that their

inhabitants were very happy and contented. Look at a print of any old

Belgian town or street, and you will at once see our meaning. What a

joyous upspringing of pinnacles and pointed roofs and spires! of no more

earthly use, indeed, than so much pleasant laughter. There is no tower

without its spire, no turret or gable without its pinnacle, no oriel

without its pointed roof, no dormer without some such playful leaping

up into the air. Every salient point attacks the sky with its long iron

spindle, wrought with strange device and bearing a hospitable cup where

the bird makes his nest; and every spindle sings and shrieks with a

shifting vane,--so that the wind never sweeps idly over a Belgian town.

This innocent and happy people did not frown through the ages from grim

battlements, and awe posterity with stern and massive walls. But they

loved old childlike associations and fireside tales. They loved to build

curious fountains in commemoration of pleasant legends. They loved, too,

the huge, delicious-toned bells of their minster-towers, and the sweet

changes of melodious, never-ceasing chimes. They carved their Lares

and Penates on their house-fronts very curiously, with sun-dials and

hatchments, sacred texts and legends of hospitality. The narrow streets

of Ghent, Louvain, Liege, Mechlin, Antwerp, Ypres, Bruges are thus full

of household memories and saintly traditions. So it is not strange that

a people whose daily hours were counted out with the music of belfries

were fond of fretting their towers with workmanship so precious and

delicate that it has been called "the petrifaction of music."

But before we proceed to tell in how florid a manner the Low Countries

interpreted the simpler forms of spires, we shall describe generically

in what manner not only they, but all the other European kingdoms, were

indebted to the old Rhineland towns for some of these forms. When the

bell-tower, in about the seventh or eighth century, began to be used in

Germany, it at once received certain very important modifications on the

earlier Italian campanile. The upper terminations of these latter

were horizontal, on account of their flat roofs. Now in more northern

climates, where the snow falls, these flat roofs would be unsafe and

inconvenient. So we find that the first church-towers that arose in such

Rhenish places as Oberwesel, Gelnhausen, Bacharach, Coblentz, Cologne,

Bingen, "sweet Bingen on the Rhine," no longer ended in these horizontal

lines, but arose in pointed shapes. Indeed, the Germans, who were great

rivals of the Italians in those days, not only in matters pertaining to

architecture, but to literature also, in the same independent spirit

which induced them alone, of all civilized peoples, to retain through

all time the cramped, angular letters of monkish transcribers, in

preference to the fair and square Roman forms, took particular pride in

avoiding horizontal lines entirely at the tops of their towers, as they

did at the tops of their letters. Wherever they so occur, they are

insignificant,--rather ornamental than constructive. Not so with the

English; they kept the square tops to their towers, and contented

themselves with the pointed superstructure. Let us see how Teutonic

stubbornness arranged the matter. Each separate face of their towers,

whether these towers were square or octangular, ended above in a gable;

and from these gables, in various ways, arose the octangular pointed

roof or spire. This circumstance, more than any other, tended to give

a peculiar character to German Gothic. The simplest type of the gabled

spire was magnificently used in the spire of St. Peter's at Hamburg.

This was the finest in North Germany; it was four hundred and sixteen

feet high, and, if still standing, would be the third in height in the

world. But it was destroyed by the great fire of 1842. Many a traveller

can bear witness to the sweet melody of the chimes that used to sound

beneath it every half-hour.

In later times, between the Germans and the French, was invented the

_lantern_,--a feature so often and so superbly used, not only on the

Continent, but more lately in England, that we must needs glance at it.

This consisted in a tall, perpendicular, octangular structure, placed

upon the tower, quite light and open, and pierced with long windows.

Here they used to swing the bells, and the place was called the lantern

or _louvre_; thence the octangular spire arose easily and naturally.

Now, notwithstanding this device, those troublesome triangular spaces

still remained unoccupied at the top of the square tower. The manner

in which this difficulty was remedied was exceedingly ingenious and

beautiful. It was by building on them very delicate pinnacles or

turrets, peopled, perhaps, as at Freiburg, with a silent and serene

concourse of saints in rich niches, or inclosing, as at Strasburg,

spiral open-work stairs. These structures accompanied the tall lantern

through its whole height; thus rendering the entire group a memory,

as it were, of the square tower below, while, at the same time, it

beautifully foreshadowed the octangular character of the sky-seeking

spire above,--a significant symbolism.

Now, when the Belgians and their neighbors received the spire thus from

the fatherland, they at once began to express in it the joy of their

worship by all the embroidery and tender imagery and grotesque conceits

it was capable of receiving. They varied as many changes on it as they

did on their bells. They concealed the first springing of their spires

behind clustering pinnacles, flying-buttresses, canopied niches with

gigantic statues, galleries with battlements and parapets pierced and

mantled in lacework of flamboyant tracery, pointed gables alive with

crockets and finials, and long, quaint dormers,--all with a bewildering

intricacy of enrichment. And they inherited from the Germans a love for

the gargoyle, which haunted the springing of the spire at the corners

with visions of very hideous _diablerie_. It may well be believed that

these florid builders did not suffer the spire to arise serious and

serene from the midst of this delicious tangle of architecture. They

tricked it out with all the frostwork of Gothic genius. Not only did

they use in its decoration spire-lights, crockets, ribs and cinctures,

bands of gablets, and masses of reticulated relief, but, with wonderful

skill, they pierced each face from base to apex in foliated patterns

of great richness, so that the whole spire became a web of delicate

open-work, through which the light was sprinkled in beautiful shapes,

varying with every movement of the beholder. Their plainer spires of

wood they were fond of covering with glazed tiles of various tints

arranged in quaint taste. And they would vary the outline by making it

curve inward, giving a fine sweep thus from the base to an apex of great

slenderness. Sometimes they would give it, with exaggerated refinement,

the _entasis_ of the Greek column. There are instances of this last

treatment both in France and England.

But it was not only in exuberance of enrichment and quaintness of form

that these enthusiastic workmen uttered their inspirations. They built

their spires to a most amazing height. Indeed, the loftiest steeples in

the world arose in level tracts of country, where they could be seen at

immense distances, as not only in Belgium and thereabout, but on the

flat margins of the upper and lower Rhine, as at Strasburg and Cologne.

In these countries, and about the North of France, there was a generous

rivalry as to which city should lift up highest the cross of God. But as

soon as the sacred passion for spire-building was corrupted by this new

element of human emulation, some strange things happened. The people of

Beauvais, for instance, desiring to beat the people of Amiens, set to

work, we are told, to build a tower on their cathedral as high as they

possibly could. The same thing had been done once before on the plains

of Shinar. One foresees the result, of course; "it fell, for it was

founded upon the sand, and great was the fall thereof." And so with the

good people of Louvain. They built three spires to their cathedral, of

which the central one reached the unparalleled height of five hundred

and thirty-three feet, according to Hope, and the side-towers four

hundred and thirty feet. This tremendous group, however, fell, or,

threatening destruction, was taken down, in 1604. We remember what the

Wanderer said so finely in the "Excursion":--

"We must needs confess

That 'tis a thing impossible to frame

Conceptions equal to the soul's desire;

And the most difficult of tasks _to keep_

Heights which the soul is competent to gain."

But we find that ecclesiastical edifices were not the only ones

which were adorned with this high building; for town-halls were not

infrequently distinguished by immensely lofty spires, as at Brussels. It

is curious to see, however, how easily the less exalted impulses which

erected them may be discovered. They do not _soar_, they _climb_ up

panting into the sky, like the famous passage up through Chaos, in

Milton, "with difficulty and labor hard." They have not the light, airy

gliding upward of the religious spire, whose feeling George Herbert had

in his mind, when he sang of prayer:--

"Of what an easy, quick accesse,

My blessed Lord, art thou! how suddenly

May our requests thine eare invade!"

Not so; but it is all human rivalry, a succession of diminishing towers,

steps piled one above another, where the mind every now and then may

stop to breathe, and then fight its way onward again;--not an Ascension,

like that from Bethany; rather the toil of a very human, though very

laudable ambition.

Unfinished spires were in Europe very common legacies from generation to

generation. Descendants were called upon to embody the great conceptions

of their forefathers. But the ancestral spirit too often failed in the

land, the wing of aspiration was broken, the crane rotted in its place,

the great conceptions were forgotten, or lived only as vague and dreamy

inheritances; and the half-completed spires stood like Sphinxes, and

none knew their riddles! They are very melancholy memorials. Like the

broken columns over the graves of the departed, fallen short of their

natural uses, they seem only the funeral monuments of a race that

is dead. The empty air is stilled over them in expectation, and the

imagination makes vain pictures, and fills out their crescent of

splendid purposes. They have been called "broken promises to God." Too

often, perhaps, they were rather monuments of the feebleness of those

who would scale heaven with anything but adoration upon their lips.

There were Ulm, indeed, and Cologne, and Mechlin, as artistic

intentions, eminently grand and beautiful; and in the early part of the

sixteenth century Belgium was famous for designs of open-work spires,

which, if erected, would have surpassed in height and richness all

hitherto existing. But it is worthy of note that at this period the

purity of the Church had become so sullied with priestcraft and the

plenitude of Papal power, that it no longer possessed within its

violated bosom those sacred impulses of piety which whilom sent up the

simple spire, like a pure messenger, to whisper the aspirations of men

to the stars. "Gay religions, full of pomp and gold," could neither feel

nor utter the grave tenderness of the early inspirations. And so, when

the German monk affixed his ninety-five theses to the door of Wittenberg

Church, the spire had ceased to be an utterance of prayerful aspiration.

It had lost its peculiar significance as an involuntary expression of

worship, and had become liable to all the accidents and contingencies

that attend the efforts of a merely human ambition. The whole story is

an architectural version of the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican

who went down to the temple to pray.

Of the finished spires, the loftiest in the world are, first, that of

Strasburg Minster, 474 feet; second, that of St. Stephens at Vienna,

469 feet; third, that of Notre Dame at Antwerp, 466 feet; then that of

Salisbury, 404 feet; Freiburg in the Breisgau, 380-1/2 feet; and then

follow the distinguished heights of Landshut, Utrecht, Rouen, Chartres,

Brugrels, Soissons, and others. The highest spire in our own country is

that of Trinity Church, New York, 284 feet. We do not "sweep the cobwebs

from the sky" so effectually as when men built according to the scale

of spiritual exaltation rather than that of practical feet and

inches,--after the stature of the soul, rather than that of the man.

The architects of the revival of classic architecture, with the learned

language of the five orders, with pediments and attics, consoles and

urns, labored to express the childlike sentiment of the spire. But even

the great Sir Christopher Wren, with his sixty steeple-towers, and

all his followers to this day, have not succeeded in a translation so

unnatural. Spirituality and the artless grace of inspiration are wanting

to the spires of the Renaissance, and so they struggle up painfully into

the sky. And it is very rare to find those who have gone back even to

Gothic models building a spire which touches our affections, or claims

affinity with any of our nobler emotions; so sensitive is this unique

structure to the approach of any element foreign to the early conditions

of its existence.

As for the great Strasburg example, that _Jungfrau_ of all spires,

German traditions have very properly babbled many strange stories about

the erection of it. These constitute an episode so characteristic in the

history of spire-building, that this essay would be incomplete, were

they not briefly told here.

In the legendary days of yore, nothing was more common than to meet that

personage known as the Devil walking up and down the earth, in innocent

guise, but ripe for all sorts of mischief, especially where the people

were building up mighty monuments to the glory of the good God. Very

naturally, the sacred spire was a special object of his aversion; and,

for some reason or other, that of Strasburg was honored with peculiar

marks of his hatred. Two ancient churches, which stood on the site

of the present minster, had been successively destroyed by fire; and

although, in the one case, this had been kindled by the torch of an

invading army, and in the other by a thunderbolt, yet the infernal

agency, in both cases, nobody ever thought of doubting. So it was

the effort of Bishop Werner to combat these evil influences; and he

accordingly inflamed the pride and indignation of the people to such

a degree, that throughout the land all concerted to defeat the wicked

designs of the Adversary. In two centuries and a half the whole

cathedral was completed, save the tower, the corner-stone of which was

forthwith laid with great pomp by Bishop Conrad of Lichtenberg, on the

25th of May, 1277. Doubtless the Arch-Fiend laid many cunning schemes to

entrap the illustrious architect, Erwin of Steinbach; but, unlike his

brother in the craft at Cologne, he came out unscathed; so we must

believe that throughout the whole work he was actuated by the most

unselfish spirit of devotion, infernal machinations to the contrary

notwithstanding. Now it must be confessed that the Enemy had a hard time

of it, since we read that the good Bishop Conrad fought against him with

all the powers of the Church, and granted absolution for all sins, past,

present, and future, for forty thousand years, to whatever person should

contribute to the building of the spire by money, material, or labor.

Owing to the scarcity of parchment, these grants of absolution were made

out on asses' skins; and it will be seen, that, in the great struggle,

these instruments retained in a very eminent degree that quality of

stubborn resistance which had cost them in their original state many a

beating from the driver's staff. The greatest enthusiasm was kindled

among rich and poor; year after year, thousands of pilgrims flocked

hither from all Germany to offer their aid, without reward or

recompense, to the building of the tower; and out of the

farthest boundaries, even from Austria, came wagons loaded with

building-materials, the gratuitous offerings of the pious. Rich legacies

were left to the work, and many a cloister devoted a fourth part of its

yearly revenues to the same object So much for asses' skins!

Meanwhile the Devil was not idle. In the night-winds he and his legions

would shriek and yell and rattle among the scaffolding and cranes

in vain. In the latter part of the thirteenth century, he shook the

structure with a frightful earthquake, which terrified all Alsatia,

and, although whole streets were thrown down in Strasburg, yet the

foundations of the _Wunderbau_, as the Germans love to call it, were not

loosened, and no stone was moved from its place. A few years afterward,

in 1289, he once more made use of his favorite element, and laid in

ashes the market-place of Strasburg all around the minster. More

fortunate than its great compeers, St. Paul's of London, and St. Peter's

of Hamburg, it miraculously experienced but trifling damage.

Well, the great Erwin died at last, when he had built the tower as high

as the roof-ridge of the nave. His son succeeded him, finished the tower

to the platform, when he, too, was gathered to his fathers in 1339. John

Hültz followed as master; and finally his nephew, Hültz II., in 1439,

finished the grand pyramid, fixed the colossal cross in its place, and

crowned the whole with a gigantic statue of the Virgin. Thus, from the

laying of the foundation-stone till all was completed, were one

hundred and sixty years; yet throughout this time the work was never

discontinued, and five successive generations labored upon its walls.

But the wrath of the Arch-Enemy, as may well be believed, waxed greater

as this prodigious structure gradually developed itself in all its

lordliness and strength, and was not at all appeased at its triumphant

completion. Ever since then he has visited its stately height with

especial marks of his malice. The most furious tempests have raged about

it, and more than sixty times has it been struck by lightning, and five

times have earthquakes shaken its foundations. But in vain. "The Golden

Legend" tells us how Lucifer and the Powers of the Air stormed about the

spire, and how he cried,--

"Hasten! hasten!

O ye spirits!

From its station drag the ponderous

Cross of iron that to mock us

Is uplifted high in air!"

and how the voices replied,--

"Oh, we cannot!

For around it

All the Saints and Guardian Angels

Throng in legions to protect it;

They defeat us everywhere!"

At one point, however, the evil spirits were successful; the colossal

statue of the Virgin, which crowned the dizzy summit, and was familiar

with the secrets of the upper air, and which, like its dread Enemy,

"above the rest,

In shape and gesture proudly eminent,

Stood like a tower,"--

after having for fifty years borne the insults of these airy powers,

till it had lost all its original brightness, and its face

"Deep scars of thunder had intrenched,"--

was taken down, and the present cross put in its place. And there it

stands to this day, high up in the silence of midair, where the voices

of the city below are rendered small and thin by the distance,--four

hundred and seventy-four feet above the heads of the populace, who, in

their littleness, crawl about and traffic at its base. This amazing

summit, "moulded in colossal calm," in its unapproachable grandeur,

seems to forget the city from which it rises, and to hold communion only

with that vast circle of "crowded farms and lessening towers" which

it surveys. It is a worthy companionship; on the one hand, the great

Vosgian chain, the closed gates of France,--on the other, afar off, the

hills of the Black Forest, and, more near, Father Rhine, winding his

silver thread among the villages and vineyards of Germany.

There is (or was) an enormous key suspended just beneath the cross of

Strasburg Cathedral, its use, and why it was placed there, having passed

away from the memory of man. If it were not to open the gates of heaven

for those who built this ladder of light and those who worship in

its shadow, it remains a riddle and a blank. Let us accept the

interpretation, and, made mild-eyed by the lens of tender memories, we

shall behold in every spire a means of grace and a hope of glory.

THE PROFESSOR'S STORY.

PRELIMINARY CORRESPONDENCE.

THE PUBLISHERS TO THE AUTHOR.

_Queerangle Building, Nov. '59._

Dr. SR,--

Will you contract to do us a tale or a novel, at the rate of say 10 pp.

per month, with some popular subject, such as philanthropy, or the Broad

Church movement, or fashionable weddings, or the John Brown invasion,

brought in so as to make a taking thing of it? When finished, to come

to a 12mo of 350 pp. more or less. A good article of novel is always

salable about Christmas time, and we can do it up by Dec. 1, 1860.

Our Mr. Goader has been round among the hands that do the light

jobbing,--finds several ready to undertake the contract, at say 75c. @

3.00 per page;--but want the job done in first-rate style, and think

you could furnish us a good article. Our firm has great facilities for

working a novel, tale, or any kind of fancy stuff. What w'd be y'r terms

in cash payment, 1st of every month?

P.S. Would any additional compensation induce you to allow each number

to be illustrated by a colored engraving?

Yr obt serv'ts.

THE AUTHOR TO THE PUBLISHERS.

GENTLEMEN,--

In reply to your polite request, I have to say, that under no

circumstances can I entertain your proposition to write a _fictitious_

narrative. I could, however, relate some very interesting events which

have come to my knowledge, and which, if told in a connected form, might

undoubtedly be taken by the public for a work of fiction. I think my

narrative, with some collateral matter I should introduce, would take up

a reasonable space in about a dozen numbers of the Oceanic Miscellany.

I cannot listen to your proposal about the engraving. If you accept my

offer to write out, in the form of a story, the incidents of real

life to which I have referred, we will arrange the terms at a private

interview. I consider the first day of a month as unobjectionable as any

other in the same month, as a time for receiving payment of any sum that

may be due me under the proposed contract.

Yours truly.

CONFIDENTIAL EDITOR OF THE OCEANIC MISCELLANY TO THE AUTHOR.

MY DEAR PROF.,--

We have had lots of bob-tail stories,--docked short in from one to three

months. Can't you give us a switch-tail one, that will hang on so as

to touch next December? Something imaginary, based on your

recollections,--the incidents of the War of 1812, for instance;--but, at

any rate, a regular "to be continued" "_pièce de résistance_"

Yours ever.

THE AUTHOR TO THE CONFIDENTIAL EDITOR.

MY DEAR ED.,--

I really wouldn't undertake to tell an "imaginary" story, or to write

a romance, or anything of the kind. I might be willing to relate some

curious matters that have come to my knowledge, arranging them in a

collective form, so that they would probably pass with most readers for

fictitious, and perhaps excite very much the same kind of interest they

would if genuine fictions. I don't remember much about the "last war";

but I suppose both of us may recollect the illumination when peace was

declared in 1815.

Ever yours.

THE PUBLISHERS TO THE AUTHOR.

(Inclosing a check, in advance, for the first number.)

THE AUTHOR TO THE READER.

Finding myself in possession of certain facts which possess interest

sufficient to warrant their publication, I am led to ask myself whether

I shall put them in the form of a narrative. There are, evidently, two

sides to this question. In the first place, I have a number of friends

who write me letters, and tell me openly to my face, that they want me

to go on writing. It doesn't make much difference to them, they say,

what I write about,--only they want me to keep going. They have got used

to seeing me, in one shape or another,--and I am a kind of habit with

them, like a nap after dinner. They tell me not to be frightened about

it,--to begin as dull as I like, and that I shall warm up, by-and-by, as

old _Dutchman_ used to, who could hardly put one leg before the other

when he started, but, after a while, got so limbered and straightened

out by his work, that he dropped down into the forties, and, I think

they say, into the thirties. _L'appétit vient en mangeant_, one of them

said who talks French,--which, you know, means, that eating makes one

hungry. I remember, when I sat down to that last book of mine, which you

may perhaps have read, although I had the facts of the story, of course,

all in my head, it seemed to me that I should never have the patience

to tell them all; and yet, before I was through, I got so full of the

scenes and characters I was talking about, that I had to bolt my door

and lay in an extra bandanna, before I could trust myself to put my

recollections and thoughts on paper. You don't expect a locomotive is

going to start off with a train of thirty or forty thousand passengers,

without straining a little,--do you? That isn't the way; but this is.

_Puff!_ The wheels begin to turn, but very slowly. Papas hold up their

little Johnnys to the car-windows to be kissed. _Puff----Puff!_ People

shake hands from the platform to the cars, walking along by their side.

_Puff--puff--puff!_ Now, then, Ma'am! pass out that tumbler pretty

spry, out of which you have been swallowing that eternal "drink o'

wotter," to which the human female of a certain social grade is so

odiously addicted. _Puff, puff, puff, puff!_ Too late, old gentleman

I unless you can do a mile in a good deal less than three minutes,

carrying weight, in the shape of a valise in one hand and a carpet-bag

in the other. That's the way with anything that's got any freight to

carry. It's slow when it sets out;--but steam is steam,--and what's bred

in the boiler will show in the driving-wheel, sooner or later.

If I had to _make up_ a story, now, it would be a very different matter.

I could never conceive how some of those romancers go to work, in cold

blood, to draw, out of what they call their imagination, a parcel of

impossible events and absurd characters. That is not my trouble; for I

have come into relation with a series of persons and events which will

save me the pains of drawing on my invention, in case I shall see fit to

follow the counsel of my too partial friends. I am only afraid I should

not disguise the circumstances enough, if I were to arrange these facts

in the narrative form. Some of them are of such a nature, that they

cannot be supposed to have happened more than once in the experience

of a generation; and I feel that the greatest caution and delicacy are

necessary in the manner of their presentation, not to offend the living

or wrong the memory of the dead.

It is very easy for you, the Reader, to sit down and run over the pages

of a monthly narrative as a boy "skips" a stone,--and the flatter and

thinner your capacity, the more skips, perhaps, you will make. But I

tell you, for a man who has live people to deal with, and hearts that

are beating even while he handles them,--a man who can go into families

and pull up by the roots all the mysteries of their dead generations and

their living sons' and daughters' secret history,--_responsible_ for

what he says, here and elsewhere,--open to a libel suit, if he isn't

pretty careful in his personalities, or to a visit from a brother or

other relative, wishing to know, Sir, and so forth,--or to a paragraph

in the leading journal of that whispering-gallery of a nation's gossip,

Little Millionville, to the effect that--We understand the personages

alluded to in the tale now publishing in the Oceanic Miscellany are

the Reverend Dr. S---h and his accomplished lady, the distinguished

financier, Mr. B---n,--and so through the whole list of characters;--I

say, for a man who _writes_ the pages you skim over, it is a mighty

different piece of business. Why, if I _do_ tell all I know about some

things that have come to my cognizance, I shall make you open your eyes

and spread your pupils, as if you had been to the Eye Infirmary, and the

doctors there had anointed your lids with the extract of belladonna.

Mark what I tell you! I have happened to become intimately acquainted

with circumstances of a very extraordinary nature,--not, perhaps,

without precedent, but such as very few have been called upon to

witness. Suppose that I should see fit to tell these in connection with

the story of which they form a part? I may render myself obnoxious to

persons whom it is not safe to offend,--persons that won't come out in

the public prints, perhaps, but will poke incendiary letters under your

doors,--that won't step up to you in broad daylight, and lug a Colt out

of their pocket, or draw a bowie-knife from their back, where they had

carried it under their coat, but who will dog you about to do you a

mischief unseen,--who will carry air-guns in the shape of canes, and

hang round the place where you get your provisions, and practise with

long-range rifles out in the lonely fields,--rifles that crack no louder

than a parlor-pistol, but spit a bit of lead out of their mouths half a

mile and more, so that you wait as you do for the sound of the man's axe

who is chopping on the other side of the river, to see the fellow you

have "saved" clap his hand to his breast and stagger over. It makes me

nervous to think of such things. I don't want to be suspicious of every

queer taste in my coffee, and to shiver if I see a little powdered white

sugar on the upper crust of my pastry. I don't want, every time I hear a

door bang, to think it is a ragged slug from an unseen gun-barrel.

If Dick V---- was _not_ killed on the Pampas, as they have always said

he was, I should never sleep easy after telling my story. For such a

fellow as he was would certainly see through all the disguises I could

cover up a real-life story with, and then----. He has learned the use of

the lasso too well for me to want to trust my neck anywhere within a rod

of him, if there were light enough for him to see, and nothing between

us, and nobody near.

And besides, there were a good many opinions handled by some of these

people I should have to talk about. Now, of course, a magazine like the

Oceanic is no place for opinions. Look out for your Mormon subscribers,

if you question the propriety of Solomon's domestic arrangements! And

if you say one word that touches the Sandemanians, be sure their whole

press will be down on you; for, as Sandemanianism is the undoubted and

absolutely true religion, it follows, of course, that it is as sore as a

scalded finger, and must be handled like a broken bone.

Add to this that I have always had the greatest objection to writing

anything which those who were not acquainted with the facts might call

a _romance_ or a _tale._ We think very ill of a man who offers us as a

truth some single statement which we find he knew to be false. Now what

can we think of a man who tells three volumes, or even one, full of just

such lies? Of course the _primâ-facie_ aspect of the case is, that he

is guilty of the most monstrous impertinence; and, in point of fact,

I confess the greatest disgust towards any person of whom I hear the

assertion that he has _written a story,_ unless I hear something more

than that. He is bound to show extenuating or justifying circumstances,

as much as the man who writes what he calls "poems." For, as the world

is full of real histories, and every day in every great city begins and

ends a score or half a dozen score of tragic dramas, it is a huge piece

of assumption to undertake to make one out of one's own head. A man

takes refuge under your porch in a rain-storm, and you offer him the use

of your shower-bath!

Also, I cannot help remembering, that, on the whole, I have been more

intensely bored with works of fiction,--beginning with "Gil Blas," and

ending with--on the whole, I won't even mention it,--than I ever was by

the Latin Grammar or Rollin's History. Naturally, therefore, I should

not wish to threaten my friends with the punishment I have endured from

others. But then, as I said before, if I write down the circumstances

that have come to my knowledge, with some account of persons, opinions,

and conversations, no one can accuse me of writing a _novel,_--a thing

which I never meant to do, under any circumstances.

----After having carefully weighed my friends' arguments and my own

objections, I have come to the conclusion to do pretty much as I like

about it. Now the truth is, I have grown to be rather fonder of you, the

Reader, than I have ever been willing to confess. You are such a good,

kind creature,--it takes so little to please you,--you laugh and cry

so very obligingly at just the right time,--you send me such charming

notes, such dear little copies of verses,--nay, (shall I venture to say

it?) such prodigal tokens of kindness, some of you, that I----in short,

I love you very much, and cannot make up my mind to part with you.

Rather than do this, as I could not and would not write a romance, I

have made up my mind to tell you something of some persons and events of

which I have known enough,--of some of them, I might say, too much. Of

course, you must trust wholly to my discretion and sense of propriety,

in dealing with living personages, recent events, and subjects still in

dispute. Trusting that none of my friends will pay any attention to any

idle rumors tending to fix the personages or localities of which I shall

speak, and reminding my readers that the narrative will constitute only

a part of what I have to say, inasmuch as there will be no small amount

of reflections introduced, and perhaps of conversations reported, I

begin this connected statement of facts with an essay on a social

phenomenon not hitherto distinctly recognized.