CHAPTER III.

Produced by Cornell University, Joshua Hutchinson, Janet

Blenkinship and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

at https://www.pgdp.net

THE

CONTINENTAL MONTHLY:

DEVOTED TO

LITERATURE AND NATIONAL POLICY.

* * * * *

VOL. IV.--OCTOBER, 1863.--No. IV.

* * * * *

CONTENTS

THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS.

THE BROTHERS.

UNUTTERED.

WILLIAM LILLY ASTROLOGER.

JEFFERSON DAVIS—REPUDIATION, RECOGNITION, AND SLAVERY.

DIARY OF FRANCES KRASINSKA.

MAIDEN'S DREAMING.

THIRTY DAYS WITH THE SEVENTY-FIRST REGIMENT.

REASON, RHYME, AND RHYTHM.

TO A MOUSE.

CURRENCY AND THE NATIONAL FINANCES.

OCTOBER AFTERNOON IN THE HIGHLANDS.

THE ISLE OF SPRINGS.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

THE RESTORATION OF THE UNION.

WAS HE SUCCESSFUL?

CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER X.

AMERICAN FINANCES AND RESOURCES.

VOICELESS SINGERS.

A DETECTIVE'S STORY.

LITERARY NOTICES.

CONTENTS.—No. XXIII.

THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS.

An important discussion has arisen since the commencement of the war,

bearing upon the interests of the American Press. The Government has

seen fit, at various times, through its authorities, civil and military,

to suppress the circulation and even the publication of journals which,

in its judgment, gave aid and comfort to the enemy, either by disloyal

publications in reference to our affairs, or by encouraging and

laudatory statements concerning the enemy. The various papers of the

country have severally censured or commended the course of the

Government in this matter, and the issue between the Press and the

Authorities has been regarded as of a sufficiently serious nature to

demand a convocation of editors to consider the subject; of which

convention Horace Greeley was chairman. A few remarks on the nature of

the liberty of the press and on its relations to the governing powers

will not, therefore, at this time, be inopportune.

Men are apt, at times, in the excitement of political partisanship, to

forget that the freedom of the press is, like all other social liberty,

relative and not absolute; that it is not license to publish whatsoever

they please, but only that which is _within certain defined limits_

prescribed by the people as the legitimate extent to which expression

through the public prints should be permitted; and that it is because

these limits are regulated by the whole people, for the whole people,

and not by the arbitrary caprice of a single individual or of an

aristocracy, that the press is denominated free. Let it be remembered,

then, as a starting point, that the press is amenable to the people;

that it is controlled and regulated by them, and indebted to them for

whatever measure of freedom it enjoys.

The scope of this liberty is carefully defined by the statutes, as also

the method by which its transgression is to be punished. These

enactments minutely define the nature of an infringement of their

provisions, and point out the various methods of procedure in order to

redress private grievance or to punish public wrong, in such instances.

These statutes emanate from the people, are the expression of their

will, and in consonance with them the action of the executive

authorities must proceed, whenever the civil law is sufficient for the

execution of legal measures.

But there comes a time, in the course of a nation's existence, when the

usual and regular methods of its life are interrupted; when peaceful

systems and civilized adaptations are forced to give place to the ruder

and more peremptory modes of procedure which belong to seasons of

hostile strife. The slow, methodical, oftentimes tedious contrivances of

ordinary law, admirably adapted for periods of national quietude, are

utterly inadequate to the stern and unforeseen contingencies of civil

war. Laws which are commonly sufficient to secure justice and afford

protection, are then comparatively powerless for such ends. The large

measure of liberty of speech and of the press safely accorded when there

is ample time to correct false doctrines and to redress grievances

through common methods, is incompatible with the rigorous promptitude,

energy, celerity, and unity of action necessary to the preservation of

national existence in times of rebellion. If an individual be suspected

of conspiring against his country, at such a time, to leave him at

liberty while the usual processes of law were being undertaken, would

perhaps give him opportunity for consummating his designs and delivering

the republic into the hands of its enemies. If a portion of the press

circulate information calculated to aid the foe in the defeat of the

national armies, to endeavor to prevent this evil by the slow routine of

civil law, might result in the destruction of the state. The fact that

we raise armies to secure obedience commonly enforced by the ordinary

civil officers is a virtual and actual acknowledgment that a new order

of things has arisen for which the usual methods are insufficient, civil

authority inadequate, and to contend with which powers must be exercised

not before in vogue. Codes of procedure arranged for an established and

harmoniously working Government cannot answer all the requirements of

that Government when it is repudiated by a large body of its subjects,

and the existence of the nation itself is in peril.

It is evident, therefore, that at times the accustomed methods of Civil

government must, in deference to national safety, be laid aside, to some

extent, and the more vigorous adaptations of Military government

substituted in their stead. But it does not follow from this that

_arbitrary_ power is necessarily employed, or that such methods are not

strictly legal. There is a despotic Civil government and a despotic

Military government, a free Civil government and a free Military

government. The Civil government of Russia is despotic; so would its

Military government be if internal strife should demand that military

authority supersede the civil; the Civil government of the United States

is free, so must its Military government be in order to be sustained.

But what is a free Military government? There is precisely the same

difference between a free and a despotic _military_ polity as between a

free and a despotic _civil_ polity. It is the essential nature of

_despotic_ rule that it recognizes the fountain head of all power to be

the ruler, and the people are held as the mere creatures of his

pleasure. It is the essence of _free_ government that it regards the

people as the source of all power, and the rulers as their agents,

possessing only such authority as is committed by the former into the

hands of the latter. It matters not, therefore, whether a ruler be

exercising the civil power in times of peaceful national life, or

whether, in times of rebellion, he wields the military authority

essential to security, he is alike, at either time, a despot or a

republican, accordingly as he exercises his power without regard to the

will of the people, or as he exercises such power only as the national

voice delegates to him.

Wendell Phillips said in his oration before the Smithsonian Institute:

'Abraham Lincoln sits to-day the greatest despot this side of China.'

The mistake of Mr. Phillips was this: He confounded the method of

exercising power with the nature of the power exercised. It is the

latter which decides the question of despotism or of freedom. The

methods of the republican governor and of the despot may be, in times of

war _must_ be, for the most part, identical. But the one is,

nevertheless, as truly a republican as the other is a despot. Freedom of

speech, freedom of the press, the right of travel, the writ of _habeas

corpus_--these insignia of liberty in a people are dispensed with in

despotic Governments, because the ruler chooses to deprive the people of

their benefits, and for that reason only; they were suspended in our

Government because the national safety seemed to demand it, and because

the President, as the accredited executive of the wishes of the people,

fulfilled their clearly indicated will. In the former case it is lordly

authority overriding the necks of the people for personal pride or

power; in the latter, it is the ripe fruit of republican civilization,

which, in times of danger, can with safety and security overleap, for

the moment, the mere forms of law, in order to secure its beneficial

results. They seem to resemble each other; but are as wide apart as

irreligion and that highest religious life which, transcending all

external observances, seems to the mere religious formalist to be

identical with it.

But how is the Executive to ascertain the behest of the people? In

accordance with the modes which they, as a part of their behest,

indicate. But as there are two methods of fulfilling the wishes of the

people, one adapted to the ordinary routine of peaceful times, and

another to the more summary necessities of war, so there are two

methods, calculated for these diverse national states, by which the

Government must discover the will of the people. The slow, deliberate

action of the ballot box and of the legislative body is amply

expeditious for the purposes of undisturbed and tranquil periods. But in

times of rebellion or invasion, the waiting and delay which are often

essential to the prosecution of forms prescribed for undisturbed epochs

are, as has been said, simply impossible. War is a period in which

methods and procedures are required diametrically opposite to those

which are so fruitful of good in days of peace. The lawbreaker who comes

with an army at his back cannot be served with a sheriff's warrant, nor

arrested by a constable. War involves unforeseen emergencies, to meet

which there is no time for calling Congress together, or taking the

sense of the populace by a ballot. It is full of attempted surprises,

which must be guarded against on the instant, and of dangers which must

be quickly avoided, but for whose guardance or avoidance the statutes

make no provision. Hence arises a necessity for a mode of ascertaining

the will of the people other than the slow medium of formal legislation

or of balloting.

The Government of the United States is the servant of its people. It was

ordained to insure for _them_ 'domestic tranquillity, provide for the

common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of

liberty to' themselves and their posterity. Its laws and statutes are

but the forms by which the people attempt to secure these things. But

the people are sovereign, even over their laws. As they have instituted

them _for their own good_, so may they dispense with them for their own

good, whenever the national safety requires this. As they have

established certain modes of lawful procedure _for their own security_,

so may they adopt other modes when their safety demands it. Their laws

and their codes of procedure are for their _uses_, not for their

destruction. 'When a sister State is endangered, red tape must be cut,'

said Governor Seymour, when it was telegraphed to him that some delaying

forms must be gone through in order to arm and send off our State

troops who were ordered to the defence of Harrisburg; and all the people

said, Amen! The people of the United States inaugurated a government,

whose forms of law were admirably suited to times of peace, but have

been found inadequate to seasons of intestine strife. They have, as we

have seen, superadded, in some degree, other methods of action,

indorsing and adopting those to which the Executive was compelled to

resort as better adapted to changed conditions. They have not done this

in accordance with prescribed forms, in all instances, because the forms

of _civil_ government do not provide for a condition of society in which

civil authority is virtually abrogated, to a greater or less extent, for

military authority.

In the same way and by virtue of the same sovereignty, the people of the

United States may lay aside the common method of indicating their

pleasure to the Executive, and substitute one more in consonance with

the requirements of the times. They may make known that they _do_ lay

aside an established mode, either by a formal notice or by a general

tacit understanding, as the exigencies of the case require. They may

recognize the right, aye, the _duty_ of the Executive to act in

accordance with other methods than those prescribed for ordinary

seasons, in cases where the national security demands this.

But this is not an abandonment of the methods and forms of law! This is

not the establishment of an _arbitrary_ government! This is not passing

from freedom to despotism! The _people_ of this country are sovereign,

let it be repeated. So long as its Government is conducted as its people

or as the majority of them wish, it is conducted in accordance with its

established principle. There were no freedom if the vital spirit of

liberty were to be held in bondage to the dead forms of powerless or

obsolete prescriptions in the very crisis of the nation's death

struggle! Freedom means freedom to act, in all cases and under all

circumstances, so as to secure the highest individual and national

well-being. It does _not_ mean freedom to establish certain codes of

procedure under certain regulations, and to be forever bound under these

when the preservation of liberty itself demands their temporary

abeyance. So long as the Government fulfils the wishes of the people, it

is not arbitrary, it is not despotic, no matter what methods an

emergency may require it to adopt for this purpose, or in what manner it

ascertains these wishes; provided always that the methods adopted and

the modes of ascertainment are also in accordance with the people's

desires.

But how is the Executive to discover the will of the people if he does

not wait for its formal expression? How is he to be sure that he does

not outrun their desires? How is he to be checked and punished, should

he do so? Precisely the same law must apply here as has been indicated

to be the true one in reference to the fulfilment of the people's

behest. Fixed, definite, precise, formal expressions of popular will,

when time is wanting for these, must be replaced by those which are more

quickly ascertained and less systematically expressed. The Executive

must forecast the general desire and forestall its commands, regarding

the tacit acceptance of the people or their _informal_ laws, such as

resolutions, conventions, and various modes of expressing popular accord

or dissent, as indications of the course which they approve. Nor is this

an anomaly in our legal system. The citizen ordinarily is not at liberty

to take the law into his own hands; he must appeal to the constituted

authorities, and through the machinery of a law court obtain his redress

or protection. But there are times when contingencies arise in which

more wrong would be done by such delay than by a summary process

transcending the customary law. The man who sees a child, a woman, or

even an animal treated with cruelty, does not wait to secure protection

for the injured party by the common methods of legal procedure, but, on

the instant, prevents, with blows if need be, the outrage. He oversteps

the forms of law to secure the ends of law, and rests in the

consciousness that the law itself will accept his action. When the case

is more desperate, his usurpation of power generally prohibited to him

is still greater, up to that last extremity in which he deliberately

takes the whole law into his own hands, and, acting as accuser, witness,

judge, executioner, slays the individual who assaults him with deadly

weapons or with hostile intent.

In this case now stands the nation. Along her borders flashes the steel

of hostile armies, their cannon thunder almost in hearing of our

capitol, their horses but recently trampled the soil of neighboring

States. A deadly enemy is trying to get its gripe upon the republic's

throat and its knife into her heart. The nation must act as an

individual would under similar circumstances; and the nation must act

through its Executive. If one person, attacked by another, should snatch

from the hands of a passer his cane, in order to defend his life; if, in

his struggles with his assailant, he should strike a second through

misconception, how immeasurably ridiculous would be the action of these

individuals, should they, while the death struggle were still raging,

berate the man, one for breaking the law by taking away his cane, and

the other for breaking the law by the commission of a battery! Every man

feels instinctively that in such a crisis all weapons of defence are at

his disposal, and that he takes them, _not_ in violation of law, but in

obedience to the law of extraordinary contingencies, which every

community adopts, but which no community can inscribe upon its statute

book, _because it is_ the law of contingencies.

The Executive of this, as of every country, resorts to this law when, in

the nature of things, the statute law is inadequate. In doing this, he

does not violate law; he only adopts another kind of law. A subtle,

delicate law, indeed, which can neither be inscribed among the

enactments, nor exactly defined, circumscribed, or expressed. When it is

to be substituted for the ordinary modes of legal procedure, how far it

is to be used, when its use must cease--these are questions which the

people, as the sole final arbiters, must decide. As the individual in

society must judge wisely when the community will sanction his use of

the contingent law, the law of private military power, so to speak, in

his own behalf; so must the Executive judge when the urgency of the

national defence demands the exercise of the summary power in the place

of more technical methods. If the public sentiment of the community

sustain the individual, it is an indorsement that he acted justifiably

in accordance with this exceptional law; if it do not, he is liable for

an unwarranted usurpation of power. The Executive stands in the same

relation to the nation. The Mohammedans relate that the road to heaven

is two miles long, stretching over a fathomless abyss, the only pathway

across which is narrower than a razor's edge. Delicately balanced must

be the body which goes over in safety! The intangible path which the

Executive must walk to meet the people's wishes on the one side, and to

avoid their fears upon the other, in the national peril, is narrower

than the Mahommedan's road to heaven, and cautiously bold must be the

feet that safely tread it! Blessed shall that man be who succeeds in

crossing. The nations shall rise up and call him blessed, and succeeding

generations shall praise him.

We come then to the relations of the press and the Executive. We have

seen that all liberty is _relative_, and not _absolute_; that the

people, the sovereigns in this country, have prescribed certain methods

for securing, in ordinary periods, those blessings which it is their

desire to enjoy; that when, under special contingencies, these methods

become insufficient for this purpose, the people may, in virtue of their

sovereignty, suspend them and adopt others adequate to the occasion;

that these may not, indeed, from their very nature, cannot be of a fixed

and circumscribed kind, but must give large discretionary power into the

hands of the Executive, to be used by him in a summary manner as

contingencies may indicate; that this abrogation or suspension, for the

time, of so much of the ordinary civil law, in favor of the contingent

law, is not an abandonment of free government for arbitary or despotic

government, because it is still in accordance with the will of the

people, and hence is merely the substitution of a new form of law,

which, being required for occasions when instant action is demanded, is

necessarily summary in its character; that the extent to which this law

is to be substituted for the ordinary one is to be discovered by the

Executive from the general sense of the nation, when it cannot be made

known through the common method of the ballot box and the legislature;

that in the people resides the power ultimately to determine whether

their wishes have been correctly interpreted or not; and, finally, that

the Executive is equally responsible for coming short of the behests of

the nation in the use of the contingent law or for transgressing the

boundaries within which they desire him to constrain his actions.

The press of the United States has always been free to the extent that

it might publish whatsoever it listed, _within certain limits prescribed

by the law_. The press may still do this. But the nature of the law

which prescribes the limits has changed with the times. The constituted

authorities of the people of the United States are obliged now, in the

people's interest, to employ the processes of summary rather than those

of routine law. Hence when the press infringes too violently the

boundaries indicated, and persists in so doing, the sterner penalty

demanded by the dangers of the hour is enforced by the sterner method

likewise rendered necessary. So long as Executive action concerning the

press shall be _in accordance_ with the general sentiment of the people,

it will be within the strict scope of the highest law of the land.

Should the Executive persistently exercise this summary law in a manner

not countenanced by the nation, he is amenable to it under the strict

letter of the Constitution for high crimes or misdemeanors, not the

least of which would be the usurpation of powers not delegated to him by

the people.

The Executive of the United States occupies at this time an exceedingly

trying and dangerous position, which demands for him the cordial,

patient, and delicate consideration of the American nation. He is placed

in a situation where the very existence of the republic requires that he

use powers not technically delegated to him, and in which the people

expect, yea, demand him, to adopt methods transcending the strict letter

of statute law, the use of which powers and the adoption of which

methods would be denounced as the worst of crimes, even made the basis

of an impeachment, should the mass of the populace be dissatisfied with

his proceedings. It is easy to find fault, easy in positions devoid of

public responsibility to think we see how errors might have been

avoided, how powers might have been more successfully employed and

greater results achieved. But the American Executive is surrounded with

difficulties too little appreciated by the public, while an almost

merciless criticism, emanating both from injudicious friends and

vigilant foes, follows his every action. Criticism should not be

relaxed; but it should be exercised by those only who are competent to

undertake its office. The perusal of the morning paper does not

ordinarily put us in possession of sufficient information to enable us

to understand, in all their bearings, the measures of the Government.

Something more is required than a reading of the accounts of battles

furnished by the correspondents of the press to entitle one to express

an opinion on military movements. It should not be forgotten that the

officers engaged in the army of the United States are better judges of

military affairs than civilians at home; that the proceedings of the

Government, with rare exceptions, possibly, are based upon a fuller

knowledge of all the facts relating to a special case, than is obtained

by private persons, and that its judgment is therefore more likely to be

correct, in any given instance, than our own. The injury done to the

national cause by the persistent animadversion of well-intentioned men,

who cannot conceive that their judgments may perchance be incorrect, is

scarcely less, than the openly hostile invective of the friends of the

South. The intelligent citizens of the North, especially those who

occupy prominent positions as teachers and instructors of the people

through the press, the pulpit, and other avenues, should ever be mindful

that the _political_ liberty which they possess of free thought and free

speech, has imposed upon them the moral duty of using this wisely for

the welfare of humanity, and that they cannot be faithless to this

obligation without injuring their fellow men and incurring a heavy moral

guilt.

THE BROTHERS.

AN ALLEGORY.

DEDICATION, TO ONE WHO WILL UNDERSTAND IT:

'I love thee freely, as men strive for right;

I love thee purely, us they turn from praise

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith;

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints,--I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee dearer after death.'

The Creator still loved and guarded the earth, although its children had

departed from their early obedience. In evidence of His care, He sent,

from time to time, gifted spirits among men to aid them in developing

and elevating the souls so fallen from their primal innocence. These

spirits He clad in sensuous bodies, that they might be prepared to enter

the far country of Human Life. Earth was rapidly falling under the

merciless rule of a hopeless and crushing materialism, when He

determined upon sending among men, Anselm, the saint; Angelo, the tone

artist; Zophiel, the poet; and Jemschid, the painter. The spirits

murmured not, although they knew they were to relinquish their heaven

life for that torment of perpetual struggle which the forbidden

knowledge of Good and Evil has entailed upon all incarcerated in a human

form.

_For self-abnegation is the law of heaven!_

* * * * *

'Brothers,' said the merciful Father, 'go, and sin not, for of all

things that pass among men must a strict account be rendered. For are

not their evil deeds written upon the eternally living memory of a just

God? Evil lurks in the land of your exile; it may find its way into your

own hearts, for you are to become wholly human, and to lose for a time

the memory of your home in heaven. But even in that far country you will

find the Book of Life, which I have given for the guidance and

consolation of the fallen. For it is known even there that 'God is

Love!''

* * * * *

Then the journey of the Heaven Brothers began through the blinding

clouds and trailing mists of chaos, in whose palpable gloom all memories

are obliterated. Naked, trembling, and human, they arrived upon the

shifting sands of the world of Time and Death.

A vague, shadowy sense, like a forgotten dream which we struggle vainly

to recall, often flitted through their clay-clogged souls, of a

strangely glorious life in some higher sphere; but all attempts to give

definite form to such bewildering visions ended but in fantastic

reveries of mystic possibilities or dim yearnings of unseen glories.

They found the Book of Life, but they remembered not that the Father had

told them the Word was His.

For the thread of _Identity_, on which are strung the pearls of

_Memory_, in the passage through chaos had snapped in twain!

* * * * *

Like the silver light through the storm clouds flitting over the fair

face of the moon, gleam the antenatal splendors through the gloom of the

earth life.

As Anselm wonderingly turned the pages of the Book of Life, strange

memories awoke within him. So inextricably were the dreams of his past

woven with the burning visions of the Prophets, that the darkness of

Revelation, like the heaven vault at midnight, was illumined by the

light of distant worlds; his own vague reminiscences supplying the inner

sense of the inspired but mystic leaves. What wonder that he loved the

Book, when in its descriptions of the life to _come_, he felt the

history of the life already _past_; and through its sternest

threatenings, like the rainbow girdling storm clouds, shone the promise

of a blessed future!

He spent the hours of exile in a constant effort to commune with the

Father; in humble prayer and supplication for strength to resist the

power of sin. For he feared the Evil which lurked in the land. He

examined the springs of his own actions, analyzed his motives, and

tortured himself lest any of the evils denounced in the Book should lurk

in the folds of his own soul. In contemplating the awful justice of the

Father, he sometimes forgot that He is Love. He feared close commune

with the children of the earth, for Evil dwelt among them; he looked not

into the winecup, nor danced with the maidens under the caressing

tendrils of the vine or the luxuriant branches of the myrtle--nay, the

rose cheek of the maiden was a terror to him, for lo! Evil might lurk

under its brilliant bloom. The Dread of Evil sapped the Joy of Life!

He turned from all the lovely Present, to catch faint traces of the dim

Past, to picture the unseen Future, about which it is vain to disquiet

ourselves, since, like everything else, it rests upon the heart of God!

His life was holy, innocent, and self-sacrificing. He sought to serve

his fellow men, yet feared to give them his heart, lest he should rob

the Father of His just due. He knew not from his own experience that

Love is infinite, and grows on what it gives. He bore religious

consolation to the afflicted, aid to the needy, sympathy to the

suffering. He was universally esteemed, but the spirit of his brethren

broke not into joy at his approach, for the _trusting_ heart of genial

humanity throbbed not in his sad breast. He was no Pharisee, but he

dined not with the Publican, and the precious ointment of the Magdalen

never bathed his weary head. His language was: 'All is fleeting and

evil, save Thee, O my Father; in Thee alone can rest be found!'

Solace for human anguish can only be found upon the heart of love. 'Thou

shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with

all thy mind: and thy neighbor as thyself!' Blessed Son of Mary! Thou

alone hast fully kept these _two_ commandments!

'For wisdom is justified of her children!'

* * * * *

Angelo, Zophiel, and Jemschid also resolved to avoid the Evil spoken of

in the Book of Life. But the far country into which the Father had sent

them was lovely in their eyes, and they were charmed with the Beauty

with which He had surrounded them. They dreamed by the shady fountains,

with their silver flow and gentle ripples; roamed by the darker rivers

as they hurry on to plunge themselves into the sea; gazed on the

restless ocean breakers when the dying sun fringes their crest with

rainbow hues, and the flushing sky, to cool her burning blushes, flings

herself into the heart of the restless waters. They loved to breathe the

'difficult air' of mountain tops, so softly pillowed and curtained by

the fleecy vapors, which they win again from heaven in limpid streams,

leading them in wild leaps through gloomy chasms fringed by timid

harebells, whose soft blue eyes look love upon the rocks, while the

myriad forest leaves musically murmur above their flinty couch. They

watched the fitful shadow-dance of clouds over the green earth. They

loved to see these heaven tents where Beauty dwells chased by the young

zephyrs, or, driven on in heavy masses by the bolder winds, blush under

the fiery glances of the sun, and melt into the sky upon his nearer

approach. Ah! these clouds and vapors had more than human tenderness,

for had they not seen them throng around the ghastly disc of the

star-deserted moon, weaving their light webs into flowing veils to

shadow the majestic sorrow written upon her melancholy but lovely face,

shielding the mystic pallor of the virgin brow from the desecrating gaze

of the profane?

The three brothers were happy upon earth, for they looked into the heart

of their fellow mortals, and felt the genial feeling beating there; and

so luxuriantly twined its vivid green around, that the evil core was

hidden from their charmed eyes, and they ceased not to bless the Father

for a gift so divine as Human Love! They could not weep and pray the

long night through, as did the saintly Anselm, for their eyes were

fastened upon the wildering lustre of the thronging stars as they wove

their magic rings through the dim abysses of distant space, yet the

incense of constant praise rose from their happy souls to the

Beauty-giving Father.

They struggled to awake the sleeping powers of men to a perception of

the glories of creation; to lead them 'through nature up to nature's

God.' The Artist-Brothers were closely united in feeling, striving

through different mediums to refine the soul of man.

For the spirit of Beauty always awakens the spirit of Love, sent by God

to elevate and consecrate the heart of man!

* * * * *

Of a more subtle genius and more daring spirit than Zophiel or Jemschid,

Angelo boldly launched into the bewildering chaos of the realm of

sound. As yet the laws of the Acoustic Prism were unknown; the

seven-ranged ladder was all unformed, and without its aid it seemed

impossible to scale the ever-renewing heights, to sound the ever-growing

depths of this enchanted kingdom. But Angelo was a bold adventurer.

Haunted by the heaven sounds, vague memories of his antenatal existence,

although he had entirely lost the _meaning_ of their flow, as one may

recall snatches of the melody of a song when he cannot remember one of

its words--he commenced his subtle task. He resolved the Acoustic Prism;

he built the seven-runged ladder; he charmed the wandering Tones, and

bound them in the holy laws of Rhythm. Divining the hidden secrets of

their affiliations, relations, loves, and hates, he wrought them into

gorgeous webs of harmonics, to clothe the tender but fiery soul of

ever-living melodies. Soothing their jarring dissonances into sweet

accord, he filled their pining wails with that 'divine sorrow,' that

mystic longing for the Infinite, which is the inner voice of every

created heart. If he could not find the _heaven sense_ of the tones, he

found their _earthly meaning_, and caused them to repeat or suggest

every joy and sorrow of which our nature is capable. He forced the

heaven tongue to become _human_, while it retained its _divine_. Without

a model or external archetype, he formed his realm and divined its

changing limits; wide enough to contain all that is noble, holy enough

to exclude all that is low or profane. He forever exorcised the spirits

of Evil--the strong Demons of materialism--from his rhythmed world.

Flinging his spells on the unseen air, he forced it to breathe his

passion, his sighs; he saddened it with his tears, kindled it with his

rapture, until fired and charged with the electric breath of the soul,

it glowed into an atmosphere of Life, swaying at will the wild and

restless heart. He created _Music, the only universal language_, holding

the keys of Memory, and wearing the crown of Hope. Angelo, strange

architect in that dim domain of chaos, thy creation, fleeting,

invisible, and unembodied, is in perpetual, flow; changeful as the play

of clouds, yet stable as the eternal laws by which they form their misty

towers, their glittering fanes, and foam-crested pinnacles! Trackless as

the wind, yet as powerful, thy sweet spirit, Music, floats wherever

beats the human heart, for Rhythm rocks the core of life. Music nerves

the soul with strength or dissolves it in love; she idealizes Pain into

soul-touching Beauty; assuming all garbs, robing herself in all modes,

and moving at ease through every phase of our complicated existence.

White and glittering are her robes, yet she is no aristocrat. She

disdains not to soothe the weary negro in his chains, or to rock the

cradle of the child of shame, as the betrayed and forsaken girl murmurs

broken-hearted lullabies around the young 'inheritor of pain.' She is

with the maiden in the graceful mazes of the gay Mazourka; she inflames

the savage in the barbaric clang of the fierce war-dance; or marks the

measured tramp of the drilled soldiery of civilization. She is in the

court of kings; she makes eloquent the ripe lip of the cultured beauty;

she chants in the dreary cell of the hermit; she lightens the dusty

wallet of the wanderer. She glitters through the dreams of the Poet; she

breathes through the direst tragedies of noblest souls. On--on she

floats through the wide world, everywhere present, everywhere welcome,

refining, and consecrating our dull life from the Baptismal Font to the

Grave!

All the inner processes of life are guarded by the hand of nature. In

vain would the curiosity of the scalpel knife invade the sanctuary of

the beating heart to lay open the burning mystery of Being. The outraged

Life retreats before it to its last citadel, and the indignant heart,

upon its entrance, refuses to throb more. The citadel is taken; but the

secret of _Life_ is not to be discovered in the kingdom of _Death_. It

is because Music is essentially a _living_ art that we find it

impossible to read the mystery of its being. If Painting touch us, we

can always trace the emotion to its exciting cause; if we weep over the

pages of the Poet, it is because we find our own blighted hopes imaged

there. But why does Music sway us? Where did we learn that language

without words? in what consists its mystic affinities with our spirits?

Why does the harp of David soothe the insanity of Saul? Is not its

festal voice too triumphant to be the accompaniment of our own sad,

fallen being; its breath of sorrow too divine to be the echo of our

petty cares? All other arts arise from the facts of our earthly

existence, but Music has no external archetype, and refuses to submit

her ethereal soul to our curious analysis. _'I am so, because so I am,'_

is the only answer she gives to the queries of materialism. Like the

primitive rock, the skeleton of earth's burning heart, she looms up

through the base of our existence. Addressing herself to some mystic

faculty born before thought or language, she lulls the suffering baby

into its first sleep, using perhaps the primeval and universal language

of the race. For the love which receives the New Born, cadences the

monotonous chant; and human sympathies are felt by the innocent and

confiding infant before his eyes are opened fully upon the light, before

his tongue can syllable a word, his ear detect their divisions, or his

mind divine their significations. But Music looms not only through the

base of our being; like the encompassing sky, her arch spans our

horizon. Lo! is it not the language through which the Angels convey the

secrets of their profound adoration to the Heart of God!

'Having every one of them harps'--'and they _sung_ a new song'--in which

are to join 'every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and

under the earth, and such as are in the sea'--'and the number of them

was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands.'

(Revelation, chap, v.)

* * * * *

While Angelo linked the fiery tones in rhythmed laws, Zophiel sketched

with glowing pen the joys of virtue, the glories of the intellect, and

the pleasures, pains, raptures, woes, and loves of the heart. The deeds

of heroes were sung in Epic; Dramas, Elegies, and Lyrics syllabled the

inner life; men listened to the ennobling strains, and became _freemen_

as they heard. The intermingling flow of high thought and melodious

measures elevated and soothed the soul, and love for, and faith in,

humanity, were awakened and nourished by the true Poet.

Jemschid wrought with brush and pencil, until the canvas imaged his

loved skies and mountains, glowed with the noble deeds of men, and

pictured that spiritual force which strangely characterizes and mingles

with the ethereal grace of woman's fragile form.

Through the artists, life grew into loveliness, for all was idealized,

and the scattered and hidden beauties of the universe were brought to

light. The plan of creation is far too vast to be embraced in its

complex unity by the finite: it is the province of art to divide,

condense, concentrate, reunite, and rearrange the vast materials in

smaller frames, but the new work must always be a _whole_. Angelo

aroused and excited the emotions of the soul, which Zophiel analyzed and

described in words most eloquent; while Jemschid made clearer to his

brethren that Beauty of creation which is an ever visible proof of the

love of God. His portraits illumined the walls of the bereaved, keeping

fresh for them the images of the loved and lost. Historical pictures

enlarged the mind of his people, keeping before it the high deeds of its

children and stimulating to noble prowess. His landscapes warmed the

dingy city homes, bringing even there the blue sky, the clouds, the

streams, the forests, the mountains, moss, and flowers.

Men became happier and better, for the Brothers, in showing the

_universal Beauty_, awakened the _universal Love_.

For the true essence of man, made in the image of God, is also Love!

* * * * *

The artists turned not from the rose-cheek of the maiden, nor refused

the touch of the ruby lip; but they loved her too well to sully by one

wronging thought the tender confidence of perfect innocence, or cause

her guileless heart a single pang. For womanhood was holy in their

sight!

Among earth's purest maidens shone a fair Lily, whose virgin leaves had

all grown toward the sky; whose cup of snow had never been filled save

by the dews of heaven; whose tall circlet of golden stamens seemed more

like altar lamps arranged to light a sanctuary, than meant to warm and

brighten the heart of human love. But the devotion of a noble heart is a

holy thing; Genius is full of magic power, and the maiden did not always

remain insensible to the love of Angelo, for he was spiritually

beautiful, and when he moved in the world of his own creation, his face

shone as it were the face of an angel. In ethereal 'fantasies' and

divine 'adagios,' he won the Lily to rest its snowy cup upon his manly

heart. He soothed the earth cares with the heaven tones and beautified

the bitter realities of life by transfiguring them into passionate

longings for the Perfect. Bathed in Music's heavenly dew, and warmed by

the fire of a young heart, the snow petals of the Lily multiplied, the

bud slowly oped, and allowed the perfumed heart to exhale its blessed

odor; and as Love threw his glowing light upon the leaves, they blushed

beneath his glance of fire--and thus the pale flower grew into a

fragrant Rose, around which one faithful Bulbul ever sang. Sheltered in

the close folds of the perfumed leaves, what chill could reach the heart

of Angelo? His Rose cradled his genius in her heart, while he poured for

her the golden flow of the tones, coloring them with the hues of Love,

and filling them with the joys of Purity and Peace. Alike in their

susceptibility to tenderness and beauty are the woman and the artist;

and she who would find full sympathy and comprehension must seek it in

his heart!

Time passed on with Anselm, the Saint; Angelo, the Musician; Zophiel,

the Poet; Jemschid, the Painter. But the _artists_ grew not old, for

Beauty keeps green the heart of her worshippers; and Art, immortal

though she be, is indigenous, and, happy in her natal soil, exhausts not

the heart of her children. Anselm, however, seemed already old, with his

pure heart sick--sick for the Evil possessing the earth. Alas! holiness

is an exotic here, soon exhausting the soil of clay in which it pines,

and ever sighing to win its transplantation to its native clime.

'The Lethe of Nature

Can't trance him again,

Whose soul sees the Perfect

His eyes seek in vain.'

* * * * *

It was midnight, and Anselm, worn with fasts and pale with vigils, knelt

at his devotions in his lonely cell. Lo! a majestic form of fearful but

perfect beauty stood beside him. The Angel was clad in linen, white as

snow, and his voice startled the soul like the sound of the last

trumpet.

'Gird up thy loins like a man, for the darksome doors of Death stand

open before thee, and this night thy Lord requires thy spirit!' said the

mighty messenger.

Anselm trembled. He feared to stand before the All-seeing Eye, whose

dread majesty subdued his soul.

'Behold! He putteth no trust in His saints, and the heavens are not

pure in His sight,' he murmured. But he hesitated not to obey, and

giving his hand to the Angel, said:

'Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him!'

His earnest lips still thrilling with a prayer for mercy, together they

departed 'for that bourne from which no traveller returns.' Between the

imperfections of the created and the perfections of the Creator, what

can fill the infinite abyss? Infinite Love alone!

* * * * *

The artist-brothers had never separated. Music, Poetry, and Painting

spring from the triune existence of man, represent his life in its

triune being, and thus move harmoniously together.

They had made their home the happiest spot on earth.

It was evening, and the Poet seemed lost in revery as he gazed on the

dying light. His hand rested tenderly on the shoulder of a dark but

brilliant woman, who loved him with the strength of a fervid soul.

'Sibyl,' said he softly to his young wife, 'were I now to leave thee,

how many of my lines would remain written on thy heart?'

'All! they are all graven there,' replied the enthusiast, 'for the

glowing words of a pure poet are the true echoes of a woman's soul!'

The Painter sat near them, putting the last touches upon a picture of a

Virgin and Child, which he was striving so to finish that his brethren

might be able to grasp more fully that sweet scene of human love and

God's strange mercy.

Tender were the shadows that fell from the veiling lashes on the rounded

cheek of his fair model; lustrous, yet soft and meek, the light from the

maiden's eye as she gazed upon the beautiful infant resting on her

bosom. The name of the child was Jemschid, and there was in that name a

charm sufficient to awaken her innocent love.

She was the betrothed of the Painter.

'Imogen!' said he to the fair model, 'I know not why the thought rushes

so sadly over me, but I feel I shall never finish this picture. The

traits escape me--I cannot find them.'

'Never finish the beautiful Madonna, to which you have given so much

time, and on which you have expended so much care!' Then with a sudden

change of tone, in which astonishment darkened into fear, she exclaimed:

'Are you ill, Jemschid? You have already worked too long upon it. You

will destroy your health; you need rest.'

'Nay, sweet Imogen, not so; I am well, quite well, and too happy for

words. But I cannot finish the picture. I have lost the expression for

the face of the Madonna. Six months ago, when I began it, your face was

so meek and tranquil it served me well, but now, even with its present

air of meek entreaty, it is too passionate for the mother of God. It is

far dearer thus to me, Imogen--but I can never finish the painting

now--and only an angel can, for your young face is fairer and purer than

aught else on earth.'

Again fell the heavy lashes, half veiling the innocent love in the timid

eyes, as the Painter parted the massive braids from the spotless brow,

and softly kissed the snowy forehead of his betrothed.

The harp of Angelo quivered, as the sun set behind the crimson clouds,

under his nervous touch. Some sadness seemed to weigh upon his buoyant

spirit too, in this eventful eve. His music always pictured the depths

of his own soul, and he forced the heaven tones to wail the human

Miserere. But the Beauty into which the sorrow was transfigured gave

promise that it would end in the triumphant chorus of the 'Hosanna in

Excelsis.' For music gives the absolute peace in the absolute conflict;

the absolute conflict to terminate in the absolute peace.

Fair as the Angel of Hope, the Rose listened with her heart. Her

childlike, deep blue eyes were raised to heaven, while her long golden

curls, lighting rather than shading her pale brow, like the halos of dim

glory which the light vapors wreathe round the moon, mingled with the

darker flow of wavy hair falling upon the shoulder of the harpist, on

which she leaned as if to catch the flying sounds as they soared from

the heart of the loved one.

'Thy song is very sad,' said the Rose, as her eyes rested tenderly upon

the inspired face. 'Is there no Gloria to-night, Angelo?'

'I cannot sing it now, sweet Rosalie! The Hosanna is for heaven; not for

a world in which Love is, and Death may enter. If I am to lose thee, my

soul must chant the Miserere. Ah! that thought unmans me. I cannot part

from thee, sweet wife. Cling closer, closer to me, Rosalie. There! Death

must be strong to untwine that clasp! But he alone is strong--and

Love'--

'Love is stronger far!' cried the startled Rose, as she buried her face

in the bosom of her husband, to hide the unwonted tears which dimmed her

trustful eyes.

'Parting! there is no parting for those whom God has joined. His ties

are for eternity. The Merciful parts not those whom He has made for each

other. Even if we must chant the Miserere here, together will we chant

the Gloria before the throne of our Creator. Ah, Angelo, do you not feel

that but _one_ life throbs in our _two_ hearts? Parting and Death are

only seeming!'

Thus sped time on until midnight was upon the earth. The little group

were still together; mystic thoughts and previsions were upon them.

Zophiel read at intervals weird passages from the Book of Life; Jemschid

touched, now and then, the face of the Madonna, and some unwonted spirit

of sorrow brooded over the harp of Angelo.

'Rosalie! once more the Miserere ere we sleep,' said he. Scarcely had he

commenced the solemn chant, when, suddenly resting his hand on the

chords, he cried: 'Hark! brothers. It is the voice of Anselm--he calls

he calls us--but I hear not what he says. Listen!'

Lo! a Shining One from the court of the Great King suddenly stands among

them. His gossamer robes seemed woven of the deep blue of the fields of

space through which he had just passed, and the stars were glittering

through the graceful folds bound with rare devices, wrought from the

jasper, onyx, and chrysoprase of the heavenly city.

'Brothers!' said the sweet voice of the beautiful vision, 'the term of

exile is past; the Father has sent me to recall His children.'

But the heart of the artists sank, for the human love was strong in

their bosoms.

Jemschid gazed upon the betrothed bride; the unfinished picture; and

tears rushed into his sad eyes.

The Angel was touched with pity for the double grief of artist and

lover, and said:

'Gaze not so sorrowfully upon the unwedded maiden; the unfinished

picture! She shall yet be thine-and the picture shall be dear to thy

fellow men. Lo! I am Rubi, the angel of Beauty!'

Then, taking the brush in his glittering hands, with rapid touch he gave

the lovely face an expression of tender innocence, of virgin purity, of

maternal love and adoration, which will never cease to thrill the heart

of the faithful.

'It is the Mother of our Lord!' said the astonished brothers, as they

gazed upon the finished work.

'Zophiel!' continued the pitying angel, 'the lips of Sibyl shall repeat

thy songs, for they are all graven upon her heart! But you are now to

chant in heaven, and the canticle is to be for His praise who made all;

and when you exalt Him, put forth all your strength, and be not weary;

for you can never go far enough!

'Angelo! the Hosanna is for heaven. The Rose lingers not here to chant

alone the Miserere.'

Alas! the wild human dread and sorrow overpowered all else in the

breasts of the brothers as they gazed upon the women of their love. A

strange smile played over the heavenly face of the Angel as he murmured:

_'Are they not safe in the bosom of the everlasting Love?'_

* * * * *

Slowly through the Valley of the Shadow--and then more rapid than the

flight of thought, moved the brothers, on--on--through myriads upon

myriads of blazing suns, of starry universes; on--on--until they reached

the limits of space, the boundary of material worlds. The angels left

them as they entered the primeval night of chaos, the shoreless ocean

between the sensuous and spiritual life. For alone with God through

chaos do we arrive at the sensuous body; alone with God in chaos do we

leave this body of corruption, from which is evolved the Body of the

Spirit, 'glorious and unchangeable.' And again is clasped the thread of

_Identity,_ on which are strung the pearls of memory, and the Past and

Future of Time become the Eternal Present!

* * * * *

Clothed in immortal vesture, the brothers now stand before that Great

White Throne, which has no shadow, but is built of Light inaccessible,

and full of Glory.

Summoned by the Holy Lawgiver, the meek Anselm knelt before Him, blinded

with splendor, dazzled with fathomless majesty.

'Behold thy creature before thee for judgment, O Thou in whose sight the

angels are not pure! We are born to evil, and who may endure thy

justice? Look not into my weak and sinful heart, O God, but upon the

face of Thy Anointed, in whom is all my trust! Have mercy upon me!'

Tears of mingled gratitude and penitence welled up, as in the days of

exile, from his self-accusing breast.

Wonderful condescension the Father Himself wiped them from the downcast

eyes!

And the Saviour of men clothed him in a garment of fine linen, white and

pure, and 'to him was given the hidden manna, and a white stone, and in

the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth but he that receiveth

it.'

Then the words over whose mystic meaning he had so often pondered, came,

like the sound of many waters, upon his ear:

'And he that shall overcome, and keep my works unto the end, to him I

will give power over the nations; and he shall rule them with a rod of

iron, and as the vessel of a potter they shall be broken.

'And I will give him the morning star.'

Thus the humble and self-abnegating Anselm, who had kept the

commandments and loved his Maker, passed in glory to the Saints of

Power. The morn of the Eternal Present dawned upon him, and the sublime

'_vision in God_' was open before him.

* * * * *

Then were the artists summoned before the Throne. Awed yet enchanted,

they bowed before their Maker, with raised hands clasped in gratitude

for the happiness they had known on earth. Then spoke Angelo, the

musician:

'Behold thy grateful children at thy feet, O Father of earth and heaven!

We truly repent of all we may have done amiss in Thy lower world. Thy

heritage was very fair, and the exceeding Beauty thereof covered the

Evil, and in all things were planted the germs of Good. 'Our prayer was

in our work,' and all things spake to us of Thee, for the hand of a

Father made all. Forgive us if we have loved life too well; we have

always felt that the rhythmed pulse of our own hearts throbbed but in

obedience to Thy tuneful laws! Loving our fellow men, we have labored to

awake them to a sense of Thy tenderness, O Creator of Love and of

Beauty, so unsparingly casting the ever-new glories around them! Father,

we have loved Thee in thy glorious creation.

"For Thou lovest all things that are, and hatest none of the things that

thou hast made, for thou didst not appoint or make anything hating it.

For He made the nations of the earth for health: and there is no poison

of destruction in them, nor kingdom of hell upon earth.

"For justice is perpetual and immortal.'

"We have looked upon the rainbow, and blessed Him that made it: for it

was very beautiful in its brightness.'

"For by the greatness of the Beauty, and of the creature, the Creator of

them may be seen so as to be known thereby.'

"It is good to give praise to the Lord: to show forth thy loving

kindness in the morning, and thy truth in the night;

"Upon an instrument of ten strings, upon the psaltery, upon the harp

with a solemn sound.

"For thou, Lord, hast made me glad through thy works, and in the works

of thy hand I shall rejoice.'

'Have mercy upon us for the sake of the Redeemer, whose Perfection

crowns the universe, who has not disdained to give Himself to us, and

for us: the chief among ten thousand, and altogether lovely. Mercy for

ourselves--and for those whom we have left on earth, we beseech Thee!'

Gently smiled the Virgin Mother, whose humble heart had cradled the

Everlasting Love! 'All generations shall call her blessed,' for on that

tender woman bosom rests that wondrous God-built arch spanning the awful

Chaim between the sinful human and the Perfect Infinite! 'For _He_ was

born of a Virgin.'

The heart of Anselm throbbed through his garments white and pure; he

loved his brothers, and feared that human art would be deemed vain and

worthless in heaven. _For the saints forget that God himself is the

Great Artist!_

Then was there silence in heaven, and the brothers knelt before the

Throne.

The Father spoke:

'Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord. Enter into his gates

with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise, be thankful unto

him, and bless his name: the Lion of the tribe of Judah hath conquered.

He will give to him that overcometh to eat of the Tree of Life, which is

in the Paradise of God.'

The silence that ensued was the bliss of heaven!

As Rubi, the Angel of Beauty, advanced to greet the spirits whom he had

left on the confines of chaos, the triumphant song burst from the young

choir of angels: 'For they shall not hunger nor thirst any more; neither

shall the sun fall on them or any heat. For the Lamb, which is in the

midst of the throne, shall rule them, and shall lead them to the

fountains of the waters of life, and God shall wipe away all tears from

their fives.'

Joy! joy! for the soul of the musician! The heart of the Rose had broken

while chanting the last Miserere, and she was again at his side to catch

his first Hosanna!

'Angelo--Angelo--parting and death are only seeming!'

To the soul of the poet was given the highest theme, the splendor and

love of the Eternal City, and power to join the scribes of heaven. And

the painter looked upon the face of the Virgin, the strange lights, the

forms of Cherubim and Seraphim, and the twelve gates and the golden

streets of that city; 'which needeth not sun or moon to shine in it, for

the glory of God hath enlightened it; and the Lamb is the light

thereof.'

Who can imagine that region of supernal splendor, 'whose glories eye

hath not seen, ear hath not heard, neither hath it entered into the

heart of man to conceive'?

The strings of Angelo's heaven harp quivered as though stirred by the

breath of God.

Then did he first truly discern the _soul_ of that divine language whose

_form_ he had made known on earth.

Then arose 'as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice

of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying:

Alleluia! for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.'

Loud rang the heaven harps: 'Holy--Holy--Holy! To Him that sitteth on

the Throne, and to the Lamb, Benediction, and Honor, and Glory, and

Power, forever and ever!'

UNUTTERED.

Said a poet, sighing lowly,

As his life ebbed slowly, slowly,

And upon his pallid features shone the sun's last rosy light,

Shedding there a radiance tender,

Softened from the dazzling splendor

Of the burning clouds of sunset, gleaming in the west so bright,

Glancing redly, ere forever lost within the gloom of night:

'Gold and crimson clouds of even,

Kindling the blue vault of heaven,

Ye are types of airy fancies that within my spirit glow!

Thou, O Night, so darkly glooming,

And those brilliant tints entombing

In thy black and heavy shadows, thou art like this life of woe,

Prisoning all the glorious visions that still beat their wings to go!

'Oh, what brilliancy and glory

Had illumed my life's dull story,

Could those thoughts have found expression as within my soul they shone!

But though there like jewels gleaming,

And with golden splendor streaming,

Cold and dim their lustre faded, tarnished, like the sparkling stone

That, from out the blue waves taken, looks a pebble dull alone.

'For within my heart forever

Was a never-dying river,

Was a spring of deathless music welling from my deepest soul!

And all Nature's deep intonings,

Merry songs, and plaintive meanings,

Floated softly through my spirit, swelling where those bright waves stole,

Till the prisoning walls seemed powerless 'gainst that billowy rush and roll.

'Oh, the surging thoughts and fancies;

Oh, the wondrous, wild romances

That from morn till dewy twilight murmured through my haunted brain!

Thoughts as sweet as summer roses,

And with music's dreamiest closes,

Dying faintly into silence, from the full and ringing strain

That through all my spirit sounded with a rapture half of pain.

'How I longed those words to utter

That within my heart would flutter,

Beating wild against their prison, as its walls they'd burst in twain:

But it broke not, throbbing only,

Aching in a silence lonely,

Till my very life was flooded with a wild, delicious pain;

Kindled with a blaze illuming all the chambers of my brain!

'And to me death had been glorious,

If those burning words, victorious,

Had at last surged o'er their prison, bearing my departing soul!

Gladly were my heart's blood given,

If those bonds I might have riven;

If, with every crimson lifedrop that from out my full heart stole,

I might hear that swelling chorus upward in its glory roll.

'Sad and low my heart is beating!

Each pulsation still repeating

'All in vain those eager longings, all in vain that burning prayer.

See the breezes, 'mid the bowers,

Sigh above the fragrant flowers,

And from out those drooping roses, their heart-folded sweetness bear--

But no heaven-sent wind shall whisper thy soul-breathings to the air.'

'But upon my darkened vision

Comes a gleam of light Elysian;

And a seraph voice breathes softly--'Answered yet shall be that prayer!

For the spirit crushed and broken

By those burning words unspoken,

Soon shall hear them swelling, floating far upon the heavenly air,

And its deepest inmost visions shall have perfect utterance there!''

WILLIAM LILLY, ASTROLOGER.

A cunning man, hight Sidrophel,

That deals in destiny's dark counsels,

And sage opinions of the moon sells,

To whom all people, far and near,

On deep importances repair.

* * * * *

Do not our great reformers use

This Sidrophel to forebode news?

To write of victories next year,

And castles taken yet i' the air?

Of battles fought at sea, and ships

Sunk two years hence--the great eclipse?

A total overthrow given the king

In Cornwall, horse and foot, next spring?'

Thus much, and more, wrote Butler in his 'Hudibras' of William Lilly,

who was famous in London during that eventful period of English history

from the time of Charles I, onward through the Commonwealth and the

Protectorate, to the Restoration: a time of civil commotions and wars,

when political parties and religious sects, striving for mastery, or

struggling for existence, made the lives and estates of men insecure,

and their outlook in many respects a troubled one. Lifelong connections

of families and neighbors were then rudely severed, and doubt, distrust,

and discontent filled all minds, or most. Of this widespread commotion

London was the active centre; and there a judgment of God, called the

plague, had, in the year 1625, desolated whole streets. The timid,

time-serving, faithless, a wavering host, peered anxiously into the

future, eager to know what might be hidden there, so that they could

shape their course accordingly for safety or for profit. Finding their

own short vision inadequate, they turned for aid to the professional

prophets of that troublous time--magicians who could call forth spirits

and make them speak, or astrologers who could read the stars, and show

how the great Disposer of events could be forestalled. These discoverers

of the hidden, disclosers of the future, though branded now as

impostors, were not therefore worse than their dupes; for in all ages

the two classes, deceivers and deceived, are essentially alike;

positives and negatives of the same thing. 'Men are not deceived; they

deceive themselves.' Witness a great American nation, in these latter

days, electing its ablest man to its highest place, and choosing between

a Fremont and a Buchanan! But let us turn quickly to the seventeenth

century again, and leave the nineteenth to its day of judgment.

Among the many astrologers dwelling in London at the time of which we

treat, William Lilly was the most famous; and his life being of great

interest to himself, he wrote an account of it for the instruction of

mankind--or for some other purpose; and we will now get from it what we

conveniently can.[1]

'I was born,' says this renowned astrologer, 'in the county of

Leicester, in an obscure town, in the northwest part thereof, called

Diseworth, seven miles south of the town of Derby, one mile from Castle

Donnington.' 'This town of Diseworth is divided into three parishes; one

part belongs under Lockington, in which stands my father's house (over

against the steeple), in which I was born' on the first day of May,

1602. After this rather too minute account of his birthplace, Lilly

tells us of his ancestors, substantial yeomen for many generations, who

'had much free land and many houses in the town;' but all the family

estates were 'sold by my grandfather and father, so that now our family

depends wholly on a college lease.' 'Of my infancy I can speak but

little; only I do remember that in the fourth year of my age I had the

measles.' 'My mother intended I should be a scholar from my infancy,

seeing my father's backslidings in the world, and no hopes by husbandry

to recruit a decayed estate.' Therefore, after some schooling at or near

home, the boy, when eleven years old, was sent to Ashby-de-la-Zouch,

Leicester, to the school of Mr. John Brinsley, who 'was very severe in

his life and conversation, and did breed up many scholars for the

universities; in religion he was a strict Puritan.' 'In the fourteenth

year of my age, about Michaelmas, I got a surfeit, and thereupon a

fever, by eating beechnuts.' 'In the sixteenth year of my age I was

exceedingly troubled in my dreams concerning my salvation and damnation,

and also concerning the safety and destruction of my father and mother:

in the nights I frequently wept and prayed, and mourned, for fear my

sins might offend God.' 'In the seventeenth year of my age my mother

died.' The next year, 'by reason of my father's poverty, I was enforced

to leave school, and so came home to my father's house, where I lived in

much penury one year, and taught school one quarter of a year, until

God's providence provided better for me. For the last two years of my

being at school I was of the highest form of the school, and chiefest of

that form. I could then speak Latin as well as English; could make

extempore verses upon any theme.' 'If any scholars from remote schools

came to dispute, I was ringleader to dispute with them.' 'All and every

of those scholars, who were of my form and standing, went to Cambridge,

and proved excellent divines; only I, poor William Lilly, was not so

happy, fortune then frowning on my father's condition, he not in any

capacity to maintain me at the university.'

So this poor scholar, first of his class, bright visions of the

university, and of what might lie beyond, all fading into darkness, went

down to his father's house in the country, where his acquirements were

useless. He says: 'I could not work, drive plough, or endure any country

labor; my father oft would say, 'I was good for nothing,' and 'he was

willing to be rid of me.' A sorrowful time for the poor young fellow,

without any outlook toward a better. But at last, one Samuel Smatty, an

attorney, living in the neighborhood, took pity on the lad, and gave him

a letter to Gilbert Wright, of London, who wanted a youth who could read

and write, to attend him. Thereupon Lilly, in a suit of fustian, with

this letter in his pocket, and ten shillings, given him by his friends,

took leave of his father, who was then in Leicester jail for debt, and

set off for London with 'Bradshaw, the carrier.' He 'footed it all

along,' and was six days on the way; spending for food two shillings and

sixpence, and nothing for lodgings; but he was in good heart, I think,

for almost the only joyous expression in his autobiography is this one,

relating to this time: 'Hark, how the wagons crack with their rich

lading!'

Gilbert Wright, who had been 'servant to the Lady Pawlet in

Hertfordshire,' had married a widow with property, and lived afterward

'on his annual rents;' or on his wife's, and 'was of no calling or

profession.' This man had real need of a servant who could read and

write, for he himself could do neither; but he was, however, 'a man of

excellent natural parts, and would speak publicly upon any occasion very

rationally and to the purpose.' Lilly was kindly received by Master

Wright, who found, it seems, employment enough for him. 'My work was to

go before my master to church; to attend my master when he went abroad;

to make clean his shoes; sweep the street; help to drive bucks when he

washed; fetch water in a tub from the Thames--I have helped to carry

eighteen tubs of water in one morning;--weed the garden. All manner of

drudgery I willingly performed.'

Mrs. Wright, who brought money to her husband, brought also a jealous

disposition, and made his life uncomfortable. 'She was about seventy

years of age, he sixty-six,' 'yet was never any woman more jealous of a

husband than she!' She vexed more than one man, too, and her first

husband had temptations to cut his own throat and escape from trouble

so; but he, as we shall learn by and by, got some relief otherwise, and

lived till death came by better means.

Tally had difficulty in keeping on good terms 'with two such opposite

natures' as those of his master and mistress, that he managed it

somehow, and says: 'However, as to the things of this world, I had

enough, and endured their discontents with much sereneness. My mistress

was very curious to know of such as were then called cunning, or wise

men, whether she should bury her husband. She frequently visited such

persons, and this begot in me a little desire to learn something that

way; but wanting money to buy books, I laid aside these notions, and

endeavored to please both master and mistress.'

This mistress had a cancer in her left breast, and Lilly had much

noisome work to do for her; which he did faithfully and kindly. 'She was

so fond of me in the time of her sickness, she would never permit me out

of her chamber.' 'When my mistress died (1624) she had under her armhole

a small scarlet bag full of many things, which one that was there

delivered unto me. There were in this bag several sigils, some of

Jupiter in Trine; others of the nature of Venus; some of iron, and one

of gold, of pure virgin gold, of the bigness of a thirty-three shilling

piece of King James coin. In the circumference on one side was engraven,

_Vicit Leo de Tribu Judæ Tetragrammation_~+~: within the middle there

was engraven a holy lamb. In the other circumference there was

_Amraphel_, and three ~+ + +~. In the middle, _Sanctus Petrus_, _Alpha_

and _Omega_.'

This sigil the woman got many years before of Dr. Samuel Foreman, a

magician or astrologer; the same who 'wrote in a book left behind him,'

'This I made the devil write with his own hand, in Lambeth Fields, 1596,

in June or July, as I now remember.' This sigil the woman got from the

doctor, who was evidently a foreman among liars, for her first husband,

who had been 'followed by a spirit which vocally and articulately

provoked him to cut his own throat.' Her husband, wearing this sigil

'till he died, was never more troubled by spirits' of this kind of call;

but on the woman herself it seems to have failed of effect, for though

she too wore it till she died, she was continually tormented by an

authentic spirit of jealousy--a torment to herself and to her husband.

After this mistress had gone, Lilly lived very comfortably, his 'master

having a great affection' for him; and also a great confidence in him,

it seems; for when the plague (1625) began to rage in London, the master

went for safety into Leicestershire, leaving Lilly and a fellow servant

to keep the house, in which was much money and plate, belonging to his

master and others. Lilly was faithful to his charge in this fearful

time, and kept himself cheerful by amusements. 'I bought a bass viol,

and got a master to instruct me; the intervals of time I spent in

bowling in Lincoln's Inn Fields with Watt, the cobbler, Dick, the

blacksmith, and such-like companions.' Nor did he neglect more serious

business, but attended divine service at the church of St. Clement

Danes, where two ministers died in this time; but the third, Mr.

Whitacre, 'escaped not only then, but all contagion following,' though

he 'buried all manner of people, whether they died of the plague or

not,' and 'was given to drink, so that he seldom could preach more than

one quarter of an hour at a time.' This year of plague was indeed a

fearful one in London, and Lilly says elsewhere, 'I do well remember

this accident, that going in July, 1625, about half an hour after six in

the morning, to St. Antholine's church, I met only three persons on the

way, from my house over against Strand bridge, till I came there; so few

people were there alive and the streets so unfrequented.' 'About fifty

thousand people died that year;' but Lilly escaped death, though his

'conversation was daily with the infected.'[2]

Master Wright did not continue long a widower, but took to himself

another wife, and a younger, who was of 'brown ruddy complexion,' and of

better disposition than her predecessor in the household. Master Wright

was probably a happy man for a time; but only for a short time; for in

May, 1627, he died, and the estate, by agreement of the parties in it,

was assigned to Lilly for payment of its debts. The trust was not

misplaced; the debts were all paid, and the remainder of the estate,

except an annuity of twenty pounds, which his master had settled on

Lilly, he returned to the executors.

Mistress Wright, the widow, 'who had twice married old men,' had now

many suitors; 'old men, whom she declined; some gentlemen of decayed

fortunes, whom she liked not, for she was covetous and sparing;'

'however, all her talk was of husbands,' and, in short, William Lilly

became the happy man; made happy within four months of the death of the

old master. 'During all the time of her life, which was till October,

1633, we lived very lovingly; I frequenting no company at all; my

exercises were angling, in which I ever delighted; my companions, two

aged men.' 'I frequented lectures, and leaned in judgment to Puritanism;

and in October, 1627, I was made free of the Salters' company of

London.'

Up to this time, therefore, the history of William Lilly, so far as he

has made it known, is briefly this: Born poor, the grandfather and

father having wasted the family estates, he was sent by his mother, who

intended him from his infancy for a scholar, to the school of

Ashby-de-la-Zouch; where, at one time, he was in trouble about his soul

and the souls of his parents; and he 'frequently wept, prayed, and

mourned, for fear his sins might offend God.' But the mother died, the

father got into prison for debt, and poor Lilly, who had made himself

the best scholar in the school, could not go up to the university as he

had hoped to do, but after a wretched year at his father's house, where

he was accounted useless and an encumbrance, he had to become the

servant of one who could neither read nor write, doing all kinds of

drudgery. Serving faithfully, the much-enduring young man won the love

and confidence of the old master and mistress, and at last married the

young widow, who was a wholesome-looking woman, of brown ruddy

complexion, and had property, which served, among other things, to make

Lilly 'free of the Salters' company.' Not a bad history, certainly, if

not one of the best: he was a thriving young man, not a complaining one;

but one who accepted the conditions under which he was placed, and made

the best of them; which is what all young men ought to do.

And now Lilly--being a man of some property and standing, without any

profession or regular business, but with an inclination to the occult

arts, begot in him probably by the folly of old Mistress Wright--tells

us how he 'came to study astrology.' 'It happened on one Sunday, 1632,

as myself and a justice of peace's clerk were, before service,

discoursing of many things, he chanced to say that such a person was a

great scholar; nay, so learned that he could make an almanac, which to

me was strange: one speech begot another, till at last he said he could

bring me acquainted with one Evans, who lived in Gunpowder alley, who

formerly lived in Staffordshire, that was an excellent wise man, and

studied the black art. The same week (after) we went to see Mr. Evans.

When we came to his house, he, having been drunk the night before, was

upon his bed--if it be lawful to call that a bed whereon he lay.' 'He

was the most saturnine man my eyes ever beheld either before I practised

(astrology) or since: of middle stature, broad forehead, beetle browed,

thick shoulders, flat nosed, full lips, down looked, black, curling,

stiff hair, splay footed;' 'much addicted to debauchery, and then very

abusive and quarrelsome; seldom without a black eye, or one mischief or

another.' A very good description this, save that the shoulders of it

are between the brow and nose: not a handsome man, certainly; a kind of

white negro, we should say, and not the better for being white:

nevertheless men of high rank came to see him, and readers who have made

acquaintance with Sir Kenelm Digby will not be astonished to learn that

he was one of them. He came with Lord Bothwell, and 'desired Evans to

show them a spirit.' But 'after some time of invocation, Evans was taken

out of the room, and carried into the fields near Battersea causeway,

close to the Thames:' taken by the spirits, because the magician 'had

not at the time of invocation made any suffumigation;' for spirits must

always be treated gingerly. 'Sir Kenelm Digby and Lord Bothwell went

home without any harm;' which was better than they deserved.

Lilly, after many lessons given him by this Evans, was doubtful about

the black art, as he might well be; but, he says, 'being now very

meanly introduced, I applied myself to study those books I had obtained,

many times twelve or fifteen or eighteen hours a day and night: I was

curious to discover whether there was any verity in the art or not.

Astrology at this time, viz. 1633, was very rare in London; few

professing it that understood anything thereof.' Lilly gives us next

some account of the astrologers of his time; but the reader need form no

further acquaintance of this kind; acquaintance with Lilly, who was the

best of them, will be enough for him.

In October of this year, 1633, Lilly's wife died, and left him 'very

near to the value of one thousand pounds sterling'--all she had to

leave. He continued a widower 'a whole year,' which he, as that phrase

implies, held to be a long time in such bereavement--and followed his

studies in astrology very diligently. So diligently that he soon had

knowledge to impart to others, and he 'taught Sir George Knight

astrology, that part which concerns sickness, wherein he so profited

that in two or three months he would give a very good discovery of any

disease only by his figures.'

With a new wife, which he got the next year (1634), Lilly had £500

portion; but 'she was of the nature of Mars,' which is surely not a good

nature in a wife. In that same year he, with some 'other gentlemen,'

engaged in an adventure for hidden treasure: they 'played the hazel rod

round about the cloyster,' and digged, in the place indicated, six feet

deep, till they came to a coffin; but they did not open it, for which

they were afterward regretful, thinking that _it_ probably contained the

treasure. Suddenly, while they were at this work, a great wind arose,

'so high, so blustering, and loud,' that all were frightened, 'and knew

not what to think or do;' all save Lilly, who gave 'directions and

commands to dismiss the dæmons,' and then all became quiet again. These

doings Lilly did not approve, and says he 'could never again be induced

to join in such kind of work.' He engaged, however, in another

transaction of still worse character, which seems to have been even

more unpleasant to him; for he says: 'After that I became melancholy,

very much afflicted with the hypochondriac melancholy, growing lean and

spare, and every day worse; so that in the year 1635, my infirmity

continuing and my acquaintance increasing, I resolved to live in the

country, and in March and April, 1636, I removed my goods unto Hersham

(Horsham in Sussex, thirty-six miles from London), where I continued

until 1641, no notice being taken who or what I was:' and in this time

he burned some of his books, which treated of things he did not approve,

and which he disliked to practise; for this man really had a conscience

as good as the average, or even better: he was driven into solitude by

the reproaches of it--or, perhaps, by the scoldings of a wife who 'was

of the nature of Mars.'

Thus far we have followed Lilly's account of himself closely, using

often his own words, because they give a more correct idea of the man

than could be got from the words of another; but henceforth to the end,

we will skip much and be brief. This astrologer did not always rely on

his special art to discover things hidden, but used often quite ordinary

means; sometimes such as are common to officers of detective police. His

confessions of doings in that kind are candid enough, and we must say of

his 'History of his Life and Times' that it is, on the whole, a simple,

truthful statement of facts; not an apology for a life at all; for he

seldom attempts to excuse or justify his actions, but leaves a plain

record with the reader for good or evil.

A man, it is sometimes said, is to be judged by the company he keeps,

and we will therefore say a few words of this astrologer's friends. Of

men like William Pennington, of Muncaster, in Cumberland, 'of good

family and estate,' introduced to Lilly by David Ramsay, the king's

clockmaker, in 1634, who are otherwise unknown to us, we will say

nothing. But the reader surely knows something of Hugh Peters, the

Puritan preacher--who could do other things as well as preach: with him

Lilly had 'much conference and some private discourses,' and once in the

Christmas holidays, a time of leisure, Peters and the Lord Gray of Groby

invited him to Somerset House, and requested him to bring two of his

almanacs. At another time Peters took Lilly along with him into

Westminster Hall 'to hear the king tried.' But the most influential

friend, perhaps, was Sir Bulstrode Whitlocke, a man well known to

readers of English history as very prominent in the time of the

Commonwealth and Protectorate. He was high steward of Oxford, member of

the council of state, one of the keepers of the great seal, a man very

learned in the law, who made long discourses to Oliver Cromwell on the

matter of the kingship, and on other matters. He went to Sweden as

Cromwell's ambassador, and was one of the great men of that time, or one

of the considerable men. Sir Bulstrode, according to Ashmole, was

Lilly's patron; and indeed the great man did befriend him long, and help

him out of difficulties. The acquaintance began in this wise: Sir

Bulstrode being sick, Mrs. Lisle, 'wife to John Lisle,' afterward one of

the keepers of the great seal, came to Lilly, bringing a specimen of the

sick man. Whereupon the astrologer, having inspected the specimen, 'set

a figure,' and said, 'the sick for that time would recover, but by means

of a surfeit would dangerously relapse within one month; which he did,

by eating of trouts at Mr. Sands' house in Surrey.' Therefore, as there

could no longer be any doubt of Lilly's skill, he, at the time of Sir

Bulstrode's second sickness, was called to him daily; and though the

family physician said 'there was no hope of recovery,' the astrologer

said there was 'no danger of death,' and 'that he would be sufficiently

well in five or six weeks; and so he was.' This Mrs. Lisle, who brought

the specimen, being apparently one of Lilly's she friends, we will add

that she made herself remarkable by saying at the martyrdom of King

Charles I, in 1648, that 'her blood leaped within her to see the tyrant

fall.' For this, and for other things, the woman was finally beheaded;

it being impossible otherwise to stop her tongue; and I have no tear for

her.

Lilly's most intimate friend, however, was Elias Ashmole, Esq. Born in

1617, the name for him agreed on among his friends was Thomas; but at

the baptismal font the godfather, 'by a more than ordinary impulse of

spirit,' said Elias; and under that prophetic name the boy grew up to

manhood, and became for a time rather famous in high places. He was a

learned antiquary, and made a description of the consular and imperial

coins at Oxford, and presented it, in three folio volumes, to the

library there. He made also a catalogue and description of the king's

medals; a book on the Order of the Garter; a book entitled, _Fasciculus

Chemicus_, and another, _Theatrum Chemicum_. He published, moreover, a

book called 'The Way to Bliss;' but if he himself ever arrived at that

thing, he found the way uncomfortable, if we may judge from his diary,

half filled with record of his ailments, surfeits, and diseases, and of

the sweatings, purgings, and leechings consequent thereupon, or intended

as preventives thereof. To one kind of bliss, however, he did certainly

attain--that of high society; dining often with lords, earls, and dukes,

bishops and archbishops, foreign envoys, ambassadors, and princes; and

they, many of them, came in turn, and dined with him, who had made a

book on the Order of the Garter, and who understood the art of dining.

Continental kings sent to this man chains of gold, and his gracious

majesty, Charles II, was very gracious to him, and gave him fat offices,

mostly sinecures: and over and above all he gave a pension. This world

is a very remarkable one--especially remarkable in the upper crust of

it.

Lilly's acquaintance with Ashmole began in 1646, and continued till

death did them part in 1681. Through all these thirty-five years there

was a close intimacy, Ashmole being a frequent visitor at Lilly's house

in the country, staying there often months at a time, and Lilly in

return coming often to London, and staying weeks with his honored

friend--a kind of Damon and Pythias affair without the heroics. Ashmole,

we said, was famous in his time; but indeed he has a kind of fame now,

and cannot soon be altogether forgotten, for he founded the Ashmolean

Museum at Oxford, and in the library there the curious can probably find

all his books, and read them, if they will; but I, who have read one of

them, shall not seek for more.[3]

But indeed Lilly attracted the attention of Oliver Cromwell himself, and

once had an interview with him--a remarkably silent one. The occasion of

it was as follows: The astrologer, in his _Martinus Anglicus_

(astrological almanac) for 1650, had written that 'the Parliament should

not continue, but a new government should arise;' and the next year he

'was so bold as to aver therein that the Parliament stood upon a

tottering foundation, and that the commonalty and soldiers would join

together against it.' These things, and others, published in _Anglicus_,

offended the Presbyterians, and on motion of some one of them, it was

ordered that '_Anglicus_ should be inspected by the committee for

plundered ministers;' and the next day thereafter Lilly was brought

before the committee, which was very full that day (thirty-six in

number), for the matter was an interesting one, whispered of before in

private, and now made public by prophecy. The astrologer, by skilful

management of friends, and some lies of his own, got off without damage

to himself.

At the close of the first day's proceedings in committee, as the

sergeant-at-arms was carrying Lilly away, he was commanded to bring him

into the committee room again. 'Oliver Cromwell, lieutenant-general of

the army, having never seen me, caused me to be produced again, where he

steadfastly beheld me for a good space, and then I went with the

messenger.' This first meeting was, it appears, the only one, for Lilly

speaks of no other; but Cromwell spoke a good word for him that same

night, and was ever after rather friendly to him, or at least tolerant

of him. The lieutenant-general, looking fixedly at this man 'for a good

space,' saw nothing very bad in him; and knowing that his prophecies

favored the good cause, he, a man of strong, practical sense, was

willing to let him work as one of the influences of that time.

This was not Lilly's only appearance before Parliament; sixteen years

later we shall find him there again; but of that at its time; and we

will look first at some of his doings in the interim. With another

general our astrologer had a meeting too, but with him--General

Fairfax--there was talk, not so full of meaning to me as the silence of

Cromwell. 'There being,' says Lilly, 'in those times, some smart

difference between the army and Parliament, the headquarters of the army

were at Windsor, whither I was carried with a coach and four horses, and

John Boker (an astrologer) with me. We were welcomed thither, and

feasted in a garden where General Fairfax lodged. We were brought to the

general, who bid us kindly welcome to Windsor.' Lilly tells what Fairfax

said, and what he himself said in reply; but if these speeches were all

that was there said and done, the coach and four, and the time spent,

seem to me wasteful. The speeches ended, 'we departed, and went to visit

Mr. Peters (Hugh Peters), the minister, who lodged in the castle; whom

we found reading an idle pamphlet come from London that morning.' He

said--what gives proof, if proof be needed, that there was idle talk

current in that time, as indeed there is in all times.

Our astrologer, professing a high art, standing above the common level,

did not give 'up to party what was meant for mankind.' The stars look

down, from their high places, on sublunary things, with a sublime

indifference; and he, their interpreter, was at the service of all

comers, or of all who could pay. Many came to him; among others came

'Madam Whorwood,' from King Charles, who intended to escape from Hampton

Court, where he was held prisoner by the army. She came to inquire 'in

what quarter of this nation he (the king) might be most safe?' Lilly,

after 'erection of his figure,' said, 'about twenty miles from London,

and in Essex,' 'he might continue undisturbed;' but the poor king,

misguided by himself, or others, 'went away in the night time westward,

and surrendered to Hammond in the Isle of Wight. Twice again, according

to Lilly, Madam Whorwood came to him, asking advice and assistance for

the king. This Madam Whorwood I have not met with elsewhere in my

reading, and the name may be a fictitious one; but that King Charles, in

his straits, sought aid of William Lilly, who by repute could read the

stars, is not improbable. In 1648, Lilly gave to the council of state

'some intelligence out of France,' which he got by means not

astrological, or in any way supernatural; and the council thereupon gave

him 'in money fifty pounds, and a pension of one hundred pounds per

annum,' which he received for two years, 'but no more.'

So Lilly, whose business as astrological prophet brought him into close

contact with many kinds of men--men of all parties and sects--went on

getting information of all, and by all kinds of means; and imparting it

again to all who had need; but always he had an eye to the 'main

chance,' and provided well for himself. With each of his three wives he

got money. The second one, who, as we remember, 'was of the nature of

Mars,' died in February, 1654, and the bereaved man says that he

thereupon 'shed no tear;' which we can well believe. Dry eyed, or with

only such moisture as comes of joy, he, within eight months after the

departure of Mrs. Mars, took another to his bosom, one who, he says, 'is

signified in my nativity by Jupiter in Libra, and she is so totally in

her conditions, to my great comfort.'

After the Restoration, Lilly was apprehended and committed to the Gate

House. 'I was had,' he says, 'into the guard room, which I thought to be

hell: some therein were sleeping, others swearing, others smoking

tobacco. In the chimney of the room I believe there were two bushels of

broken tobacco-pipes, and almost half one load of ashes.' A sad time and

place: but his 'old friend, Sir Edward Walker, garter king-at-arms,'

made interest for him in the right quarters, and he was released from

the place he 'thought to be hell.' In 1660 he sued out his pardon for

all offences 'under the broad seal of England.'

Of Lilly's religion (so called) there is not much to be said: in early

life he 'leaned to Puritanism,' as we have been told, and he probably

leaned on that so long as he could find support in it; but after the

Restoration (in 1663) he was made churchwarden of Walton-upon-Thames,

and settled 'the affairs of that distracted parish' as well as he could;

and upon leaving the place, 'forgave them seven pounds' which was due to

him.

Soon after this, when the great plague of 1665 came upon London, Lilly

gave up business there and retired into the country to his wife and

family, and continued there for the remainder of his life; going up to

the great city occasionally to visit his friends, or on calls to

business in his special line: one call from a high quarter came to him

in this shape:

'Monday, _22d October_, 1666.

At the committee appointed to inquire after the causes of the late

fires:

'_Ordered_, That Mr. Lilly attend the committee on Friday next, being

the 25th day of October, at two o'clock in the afternoon, in the

speaker's chamber, to answer such questions as shall be then and there

asked him.

'ROBERT BROOKE.'

The question before Parliament was in relation to the great fire in

London: 'as to the causes of the late fire; whether there might be any

design therein;' and Lilly was supposed to know something about that

matter, because he, in his book or pamphlet entitled 'Monarchy or no

Monarchy,' published in 1651, had printed on page seventh a hieroglyphic

'representing a great sickness and mortality, wherein you may see the

representation of people in their winding sheets, persons digging graves

and sepultures, coffins, etc.;' and on another page another hieroglyphic

representing a fire: two twins topsy-turvy, and back to back, falling

headlong into a fire. 'The twins signify Gemini, a sign in astrology

which rules London:' all around stand figures, male and female, pouring

liquids (oil or water?) on the flames. When, therefore, the great fire

of 1666 followed the plague of the preceding year, these hieroglyphics

again attracted attention, and the maker of them was called before

Parliament to declare if he, who had foreseen these events, could see

into them, and give any explanation of their causes. But Lilly was

prudent: to the question, 'Did you foresee the year of the fire?' he

replied: 'I did not; nor was I desirous; of that I made no scrutiny.' As

to the cause of the fire, he said: 'I have taken much pains in the

search thereof, but cannot, or could not, give myself any the least

satisfaction therein: I conclude that it was only the finger of God;

but what instruments he used therein I am ignorant.'

That William Lilly, who, as we have seen, was twice called before

Parliament and questioned, attracted much attention elsewhere by his

prophecies and publications, there can be no doubt; and his books found

many readers. Their titles, so far as known to us, are as follows:

'Supernatural Insight;' 'The White King's Prophecy;' 'The Starry

Messenger;' 'A Collection of Prophecies;' an introduction to astrology,

called, 'Christian Astrology;' 'The World's Catastrophe;' 'The

Prophecies of Merlin, with a Key thereto;' 'Trithemius of the Government

of the World by the Presiding Angels;' 'A Treatise of the Three Suns

seen the preceding winter,' which was the winter of 1648; 'An

Astronomical Judgment;' 'Annus Tenebrosus;' 'Merlinus Anglicus,' a kind

of astrological almanac, published annually for many years, containing

many prophecies--a work which got extensive circulation, 'the Anglicus

of 1658 being translated into the language spoken in Hamburg, printed

and cried about the streets as it is in London;' and his 'Majesty of

Sweden,' of whom 'honorable mention' was made in Anglicus, sent to the

author of it 'a gold chain and a medal worth about fifty pounds.'

Of these books made by Lilly, we, having little knowledge, indeed none

at all of the most of them, do not propose to speak; but one who has

looked into the 'Introduction to Astrology' can say that it has

something of method and completeness, and he can readily conceive how

Lilly, studying astrology through long years very diligently, then

practising it, instructing other men in it, writing books about it,

could have himself some kind of belief in it; such belief at least as

many men have in the business they study, practise, and get fame and

pudding by. Consider, too, how his belief in his art must have been

strengthened and confirmed by the belief of other men in it; able men of

former times, and respectable men of his own time. Indeed we will say of

astrology generally that it is a much better thing than the spiritualism

of this present day, with its idle rappings and silly mediums.

We have named some of Lilly's friends--those only of whom we happened to

have some knowledge; but he had many friends, or many acquaintances--a

large circle of them. There were 'astrologers' feasts' in those days,

held monthly or oftener. Ashmole (called, by a more than ordinary

impulse of spirit, Elias) makes record in his Diary: 'Aug. 1, 1650, the

astrologers' feast at Painter's Hall, where I dined;' 'Oct. 31, the

astrologers' feast;' and other entries there are to the same effect.

Some ten years after, Lilly seems to have had these festivals, or

similar ones, in his own house; and on the 24th October, 1660, one

Pepys, well known to literary men, 'passed the evening at Lilly's house,

where he had a club of his friends.'[4]

Thus far, namely, to the year 1666, Lilly brought the history of his

life: and in the continuation of it by another hand, we learn that in

the country at Horsham, near London, 'he betook himself to the study of

physic;' and in 1670, his old and influential friend, Mr. Ashmole, got

for him from the archbishop of Canterbury a license for the practice of

it. 'Hereupon he began to practise more openly and with good success;

and every Saturday rode to Kingston, where the poorer sort flocked to

him from several parts, and received much benefit by his advice and

prescriptions, which he gave them freely and without money. From those

that were more able he now and then received a shilling, and sometimes a

half crown, if they offered it to him; otherwise he received nothing;

and in truth his charity toward poor people was very great, no less than

the care and pains he took in considering and weighing their particular

cases, and applying proper remedies to their infirmities, which gained

him extraordinary credit and estimation.' So William Lilly lived at

Horsham, publishing his 'astronomical judgments' yearly, and helping as

he could the poor there and in the neighborhood, till the 9th day of

June, 1681, when he died. The 'great agony' of his diseases, which were

complicated, he bore 'without complaint.' 'Immediately before his breath

went from him, he sneezed three times;' which, we will hope, cleared his

head of some nonsense.

In the judgment of his contemporaries, this William Lilly, astrologer,

was, as we can see, 'a respectable man.' Such judgment, however, is

never conclusive; for the time clement is always a deceptive one; and,

as all navigators know, the land which looms high in the atmosphere of

to-day does often, in the clearer atmosphere of other days, prove to be

as flat as a panecake: but we must say of Lilly, that though

unfortunately an impostor, he was really rather above the common level

of mankind--a little hillock, if only of conglomerate or pudding stone:

for, in his pamphlet entitled 'Observations on the Life and Times of

Charles I,' where he, looking away from the stars and treating of the

past, is more level to our judgment, he is still worth reading; and does

therein give a more impartial and correct character of that unhappy king

than can be found in any other contemporary writing; agreeing well with

the best judgments of this present time, and showing Lilly to be a man

of ability above the common. On the whole, we will say of him, that he

was the product of a mother who was good for something, and of a father

who was good for nothing, or next to that; that with such parentage, and

under such circumstances as we have seen, he became an astrologer, the

best of his kind in that time.

It would be easy to institute other moral reflections, and to pass

positive judgment on the man: but instead thereof I will place here two

questions:

_First_: Did William Lilly, in the eighteenth year of his age, need

anything except a little cash capital to enable him to go up to the

university and become a respectable clergyman of the Church of England,

or the minister of some dissenting congregation, if he had liked that

better?

_Second_: When this impostor and the clergymen, who as boys stood

together in the same form of the school at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, come

together before the judgment bar of the Most High, will the Great Judge

say to each of the clergymen: Come up hither; and to the impostor:

Depart, thou cursed?

'A fool,' it is said, 'may ask questions which wise men cannot answer;'

and the writer, having done his part in asking, leaves the more

difficult part for the consideration of the reader.[5]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: The Lives of those eminent Antiquaries, Elias Ashmole,

Esquire, and Mr. William Lilly, written by themselves; containing first,

William Lilly's History of his Life and Times, with Notes by Mr Ashmole;

secondly, Lilly's Life and Death of Charles I; and lastly, the Life of

Elias Ashmole, Esq., by way of Diary, etc. London, 1774.]

[Footnote 2: Lilly's Life and Death of King Charles I.]

[Footnote 3: The Lives of those eminent Antiquaries, Ellas Ashmole and

William Lilly, &c. London, 1774.]

[Footnote 4: See Pepys' Diary and Correspondence. London, 1858. Vol. i,

p. 116.]

[Footnote 5: The reader will find this question already answered in the

pages of holy writ: 'For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his

Father, with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to

his works.'--_Matt_, xvi, 27.--ED. CON.]

JEFFERSON DAVIS--REPUDIATION, RECOGNITION, AND SLAVERY.

LETTER NO. II, FROM HON. ROBERT J WALKER.

LONDON, 10 HALF MOON STREET, PICCADILY}

_July 30th, 1863._ }

In my publication of the 1st inst., it was proved by the two letters of

Mr. Jefferson Dans of the 25th May, 1849, and 29th August, 1849, that he

had earnestly advocated the repudiation of the bonds of the State of

Mississippi issued to the Union Bank. It was then shown that the High

Court of Errors and Appeals of Mississippi, the tribunal designated by

the Constitution of the State, had _unanimously_ decided that these

bonds were constitutional and valid, and that more than seven years

thereafter, Mr. Jefferson Davis had nevertheless sustained the

repudiation of those bonds.

In his letter before quoted, of the 23d March last, Mr. Slidell, the

minister of Jefferson Davis at Paris, says, 'There is a wide difference

between these (Union) bonds and those of the Planters' Bank, for the

repudiation of which neither excuse nor palliation can be offered.' And

yet I shall now proceed to prove, that Mr. Jefferson Davis did not only

_palliate and excuse_, but justified the repudiation, in fact, of those

bonds by the State of Mississippi. First, then, has Mississippi

repudiated those bonds? The principal and interest now due on those

bonds exceed $5,000,000 (£1,000,000), and yet, for a quarter of a

century, the State has not paid one dollar of principal or interest. 2.

The State, by act of the Legislature (ch. 17), referred the question of

taxation for the payment of those bonds to the vote of the people, and

their decision was adverse. As there was no fund available for the

payment, except one to be derived from taxation, this popular vote (to

which the question was submitted by the Legislature) was a decision of

the State for repudiation, and against payment. 3. The State, at one

time (many years after the sale of the bonds), had made them receivable

in purchase of certain State lands, but, as this was 'at three times its

current value,' as shown by the London _Times_, in its article

heretofore quoted by me, this was only another form of repudiation. 4.

When a few of the bondholders commenced taking small portions of these

lands in payment, because they could get nothing else, the State

repealed the law (ch. 22), and provided no substitute. 5. The State, by

law, deprived the bondholders of the stock of the Planters' Bank

($2,000,000), and of the sinking fund pledged to the purchasers for the

redemption of these bonds when they were sold by the State. Surely there

is here ample evidence of repudiation and bad faith.

The bonds issued by the State of Mississippi to the Planters' Bank were

based upon a law of the State, and affirmed, by name, in a specific

provision of the State Constitution of 1832. The State, through its

agent, received the money, and loaned it to the citizens of the State,

and the validity of these obligations is conceded by Mr. Slidell and Mr.

Davis.

These bonds were for $2,000,000, bearing an interest of six per cent.

per annum, and were sold at a premium of 13-1/2 per cent For those

bonds, besides the premium, the State received $2,000,000 of stock of

the Planters' Bank, upon which, up to 1838, the State realized ten per

cent. dividends, being $200,000 per annum. In January, 1841, the

Legislature of Mississippi _unanimously_ adopted resolutions affirming

the validity of these bonds, and the duty of the State to pay them.

(Sen. Jour. 314.)

In his message to the Legislature of 1843, Governor Tucker says:

'On the 1st of January, 1838, the State held stock in the Planters'

Bank for $2,000,000, which stock had, prior to that time, yielded

to the State a dividend of $200,000 per annum. I found also the

first instalment of the bonds issued on account of the Planters'

Bank, $125,000, due and unpaid, as well as the interest for several

years on said bonds.' (Sen. Jour. 25.)

The Planters' Bank (as well as the State), by the express terms of the

law, was bound for the principal and interest of these bonds. Now, in

1839, Mississippi passed an act (Acts, ch. 42), 'to transfer the stock

now held by the State in the Planters' Bank, and invest the same in

stock of the Mississippi Railroad Company.' By the first section of this

act, the Governor was directed to subscribe for $2,000,000 of stock in

the railroad company for the State, and to pay for it by transferring to

the company the Planters' Bank stock, which had been secured to the

State by the sale of the Planters' Bank bonds. The 10th section released

the Planters' Bank from the obligation to provide for the payment of

these bonds or interest. Some enlightened members, including Judge

Gholson, afterward of the Federal Court, protested against this act as

unconstitutional, by impairing the obligation of contracts, and as a

fraud on the bondholders.

They say in this protest:

'The money which paid for the stock proposed to be transferred from

the Planters' Bank to the Mississippi Railroad Company, was, under

the provisions of the charter, obtained by loans on the part of the

State, for the payment of which the stock, in addition to the faith

of the Government, was pledged to the holders of the bonds of the

State. By the terms of the contract between the commissioners on

the part of the State and the purchasers of the bonds, the interest

on the loans is required to be paid semiannually out of the

semiannual dividends _accruing upon the said stock_; and the

surplus of such dividends, after paying the said interest, is to be

converted into a _sinking fund_ for the payment and liquidation of

said loans. The bill, as the title purports, simply provides for

the transfer of the stock now held by the State in the Planters'

Bank, and that the same shall be invested in the stock of the

Mississippi Railroad Company, leading from Natchez to Canton, which

has banking privileges to twice the amount of capital stock paid

in. The transferring of the stock and dividend to another

irresponsible corporation, and the appropriation of the same to the

construction of a road, is a violation of and impairing the

obligation of the contract made and entered into with the

purchasers or holders of the bonds of the State, under a solemn act

of the Legislature. If it should be thought that a people, composed

of so much virtue, honor, and chivalry, as the noble and generous

Mississippians, would disdain, and consequently refrain, from

repealing or violating their plighted faith, it may be answered,

that the faith of the State, solemnly and sacredly pledged by an

act of the Legislature, with all the formality and solemnity of a

constitutional law, is violated by the provisions of this very bill

under consideration. The faith of the State is pledged to the

holders of the bonds, by the original and subsequent acts

incorporating the Planters' Bank, as solemnly as national or

legislative pledges can be made, that the stock and dividends

accruing thereon shall be faithfully appropriated to the redemption

and payment of said loans and all interest thereon, as they

respectively become due; the appropriation of this fund to an other

purpose is, therefore, a violation of the faith of the State.'

(House Jour. 443.)

Thus was it, that the stock of the bank, which for so many years had

been yielding a dividend far exceeding the interest on the loan, and

which stock had been pledged for the redemption of the loan, was

diverted to the building of a railroad, which never did or could yield a

single dollar, and the company soon became insolvent. By another clause

of this act of 1839, the Planters' Bank, which, by the loan act, was

made responsible (together with the State) for the payment of these

bonds, was released from the obligation to make such payments.

And now, what is the answer of Jefferson Davis on this subject? He says,

in his letter of the 25th May, 1849, before quoted:

'A smaller amount is due for what are termed Planters' Bank bonds

of Mississippi. These evidences of debt, as well as the coupons

issued to cover accruing interest, are receivable for State lands,

and no one has a right to assume they will not be provided for

otherwise, by or before the date at which the whole debt becomes

due.'

To this the London _Times_ replied, in its editorial of the 13th July,

1849, before quoted, as follows:

'The assurance in this statement that the Planters' Bank, or

non-repudiated bonds, are receivable for State lands, requires this

addition, which Mr. Jefferson Davis has omitted, that they are only

so receivable upon land being taken at three times its current

value. The affirmation afterward, that no one has a right to assume

that these bonds will not be fully provided for before the date at

which the principal falls due, is simply to be met by the fact,

that portions of them fell due in 1841 and 1846, and that on these,

as well as on all the rest, both principal and interest remain

wholly unpaid.'

Mr. Davis's 'palliation and excuse' for the non-payment of these bonds

was: 1st. That the principal was not due. If this were true, it would be

no excuse for the non-payment of the semi-annual interest. But the

statement of Jefferson Davis as to the principal was not true, as shown

by the _Times_, and as is clear upon the face of the law. Then, as to

the lands. The bonds, principal aid interest, were payable in money, and

it was a clear case of repudiation to substitute lands. But when, as

stated by the _Times_, this land was only receivable '_at three times

its current value_,' Mr. Davis's defence of the repudiation of the

Planters' Bank bonds by Mississippi, is exposed in all its deformity.

When, however, we reflect, as heretofore shown, that the law authorizing

the purchase of these lands by these bonds was repealed, and the

bondholders left without any relief, and the proposition for taxation to

pay the bonds definitively rejected, it is difficult to imagine a case

more atrocious than this.

The whole debt, principal and interest, now due by the State of

Mississippi, including the Planters' and Union Bank bonds, exceeds

$11,250,000 (£2,250,000). Not a dollar of principal or interest has been

paid by the State for more than a fourth of a century on any of these

bonds. The repudiation is complete and final, so long as slavery exists

in Mississippi. Now, would it not seem reasonable that, before

Mississippi and the other Confederate States, including Florida and

Arkansas, ask another loan from Europe, they should first make some

provision for debts now due, or, at least, manifest a disposition to

make some arrangement for it at some future period. If a debtor fails to

meet his engagements, especially if he repudiates them on false and

fraudulent pretexts, he can borrow no more money, and the same rule

surely should apply to states or nations. Nor can any pledge of property

not in possession of such a borrower, or, if so, not placed in the hands

of the lender, change the position. It is (even if the power to pay

exists) still a question of good faith, and where that has been so often

violated, all subsequent pledges or promises should be regarded as

utterly worthless.

The _Times_, in reference to the repudiation of its Union Bank bonds by

Mississippi, and the justification of that act by Jefferson Davis, says:

'Let it circulate throughout Europe that a member of the United

States Senate in 1849 has openly proclaimed, that at a recent

period the Governor and legislative assemblies of his own State

deliberately issued fraudulent bonds for five millions of dollars

to 'sustain the credit of a rickety bank;' that, the bonds in

question having been hypothecated abroad to innocent holders, such

holders have not only no claim against the community by whose

executive and representatives this act was committed, but that they

are to be taunted for appealing to the verdict of the civilized

world rather than to the judgment of the legal officers of the

State by whose functionaries they have been already robbed; and

that the ruin of toil-worn men, of women, of widows, and of

children, and the 'crocodile tears' which that ruin has occasioned,

is a subject of jest on the part of those by whom it has been

accomplished; and then let it be asked if any foreigner ever penned

a libel on the American character equal to that against the people

of Mississippi by their own Senator.'

Such was the opinion then expressed by the London _Times_ of Jefferson

Davis and of the repudiation advocated by him. It was denounced as

_robbery_, 'the ruin of toil-worn men, of women, of widows, and of

children.' And what is to be thought of the '_faith_' of a so-called

Government, which has chosen this repudiator as their chief, and what of

the value of the Confederate bonds now issued by him? Why, the legal

tender notes of the so-called Confederate Government, fundable in a

stock bearing eight per cent, interest, is now worth in gold at their

own capital of Richmond, less than ten cents on the dollar (2_s._, on

the pound), whilst in two thirds of their territory such notes are

utterly worthless; and it is TREASON for any citizen of the

United States, North or South, or any ALIEN resident there, to

deal in them, or in Confederate bonds, or in the cotton pledged for

their payment. No form of Confederate bonds, or notes, or stock, will

ever be recognized by the Government of the United States, and the

cotton pledged by slaveholding traitors for the payment of the

Confederate bonds is all forfeited for treason, and confiscated to the

Federal Government by act of Congress. As our armies advance, this

cotton is either burned by the retreating rebel troops, or seized by our

forces, and shipped and sold from time to time, for the benefit of the

Federal Government. By reference to the census of 1860, it will be seen

that three fourths of the whole cotton crop was raised in States (now

held by the Federal army and navy) touching the Mississippi and its

tributaries, and all the other ports are either actually held or

blockaded by the Federal forces. The traitor pledge of this cotton is,

then, wholly unavailing; the bonds are utterly worthless; they could not

be sold at any price in the United States, and those who force them on

the London market, in the language of the _Times_, before quoted, will

only accomplish '_the ruin of toil-worn, men, of women, of widows, and

of children_.'

But the advocacy of repudiation by Jefferson Davis has not been confined

to his own State, as I shall proceed to demonstrate in my next letter.

R.J. WALKER.

DIARY OF FRANCES KRASINSKA;

OR, LIFE IN POLAND DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY,

Tuesday, _March 19th_.

The Prince and Princess Lubomirski left us about half an hour ago; they

had decided upon going yesterday, but my father told them that Monday

was an unfortunate day, and fearing that this argument would not possess

sufficient weight, he ordered the wheels to be taken off their carriage.

They overwhelmed me with kindness during their sojourn in the castle;

the princess, especially, treated me with great affability. Both she and

the prince take a deep interest in my future lot; they endeavored to

persuade my parents to send me to Warsaw to finish my education.

A foreigner, Miss Strumle, who, however, receives universally the title

of madame, has recently opened a young ladies' boarding school in

Warsaw. This school enjoys a high reputation, and all the young ladies

of distinction are sent there to finish their education. It is the same

for a young lady to have been some time at Madame Strumle's as for a

young gentlemen to have been at Luneville. The prince palatine advised

my mother to send me for a year to Madame Strumle. My parents prefer the

Sisters of the Holy Sacrament; they say that nothing can be better than

a convent.

I do not know what will be their final decision, but I feel restless and

agitated. I no longer find pleasure in my reading; my work is tedious to

me, and not so well executed as formerly; the future occupies my mind

much more than the present; in short, I am in a constant state of

excitement, as if awaiting some great event. Since the visit of the

prince and princess I have an entirely different opinion of myself, and

I am by no means so happy as I was before.... In truth, I no longer

understand myself.

Sunday, _March 24th_.

Ah I God be praised, my suspense is over, and we leave day after

to-morrow for Warsaw. My parents have been suddenly called there on

matters of business connected with the recent death of my uncle, Blaise

Krasinski, who has left a large fortune and no children. I do not yet

know whether I am to be placed at a boarding school or not, but I

believe it will be a long time before I return to Maleszow.

Ah! how happy the idea of this journey makes me! We will go a little out

of our way, that we may stop at Sulgostow. Her ladyship the starostine

has at length, after a very agreeable tour, returned to her palace. The

starost has introduced her to all his cousins, friends, and neighbors;

she was everywhere admirably received, and will now settle down in her

own mansion, at which prospect she is very well pleased; she has all the

necessary qualifications for becoming a good housekeeper. The Palatine

Swidzinski spoke of her so affectionately in one of his letters that my

parents wept hot tears, but tears of joy, so sweet and go rare. Barbara

has always been a source of happiness to her parents.

Warsaw, Sunday, _April 7th_.

I can scarcely believe it, but here I am fairly installed in Madame

Strumle's famous boarding school. The princess palatine's advice has

prevailed, and Madame Strumle has received the preference over the

Sisters of the Holy Sacrament. God be praised, for I really was very

anxious to come here. I received a most flattering reception.

On our way to Warsaw we stopped at Sulgustow. We found her ladyship the

starostine gay and most hospitable; the presence of our dear parents

filled the measure of her happiness. She assured me that the delight of

receiving one's parents in one's own house could be neither expressed

nor understood. 'You must yourself experience it,' added she, 'before

you can form any idea of it.'

On the table were all the dishes, confections, and beverages preferred

by our parents. Barbara forgot nothing which could be agreeable to them,

and the starost aided her wonderfully in all her efforts. My mother

remarked that Barbara was still better since her marriage than before,

to which the starost replied:

'Indeed, she is no better, for thus did I receive her from the hands of

your highnesses. But she gladly profits by the present opportunity to

testify her gratitude; she shows here those lovely and precious

qualities which you have cultivated in her soul, and during the past

three days she has been for her parents what she is every day for me.'

There was no flattery in what the starost said--it came really from his

heart. He adores Barbara, and she respects, honors, and obeys him as if

he were her father.

She understands perfectly the whole management of a household, and does

the honors of her mansion most gracefully. Every one praises her, and

the young ladies and waiting women who followed her from Maleszow are

delighted with their new position.

My parents regretted the necessity of parting from their daughter; they

would willingly have remained longer; but I must confess I was very

anxious to see Warsaw, and was charmed when they received letters

obliging them to hasten their departure.

It was really a true instinct which gave me a preference for this place.

I study well, and must improve. My education will be complete, and I may

perhaps become a superior woman, as I have always desired to do; but I

need much study and close application to bring me to that point; above

all, must I chain my wandering fancies, and not suffer them to stray

about so vaguely as I have hitherto done.

Yesterday my mother came to take me to church. I made my confession, and

communed for the intention of using well the new acquirements which I

have now the opportunity of making.

When I am well established here, I will write in my journal every day as

I did at Maleszow; but I am still in a state of excitement from all I

have seen, and I must first become better acquainted with my new

dwelling.

Wednesday, _April 17th_.

I am already quite familiar with all the regulations of the school. I am

very well pleased with Madame Strumle; she has excellent manners, and is

very kind to me. I might perhaps regret our court, the magnificence,

bustle, and gayety of our castle, but there comes a time for everything,

and we live here very happily and comfortably.

That which seems most strange and entirely new to me is, that there is

not even a little boy in the house, no men servants, women always, and

only women; they wait upon us even at table.

There are about fifteen boarders, all young, and belonging to the best

families.

Every one speaks highly of Miss Marianne, the Starost Swidzinski's

sister, now married to the Castellan of Polaniec; she spent two years at

the school, and has left an ineffaceable impression in the hearts of

Madame Strumle and her young companions. They say she was very

accomplished, very good and sensible, very gay, and very studious.

My parents, after having made a thorough examination of the school, felt

quite satisfied; and truly they might well be so, for no one could be

more securely guarded in a convent than here. Madame keeps the key of

the front door always in her pocket; no one can go out or come in

without her knowledge, and were it not for two or three aged masters of

music and the languages, we might be in danger of forgetting the very

existence of _man_-kind.

It is expressly forbidden to receive visits even from one's male cousins

within the walls of the school. The dancing master desired that the

young potockis should come and learn quadrilles with their sisters and

myself, but madame rejected this proposition at once, saying, 'These

gentlemen are not the brothers of all my boarders, and I cannot permit

them to enter my school.'

We have masters in French and German, as also in drawing, music, and

embroidery. We learn music on a fine piano of five octaves and a half.

What an improvement on that of Maleszow! Some of the scholars play

polonaises very well, but not by rote; they read them from the notes. My

master tells me that in six months I will have reached this perfection;

but then I already had some ideas of music when I came.

I draw quite well from the patterns set before me, but ere I proceed any

further, I wish to paint a tree in oil colors. On one of the branches I

will hang a garland of flowers, encircling the cypher of my parents, and

will thus testify to them my gratitude for all they have done for me,

and especially for the care they have bestowed upon my education.

The young Princess Sapieha, who has been here a year, is at present

employed upon such a picture, and I envy her her pleasure every time my

eyes fall upon the work.

What a fine effect my picture will make in our hall at Maleszow, beneath

the portrait of our good uncle, the Bishop of Kamieniec!

Our dancing master, besides the minuet and quadrilles, teaches us to

walk and courtesy gracefully. To tell the truth, I was so ignorant when

I came, that I knew but one mode of making a salutation; but there are

several kinds, which must be employed toward personages of different

ranks; one for the king, another for the princes of the blood, and still

another for lords and ladies of rank.

I learned first how to salute the prince royal, and succeeded quite

well; some day, perhaps, this knowledge may be useful to me.

My lessons follow one another regularly, and I am so anxious to learn

that the time passes rapidly and agreeably.

My mother is very much occupied with family affairs, and has been only

once to see me.

When I first entered the school, everything surprised me, but what

seemed to me most strange was that I was continually reproved, and even

obliged to undergo real penance. An iron cross was placed at my back to

make me hold myself upright, and my limbs were enclosed in a kind of

wooden box, to straighten them. I must however think that they were

already quite straight enough. All that was not very amusing for me, who

thought myself already a young lady. Since Barbara's marriage I had

myself been asked in marriage, and the prince palatine had not treated

me as if I were a child!

Madame Strumle has commanded me to omit in future these words from my

prayers: 'O my God, give me a good husband,' and to say instead, 'Give

me the grace to profit by the good education I am receiving.'

One must here work continually, or think of one's work, and of nothing

else.

Sunday, _April 28th_.

I have been nearly three weeks at Madame Strumle's school, and my poor

journal has been quite neglected during all that time; but the

uniformity of my life, these monotonous hours, all passed in the

constant repetition of the same occupations, afford no matter for

interesting details or descriptions.

At this very moment, when I hold the pen in my hand, I am ready to lay

it down, so great is the poverty of my observations.

My parents will soon leave. The princess palatiness has honored me with

a visit; she remarked that my carriage was much improved. My masters are

all satisfied with the closeness of my application. Madame is especially

kind to me, and my companions are polite and friendly.... But is all

this worth the trouble of writing?

I sometimes fancy that I am not really in Warsaw, so ignorant am I with

regard to all political events. I have seen neither the king nor the

royal family. At Maleszow we at least hear the news, and occasionally

see Borne distinguished men.

The Duke of Courland is absent, and will not return for some time.

Sunday, _June 9th_

If I were to live forever in this school, I should give up writing in my

journal, and it really serves one very valuable purpose; for I find I am

in great danger of forgetting Polish. With the exception of the letters

I write to my parents, and the few words I say to my maid, I always

write and speak French.

I progress in all my studies, and if I am sometimes melancholy, at least

my time is not lost.

The princess palatiness has again been to see me. A month had passed

since her last visit; she found me considerably taller, and was kind

enough to praise my manners and bearing.

I am the tallest of all our boarders, and it really pleases me

exceedingly to find that my waist is not quite a half yard round.

Summer has come, the fine weather has returned, but I cannot go out--a

privation which is really quite vexatious. Ah! how I wish I were a

little bird! I would fly away, far away--and then I would return to my

cage.

But my days and my nights must all be spent in this dull house and in

this ugly street; I believe that Cooper street (ulika Bednarska) is the

darkest, dingiest, and dirtiest street in Warsaw. God willing, next year

I shall be no longer here.

Friday, _July 28th_.

Labor has at least the good quality of making the time pass more

rapidly; our days vanish one by one, without distractions or news from

without.

I just now felt a desire to write in my journal, and when I consulted

the almanac to find out the day of the month, I was quite surprised to

find that seven whole weeks had passed since I had written a single word

in my poor diary.

This day certainly deserves to be noted down, for never since I was born

did such a thing happen to me as I experienced this morning. I received

a letter by the mail, and the world is no longer ignorant that the

Countess Frances Krasinska is now living in Warsaw! I danced with joy

when I saw my letter, my own letter! It came from her ladyship, the

Starostine Swidzinska; I shall keep it as a precious and delightful

remembrance. My sister writes to me that she is quite well, and happy

beyond all I can imagine; she was kind enough to send me four gold

ducats, which she has saved from her own private purse.

For the first time in my life I have money to spend as I will, which

gives me great pleasure. With the money came the desire to spend, and a

variety of projects; it seemed to me as if I could buy the whole city.

Thanks to my parents, I need nothing, and I will buy nothing for myself;

but I would have liked to leave a pretty remembrance to each of my

companions, a gold ring, for example; but madame quite distressed me by

telling me that my four ducats would only buy four rings-a real

affliction to me, who had hope to purchase, besides the rings, a blonde

mantle for Madame Strumle herself.... All my projects are overturned; I

have learned that the mantle will cost at least a hundred ducats, and

have thence determined to give one ducat to the parish church, to have a

mass said in the chapel of Jesus to draw the blessing of Heaven upon the

affairs now occupying my parents, and for the continuation of the

happiness of her ladyship the starostine. I will have another ducat

changed into small coin, to be distributed among all the servants in the

house; there will still remain two ducats, which will buy a charming

collation for my companions on Sunday next. We will have coffee, an

excellent beverage, which we never see here, cakes, and fruit. Madame

Strumle willingly consented to this last project.

May God reward my dear starostine for the happiness she has bestowed

upon me! There can be no greater pleasure than that of making presents

and regaling one's friends. If I am anxious to have a husband richer

than I am myself, it is solely that I may be very generous.

I am not losing my time; I improve daily. I can already play several

minuets and cotillons from the notes, and will soon learn a polonaise.

The most fashionable one just now has a very strange name; it is called

the Thousand Fiends.

In one month more I shall begin my tree in oil colors, with its

allegoric garland.

Notwithstanding my more serious studies, I by no means neglect my little

feminine occupations. I am embroidering on canvas a huntsman carrying a

gun, and holding his hound by a leash.

I read a great deal, I write under dictation, I copy good works, an

excellent method of forming one's own style. I speak French quite as

well as Polish, perhaps even better; in short, I think I will soon be

fitted to make my appearance in the best society.

As for dancing, I need scarcely say that that progresses wonderfully; my

master, who has no reason to flatter me, assures me that in all Warsaw

no one dances better than I do.

I occasionally visit the Prince and Princess Lubomirski, but at times

when they have no company. I always hear there many agreeable and

flattering things, especially from the prince. He is desirous that I

should leave school now, but the princess and my parents wish me to

remain here during the winter. It is now only the end of July! How many

hours and days must pass before the winter sets in! Will that time ever

come?

Thursday, _December 26th_.

Finally, God be praised, the time has come for leaving school; a new

existence is opening before me; my journal will be overflowing, and I

shall have no lack of matter, but plenty of charming things to say.

The prince and princess are so kind to me; they have obtained permission

from my parents for me to pass the winter with them, and they will

introduce me into society. I shall leave this place day after to-morrow,

and will reside with the Princess Lubomirska. I am quite sorry to part

from Madame Strumle and my companions, to many of whom I am sincerely

attached, but my joy is greater than my sorrow, for I shall see the

world, and fly away from this narrow cage.

I shall be taken to court and presented to the king and the royal

family; the Duke of Courland is expected daily; I shall see him at last!

The days have become intolerably long since I knew I was to leave

school.

WARSAW, Saturday, _December 28th, 1759_.

Never, never can I forget this day. The Princess Lubomirska came for me

quite early. I bade adieu to Madame Strumle and my companions. I was

glad to go, and yet I wept when I parted from them!

Before going to her own house, the princess took me to church; but I

could scarcely force my recollection; there was a whole future in my

brain, a whole world in my thoughts.

I am now established with the princess; her palace is situated in the

quarter named after Cracow, nearly opposite to the residence of the

Prince Palatine of Red-Russia, Czartoryski.

The palace in which we live is not very large, but very elegant; the

windows upon one side overlook the Vistula and a handsome garden. My

chamber is delightful, and will be still more agreeable in summer; it

communicates on the right with the apartments of the princess, and on

the left with my waiting maid's room.

The tailor came yesterday to take my measure; he is to make me several

dresses. I do not know what they will be, as the princess has ordered

them without consulting my taste. She inspires me with so much respect,

or perhaps awe, that I do not venture to ask her the least question. I

am much less afraid of the prince; his manners are so gentle and

engaging. He has gone to Bialystok, where he expects to meet the Duke of

Courland; he is in high favor with the duke.

We are to make some visits to-morrow, when the princess will introduce

me into some of the most distinguished houses; one must thus make one's

appearance, if one desires to be invited to balls and parties. I am

glad, and yet I am a little frightened at the idea of these visits: I

shall be so looked at, perhaps criticized; however, I shall see many new

things and will have much to observe, which thought affords me much

consolation in my new and trying position.

Sunday, _December 29th_.

At least, now I have some news to tell, and my journal will no longer be

so dry and uninteresting. The prince royal, accompanied by the prince

palatine, arrived yesterday about one o'clock. Indeed I am quite

confused by the palatine's overwhelming kindness; he received me as if I

had been his daughter, and there is no kind of friendship or interest

which he has not testified toward me.

We accomplished our visits and went to about fifteen different houses,

but were not everywhere admitted. At the French and Spanish ambassadors'

and the prince primate's, etc., the princess merely left cards.

Our first visit was to Madame Humiecka, wife of the swordbearer to the

crown; this lady is my aunt. We then went to see the Princess

Lubomirska, wife of the general of the advance guard of the royal

armies; she is a full cousin to the princess palatine. She was born a

Princess Czartoryska, is very young and very beautiful; she holds the

first rank among the younger ladies, and loves passionately everything

French. I am so glad I am a proficient in the French language; besides

being very useful, it will cause me to be much more sought after in

society.

French is here spoken in nearly all the more distinguished houses; only

the older men retain the tiresome custom of mingling Latin in their

conversation; the young people avoid this pedantry and speak French,

which is much better; at least, I can understand them, which I cannot

the others.

We also went to see the wife of the Grand-General Branicki. Her husband

is one of the most wealthy lords of Poland, but is not very favorably

regarded at court.

We then visited the Princess Czartoryska, Palatiness of Red-Russia. The

conversation there was held entirely in Polish; she is quite aged, and

consequently no admirer of new fashions. She introduced to us her only

son, a very handsome young man, with polished and elegant manners; he

overwhelmed me with the most graceful compliments. This visit was more

agreeable than any of the others. But no--I think I was quite as much

pleased at the palace of the Castellane of Cracow, Poniatowska. She is

a very superior person; she talks a great deal, it is true, but then she

speaks with enthusiasm and in a very interesting manner. We found her

quite elated with the pleasure of welcoming her son after a long

absence. Many think that this much-loved son may one day be king of

Poland; I do not believe that will ever be, but I did not the less

examine him with great attention. I frankly confess that I was not

pleased with him, and yet he is handsome and amiable; but he has a kind

of stiffness in his manners, a pretension to dignity and to airs of

grandeur, which injure his bearing.

I must not forget, in enumerating our visits, to mention that paid to

the Palatiness of Podolia, Rzewuska. This visit possessed a doubled

interest for me; I was anxious to see Rzewuski, the vice-grand-general

of the crown, because I had heard my father speak of him so often.

The vice-grand-general, although belonging to an illustrious family, was

brought up among the children of the common people; he went barefooted

as they did, and shared all their pleasures (very rustic indeed, it

seems to me). This strange education has given him great strength and a

wonderful constitution. He is now quite aged; he is more than fifty

years old, and yet he walks and rides like a young man. Following the

old Polish custom, he permits his beard to grow, and this gives him a

very grave appearance.

They say he has composed some very fine tragedies. We also called upon

Madame Brühl, who received us most politely. Her husband, the king's

favorite minister, is not much esteemed, but they are visited for the

sake of etiquette, and likewise for that of Madame Brühl, who is very

amiable.

We saw too Madame Soltyk, Castellane of Sandomir; she is a widow, but

still young and beautiful. Her son is nine years old; he is a charming

child, already possessing all the manners of the best society. As we

entered, he offered me a chair, and made me, at the same time, a very

graceful compliment; the castellane was kind enough to say that he was a

great admirer of pretty faces and black eyes. The Bishop of Cracow is

this child's uncle; he was anxious to have the charge of him, but his

mother was not willing to part with him.

Of all the persons whom I saw, I was the most pleased with Madame

Moszynska, the widow of the grand-treasurer of the crown. She received

me most affectionately, and I feel a strong attraction toward her. She

expressed much admiration for me; but indeed, I received commendation

everywhere, and everywhere did I hear that I was beautiful. Perhaps I

owe a great part of these praises to my costume; I was so well

dressed! ... much better than at Barbara's wedding! I wore a white silk

dress with gauze flounces, and my hair was dressed with pearls.

If I had seen the Duke of Courland, I should have been perfectly

satisfied; but I met him in none of the houses to which I went. They say

he is so happy to be once more with his family that he devotes all his

time to them. This feeling seems very natural to me, for when I was at

boarding school, I was very melancholy whenever I thought of my parents,

and I felt an imperative desire to see them, surpassing anything I had

before experienced.

The carnival will soon begin; every one says it will be very brilliant,

and that there will be many balls; it is impossible that I should not

somewhere meet the Duke of Courland.

Wednesday, _January 1st, 1750_.

All my desires have been gratified, and far beyond my hopes; I have seen

the prince royal! I have seen and spoken to him! ... I must indeed be

dreaming; my mind is filled with the most lively impressions, strange

and wild fancies surge through my brain, and I feel at once exalted and

depressed, transported with joy and tremulous through fear. I would not

dare to confide to any one that which I am about to write; it is all

perhaps only illusion, deception, error.... But yet, I have always

hitherto judged correctly of the effect which I produced; I

instinctively divined the degree in which I pleased; I have never been

deceived; can I be mistaken now? ... And indeed, why should not a prince

find me beautiful, when all other men tell me that I am so? But there

was more than admiration in the prince royal's eyes, which have a

peculiarly penetrating expression; his look was more kind than ordinary

glances, and said more than any words. Perhaps all princes may be thus!

But that I may remember during my whole life, or rather that I may one

day read all this again, I will now write down a detailed account of

last evening and of the few hours immediately preceding.

Yesterday morning the Princess Lubomirska sent for me and said, 'To-day

is the last of the year, and there will be to-night a grand festival, a

masked ball; all the nobility will be there, and even the king and his

sons; at least, I think so. I have selected a dress for you; you will go

as a virgin of the sun.'

I was so charmed with the choice of this costume, that I kissed the hand

of the princess.

After dinner all the maids came to assist at my toilet, and most

assuredly it was no ordinary toilet. My hair was not powdered and I wore

no hoop, whence the prince said to me, quite gravely, 'This costume is

not at all in accordance with received notions and fashions; any other

woman would certainly be lost were she to wear it; but I am sure you

will supply by the severity of your deportment and the propriety of your

manners whatever may be lacking in dignity, or too light, in your

dress.'

I did not forget his advice: notwithstanding my vivacity, I can assume

upon occasion a very majestic air; and indeed, I overheard some one

saying at the ball, 'Who is that queen in disguise?'

Ah! I know that I was more beautiful than I usually am. My hair, without

powder and black as ebony, fell in curls over my forehead, my neck, and

my shoulders; my dress was made of white gauze, and had not that long

train which hides the feet and impedes the motions. I wore a zone of

gold and precious stones round my waist, and was entirely enveloped in a

transparent white veil; I seemed to be in a cloud. When I looked in my

mirror, I could scarcely recognize myself.

The ball room, brilliantly lighted, and glittering with gold and the

most gorgeous costumes, presented a dazzling spectacle; the women,

nearly all robed in fancy dresses, were charming; I did not know to

which one I should give the preference.

A few moments after our arrival, we learned that the Duke of Courland

was in the hall; my eyes sought and found him, surrounded by a brilliant

group of young men. His dress differed but little from that of the lords

of his court; but I could distinguish him among them all. His figure is

tall and dignified, his air noble and affable; his beautiful blue eyes

and his charming smile eclipse all that approach him; where he is, no

one can see anything but himself.

I looked at him until our eyes met; then I avoided his gaze, but found

it always fixed upon me. But what was my confusion when I understood

that he was asking the Prince Palatine Lubomirski who I was! His face

lighted up with joy when he heard the answer; be made no delay in

approaching the Princess Lubomirska, and saluted her with a grace

peculiar to himself. After the exchange of the preliminary compliments,

the princess introduced me as her niece. I do not know what kind of a

courtesy I made, doubtless quite different from that which I had learned

from my dancing master; I was so agitated, and still am so much so,

that I cannot remember the words used by the prince as he saluted me;

but the impression is not fugitive like the words.

What an evening! The prince opened the ball with the princess

palatiness, and danced the second polonaise--with me; he had then time

to speak to me; and I, at first so timid, embarrassed, and agitated,

found myself replying to him with inconceivable assurance. He questioned

me about my parents, my sister the starostine, and all the details of

her marriage. I was surprised to find him so well acquainted with my

family affairs; but then I remembered that Kochanowski, son of the

castellan, is his favorite. What a good, forgiving soul that Kochanowski

must have; not only has he digested the goose dressed with the black

sauce, but he has said so many kind things of us all!

The prince danced with me nearly the whole evening, and talked all the

time ... The words would seem insignificant and absurd, were I to write

them down; but with him, tone, manner, expression, all speak and say

more than words, and yet his very words signify more, depict better, and

penetrate more deeply than those of others. I keep them in my memory,

and fear to weaken their impression should I write them.

When, at midnight, the cannon were fired to announce the end of one year

and the beginning of another, the prince said to me, 'Ah! never can I

forget the hours I have just passed; this is not a new year which I am

beginning, but a new life which I am receiving.'

This is but one of the many things he said to me; but as he always spoke

French, I should find great difficulty, in my present agitated state of

mind, in translating his conversation into Polish.

All that I have read in Mademoiselle Scudery, or in Madame de Lafayette,

is flat, compared with what the prince himself said to me; but perhaps

this may all be nothing more than simple politeness. Ah! merciful

Heaven, if it should be indeed an illusion, a mere court flattery,

applicable to all women, or, perhaps,--a series of empty compliments,

due solely to my dress, which became me wonderfully well! I am a prey to

the most inconceivable perplexities, and dare confide in no one; I

should not venture to say to any one: 'Has he a real preference for me?'

My parents are far away, and the princess does not invite my confidence;

I fear her as a cold, severe, and uninterested judge.... The prince

palatine is very kind, but can one expose to a man all the weakness of a

woman's heart? ... I am then abandoned to myself, without a standard of

judgment, without experience or advice.... Yesterday, I was at school,

studying as a child, and now I am thrown into a world entirely new, and

in which I am playing a part envied by all my sex.... I surely dream, or

I have lost my reason.

In ten days Barbara will be here, and she must be my good angel; she

will guide and protect me: she is so wise, and has so much judgment! I

will be so glad to lay my soul bare before her; I have no fear of her,

she is so compassionate; she is beautiful and happy, and I have always

remarked that such women are the best.

I have not seen my dear sister for nine months; but I see from her

letters that she is every day more and more loved by her husband, and

satisfied with her destiny.

Shall I again see the prince royal? Will he recognize me in my ordinary

dress, and will he still think me beautiful?...

MAIDEN'S DREAMING.

Fast the sunset light is fading,

Nearer comes the lonely night,

On a maid intently dreaming

Dimly falls the evening light.

Far into the future gazing,

Heeds she not the waning light;

By the fireside softly dreaming,

Heeds she not the minutes' flight.

Heeds she not the firelight flickering

Bright upon her dark brown hair,

Tresses where the gold still lingers--

Loth to quit a home so fair.

On her lap a book is lying,

Clasped her hands upon her knee;

Dreaming of the distant future--

Wonders what her fate will be.

Dreams of knights of manly bearing,

Nodding plumes and shining casques,

Wearing all her favorite colors,

Quick to do whate'er she asks.

Dreams of castles old and stately,

Vaulted halls all life and light,

Courtly nobles stepping through them,

Smiling dames with jewels bright.

Round her own brow, in her dreaming,

She a coronet has bound;

Round her waist, so lithe and slender,

Venus' girdle she has wound.

Charms the knights of manly bearing,

Courtly nobles seek her grace,

Maidens free from envious passions

Love her kind and smiling face.

Now her dreams are growing fainter,

And her eyelids heavy grow;

Dull the waning firelight flickers

On her brow as white as snow.

Lower droop the heavy eyelids--

Weary eyes they cover quite--

And the dreamy girl is sleeping

Softly in the red firelight.

THIRTY DAYS WITH THE SEVENTY-FIRST REGIMENT.

The 71st Regiment N.Y.S.N.G. left New York to aid in repelling the

invasion of Pennsylvania on the 17th of June. On the 19th, having

meantime determined to 'go to the wars,' Dick and I presented ourselves

at the armory, inquiring whether we could follow and join the regiment,

and were told briefly to report there at one o'clock on Monday next, and

go on with a squad.

So at one o'clock on Monday we stood ready in the armory, duly clothed

in blue and buttons; but long after the appointed hour we waited without

moving, I taking the chance to practise in putting on my knapsack and

accoutrements, whose various straps and buckles seemed at first as

intricate as a ship's rigging, and benefiting by the kindly hints of

regular members who sent substitutes this trip.

At length came the word, 'Fall in,' and the squad formed, about a

hundred. A few minutes' drill ensued, sufficing to show me that I needed

considerably more, and then out--down Broadway to Cortlandt

street--aboard the ferry boat--into the cars, and about half past seven

actually off, amid the cheers and wavings of the bystanders, men, women,

and children.

'Gone for a soger!' Should I ever come back? Perhaps I should wish

myself home again soon enough. However, that couldn't be now, so good-by

everything and everybody, and into it head and heels.

I went, among other reasons, chiefly to see _what it was like_, and I

will record my experience;--for though, since the war began, tales and

sketches of military life have been written and read without number, and

we have all become sufficiently learned in warlike matters to see how

ignorant of, and unprepared for war the nation was at the outbreak of

the rebellion; yet, all I saw and learned was new to me, and may prove

interesting to some others.

Tuesday morning by daylight we were in Harrisburg, and marched from the

cars to the Capitol grounds through the just awaking town, escorted by

one policeman armed with a musket. There a wash at a hydrant refreshed

me--then to breakfast in a temporary shed-like erection near the depot.

An army breakfast! Huge lumps of bread and salt junk, and coffee. To

this I knew it must come; but just then, after spending the night in the

cars, the most I could do was to swallow some coffee, scorning however

to join those who dispersed through the town for a civilized

breakfast--wherein I intended to be soldierly, though before long I

learned that your old soldier is the very man who goes upon the plan of

snatching comfort whenever he can.

But the regiment was at Chambersburg; so for Chambersburg we took the

cars, a distance, I believe, of about fifty miles.

Chambersburg, however, we were not destined to reach. Along the route we

met all sorts of rumors: 71st cut up; six men in the 8th killed;

fighting still going on a little in front, &c., &c.;--a prospect of

immediate work. So in ignorance and doubt we came to Carlisle. Here we

were greeted by part of the 71st, and the truth proved to be that the

8th and 71st had retreated to this place the night before. 'Not, not the

six hundred,' however, for the left wing of our regiment had somehow

been left behind, and nothing was certainly known of it. At all events,

we were to go no farther, and out of the cars we came. Old members

exchanged greetings, and recruits made acquaintances.

But what were we going to do? I could not learn. We waited, having

stacked arms, some sleeping beneath the trees in the College grounds,

until the lieutenant-colonel appeared upon the scene. Then we marched,

back and forth; toward the cars--'going back to Harrisburg;' past the

cars--'no, not to Harrisburg'--through the main street, and turned away

from the town, still unconscious of officers' intentions. We privates

never know anything of plans or objects. We never know where we are

going till we get there, nor what we are to do till we do it, and then

we don't know what we are going to do next. I soon got used to this; and

although conjectures and prophecies fly through the ranks, of all kinds,

from shrewd to ridiculous, I very early learned it was sheer bother of

one's brains attempting to discover anything, and ceased to ask

questions or form theories--getting up when I heard 'Company I, fall

in,' without seeking to know whether it was for march, drill, picket

duty, or what not. Company officers seldom know more about the matter

than their men, and I speedily came to content myself with trying to

extract from past work and present position some general notion of the

'strategy' of our movements. Nor is this ignorance wholly unblissful, as

leaving always room for hope that the march is to be short or the coming

work pleasant. Well, in the present case, just out of the town we halted

in the Fair grounds; an ample field, a high tight face around it, a

large shed in the centre. We all stacked arms--most went to sleep. I

always took sleep when I could, because, in a regiment constantly on the

move as ours was, if you don't want it now, you will before long.

By and by, in came the left wing, weary but safe, and were greeted with

three tremendous cheers. I hastened to find Company I. The first

lieutenant had come on with us--the captain I had not yet seen. To him I

was now introduced.

Very soon the Fair ground was a camp; we on one side--the 8th N.Y.,

Colonel Varian, opposite. Tents were up, fires blazing, and cooking and

eating going on. As I had not started with the regiment, I had no tent,

and none could be had here, so my camping consisted of piling my traps

in a heap. But I needed none, and indeed, throughout the whole time was

under one but twice. Tents are all very well, when you are quietly

encamped for any length, of time; but when, as with us, you are on the

more continually, I consider them a humbug and nuisance. You must carry

half a one all day, and at night join it with your comrade's half. The

common shelter tent, which is the only one that can be so carried, is a

poor protection against heavy rain, for the water can beat in at the

sides and form pools beneath you; against midday sun you can guard with

a blanket and two muskets, and at any other time you need no shelter.

That night I went on guard. Two hours you watch, four for sleep, and

then two hours you watch again. All quiet, save that two or three

prisoners are brought in from the front to be deposited in limbo, and

gazed at in the morning by recruits who have never seen a live rebel.

The most surprising thing I learned in these first days, was that

everything one has will certainly be stolen by his own regiment, even by

his own company, if he does not watch it carefully. This practice is

styled '_winning_.' It is simple, naked stealing, in no wise to be

excused or palliated, and utterly disgraceful. It imposes, moreover, the

grievous nuisance of remaining to guard your property when you would be

loafing about, or of carrying everything--no light load--with you,

wherever you go. Of course, all colonels should prevent this, and one of

any force and energy could easily do so; but Colonel ---- is not of that

kind. An excellent company officer, as I judge, he has not the activity

and nerve required in the commander of a regiment, and many a wish did

I hear expressed in those thirty days that his predecessor, Colonel

Martin, were still in command. Confidence in his bravery before the

enemy, was universal; but many things necessary to the decorum,

discipline, health, &c., of the regiment devolve duties finally upon the

colonel, for whose discharge other qualities than bravery are needed.

The next afternoon, the 24th, our laziness is disturbed by orders to

take three days' rations; our knapsacks are to be sent to Harrisburg; we

are to pack up everything, to be ready to move, Nobody knows, of course,

what it means; but a decided conviction prevails that 'something heavy

is up.' Presently a hollow square is 'up,' formed of the 8th and

ourselves, field officers in the centre. Colonel Varian advances.

Unquestionably a speech. Perhaps a few Napoleonic words on the eve of

battle. No; Colonel Varian wishes to explain that it was nobody's fault

that our left wing was deserted at Chambersburg, in order to prevent ill

feeling between the regiments. He does so, and appeals to our

lieutenant-colonel. Our lieutenant-colonel verifies and indorses.

Perfectly satisfactory; in evidence of which the two commands exchange

cheers.

Henceforth we and the 8th are fast friends. We have other friends

also--Captain Miller's battery, of Pennsylvania, has been in front with

us, and though out for 'the emergency,' declares it will stay as long as

the 71st. So we all fraternize, hailing any member as '8th,' '71st,' or

'Battery,' and cheer when we pass each other. The 8th are good cheerers,

and though we outnumbered them, I think they outdid us in three times

three and a 'tiger,' the inevitable refrain. The 'tiger' (sounding

tig-a-h-h) is the test of a cheer. If the cheer be a spontaneous burst

of hearty good feeling, the tiger concentrates its energy, and is full

and prolonged--if it be only the cheer courteous or the cheer civil, the

tiger will fall off and die prematurely.

Just at dark we left camp, passed rapidly through the town, along the

turnpike about two miles, and halted in a cornfield beside the road,

where we formed line of battle. We received orders to 'load at will,'

and fire low. The 8th were on the opposite side of the road, and their

battery somewhere near us. After some time, nobody appearing, permission

was given to thrust our muskets by the bayonets in the ground; and soon

after, one by one, the men dropped off asleep. The evening had been

extremely sensational. The sudden departure, the rapid march, whither

and for what we knew not, yet full of momentary expectation; the orders

and preparations indicating the imminence of grim, perhaps ghastly work,

in the night hours; the line of men, stretching beyond sight in the

darkness, far from home, and, it might be, near to death, sleeping yet

waiting:--the total was singularly impressive.

Nevertheless, I too was soon asleep, and slept undisturbed till morning.

Then, rebels or no rebels, we must have breakfast. There was none to be

had in the regiment; but the farmhouses supplied us, and an ancient dame

intermitted packing her goods for flight, to cook the pork which made

part of my three days' rations. Then I stretched myself beneath the

shade of a roadside house within sound of orders, and having nothing

else on hand, went to sleep again.

I was now broken in. Camp rations I could eat; camp coffee, though

always _sans_ milk and often _sans_ sugar, I deemed good; a wash was a

luxury, not a necessity; and I could sleep anywhere.

When I was aroused, I found a barricade thrown up across the road, and a

force of contrabands digging a trench across the field. A cavalry picket

reported the enemy within half a mile, advancing. The citizens came out

from Carlisle to aid us, and we went in line into the trenches. Two men

were detailed from each company to carry off the wounded; the red

hospital flag fluttered upon a house behind us, and the colonel,

passing in front, told us they were very near, and exhorted us not to

let them pass. But the day wore on to evening, and no rebels appeared,

and at dark we moved again. Starting in a heavy rain, we marched nine

miles to the borders of a town known as New Kingston. Here we halted

while quarters were hunted up. Every man, tired with the rapid walking

through rain and mud, squatted at once in the road, no matter where, and

then along the whole column singing began. A soldier will sing under all

circumstances, comfortable or uncomfortable.

At length we moved into the town and took possession of a church,

distributing ourselves in aisles, pews, and pulpit. What little remained

of the night, we were glad to have in quiet. It had been questionable

whether we could reach Kingston, for on the march it was rumored that we

were flanked; and a man, emerging from the shade as we passed, had asked

a question of the chaplain, and, receiving no answer, had retreated a

few yards, and fired his piece in the air, which looked very like a

signal. The next morning, the 26th, we went into camp in woods just in

front of the town, while the general and the surgeon established

headquarters in the town.

Here we repeated substantially the programme of the day before, except

that continuous rain was substituted for the baking sun, and proved far

more endurable.

On the afternoon of the 27th we marched some seven or eight miles, and

encamped at night in Oyster Point, about two miles from Harrisburg.

Sunday! the 28th of June. My first Sunday with the regiment. No rumors

of the enemy reach us, and to us privates the prospect is of a quiet

day. The boys gather round the chaplain for divine service. And as for a

few minutes we renew our connection with civilization, and, amid stacked

arms, tents, camp fires, and the paraphernalia of war, sing psalms and

hymns, and listen to the chaplain's prayer, I decide that this surpasses

all luxury possible in camp. I shall never forget that 'church.'

But no Sunday in camp. Hardly were the services concluded, when we went

forward a little to an orchard, and then line of battle again. This

performance of 'laying for a fight' which never came, had by this time

grown tame, in fact intolerably stupid, and I for one was growing tired

of sitting in silence, when boom! crash! a cannon shot in front of us,

the smoke visible too, curling above the woods, and showing how near it

had been fired. A smothered 'Ah!' and 'Now you've got it, boys,' went

through the ranks. It was no humbug this time. The rebels were shelling

the woods as they advanced.

But it appeared we were not to receive them at that spot, for suddenly

we were ordered off again, and marched across lots, to the destruction

of many a bushel of wheat, clear into the intrenchments in front of

Harrisburg. There for the remainder of the day we waited in line. Other

regiments, we knew not what, were near us in different positions. The

signal flags were waving, and officers galloping by constantly, of whom

the quartermaster was hailed with shouts of 'Grub, grub.'

That night my company and two others went out on picket, taking position

near our camp of the day before. In the morning we advanced a little to

a lane--a cobbler's stall was converted into headquarters, and the half

of the company not on duty went foraging for dinner. Pigs and chickens

were captured, and cooking began in the kitchen of a deserted house

close by. Apple butter, too, the prevalent institution in Pennsylvania,

was found in plenty. So the two halves of the company relieved each

other in standing guard and picnicking. Meantime, however, the rebels,

from the woods just in front, were paying their respects with two-inch

shell, which shrieked and crashed through the branches, bursting over

us, around us, and many of them altogether too near to be pleasant.

Moreover, by one of those blunders which cannot always be avoided, some

of our own men, mistaking us, opened fire on our rear; but to this a

stop was speedily put by a flag of truce, improvised from a ramrod and a

white handkerchief. We were allowed to fire only three or four volleys

in return. This skirmishing tries courage, I believe, more than a

pitched battle. To lie on the ground for hours, two or three miles in

front of your main body, ten feet from the nearest man, and be fired at

without firing yourself or making any noise, is a different thing from

standing in your place amid the throng and all the noise, excitement,

and enthusiasm of a battle, earnestly occupied in firing as fast as you

can. In a battle all the circumstances combine to produce high

excitement and drive fear out of a man, leaving room only for that kind

of courage properly called fearlessness or _intrepidity_, belonging to

men like Governor Pickens, 'born insensible to fear.' But the highest

grade of courage is that which, despite of fear, stands firm. That is

the courage of principle, of _morale_, as opposed to purely physical

courage. It is the last degree--at the next step we rise into heroism.

In the afternoon we were relieved by a Pennsylvania company, and as we

retired in full sight of the rebels, the rascals yelled at us, and gave

us several volleys, from which it is wonderful that every man escaped.

That evening we moved to the extreme rear, into Fort Washington, on the

bank of the river in front of Harrisburg. Here it was said our advance

work was over, and we were promised comfortable quarters and rest.

Any one nowadays can see a camp, but only one who has seen it can

understand how picturesque it is. The night scene at Harrisburg was

beautiful in the extreme. Behind us slept the city--we guarded it in

front, and the river rolled between. The moonlight, illuminating a most

exquisite scenery, between the foliage gave glimpses of that placid

stream, and shone upon the tents and bayonets of some six thousand men

within the formidable works; the expiring fires sent up wreaths of

smoke; grim guns looked over the ramparts down the gentle slope in front

and up the beautiful Cumberland Valley; and only the occasional call of

the sentry for the corporal of the guard broke the serene stillness.

Here were our friends of the 8th, and here we regained our knapsacks.

Many of them had been 'gone through,' and everything 'won.' The 56th and

22d New York, the 23d and 18th Brooklyn, besides others, were encamped

inside.

Here we were sworn into the United States service for thirty days from

the 17th June.

On Wednesday, July 1st, all our prospect of camp life, with its

regularity of drill, inspection, and, above all, of rations, was dashed

by orders to move in the morning to Carlisle. General Knipe, riding

through camp, was asked where he was going to take us. 'Right into the

face of the enemy,' said he. 'Hi, hi!' shouted the men.

So away we went again. I was detailed to guard baggage, and remained,

loading wagons, &c., subject to the quartermaster, and went on in the

cars to Carlisle, where, on the evening of the 3d, I joined the regiment

when it came in.

Since we left Carlisle the rebels had been there and burned the

barracks. They had shelled the town the night before, and the 37th had

had a sharp skirmish with them.

On the morning of the 4th July we started about ten thousand strong--a

movement in force. The battle of Gettysburg had been fought, the danger

to Harrisburg was past, and, without knowing exactly where we were

bound, it was plain that we were to cooperate with Meade. That day we

made a long march. Our knapsacks were left behind. The first six miles

were well enough. We move on slowly, the sun overclouded, the road good,

and marching, as always is allowed on a long march (save when we pass

through a town), without order or file. The men talk, laugh, and sing,

get water and tobacco from the roadside dwellers, and chaff them with

all sorts of absurd questions. The first six miles are pleasant. At the

foot of the South Mountains we rest. This is Papertown. Papertown, as

far as visible, consists of one house. From the piazza of said house, an

8th makes a speech: I am not near enough to hear, but suppose it funny,

for colonels and all laugh. Some go to eating, some to sleep, some take

the chance, as is wise, to wash their feet at the stream below, the best

preventive of blisters.

In an hour it begins to rain, and we start to go through the Gap, along

which we meet squads of prisoners and deserters from Lee's army. Eleven

miles through that rain. I have never seen such rain before; it is

credited to the cannonading which for days past has been going on all

around. Trudge, trudge; in fifteen minutes soaked through, in half an

hour walking in six inches of water, in two hours walking in six inches

of mud. Then throw away blankets and overcoats--men fall behind done

up--men can go no farther for sore feet.

At Pine Grove, that night, Company I, out of seventy men, musters thirty

at roll call. The different regiments scatter over half a mile of

ground. Every fence about is converted into fuel. The cattle and hogs in

the fields are levied upon--shot, dressed, cooked, and eaten. There is

nothing else to be had, and the wagons cannot follow us for some time

over such roads. So officers shut their eyes. It rains still, but we can

be no wetter than we are, so we lie down and take it. This is our

glorious Fourth!

In the morning--Sunday morning again--there is nothing to eat. In the

town, which comprises half a dozen houses and an old foundery, the

answer is, 'The rebels has eat us all out.' A few secure loaves of

bread, paying as high as a dollar; another few boil what coffee they had

carried with them and contrived to save from the rain. The rest have

nothing. Henceforth the order of the day is march and starve, and the

story is only of ceaseless fatigue, hunger, and rain. Thus far we have

stood stiff and taken it cheerfully. There was growling before we got

through.

Off again over the mountains.

If I have enough to eat, I can stand anything--if not, I break down. In

two miles I 'caved in.' The captain thought the regiment would return

shortly. So I staid behind. On Monday afternoon, however, they had not

come back, and I started after them. I got a meal and passed the night

in a house on the mountain, and, after some sixteen miles' walking,

caught them on the broad turnpike the next day, and marched some seven

miles farther, to Funkstown, Pennsylvania.

Here an episode. As we started the next morning (in the rain, of

course), I was sent to the rear to report to a sergeant. The sergeant,

with nine besides me, reported to the brigade quartermaster. The

quartermaster distributed the ten, with an equal number of the 23d,

through ten army wagons, to drive and guard. We went through

Chambersburg to Shippensburg, where we loaded with provisions. Here I

heard abundance of the doings of the rebels, who loaded seven hundred

wagons at this place. I bought Confederate money and got meals at a

hotel--at my own expense.

On Friday evening, the 10th, we rejoined the column at Waynesboro', a

welcome arrival, for grub was terribly scarce. Here was the Sixth Corps,

Army of the Potomac, under General Neal--'Bucky Neal,' a 'Potomaker'

called him. For a time we belonged to it, and adorned our caps with the

badge of the corps, cut out of cracker.

On Saturday evening we crossed the line into Maryland, fording the

Antietam creek, the bridge over which the rebs had burned; and Sunday we

footed it back and forth over roads and across lots, bringing up at

Cavetown.

'Earthquakes, as usual,' wrote Lady Sale, in her 'Diary.' 'Rain, as

usual,' wrote we. And such rain! They do a heavy business in rain in

that region, and in thunder and lightning, too. I have heard Western

thunder storms described, but I doubt if they surpass such as are common

beneath these mountains. Four poor fellows of the 56th, who were sitting

beneath a tree, were struck by lightning--one of them killed.

On Monday we camped at Boonsboro', and on Tuesday beside a part of

Meade's army. When I saw all the wagons here, and what an immense job it

is to move any considerable force, with all the delays that may come

from broken wheels, lame horses, and bad roads, I could not but smile at

the military critics at home, who show you how general this should have

made a rapid movement so; or general that hurled a force upon that

point, &c.

Here, near Boonsboro', on Tuesday night, the 14th, news of the riot in

New York reached us. The near approach of the expiration of our time had

already made much talk of home, and now anxiety was doubled. Rumors flew

through camp, and all ears and mouths were open, and before we settled

for the night it came. Orderlies carried directions through the ranks to

have all ready and clean up pieces to go home.

In the morning our Battery friends came up to say good-by. Seventy-first

buttons were exchanged for their crossed-cannon badges, songs sung and

cheers given _ad lib_.

Soon we all started, bound, we knew, for the cars at Frederick City. The

last march! It was very warm, and the road across the mountains often

steep, but there was little straggling.

Most incidents of soldier life grow tame, but to the last the spectacle

of the column on march retained its impressiveness for me.

We passed through Frederick just at dusk--ejaculating tenderly 'Ah! ah!'

as fair damsels waved handkerchiefs at us--and went out to the junction.

The cars were ready. We had done the last march. Twenty-five miles that

day! And I had gone through this month of walking without foot trouble,

for which I am indebted to my 'pontoons,' i.e., Government shoes. Take

them large enough, and they are the only things to walk in.

Marching is the hardest thing I met with. I have always been a regular

and good walker. But ordinary walking is no preparation for marching.

The weight of musket and accoutrements, the dust (rain and mud in our

case), the inability to see before you, and the necessity of keeping up

in place, are all wearing and nervously exhausting.

We did not get off at once. Red tape delayed us, and we growled

savagely. But we had plenty to eat, and a river beside us. So, bathing

and eating, we passed Thursday in sight of the train. At length red tape

was untied, and Thursday night the 8th and 71st set off, in cattle cars.

This time the advance was a privilege. In Baltimore we were beset by

women trying to sell cakes, and boys trying to beg cartridges. Along the

road we ate, smoked, and slept. In Philadelphia we had 'supper' in the

'United States Volunteers' Refreshment Saloon.' I remember a bright girl

there, who got me a second cup of coffee.

And so, Saturday morning, the 18th, we took the boat at Amboy, within

two hours of home! But there was less hilarity than usual on the return

of a regiment. Our news from the city was not the latest, and our

grimmest work might be to come--and in New York! Woe to any show of a

mob we had met! The indignation was deep and intense.

But in two minutes after we landed on the Battery, papers were

circulated through the ranks, and we knew all was quiet.

So up Broadway. We were too early in the street to gather much of a

crowd. Those who were out hailed us heartily, and at the corner of Grand

street or thereabouts an ardent individual from a fourth-story window,

plying two boards cymbal-wise (_clap_-boards, say), initiated a

respectable noise. And so round the corner and into the armory at Centre

Market. The campaign was over, and a few days after we were paid off and

mustered out.

As I said, I went to see what it was like, and I saw. It is a strange

life, but a wholesome one, if you get a tolerable sufficiency to eat,

and not too heavy a dose of marching. So severe a time as we had is

terribly _physical_, and benumbs the brain somewhat. The campaign was

short, but the utmost was crowded into those thirty days.

The first portion was advance work, always arduous. General Knipe's work

was to check the rebel advance. He did so by going to the front and

meeting them, and then retreating slowly before them, making a stand and

demonstration of fight, at which their advance would fall back on the

main body, at whose approach he would up stakes, run a few miles, and

make another show. Thus he gained ten days' time, which enabled General

Couch, in command of the department, to fortify, and collect and

organize troops, and probably saved Harrisburg. And for the manner in

which he did it, without, too, the loss of a man, he deserves credit.

On the whole, did I like it? Well, I am glad I have been. But the exact

answer to that question is a sentence of Winthrop's, in his paper

'Washington as a Camp': 'It is monotonous, it is not monotonous, it is

laborious, it is lazy, it is a bore, it is a lark, it is half war, half

peace, and totally attractive, and not to be dispensed with from one's

experience in the nineteenth century.'

REASON, RHYME, AND RHYTHM.

CHAPTER VI.--TRUTH AND LOVE.

The Divine Attributes, the base of all true Art.

Art must be based upon a study of Nature, upon a clear and comprehensive

knowledge of natural laws. No man was ever yet a _great_ poet without

being at the same time a profound philosopher, for Poetry is the blossom

and fragrance of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions,

and human emotions. The poet must have the ability to observe things as

they really are, in order to depict them with accuracy, unchanged by any

passion in the mind of the describer, whether the things to be depicted

are actually present to the senses, or have a place only in the memory.

Nature may be regarded either as the home of man, and consequently

associated with all the phases of his existence; or as an assemblage of

symbols, manifesting the thoughts of the Creator. In accordance with the

first view, the poet may give it its place in the different scenes of

human life, animated with our passions, sympathizing with us, and

expressing our feelings; in the second, he must try to interpret this

divine language, to seize the idea gleaming through the veil of the

material envelope, for there is an established harmony between material

nature and intellectual. Every thought has its reflection in a visible

object which repeats it like an echo, reflects it like a mirror,

rendering it sensible first to the senses by the visible image, then to

the thought by the thought.

Genius is the instinct of discovering some more of the words in this

divine language of universal analogies, the key of which God alone

possesses, but some portions of whose stores he sometimes deigns to

unclose for man. Therefore in earlier times the Prophet, an inspired

poet; and the poet, an uninspired prophet--were both considered holy.

They are now looked upon as insane or useless; and indeed, this is but a

logical consequence of the so-called _utilitarian_ views. If only the

material and palpable part of nature which may be calculated, percented,

turned into gold, or made to minister to sensual pleasures, is to be

regarded with interest; if the lessons of the harvest, with its 'good

seed and tares,' and the angels, its reapers; the teachings of the

sparrow and the Divine Love which watched over them; the grass and the

lilies of the field clothed in splendor by their Creator, are to awaken

neither hope nor fear--then men are right in despising those who

preserve a deep reverence for moral beauty; the idea of God in his

creation; and respect the language of images, the mysterious relations

between the visible and invisible worlds. Is it asked what does this

language prove? The answer is, God and Immortality! Alas! they are worth

nothing on 'Change!

Yet let him who would study his own happiness and well-being, follow the

advice given in the Good Book:

'Look upon the rainbow, and bless Him that made it, _for it is very

beautiful_.

'It encompasseth the heavens about with the circle of its glory;

the hands of the Most High have displayed it.'

As creation is symbolic, and the province of the poet is humbly to

imitate the works of the Great Artist, we must expect to find him also

make use of symbolic language, imagery.

Metaphor (metapherô) is the application of a physical fact to the moral

order; the association of an external material fact to one internal and

intellectual. As this association is not reflective, but spontaneous,

and is found pervading the infancy of languages; as it is intuitively

and generally understood; it must take place in accordance with a mental

law which establishes natural relations of analogy between the moral

world and the physical. To become perceptible, thought must be imaged,

reflected upon a sensuous form; the definition by an image is generally

the most clear and complete. We may have clear enough ideas of some

invisible truth in our own minds, but if we would convey our conception

to another, we cannot give it to him by a pure idea, for then we would

still be in the internal world of intellect; we must go out from this

internal world, we must seek a sign in the physical world that he can

see and contemplate; we select some phenomenon which can be easily

observed, and in accordance with the law of analogy of which we have

just spoken, we associate our thought with it, and in this manner we can

clearly communicate the thought we have conceived.

Almost all the ideas we have of the moral world are expressed through

metaphors: thus we say the _movements_ or _emotions_ of the soul; the

_clearness_ or _coloring_ of a style; the _heat_ or _warmth_ of a

discourse; the _hardness_ or _softness_ of the heart, &c., &c. Language

_expresses_ the invisible thought of the soul; in accordance with the

etymology of the word (exprimere) it _presses_ them from the soul, from

the realm of internal thought, to transport them to the visible sphere.

But the etymology itself is nothing but a metaphor, for the immaterial

facts of the soul always remain in their own region inaccessible to the

senses, and the instinctive facts of the organism always remain in the

visible world, so that there can be no actual passage from one to the

other, for an immaterial fact cannot be changed into a material

one:--association, simultaneousness, correlation may obtain between

them, but nothing more.

Saint Thomas Aquinas asserts 'that in our present state of degradation

the intellect comprehends nothing without an image.' Language is in

reality the association of material facts to facts of the will, heart,

and intellect. Apparently insufficient to give a full idea of material

things alone, it would seem almost impossible that it should ever be

able to express the facts of the invisible world; but the human spirit,

in accordance with the mental law impressed upon it by the Hand Divine,

seizes the analogies of the _moral_ phenomena with the phenomena of

_nature_, and, seeing physical facts used as symbols by the Creator to

convey ethical, also instinctively uses them to express the facts of the

moral world; and thus is born the _human Word_ which, invisibly

ploughing the waves of the unseen air, can convey the most subtile

thought, the most evanescent shade of feeling, the wildest, darkest, and

deepest emotion. Language is man's expression of the finite, with its

infinite meanings modified by the extent of his intelligence and his

power of expression. It is truly a universal possession, but every man

gifts it with his own individualities, his own idiosyncrasies. The

style, one might almost say, is the man.

Thus the imagery of language finds its base in the very essence of our

being. The poet is one gifted to seize upon these hidden analogies, to

read these mystic symbols, and, through the force of his own

imagination, to reveal them to his brethren in truth and love.

The imagination has two distinct functions. It combines, and by

combination creates new forms; it penetrates, analyzes, and realizes

truths _discoverable by no other faculty_.

An imagination of high power of combination seizes and associates at the

_same moment all_ the important ideas of its work or poem, so that while

it is working with any one of them, it is at the same instant working

with and modifying them all in their several relations to it. It never

once loses sight of their bearings upon each other--as the volition

moves through every part of the body of a snake at the same moment,

uncoiling some of its involute rings at the very instant it is coiling

others. This faculty is inconceivable, admirable, almost divine; yet no

less an operation is necessary for the production of any great work, for

by the definition of unity of membership above given, not only certain

couples or groups of parts, but _all_ the parts of a noble work must be

separately imperfect; each must imply and ask for all the rest; the

glory of every one of them must consist in its relation to the rest;

neither while so much as _one_ is wanting can _any_ be right. This

faculty is indeed something that looks as if its possessor were made in

the Divine image!

'The hand that rounded Peter's dome,

And groined the aisles of Christian Rome,

Wrought in a sad sincerity;

Himself from God he could not free;

He builded better than he knew;--

The conscious stone to beauty grew.'

EMERSON.

By the power of the combining imagination various ideas are chosen from

an infinite mass, ideas which are separately imperfect, but which shall

together be perfect, and of whose unity therefore the idea must be

formed at the very moment they are seized, as it is only in that unity

that their appropriateness consists, and therefore only the conception

of that unity can prompt the preference. Therefore he alone can conceive

and compose who sees the _whole_ at once before him.

Shakspeare is the great example of this marvellous power. Not only is

every word which falls from the lips of his various characters true to

his first conception of them, so true that we always know how they will

act under any given circumstances, and we could substitute no other

words than the words used by them without contradicting our first

impression of them; but every character with which they come in contact

is not only ever true to itself, but is precisely of the nature best

fitted to develop the traits, vices, or virtues of the main figure. So

perfect and complete is this lifelike unity, that we can scarcely think

of one of his leading characters without recalling all those with whom

it is associated. If we name Juliet, for instance, not only is her idea

inseparable from that of Romeo, but the whole train of Montagues and

Capulets, Mercutio, Tybalt, the garrulous nurse, the lean apothecary,

the lonely friar, sweep by. What an exquisite trait of the poetic

temperament, tenderness, and human sympathies of this same lonely friar

is given us in his exclamation:

'Here comes the lady: O, so light a foot

Will ne'er wear out the everlasting flint.'

It also explains to us that it was the good friar's unconscious

affection for Juliet, the pure sympathies of a lonely but loving heart,

which so imprudently induced him to unite the unfortunate young lovers.

The men and women of Shakspeare live and love, and we cannot think of

them without at the same time thinking of those with whom they lived and

whom they loved. Indeed, when we can wrest any character in a drama from

those which surround it, and study it apart, the unity of the _whole_ is

but apparent, never vital. Simplicity, harmony, life, power, truth, and

love, are all to be found in any high work of the _associative_

imagination.

We now proceed to characterize the _penetrative_ imagination, 'which

analyzes and realizes truths discoverable by no other faculty.' Of this

faculty Shakspeare is also master. Ruskin, from whom we continue to

quote, says: It never stops at crusts or ashes, or outward images of any

kind, but ploughing them all aside, plunges at once into the very

central fiery heart; its function and gift are the getting at the root;

its nature and dignity depend on its holding things always _by the

heart_. Take its hand from off the beating of that, and it will prophesy

no longer; it looks not into the eyes, it judges not by the voice, it

describes not by outward features; all that it affirms, judges, or

describes, it affirms from _within_. There is _no reasoning_ in it; it

works not by algebra nor by integral calculus; it is a piercing

Pholas-like mind's tongue that works and tastes into the very

rock-heart; no matter what be the subject submitted to it, substance or

spirit, all is alike divided asunder, joint and marrow; whatever utmost

truth, life, principle it has laid bare, and that which has no truth,

life, nor principle, is dissipated into its original smoke at a touch.

The whispers at men's ears it lifts into visible angels. Vials that have

lain sealed in the sea a thousand years it unseals, and brings out of

them genii.

Every great conception of Art is held and treated by this faculty. Every

character touched by men like Æschylus, Homer, Dante, or Shakspeare, is

by them held by the _heart_; and every circumstance or sentence of their

being, speaking, or seeming, is seized by a process from _within_, and

is referred to that inner secret spring of which the hold is never lost

for a moment; so that every sentence, as it has been thought out from

the heart, opens a way down to the heart, and leads us to the very

centre of life. Hence there is in every word set down by the Imagination

an awful undercurrent of meaning--an evidence and shadow upon it of the

deep places out of which it has come.

In this it utterly differs from the Fancy, with which it is often

confounded.

Fancy sees the outside, and is able to give a portrait of the outside,

clear, brilliant, and full of detail. The Imagination sees the heart and

inner nature, and makes them felt; but in the clear seeing of things

beneath, is often impatient of detailed interpretation, being sometimes

obscure, mysterious, and abrupt. Fancy, as she stays at the externals,

never feels. She is one of the hardest hearted of the intellectual

faculties; or, rather, one of the most purely and simply intellectual.

She cannot be made serious; no edge tools but she will play with; while

the Imagination cannot but be serious--she sees too far, too darkly, too

solemnly, too earnestly, to smile often! There is something in the heart

of everything, if we can reach it, at which we shall not be inclined to

laugh. Those who have the deepest sympathies are those who pierce

deepest, and those who have so pierced and seen the melancholy deeps of

things, are filled with the most intense passion and gentleness of

sympathy. The power of an imagination may almost be tested by its

accompanying degree of tenderness; thus there is no tenderness like

Dante's, nor any seriousness like his--such seriousness that he is quite

incapable of perceiving that which is commonplace or ridiculous.

Imagination, being at the heart of things, poises herself there, and is

still, calm, and brooding; but Fancy, remaining on the outside of

things, cannot see them all at once, but runs hither and thither, and

round about, to see more and more, bounding merrily from point to point,

glittering here and there, but necessarily always settling, if she

settle at all, on a _point_ only, and never embracing the whole. From

these simple points she can strike out analogies and catch resemblances,

which are true so far as the point from which she looks is concerned,

but would be false, could she see through to the other side. This,

however, she does not care to do--the point of contact is enough for,

her; and even if there be a great gap between two things, she will

spring from one to the other like an electric spark, and glitter the

most brightly in her leaping. Fancy loves to follow long chains of

circumstance from link to link; but the Imagination grasps a link in the

middle that implies all the rest, and settles there.

'Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,

[Imagination.

The tufted crowtoe and pale jessamine,

[Nugatory.

The white pink and the pansy streaked with jet,

[Fancy.

The glowing violet,

[Imagination.

The musk rose and the well attired woodbine,

[Fancy, vulgar.

With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,

[Imagination.

And every flower that sad embroidery wears.

[Mixed.

MILTON.

'Oh, Proserpina,

For the flowers now that frighted thou lett'st fall

From Dis's wagon. Daffodils

That come before the swallow dare, and take

The winds of March with beauty. Violets, dim,

But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes

Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses

That die unmarried, ere they can behold

Bright Phoebus in his strength, a malady

Most incident to maids.'

Here the Imagination goes into the inmost soul of every flower, after

having touched them all with that heavenly timidness, the shadow of

Proserpine's; and, gilding them all with celestial gathering, never

stops on their spots or their bodily shape; while Milton sticks in the

stains upon them, and puts us off with that unhappy streak of jet in the

very flower that without this bit of paper staining would have been the

most precious to us of all.

'There is pansies--that's for thoughts.'

Can the tender insight of the Imagination be more fully manifested than

in the grief of Constance?

'And, father cardinal, I have heard you say

That we shall see and know our friends in heaven:

If that be true, I shall see my boy again;

For, since the birth of Cain, the first male child,

To him that did but yesterday suspire,

There was not such a gracious creature born.

But now will canker sorrow eat my bud,

And chase the native beauty from his cheek;

And he will look as hollow as a ghost,

As dim and meagre as an ague's fit;

And so he'll die; and, rising so again,

When I shall meet him in the court of heaven

I shall not know him: therefore, never--never--

Shall I behold my pretty Arthur more.

* * * * *

Grief fills the room up of my absent child,

Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me;

Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,

Remembers me of all his gracious parts,

Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;

Then have I reason to be fond of grief.

* * * * *

O lord, my boy, my Arthur, my fair son!

My life, my joy, my food, my all the world!

My widow-comfort and my sorrow's cure.'

This is the impassioned but simple eloquence of Nature, and Nature's

child: Shakspeare.

In these examples the reader will not fail to remark that the

Imagination seems to gain much of its power from its love for and

sympathy with the objects described. Not only are the objects with which

it presents us _truthfully_ rendered, but always _lovingly_ treated.

With the Greeks, the Graces were also the _Charities_ or _Loves_. It is

the love for living things and the sympathy felt in them that induce the

poet to give life and feeling to the plant, as Shelley to the 'Sensitive

Plant;' as Shakspeare, when he speaks to us through the sweet voices of

Ophelia and Perdita; as Wordsworth, in his poems to the Daisy, Daffodil,

and Celandine; as Burns in his Mountain Daisy. As a proof of the power

of the Imagination, through its _Truth,_ and _Love_, to invest the

lowest of God's creatures with interest, we offer the reader one of

these simple songs of the heart.

TO A MOUSE.

_On turning her up in her nest with the plough,

November, 1785._

Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie,

O, what a panic's in thy breastie!

Thou need na start awa sae hastie,

Wi' bickering brattle!

I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,

Wi' murd'ring pattle!

I'm truly sorry man's dominion

Has broken nature's social union,

An' justifies that ill opinion

Which makes thee startle

At me, thy poor earth-born companion

An' fellow mortal!

I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;

What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!

A daimen icher in a thrave

'S a sma' request;

I'll get a blessin' wi' the lave

An' never miss't!

Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin!

Its silly wa's the win's are strewin'!

An' naething, now, to big anew ane,

O' foppage green!

An' bleak December's winds ensuin',

Baith snell and keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste,

An' weary winter comin' fast,

An' cozie here beneath the blast,

Thou thought to dwell,

Till crash! the cruel coulter past

Out thro' thy cell.

That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble,

Has cost thee mony a weary nibble!

Now thou's turned out, for a' thy trouble,

Nor house nor hald,

To thole the winter's sleety dribble

An' cranreuch cold!

But, mousie, thou art no thy lane,

In proving foresight may be vain:

The best laid schemes o' mice an' men

Gang aft agley,

An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,

For promised joy.

Still thou art blest, compared with _me!_

The _present_ only toucheth thee:

But och! I _backward_ cast my e'e,

On prospects drear;

An' _forward_, though I canna see,

I guess and fear!

Poor Burns! Seventy years and more have passed since that cold November

morning on which he sang this simple and tender song, yet it is as fresh

in its rustic pathos, bathed in the quickening dews of the poet's heart,

as if it had sprung from the soul but an hour since: and fresh it will

still be long after the fragile hand now tracing this tribute to the

heart of love from which it flowed shall have been cold in an unknown

grave!

Such poems are worth folios of the erudite and stilted pages which are

now so rapidly pouring their scoria around us. Men seem ashamed now to

be simply natural. Either they have ceased to love, or to believe in the

dignity of loving. The great barrier to all real greatness in this

present age of ours is the fear of ridicule, and the low and shallow

love of jest and jeer, so that if there be in any noble work a flaw or

failing, or unclipped vulnerable part where sarcasm may stick or stay,

it is caught at, pointed at, buzzed about, and fixed upon, and stung

into, as a recent wound is by flies, and nothing is ever taken seriously

or as it was meant, but always perverted and misunderstood. While this

spirit lasts, there can be no hope of the achievement of high things,

for men will not open the secrets of their hearts to us, if we intend to

desecrate the holy, or to broil themselves upon a fire of thorns.

As the poet is full of love for all that God has made, because his

imagination enables him to seize it by the heart, he would in this love

fain gift the inanimate things of creation with life, that he might find

in them that happiness which pertains to the living; hence the constant

_personification_ of all that is in his pages. He personifies, he

individualizes, he gifts creation with life and passion, not willingly

considering any creature as subordinate to any purpose quite out of

itself, for then some of the pleasure he feels in its beauty is lost,

for his sense of its happiness is in that case destroyed, as its

emanation of inherent life is no longer pure. Thus the bending trunk,

waving to and fro in the wind above the waterfall, is beautiful because

it seems happy, though it is, indeed, perfectly useless to us. The same

trunk, hewn down and thrown across the stream, has lost its beauty. It

serves as a bridge--_it has become useful_, it lives no longer _for

itself_, and its pleasant beauty is gone, or that which it still retains

is purely typical, dependent on its lines and colors, not on its

functions. Saw it into planks, and though now fitted to become

permanently _useful_, its whole beauty is lost forever, or is to be

regained only in part, when decay and ruin shall have withdrawn it again

from _use_, and left it to receive from the hand of Nature the velvet

moss and varied lichen, which may again suggest ideas of inherent

happiness, and tint its mouldering sides with hues of life. For the

Imagination, unperverted, is essentially _loving_, and abhors all

utility based on the pain or destruction of any creature. It takes

delight in such ministering of objects to each other as is consistent

with the essence and energy of both, as in the clothing of the rock by

the herbage, and the feeding of the herbage by the stream.

We have seen that the soul rejects exaggeration or falsehood in Art, and

indeed all high Art, that which men will not suffer to perish, has no

food, no delight, no care, no perception, except of truth; it is forever

looking under masks and burning up mists; no fairness of form, no

majesty of seeming will satisfy it; the first condition of its existence

is incapability of being deceived; and though it may dwell upon and

substantiate the fictions of fancy, yet its peculiar operation is to

trace to their farthest limits the _true laws_ and likelihoods even of

such fictitious creations.

As to its love, that is not only seen in its wish and struggle to

quicken all with the warm throb of happy life, but is also clearly

manifested in the lingering over its creations with clinging fondness,

'hating nothing that it maketh,' pruning, elaborating, and laboring to

gift with beauty the works of its patient hands, finishing every line in

love, that it too may feel its creations to be 'good.' For Love not only

gives wings, but also vital heat and life, to Genius.

Thus we again arrive at the fact that the two Divine attributes of Truth

and Love, in their finite form indeed, but still 'images,' are

absolutely necessary for the creation of any true work of Art. No work

can be great without their manifestation; unless they have brooded with

their silvery wings over its progress to perfection; and in exact

proportion to their manifestation will be its greatness. On these two

attributes in God repose in holy trust the universes He hath made; and

that which typifies or suggests His faithfulness and love to the soul

created to enjoy Him, must be a source, not only of Beauty, but of

Delight.

'For He made all things in wisdom; and Truth is perpetual and

immortal.'

'For Thou _lovest_ all things that are, and hatest none of the

things Thou hast made; for Thou didst not appoint or make anything,

hating it.'

We make no attempt to give an enumeration of the attributes on which

Beauty is based; we would rather induce the reader to examine his

Maker's great Book of Symbols for himself. We hope we have turned his

attention to the fact that every Letter in this sacred Language is full

of meaning; enough to induce him to investigate the glorious mysteries

of the '_Open Secret_.'

Whatever may be the decisions of the men of the senses, or the men of

the schools, let him fearlessly condemn any work in which he cannot find

wrought into its very heart suggestions or manifestations of the Divine

attributes, or an earnest effort on the part of its author, naive and

unconscious as it may be, to imitate the Spirit of the Great Artist.

We have placed the Rosetta stone of Art, with its threefold inscriptions

in Sculpture, Painting and Music, with their union or _resumé_ in

Poetry, before him; we have given him the key to some of its wondrous

hieroglyphics; let him study the remaining letters of this mystical

alphabet for himself! These inscriptions are indeed trilingual,

phonetic, and sacred, yet the simple and loving soul may decipher them

without the genius of Champollion; their meaning is written within it.

It will readily learn to connect the sign with the thing signified, and

under the fleeting forms of rhythmed time and measured space, learn to

detect the immutable principles which are to be its glory and joy for

eternity!

CURRENCY AND THE NATIONAL FINANCES.

1. _History of the Bank of England, its Times and Traditions, from 1694

to 1844._ By JOHN FRANCIS. First American Edition. _With Notes,

Additions, and an Appendix, including Statistics of the Bank to the

close of the year 1861._ By J. SMITH HOMANS, Author of the 'Cyclopædia

of Commerce and Commercial Navigation.' New York. 8vo, pp.476.

2. _Letter from the Secretary of the Treasury to the Chairman of the

Committee of Ways and Means, in relation to the Issue of an Additional

Amount of United States Treasury Notes._

3. _Report of the Secretary of the Treasury on the State of the Finances

of the United States for the Year ending June 30, 1862._

4. _The Tariff Question considered in regard to the Policy of England

and the Interests of the United States. With Statistical and Comparative

Tables._ By ERASTES B. BIGELOW. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 4to, pp. 103

and 242.

5. _The Bankers' Magazine and Statistical Register._ New York, monthly,

1861-2. Edited by J. SMITH HOMANS, jr.

The Bank of England was created during the urgent necessities of

national finance. It was a concession of a valuable privilege to a few

rich men, in consideration of their loaning the capital to the treasury.

'The estimates of Government expenditure in the year 1694 were

enormous,' says Macaulay, in his fourth volume. King William asked to

have the army increased to ninety-four thousand, at an annual expense of

about two and a half millions sterling--a small sum compared with what

it costs in the year 1862 to maintain an army of equal numbers.

At the period of the charter of the bank, the minds of men were on the

rack to conceive new sources of revenue with which to meet the increased

expenditures of the nation. The land tax was renewed at four shillings

in the pound, and yielded a revenue of two millions. A poll tax was

established. Stamp duties, which had prevailed in the time of Charles II

had been allowed to expire, but were now revived, and have ever since

been among the most prolific sources of income, yielding to the British

Government in the year 1862 no less than £8,400,000 sterling. Hackney

coaches were taxed, notwithstanding the outcries of the coachmen and the

resistance of their wives, who assembled around Westminster Hall and

mobbed the members. A new duty on salt was imposed, and finally resort

was had to the lottery, whereby one million sterling was raised. All

these resources were not sufficient for the growing wants of the

Government, and the plan of the Bank of England was devised to furnish

immediate relief to the finances. Montague brought the measure forward

in Parliament, and 'he succeeded,' as Macaulay remarks, 'not only in

supplying the wants of the state for twelve months, but in creating a

great institution, which, after the lapse of more than a century and a

half, continues to flourish, and which he lived to see the stronghold,

through all vicissitudes, of the Whig party, and the bulwark, in

dangerous times, of the Protestant succession.'

The birth of the bank and the birth of the English national debt were

both in King William's time. In 1691, when England was at war with

France, the national debt unfunded was £3,130,000, at an annual interest

of £232,000. In 1697, at the Peace of Ryswick, this debt had swollen to

£14,522,000. At the Peace of Utrecht, in 1713, it had reached

£34,000,000. The war with Spain in 1718 brought it up to forty millions

sterling. And here it might have rested, had the advice of Shakspeare

been followed:

'Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace.'

But England went to war with Spain 'on the right of search.' From 1691

to this time the debt had increased on an average about a million

sterling per year. As early as 1745 the credit of the bank was so

identified with that of the state, that during the invasion of the

Pretender, whose forces were at Derby, only one hundred and twenty miles

from London, the creditors of the bank flocked in crowds to its counter

to obtain specie for its notes. The merchants intervened and signed an

agreement to make the bank's notes receivable in all business

transactions.

The war of the Austrian succession followed in 1742, and at the Peace of

Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, 'forever to be maintained,' the English were

saddled with a debt of £75,000,000.

'Peace hath her victories,

No less renowned than war.'

It was early in the last century that the abuse of paper money gave a

lasting and unfavorable impression against such issues. The scheme of

John Law and the South Sea Bubble about the same time broke and

scattered their fragments over both England and France. It was in the

latter scheme or folly that Pope lost a large portion of his earnings,

from which we may infer that his temper was not improved. He wrote, in

his Third Epistle, dedicated to Lord Bathurst:

'Statesman and patriot ply alike the stocks;

Peeress and butler share alike the box;

And judges job, and bishops bite the town,

And mighty dukes pack cards for half a crown.'

In the same 'Moral Essay' he alludes to paper money in the following

lines:

'Blest paper credit! last and best supply!

That lends corruption lighter wings to fly!

Gold imp'd by thee, can compass hardest things,

Can pocket states, can fetch or carry kings;

A single leaf shall waft an army o'er,

Or ship off senates to a distant shore;

A leaf, like Sibyl's, scatter to and fro

Our fates and fortunes, as the winds shall blow:

Pregnant with thousands flits the scrap unseen,

And silent sells a king, or buys a queen.'

These are among the earliest tirades against paper money; which, like

many other good things, is condemned because its power has been abused

and prostituted.

England's enormous debt, which should have warned the Georges against

further war, was not contracted without severe sacrifices. The legal

rate of interest at the opening of the funding system was six per cent.

In 1714 it was reduced to five per cent. Loans during the early wars of

the eighteenth century were raised on annuities for lives on very high

terms, fourteen per cent. being granted for single lives, twelve per

cent. for two lives, and ten per cent. for three lives. But so far was

England from being awake to the enormous debt she was creating by her

expensive wars, that the seventy-five millions existing in 1748 became

£132,000,000 at the close of the Seven Years' War in 1763. This volume

was enlarged at the end of the American Revolution to £231,000,000.

During all this time the bank was the lever with which these enormous

sums were raised; but the end was not yet.

The French war with Napoleon became more exhaustive, and within twenty

years from the peace with America to the Peace of Amiens, in 1802, the

debt went up from £231,000,000 to £537,000,000 sterling. From this

period to 1815 the debt accumulated annually, until it reached its

maximum, or eight hundred and sixty-one millions sterling.

During these severe changes, reverses, extravagance, and extraordinary

governmental expenditure, the bank was considered the prop of national

finance. The French Revolution and its consequent war with England led

to many heavy outlays by the British Government. In 1795 the bank

desired the chancellor of the exchequer to make his arrangements for the

year without 'any further assistance' from the bank. This was again

urged in 1796, and the bank appealed again to Mr. Pitt.

'The only reply from Mr. Pitt was a request for a further

accommodation, on the credit of the consolidated fund, which the

court refused to sanction, until they had received satisfaction on

the topic of the treasury bills, and requested Mr. Pitt to enter

into a full explanation on this subject, which was not even touched

upon in his letter. This resolution being communicated, Mr. Pitt

wrote to the governor and deputy-governor on the 12th August, that

'they might depend upon measures being immediately taken for the

payment of one million, and a further payment, to the amount of one

million, being made in September, October, and November, in such

proportions as might be found convenient. But, as fresh bills might

arrive, he was under the necessity of requesting a latitude to an

amount not exceeding one million.' About the same period the court

'desired the governor and deputy-governor would express their

earnest desire that some other means might be adopted for the

future payment of bills of exchange drawn on the treasury.' (_Vide_

'History Bank of England,' pp. 114, 115.)

The circumstances of the nation and of the bank were known to the

capitalists and to the people. Hence various causes of uneasiness and

distress. The bank loaned the public treasury seven and a half millions

in the years 1794, 1795, 1796, and the more they loaned to the

exchequer, the less they could loan to the people. Thus followed a

diminution of gold in the bank, and hoarding by the people. Gold was

exported more freely to the Continent, and reduced accommodation was

given to the merchants. Finally, on the 26th February, 1797, the king's

council passed an order for the suspension of cash payments.

The bank was on the eve of suspension in the year 1847. On the 25th of

October the cabinet authorized a violation of the charter, thereby

acknowledging the inability of the bank to maintain specie payments.

This order of Lord John Russell inspired fresh confidence, and the bank

immediately recovered strength, and reduced the rate of interest from 8

per cent. in October to 7 per cent. in November, to 6 and 5 per cent. in

December, to 4 per cent. in January, and to 3-1/2 in June following. The

distress and revulsion of 1847 were consequent upon the over-trading

and railway mania of 1844, 1845, and 1846, and the failure of crops in

Ireland and England in 1847.

The distress of England in 1847 was scarcely over when France was more

severely affected than at any period since the Continental War. Louis

Philippe abdicated in February, 1848, when consols closed at 88-7/8. By

the close of the week they fell to 83, upon the formation of a

provisional government. The political dissensions and commercial

revulsion led to a large withdrawal of gold from the Bank of France, and

finally the Government authorized, in March, the suspension of the bank,

which was followed by the suspension of the Bank of Belgium and by the

_Société Generale_.

Again, in 1857, the Bank of England was on the verge of suspension. Lord

Palmerston and the then cabinet issued an order, November 12,

authorizing the bank, if they thought it advisable, again to violate the

charter; but it was found at the last moment unnecessary.

November was the critical period of the year 1857. The _Times_ of

November 12, 1857, contained these announcements:

1. Bank charter suspended.

2. Interest in London, 10 per cent.

3. " in Hamburg, 10 per cent.

4. " in Paris, 8-1/2 per cent.

5. " in New York, 25 per cent.

6. Suspension of cash payments generally

by all banks in the United States.

7. Two banks stopped in Glasgow,

and one in Liverpool, and a great bill

panic in London.

8. Commercial credit and transactions

almost suspended in the country.

9. Bullion in the bank, £7,170,000.

10. Reserve notes in the bank, £975,000.

11. Bank liabilities, £40,875,000.

'One gentleman, during the heat of the excitement at Glasgow, went

into the Union Bank and presented a check for £500. The teller

asked him if he wished gold. 'Gold!' replied he, 'no; give me

notes, and let the fools who are frightened get the gold,' Another

gentleman rushed into the same bank in a great state of excitement,

with a check for £1,400. On being asked if he wished gold he

replied, 'Yes.' 'Well,' said the teller, 'there is £1,000 in that

bag and £400 in this one.' The gentleman was so flurried by the

readiness with which the demand was granted that he lifted up the

bag with the £400 only, and walked off, leaving the £1,000 on the

counter. The teller, on discovering the bag, laid it aside for the

time. Late in the day the gentleman returned to the bank in great

distress, stating he had lost the bag with the £1,000, and could

not tell whether he dropped it in the crowd or left it behind him

on leaving the bank. 'Oh, you left it on the counter,' said the

teller, quietly, 'and if you call to-morrow you will get your

£1,000.' (_Vide_ 'History Bank of England,' p. 429.)

The facts and statistics from the year 1844 to 1860 relating to the bank

are superadded to the English work by the American editor. Of the

important phases of this period the editor gives a slight sketch in the

following paragraphs. The prominent financial movements in England,

France, and the United States are given in the subsequent pages of the

volume.

'The sixteen years which followed the last charter of the bank have

been pregnant with important events of a financial character; the

most important, perhaps, during the whole history of the

institution. The bank has twice, during this short period, been on

the brink of suspension, and was relieved only by the interference

of Government. The second instance occurred after new gold, to the

extent of one hundred millions sterling, or more, had been poured

into Western Europe from California and Australia. The Bank of

France had, during the same period, suspended specie payment. Two

financial revulsions have occurred in the United States, when, with

few exceptions, the banks of the whole country suspended specie

payments. The production of gold and silver throughout the world,

which, up to 1844, was annually about ten or twelve millions

sterling, had recently advanced from twenty-five to thirty millions

sterling per annum, thus stimulating industry and production

largely throughout Europe and America. Sir Robert Peel, the author

of the new charter of the bank, has left the world's stage, after

witnessing the failure of the charter to fully accomplish the end

promised; Europe and America, Asia and Europe, have been knit

together by a wire cord, and capital is now subscribed to

'Put a girdle round about the earth,'

whereby London may speak to San Francisco (the prospective

commercial centre of the world) in less than '_forty minutes_.'

During the same short space of sixteen years the suspended States

of this Union (five at least) have resumed payment of their

obligations; two violent wars, with sundry revolutions, have

occurred in Europe; the ancient city of the Cortez has been

conquered by the 'hordes of the North,' and magnanimously given up

by the captors to the possession of their weaker enemy, and

millions were paid to the latter for portions of their territory;

the northwest passage of the American continent has been

discovered; steam has accomplished wonders between Europe and

America, and between Europe and their distant colonies of Asia,

Africa, and Australia; Ireland has been on the verge of

starvation,[6] when 600,000 of her people died from hunger alone

and its effects, and her population was reduced two millions by

emigration and privation; England's minister has been expelled from

the capital of the United States; speculation has been rife in

Europe and America, and its inevitable effects, revulsion and

bankruptcy, have followed in its train; the railway and the

telegraph have brought remote regions together; China, with her

four hundred millions of people, has been conquered by the united

forces of the English and the French.

'The Bank of England, instead of pursuing one even course, with a

view to permanent commercial interests, has unfortunately, and, we

fear, from selfish and individual views, fostered speculation by

reducing her rate of discount to 2 per cent., and soon after, but

too late, discovered the error, and forced her borrowers to pay

from 6 to 10 per cent.

'We propose to give the leading events of each year, from 1844 to

1861, referring the reader to authorities where more copious

information can be gained by those who wish to study the invariable

connection between commerce and money.

'The bank shares in the depressed period of 1847-8 fell to 180,

after having reached, in the flattering times of 1844-'5, 215 per

share, or 115 per cent. advance. Consols, at the same depressed

period, fell to 78-3/4, when starvation stared Ireland in its face,

and the bank simultaneously sought protection from the Cabinet.'

Attention has been recently directed in this country to the premium on

gold, or to the alleged fall in the value of bank paper and Government

notes. Although the premium on gold as an article of merchandise has

reached a high rate during the present year, it will be seen, on

reference to the reliable tables in the History of the Bank of England,

that a great difference occurred during the suspension of the bank in

1797 to 1819. Gold at one time (1812) reached £5 8_s._, a difference of

30 per cent. The annexed table shows the changes from 1809 to 1821.

YEARS |Price of |Difference| Nominal |Amount in

|Gold. |from Mint | Taxes. |Gold

| |prices. | |Currency.

------------------------|------------|----------|----------|----------

| £ s. d. |per cent. | £ | £

| | | |

1809, | 4 9 10 | 16-1/3 |71,887,000|60,145,000

1810, | 4 5 0 | 9-1/10 |74,815,000|68,106,000

1811, | 4 17 1 | 24-1/2 |73,621,000|55,583,000

1812, | 5 1 4 | 30 |73,707,000|51,595,000

Sept. to Dec. 1812, | 5 8 0 | 38-1/2 | ... | ...

1813, | 5 6 2 | 36-1/10 |81,745,000|52,236,000

Nov. 1812, to Mch. 1813 | 5 10 0 | 41 | ... | ...

1814, | 5 1 8 | 30-1/3 |83,726,000|58,333,000

1815, | 4 12 9 | 18-8/9 |88,394,000|66,698,000

1816, | 4 0 0 | 2-1/2 |78,909,000|72,062,000

Oct. to Dec. 1816 | 3 18 6 | under 1 | ... | ...

1817, | 4 0 0 | 2-1/2 |58,757,000|57,259,000

1818, | 4 1 5 | 5 |59,391,000|56,025,000

1819, 4th Feb. | 4 3 0 | 6-1/3 |58,288,000|54,597,000

1820, | 3 17 10-1/2| par. |59,812,000|59,812,000

1821, | 3 17 10-1/2| par. |61,000,000|61,000,000

The increased volume of Government and bank paper afloat in the United

States since the 1st January, 1862, is conceded to be only temporary.

The Government is engaged in crushing the greatest rebellion known to

history; in doing this, the national expenditures are six or seven fold

what they ever were before, in a time of peace. During the four years

1813 to 1816, when war raged with England, the whole expenses of the

Government were $108,537,000. During the Mexican war, when the

disbursements of the treasury were much heavier, the average annual

expenses of the Government were about 35 to 48 millions. It will be well

to recur to these tabular details for future history. They are presented

as follows, for the whole period of the General Government.

EXPENDITURES _of the United States, exclusive of Payments on account of

the Public Debt._

Years 1789-1792, Washington, $3,797,000

" 1793-1796, " 12,083,000

" 1797-1800, John Adams, 21,338,000

" 1800-1804, Jefferson, 17,174,000

" 1805-1808, " 23,927,000

" 1809-1812, Madison, 36,147,000

" 1813-1816, " 108,537,000

" 1817-1821, Monroe, 58,698,000

" 1821-1824, " 45,665,000

" 1825-1828, John Quincy Adams, 49,313,000

" 1829-1832, Jackson, 56,249,000

" 1833-1836, " 87,130,000

" 1837-1840, Van Buren, 112,188,000

" 1841-1844, Harrison and Tyler, 81,216,000

" 1846-1848, Polk, 146,924,000

" 1849-1852, Taylor and Fillmore, 194,647,000

" 1853-1856, Pierce, 211,099,000

" 1857-1860, Buchanan, 262,974,000

During the past fiscal year, 1862-3 and the year 1863-4, the Government

expenditures are estimated at ten hundred millions of dollars. These

heavy disbursements cannot be carried on merely by the ordinary bank

paper and the gold and silver of the country. Instead of sixty-five

millions of dollars, the average annual expenditures of the Government

during the last administration, these now involve the sum of five

hundred millions annually. Hence the obvious obligation on the part of

the Government of putting in circulation the most reliable currency, and

of avoiding those of local banks, which do not possess the confidence of

the people at a distance. This can be done only by maintaining a

currency of Government paper which every holder will have full

confidence in, and in which no loss can be sustained.

There is here no conflict or competition between the Government and the

State banks. The latter have the benefit of their legitimate circulation

in their own respective localities; while the national treasury

furnishes to the troops and to the creditors of the nation a circulation

of treasury notes which must possess confidence as long as the

Government lasts.

The policy of the English Government in this respect was a wise one. At

the adoption of the last charter of the bank (1844) the Government

allowed the country banks to maintain from that time forward the

circulation then outstanding, which was not to be increased; and as fast

as the banks failed or were wound up voluntarily, their circulation was

retired and the vacuum became filled by the notes of the Bank of

England. The latter was forbidden by its new charter to exceed certain

prescribed limits in its issues. They could issue to the amount of their

capital, £14,000,000, and beyond that to the extent of gold in the

vaults. Thus the bank circulation of England, Scotland, and Ireland is

less now than in 1844, when the new principle was established, viz.:

BANK CIRCULATION.

Bank of England. Country Banks. Ireland. Scotland. TOTAL.

1844, £22,015,000 £7,797,000 £7,716,000 £3,804,000 £41,325,000

1862, 20,190,000 5,680,000 5,519,000 4,053,000 35,442,000

Had this principle been adopted in the United States at the same

period, the excesses and extravagance of 1856-'7 might have been

obviated, as well as the revulsion of the latter year, and the distress

which followed.

Let us recur to the eventful history of the bank. Although a private

institution, owned and controlled by private capital, its large profits

accruing for the benefit of its own shareholders, yet it became so

closely interwoven with the commerce, manufactures, trade, and the

public finances of the nation, that it may be considered as in reality a

national institution. At its inception its whole capital was swallowed

by the treasury. This was a part of the contract of charter. Its

subsequent accumulations of capital, from £1,200,000, have likewise been

absorbed by the Government, until now the bank reports the Government

debt to them to be £11,015,100, and the Government securities held, to

be £11,064,000. Without the aid of the bank, the national treasury could

not, probably, have made the enormous disbursements which were actually

made between the commencement of the American Revolution in 1776, and

the termination of the continental war of 1815. The bank here furnished,

almost alone, 'the sinews of war.'

During this eventful period there were large numbers of provincial banks

of issue created in England and Ireland. These were managed mainly with

a view to private profit, while the public interests have suffered

severely from the frequent expansions and contractions of the volume of

the currency through such private management, and from the numerous

failures of these concerns. The evils of this system were for many years

the subject of discussion in Parliament and among prominent journals. In

1826 the Edinburgh _Review_ expressed the opinion that

'So long, therefore, as any individual, or association of

individuals, may issue notes of a low value, to be used in the

common transactions of life, without lodging any security for their

ultimate payment, so long is it _certain_ that those panics which

must necessarily occur every now and then, and against which no

effectual precaution can be devised, must occasion the destruction

of a greater or smaller number of banking establishments, and by

consequence a ruinous fluctuation in the supply and value of

money.' (_Edinburgh Review_, February, 1826.)

This was a period of great speculation in England. In the year 1823 no

less than 532 companies were chartered, with a nominal capital of 441

millions sterling. These speculations were fostered by the increasing

volume of bank paper. The evil increased, and was allowed to exist until

the year 1844, when a stop was put to the further increase of the volume

of bank circulation, and to the further incorporation of joint stock

banks.

We learn one lesson here, which may have a good effect upon us if we

will bear it in mind in our future legislation, and take warning from

the experiences of our contemporaries. We allude to the obvious

necessity in a country like ours, and, indeed, in any country, of

maintaining a national moneyed institution as a check upon the

vacillation, expansions, and contractions which mark the policy of small

banks of issue. This national institution, while free from individual

profit, and without power to grant individual favors, should create and

perform the functions of a national currency, and execute all the

details required by or for the national treasury. Its chief utility

would be as a check upon the excess to which all joint stock banks are

liable--a sort of controlling and conservative power to prevent that

mischief which our past experience shows has been the result of paper

money when issued merely for private gain.

The advantage, the convenience, we may say the _necessity_, of a

national circulation of paper money, are fully demonstrated by our own

past history, and by the history of European nations. This circulation

should be dictated by the wants of the National Government, and

convertible, at the will of the holder, into specie. With these obvious

restraints it would accomplish its ends and aims.

The Bank of England, in its early stages, was endangered by various and

extraordinary circumstances. Within three years of its establishment it

was compelled to suspend payment to its depositors in cash, and issued

certificates therefor payable ten per cent. every fortnight. In 1709 the

Sacheverell riots occurred in London, and fears were felt that the bank

would be sacked; but this violence was obviated by well-trained troops.

In 1718 John Law's bank was established in France, and for two years

kept the people in a ferment. This was followed by the South Sea scheme

in England, in 1720, 'a year (the historian Anderson says) remarkable

beyond any other which can be pitched upon for extraordinary and

romantic projects.' The bank, of course, suffered by these speculative

measures, and was repeatedly exposed to a run upon its specie resources.

In 1722 the _rest_ (or reserve fund) was established by the bank, as a

measure to cover extraordinary losses in the future, and to inspire more

confidence among the public as to the ability of the bank to meet

reverses. This fund, in July, 1862, had accumulated to £3,132,500

sterling, or about twenty-one and a half per cent. of the capital.

The first forged note of the Bank of England was presented in the year

1758, or sixty-four years after the bank was established. In 1780 these

forgeries became more numerous, and were so well executed as to deceive

the officers of the bank.

Let us now recur to some of the incidents connected with the bank in

early ages. Of these, the author, Mr. Francis, furnishes numerous

instances.

Among other frauds upon the bank was that of clipping the guineas, by

one of the clerks employed in the bullion office. This occurred in 1767.

The forgery of its notes having been made a capital offence, the waste

of life in consequence was severe. During the eight years, 1795 to 1803,

there were one hundred and forty executions for this crime; and two

hundred and nine between 1795 and 1809; and from 1797 to 1811 the

executions were 469. 'The visible connection between the issue of small

notes and the effusion of blood, is one of the most frightful parts of

this case.'

In 1803 a fraud on the bank to the extent of £320,000 was perpetrated by

Mr. Robert Astlett, a cashier of the bank. This was in the re-issue of

exchequer bills that had been previously redeemed, but which were not

cancelled. This fraud amounted to about 2-1/2 per cent. of the capital,

and although it did not prevent a dividend, it prevented the

distribution of a bonus which would otherwise have been paid to the

shareholders.

In the year 1822 another fraud on the bank came to light. This was

perpetrated by a bookkeeper, and amounted to £10,000. In 1824 the fraud

of Mr. Fauntleroy on the bank was discovered, amounting to £360,000.

This was done by forged powers of attorney for the transfer of

Government consols.

The bank was brought near suspension again in 1825 by the imprudent

expansion of its notes. After the resumption of specie payments in

1820-'21, the true policy of the bank would have been to maintain an

even tenor of its way; instead of which it increased its circulation

twenty-five per cent. in the year 1825 (or from £18,292,000 to

£25,709,000), while the issues of the country banks were equally

enlarged, giving encouragement to violent speculation among the people.

The specie reserve of the Bank of England fell from £14,200,000 in

January 1824 to £1,024,000 in December, 1825. This difficulty of the

bank was relieved by the issue of a few thousand bills of £1 and £2.

Speculation had been rife in 1824; no less than 624 companies were

started with a nominal capital of £372,000,000, including mining, gas,

insurance, railroad, steam, building, trading, provision, and other

companies. At the same time foreign loans were contracted in England to

the extent of £32,000,000, of which over three fourths were advanced in

cash.

The country banks of England had increased their circulation from

£9,920,000 in 1823 to £14,980,000 in 1825, or over fifty per cent., thus

stimulating prices, and promoting speculation widely throughout the

country.

Immediately following the revulsion at the close of the year 1825, Mr.

Huskisson's free trade policy was advocated in the House of Commons by a

vote of 223 to 40. In the same year lotteries were suppressed in

England. In 1828 branches of the Bank of England were established--a

measure, of course, unpopular among the provincial joint stock banks.

In the year 1832-'3 were brought forward three important measures in

Parliament. One was the abolishment of the death penalty for forgery;

another was the modification of the usury laws; the third was the

re-charter of the bank.

The last criminal executed for forgery was a man by the name of Maynard,

in December, 1829. Public sentiment had long been opposed to the

infliction of this punishment for the offence of forgery, and

transportation was now substituted in the prominent cases. England, at

the same time, opened the way for a gradual abolishment of the usury

laws. At first the relief was extended to short commercial paper,

afterward to all paper having not over twelve months to run, 1837; and

finally, in 1854, the usury laws were removed from all negotiable paper,

as well as from bonds and mortgages.

By the new charter of 1833, Bank of England notes were, for the first

time, made a legal tender, except at the bank itself. Joint stock banks

were authorized in the metropolis, but were prohibited from issuing

notes.

The English work of Mr. Francis is anecdotical in its character. The

American edition conveys to the reader, for the first time, a resumé of

the leading movements in Parliament on the subject of the bank, and its

close connection with the Government finances. The part which Mr. Pitt,

Mr. Canning, Sir Robert Peel, and other distinguished statesmen took in

the relations between the bank and the exchequer, is in the

supplementary portion of the new edition shown, as well as the views of

Lord Althorpe, Lord Ashburton, Lord Geo. Bentinck, Mr. Thomas Baring,

Lord Brougham, Mr. Gilbart, Sir James Graham, Lord King, Earl of

Liverpool, Jones Loyd, Lord Lyndhurst, Mr. Rothschild, and others who

exercised a large influence over the monetary interests of their day.

In the consideration of the banking and currency questions of the day

and of the last and present century, it is desirable to have thus

brought together in a single work, a continuous history of the

institution which has had so large an influence upon the public

interests of Europe, and a review of the important circumstances which

marked the progress of the bank in its successful efforts to sustain

England against foreign enemies and domestic revulsions, an index to the

speculative movements of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when

commerce, trade, and the vast monetary interests of Europe and America

have been unnecessarily and cruelly involved.

The letter addressed by Secretary Chase, of the Treasury Department, to

the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means of the House of

Representatives, and to the chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance,

under date June 7th, 1862, suggested the power by Congress to the

treasury to issue $150,000,000 in treasury notes, in addition to this

sum, authorized by the act of February 25th, 1862; also, authority to

receive fifty millions of dollars on deposit, in addition to fifty

millions previously authorized by Congress. These suggestions were

favorably considered in both Houses, and the recommendations of the

Secretary were adopted fully, leading to the adoption of a national

system of finance, which will eventually reëstablish and preserve

national credit. Fears have been expressed in some quarters that this

increased volume of paper money would be a public evil, and serve to

disturb the value of property and the price of labor. This might be

reasonably anticipated if the country were at peace, and the Government

expenditures were upon a peace footing.

But a state of things exists now in this country hitherto unknown. The

contracts of the Government involve the expenditure of larger sums than

were ever paid before in the same space of time by this or any other

Government. In the disbursements of these large sums it is an obvious

duty of Congress to provide a national circulation of uniform value

throughout the whole country--a circulation of a perfectly reliable

character, not subject in the least to the ordinary vicissitudes of

trade or to the revulsions which have frequently marked our history.

These revulsions have been witnessed, and their results seen by the

leading public men of the century. Mr. Madison saw at an early day the

importance of creating and sustaining a government circulation. His

language was: 'It is essential to every modification of the finances

that the benefits of an uniform national currency should be restored to

the community.'

Mr. Calhoun, in 1816, said: 'By a sort of undercurrent, the power of

Congress to regulate the money of the country has caved in, and upon its

ruin have sprung up those institutions which now exercise the right of

making money in and for the United States.'

'It is the duty of government,' says a well known writer, 'to interfere

to regulate every business or pursuit that might otherwise become

publicly injurious. On this principle it interferes to prevent the

circulation of spurious coin.' Counterfeit coin is more readily detected

than a fictitious paper currency, yet no sane man would advocate the

repeal of the laws which prohibit it. Why, then, permit the unlimited

manufacture of paper money of an unreliable character?

In the consideration of this subject we should divest ourselves of all

selfish views of private profit and advantage. We should look only to

the public good, to stability in trade and commerce, and to the general

interests of the people at large as distinguished from those of a few

individuals. It is clearly then the province of government to establish

and to regulate the paper money of the nation, so that it shall possess

the following attributes:

I. To be uniform in value throughout all portions of the country.

II. To be perfectly reliable at all times as a medium for the payment of

debts.

III. To be issued in limited amounts, and under the control of the

Government only.

IV. To be convertible, at the pleasure of the holder, into gold or

silver.

It must be conceded that these requisites do not belong, and never can

belong, to paper issued by joint stock banks, which are governed with a

view to the largest profit, and which are but little known beyond their

own immediate localities.

Recent history assures us that abuses have been practised in reference

to the bank circulation of the country, which have led to violent

revulsions and severe loss. England experienced the same results between

the years 1790 and 1840, and to such an extent that in the year 1844 her

statesmen devised a system whereby no further expansion of paper money

should occur. The amount then existing was assumed to be a minimum of

the amount required for commercial transactions, and it was ordered that

all bank issues beyond that sum shall be represented by a deposit of

gold.

If the Bank of England had been governed by considerations of public

welfare, and not by those of private interest, it would not have reduced

the rate of interest to 2-1/2 per cent. in 1844-'5, thus producing

violent speculation, and leading to the revulsion of 1849. Nor would the

bank have established low rates of interest only in the year 1857, thus

leading this powerful institution to the verge of bankruptcy, and to the

clemency of the British Cabinet in November of that year.

England has checked the paper circulation of the country, but has not

withdrawn from the bank the power to promote speculation by extravagant

loans at a low rate of discount.

The Governments of France and England have both assumed control of the

paper currency of their respective countries. This is sound policy, and

it is one of the prerogatives that must be exercised, in its full force,

by the Government of the United States and by all other governments, if

stability, permanency, consistency are to be observed or maintained for

the people. This is obviously necessary in a time of peace and

prosperity; it is perhaps more so in a time of rebellion or war, like

the present. Circumstances may arise where it will be the course of

wisdom and safety to suspend specie payment; and, in some extreme

exigencies, to forbid the export of specie.

This position was well explained by Mr. J.W. Gilbart, manager of the

London and Westminster Bank, who, in his testimony before Sir Robert

Peel, in 1843, said, 'If I were prime minister, I would immediately, on

the commencement of war, issue an order in council for the bank to stop

payment. I stated also that I spoke as a politician, not as a banker.

* * * I came to the conclusion that, under the circumstances of the war of

1797, a suspension of cash payments was not a matter of choice, _but of

necessity_.' (_Vide_ 'History of the Bank of England,' New York edition,

p. 130.)

We come now to consider what is necessary, in order to restore the

currency of the United States to a specie footing. This restoration is

demanded alike by motives of justice and sound policy. No contracts can

be well entered into, unless the currency of the country is upon a

substantial and permanent footing of redemption. It is a matter which

concerns every individual in the community; it is especially so to the

General Government in view of its extraordinary expenditures: and no

commercial prosperity can be maintained without it.

A restoration of public and private credit can be accomplished only by

an observance of those sound principles of finance that have been

announced by the wise men of our own and other countries. Mr. Alexander

Hamilton, Mr. Gallatin, Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Madison, each in his turn

advocated a national institution, by which the currency of the country

could be placed upon a reliable and permanent footing. Such an

institution should control the currency and receive surplus capital on

deposit; but need not interfere with the legitimate operations of the

State banks as borrowers and lenders of money, nor encourage in the

slightest degree, through loans, any speculative movements among the

people.

In the next place our people must resort to and maintain more economy in

their individual expenditure, and thus preserve a balance of foreign

trade in our own favor. It is shown that, during the fiscal year ending

30 June, 1860, there were imported into the United States goods, wholly

manufactured, of the value of ... $166,073,000, partially manufactured,

62,720,000.

We can dispense with two thirds of such articles during our present

national reverses, and rely upon our own domestic labor for similar

products, viz.:

Manufactures of Wool, $37,937,000

" of Silk, 32,948,000

" of Cotton, 32,558,000

" of Flax, 10,736,000

Laces and Embroideries, 4,017,000

Gunny Cloths, Mattings, 2,386,000

Clothing, 2,101,000

Iron, and Manufactures of Iron and Steel, 18,694,000

China and Earthenware, 4,387,000

Clocks, Chronometers, Watches, 2,890,000

Boots, Shoes, and Gloves, 2,230,000

Miscellaneous, 15,189,000

-----------

166,073,000

besides other articles exceeding one hundred millions in value.

Rather than send abroad thirty or forty millions in gold annually, as we

have done of late years, let us dispense with foreign woollen goods,

silk and cotton goods, laces, &c., and encourage our own mills, at least

until the war and its debt are over.

Mr. Madison said much in a few words, when he said:

'The theory of '_let us alone_' supposes that all nations concur in

a perfect freedom of commercial intercourse. Were this the case,

they would, in a commercial view, be but one nation, as much as the

several districts composing a particular nation; and the theory

would be as applicable to the former as the latter. But this golden

age of free trade has not yet arrived, nor is there a single nation

that has set the example. No nation can, indeed, safely do so,

until a reciprocity, at least, be insured to it. * * A nation,

leaving its foreign trade, in all cases, to regulate itself, might

soon find it regulated by other nations into subserviency to a

foreign interest.'

There is much good sense, too, in the views promulgated by another

president, who said, in relation to our independence of other nations:

'The tariff bill before us, embraces the design of fostering,

protecting, and preserving within ourselves the means of national

defence and independence, _particularly in a state of war_. * *

*The experience of the late war (1812) taught us a lesson, and one

never to be forgotten. If our liberty and republican form of

government, procured for us by our Revolutionary fathers, are worth

the blood and treasure at which they were obtained, it surely is

our duty to protect and defend them. * * * What is the real

situation of the agriculturist? Where has the American farmer a

market for his surplus product? Except for cotton, he has neither a

foreign nor home market. Does not this clearly prove, when there is

no market either at home or abroad, that there is too much labor

employed in agriculture, and that the channels of labor should be

multiplied? Common sense points out the remedy. Draw from

agriculture the superabundant labor; employ it in mechanism and

manufactures; thereby creating a home-market for your

bread-stuffs, and distributing labor to the most profitable account

and benefits to the country. Take from agriculture in the United

States six hundred thousand men, women and children, and you will

at once give a home-market for more bread-stuffs than all Europe

now furnishes us. In short, sir, _we have been too long subject to

the policy of British merchants_. It is time that we should become

a little more Americanized; and, instead of feeding the paupers and

laborers of England, feed our own; or else, in a short time, by

continuing our present policy, we shall be rendered paupers

ourselves.'

Mr. Bigelow, in his late and highly valuable work on the tariff, says

truly (p. 103):

'Can any one question that our home production far outweighs in

importance all other material interests of the nation? * * * It is

the nation of great internal resources, of vigorous productive

power and self-dependent strength, which is always best prepared

and most able, not only to defend itself, but to lend others a

helping hand.'

If our people would maintain their own national integrity, their own

individual independence, and their true status in the great family of

nations of the earth, they will [at least until the present rebellion is

crushed, and until the public debt thereby created shall be

extinguished] pursue a strict course of public and private economy. Let

us encourage and support our own manufactures, and thereby contribute to

the subsistence and wealth of our own laborers instead of contributing

millions annually to the pauper labor of European nations; especially of

those nations that have failed to give us countenance in the present

struggle and that have, on the contrary, given both direct and indirect

aid to the rebels of the South.

The United States have within themselves, in great abundance,

contributed by a bountiful Providence, the leading products of the

earth. In metals and in agricultural products, we exceed any and all

other countries of the earth. If we encourage the labor of our own

people in the development of the great resources of the country, we

shall not only preserve our own commercial independence, but we shall

soon be, as we ought to be in view of such advantages, the creditor

nation of the world, and compel other countries to resort to us for the

raw materials for their own manufacturing districts.

With the aid of the vast iron and coal mines of our own country, we can

construct and keep in force an adequate navy for peace or for war. Our

skilled industry can produce firearms equal to any in the world. The

vast agricultural resources of the West yield abundance for ourselves

and a large surplus for other countries. The breadstuffs of the West and

Northwest; the tobacco of the Middle States, and the cotton of the South

are in demand, throughout nearly all Europe. Let us then be independent

ourselves of foreign manufacturers, and endeavor to place the rest of

the world under obligations to our own country for the necessaries of

life. This will do more to preserve peace than all the arguments of

cabinets or the combined navies and armies of the world.

Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell said,[7] in parliament, in 1842,

five years before the famine in Ireland: 'We are not, we cannot be,

independent of foreign nations, any more than they can of us: * * * two

millions of our people have been dependent on foreign countries for

their daily food. At least five millions of our people are dependent on

the supplies of cotton from America, of foreign wool or foreign silk. *

* * The true independence of a great commercial nation is to be found,

not in raising all the produce it requires within its own bound, _but in

attaining such a preëminence in commerce that the time can never arise

when other nations will not be compelled, for their own sales, to

minister to its wants_.'

Now this principle, enunciated twenty years ago by men, who now hold the

reins of the English Government, _is especially one for us to bear in

mind_. While England, from her limited surface, can never be independent

of other countries for the supply of food, we may say, and we can

demonstrate, that the United States can reach that preëminence to which

the great English statesman alluded--a preëminence which he would gladly

attain for his own countrymen.

To the General Government was confided by the framers of the

Constitution the power to 'coin money, and regulate the value thereof;'

and the States were forbidden to 'emit bills of credit;' from which we

may infer that it was intended to place the control of the currency in

the hands of the General Government. It will be generally conceded that

it would be wiser to have one central point of issue than several

hundred as at present. There should be but one form for, and one source

of, the currency. It should emanate from a source where the power cannot

be abused, and where the interests of the people at large, and not of

individuals, will be consulted.

The people have thus an interest at stake. It is for their benefit that

a national circulation, of a perfectly reliable character, should be

established. The remark made by Sir Robert Peel, in parliament, in May,

1844, at the time of the recharter of the bank, applies with equal force

to the national currency of this or any other country.

'There is no contract, public or private, national or individual,

which is unaffected by it. The enterprises of trade--the

arrangements made in all the domestic relations of society--the

wages of labor--pecuniary transactions of the highest amount and

the lowest--the payment of the national debt--the provision for the

national expenditure--the command which the coin of the lowest

denomination has over the necessaries of life--are all affected by

the decision to which we may come.'

Sir Robert Peel wisely comprehended the powers and attributes of a

national currency, and we may wisely adopt his idea that such a national

currency, controlled by the national legislature, for the use and

benefit of the people, is the only one that can be safely adopted.

* * * * *

The national banking system established by Congress, in the year 1863,

at the suggestion of Secretary Chase, of the Treasury Department, is the

initiatory step toward a highly desirable reform in the paper currency

of the country. Already over seventy national banks have been organized,

under the act of Congress, with a combined capital of ten millions of

dollars, whose circulation will have not only a uniform appearance, but

a uniform value throughout the whole country. Numerous others are in

process of organization. To the community at large the new system is

desirable, because it secures to the people a currency of uniform value

and perfect reliability. The notes of these institutions will be at par

in every State in the Union, and holders may rely upon the certainty of

redemption upon demand: whether the institution be solvent or not--in

existence or not--the Government holds adequate security for instant

redemption of all notes issued under the law.

This feature of the paper currency of the country is one that has long

been needed. For the want of it the States have been for many years

crowded with a currency of unequal market value, and of doubtful

security. Added to this is a marked feature of the new system which did

not pertain to the Bank of the United States in its best days. Its

workings are free from individual favoritism. No loans are granted to

political or personal friends, at the risk of the Government, and all

temptation to needless and hurtful expansion is thus destroyed. There is

no mammoth institution, under the control of one or a few individuals,

liable at times to be prostituted to political and personal ends of an

objectionable character. While the banks under the new system are spread

over a large space, they perform what is needed of the best managed

institutions; and although perfectly independent of each other in their

liabilities, expenses, losses, and in their action generally, yet

together they form a practical unit, and will be serviceable in

counteracting that tendency to inflation and speculation which has

marked many years in the commercial history of this country.

We consider the Bank Act of 1863 as one of the most important features

of the Thirty-seventh Congress, and of this Administration. It will

create a link long wanted between the States and Territories, and do

much to strengthen the Union and maintain commercial prosperity. The

country will hereafter honor Secretary Chase for the conception and

success of this scheme, even if there were no other distinguished traits

in his administration of the Treasury and the Government finances.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 6: 'The scenes exhibited far exceeded in horror _anything yet

recorded in European history_.' (Alison.) America, in her own fulness,

sent succor to famished Ireland, in 1847, and when her own day of

travail came near, in 1861, England volunteered no helping hand to her

kindred.]

[Footnote 7: See 'History of the Bank of England,' p. 851.]

OCTOBER AFTERNOON IN THE HIGHLANDS.

Slowly toward the western mountains

Sinks the gold October sun;

Longer grow the deepening shadows,

And the day is nearly done.

Rosy gleams the quiet River

'Neath the crimson-tinted sky;

White-winged vessels, wind-forsaken,

On the waveless waters lie.

Glow the autumn-tinted valleys,

On the hills soft shadows rest,

Growing warmer, purple glowing,

As the sun sinks toward the west.

Slanting sunlight through the Cedars,

Scarlet Maples all aglow,

Long rays streaming through the forests,

Gleam the dead leaves lying low.

Golden sunshine on the cornfields,

Glittering ripples on the stream.

And the still pools in the meadows

Catch the soft October gleam.

Warmer grows the purple mountains,

Lower sinks the glowing sun,

Soon will fade the streaming sunlight--

See, the day is nearly done!

THE ISLE OF SPRINGS.

CHAPTER III.

THE COUNTRY

After having been detained in town several days longer than I had

reckoned on, by heavy rains, which ran through the streets in rivers,

and filled the bed of Sandy Gully, through which we must pass, with a

rushing torrent of irresistible strength, a small party of us left

Kingston one morning for the mountains of St. Andrew and Metcalfe, among

which lie the stations of the American missionaries whom we had come to

join. We were mounted on the small horses of the country, whose first

appearance excited some doubts in the mind of a friend whether he was to

carry the horse or the horse him. However, they are not quite ponies,

and their blood is more noble than their size, being a good deal of it

Arab. They are decidedly preferable for mountain travel to larger

animals.

We directed our course over the hot plains towards the mountains which

rose invitingly before us, ready to receive us into their green depths.

On leaving the town, we passed first through sandy lanes bordered by

cactus hedges, rising in columnar rows, and then came out upon the

excellent macadamized road over which thirteen of the sixteen miles of

our journey lay. As we went along we met a continual succession of

groups of the country people, mostly women and children, coming into

Kingston with their weekly load of provisions to sell. They eyed us with

expressions varying from good-natured cordiality to sullenness, and

occasionally we heard a rude remark at the expense of the 'Buckras;' but

for the most part their demeanor was civil and pleasant. Most of them

had the headloads without which a negro woman seems hardly complete in

the road, varying in dimensions from a huge basket of yams or bananas to

an ounce vial. How such a slight thing manages to keep its perpendicular

with their careless, swinging gait, is something marvellous, but they

manage it to perfection. Almost every group, in addition, had a

well-laden donkey--comical little creatures, looking hardly bigger under

their huge hampers than well-sized Newfoundland dogs, and hurrying

nimbly along, with a speed that betokened a wholesome remembrance of a

good many hard thrashings in the past and a reasonable dread of similar

ones in the future. If I held the doctrine of transmigration, I should

be firmly persuaded that the souls of parish beadles, drunken captains,

and other petty tyrants, shifted quarters into the bodies of Jamaica

negroes' donkeys. One patriotic black woman, whose donkey was rather

refractory, relieved her mind by exclaiming, in a tone of infinite

disgust, 'O-h-h you Roo-shan!' accompanying her objurgation by several

emphatic demonstrations on his hide of how she was disposed to treat a

'Rooshan' at that present moment.[8]

Going on, we passed several beautiful 'pens,' as farms devoted to

grazing are called. These near town are little more than mere pieces of

land surrounding elegant villas, the residence of wealthy gentlemen

whose business lies in Kingston. Here you see 'the one-storied house of

the tropics, with its green jalousies and deep veranda,' surrounded by

handsomely kept meadows of the succulent Guinea grass, which clothes so

large a part of the island with its golden green, and enclosed by wire

fences or by the intricate but delicate logwood hedges, or else by stone

walls. On either side of the carriage road which swept round before the

most elegant of these villas, that of Mr. Porteous, we noticed rows of

the mystic century plant.

At last we left the comparatively arid plain, with its scantier

vegetation, and began to ascend Stony Hill, which is 1,360 feet high

where the road passes over it. The cool air passing through the gap, and

our increasing elevation, now began to temper the heat, and soon the

clouds began to gather again, and a slight rain fell. But I did not

notice it, for every step of the journey now seemed to bring me farther

into the heart of fairyland. It was not any variety of colors, but the

unutterable depth of green, enclosing us, as we ascended, more and more

completely in its boundless exuberance. From that moment the richest

verdure of my native country has seemed pale and poor. Reaching the top

of the hill, we saw above us the higher range, looking down on us

through the shifting mists, with that inexpressible gracefulness which

tempers the grandeur of tropical mountains.

We descended the hill on the other side into a small inland valley,

containing the two estates of Golden Spring and Temple Hall. The

former, which presented nothing very noticeable then, has since passed

under the management of a gentleman who to a judicious and energetic

personal oversight has added a kindliness and strict honesty in his

dealings with the laborers much more desirable than frequent in the

island. As a result of this, Golden Spring has become a garden. A great

many more dilapidated estates would become gardens under the same

efficacious mode of treatment.

The streams were so swollen by the rain that on coming to what is

commonly a trifling rivulet, we found it so high as to cost us some

trouble to cross. However, we all got over, although one servant boy

with his pack horse was caught by the current and carried down several

rods almost into the river, which was rushing by in a turbid torrent. I

ought to have been much alarmed, but having a happy way, in new

circumstances, of taking it for granted that everything which happens is

just what ought to happen then and there, I stood composedly on the

farther bank, nothing doubting that the boy and the beast had their own

good reasons for striking out a new track, and it was not till they were

both safe on land that I learned with some consternation that they had

come within an inch of being drowned.

At length we turned aside into a byroad leading up a steep hill,

slippery with mud, and left this pleasant valley. I passed through it

many a time afterwards, and never lost the impression of its peaceful

richness.

We now found ourselves in the wild country in which our missionary

stations lie. Hills rose around on every side; their surfaces broken and

furrowed into every fantastic variety of shape, with only distance

enough between their bases for the mountain streams to flow. In our

latitude such a country would be much of the time a bleak desolation.

But here the mantle of glorious and everlasting green softens and

enriches the broken and fluctuating surfaces into luxuriant and cloying

beauty. In such an ocean of verdure we now found ourselves, its emerald

waves rolling above, below, and around us. Our road, when once we had

surmounted the short hill, was a narrow, winding bridle path, which kept

along almost upon a level over a continual succession of natural

causeways, spanning the gullies with such an appearance of art as I have

never seen elsewhere. I afterward learned that these are dikes of trap,

from which the softer rock has been gradually disintegrated, leaving

them thus happily arranged for human convenience.

After three miles' travel over these roads of nature's making, in a rain

which at last became quite uncomfortable, we came finally to Oberlin

Mission House. A West Indian country house, without fire or carpets,

must be very pleasingly fitted up not to look dreary in a wet day, and

Oberlin House appeared rather cheerless as we alighted with streaming

garments, the romance pretty well soaked out of us for the time. But

after supper and a change of clothes, and the clearing away of the

clouds, our dismal spirits cleared up too, and we went out into the

garden to enjoy the rare flowers and plants--the crimson-leaved

ponsetto, the Bleeding Heart, with its ensanguined centre, the curiously

pied and twisted Croton Pictum, the Plumbago, well named from the leaden

hue of its flowers, the long, deep-red leaves of the Dragon's Blood, the

purple magnificence of the Passion flower, relieved by the more familiar

beauty of the Four o'clock and of the Martinique rose. Seeing something

that pleased me, I stepped forward to view it more narrowly, when a

sudden access of acute pain in one foot, quickly spreading to the knee,

admonished me that I had got into mischief in the shape of an ant's

nest, and gave me the first instalment of a lesson I learned in due time

very thoroughly, that the beauties of Jamaica are to be enjoyed with a

very cautious regard to the paramount rights of the insect creation.

When I went to bed, I found the bedclothes saturated with dampness. But

I learned that it was like a Newport fog, too saline to be mischievous.

The atmosphere of the island, even in the brightest and most elastic

weather, is so impregnated with moisture, that a Leyden jar will lose

its charge in being taken across the room, and an electrical machine

will not work without a pan of coals under the cylinder. But as no part

of the island is more than twenty-five miles from the sea, this

continual moisture appears to be quite innocuous, its worst effect being

the musty smell which it causes in everything in the mountains, where

there is the most rain. Use fortunately takes from us the perception of

this, or it would be quite intolerable. Perpetual summer, and the utmost

glory of earth, sky, and sea, are not to be enjoyed without drawbacks

that would make a careful housekeeper very doubtful about the

desirableness of the exchange. And so ended my first day in the country.