CHAPTER VI.

LIFE ON BOARD.

I have recounted above the manner in which the good divinity spoiled the

Labrador triumph of the malign god. To that veracious history belongs

the following _addendum_. The evil power was deeply chagrined to be so

robbed of his victory. Rubbing his brow with vexation, he chanced to

break the skin with his nails. The venom of the viper is poisonous to

its own blood; and in like manner, the malignity of the demon afflicted

his own flesh with a festering pain. The slight anguish gave him a

thought. "Ha! now I have it!" he cried; "now I will be quits with him!"

He caused, accordingly, a boggy moss to grow in the hollows of this

dreary land, and made this to generate in countless multitudes a small,

winged, venomous fiend, named _mosquito_. "Ahriman is victor, after

all!" he shouted, as the humming imps trooped forth upon the air.

I think he was!

Delighted with this success, the demon tried to repeat it in other

lands; but it fared with him as with every genius, good or bad, who

begins to repeat himself: the imitation was but a feeble copy of the

original. The mosquito of Labrador would spoil Eden itself. The imitated

fiend I am indifferent to, but from the original spare me!

We were spared in a degree. Ormuzd turned the weapons of his enemy

against himself: rain, hail, and snow fought for us against the

mosquito; but when fair weather came, this pest came with it. It is

clear that Dante was not a man of genius! Otherwise he would have put

the mosquito (the original, of course) in his "Inferno."

_Ennui_ is always to be suffered on a long voyage. We had it, enough of

it, and to spare, yet always broken by days of high delight.

During the early part of the voyage, while we were still sailing, or

even during considerable detentions in harbor, there was, novelty and

incident enough to give the mind employment. The weather was fine; the

sun shone; we lived on deck, in company with sun, sea, sky, horizon; and

the mere relief from the narrowness of in-door life, the wide fellowship

with the elements in which we were established, sufficed of themselves

to invest our days with an unfailing charm. I was peculiarly happy, for

I love the sea. All its ordinary aspects delight me in a very deep and

heartfelt way. These were varied in the present instance with much that

to me was far from being ordinary. Ever there was some ascending shore,

some towering island or prodigious cliff, some enticing bird, some

magnificence of morning or evening; and besides all these and a hundred

attractions more, there were the beauty and terror of berg and

floe-field, the marvel of the ice. For a time, therefore, all was

enchantment. If we made a harbor, if we left one, expectation sailed

with us; we fancied new scenes, new adventures,--the delight of

exploration yet fierce in our souls.

But now comes a change. The novelty wears away; we get in some degree

the gauge of the scenery and the variety of circumstance; the dawdling,

snail-foot, insufferable creep of the ship from one fisherman's

dog's-hole to another becomes inexcusable; the weather conspires against

us; the sportsman wonders why he had brought gun and fishing-rod; even

Science grows weary at times in its limited and hampered inspection. For

more than five weeks our average progress along the coast was eight

miles a day! The ice and the weather were partly responsible for this

lagging; but there were other causes, at which I forbear to hint more

definitely. Suffice it to say that they were of a kind that one finds it

hard to be charmed with; and the Elder will here confide to the reader

that he was in the end a much vexed individual.

_Ennui_ overtook us first in Square Island Harbor. During our long

duress there, outward objects of interest began to fail, and each man

was thrown back in some degree upon his own resources.

Now follows a special development of idiosyncrasy, and with it of

friction. Kept below much of the time by inclement weather, we are

crowded and jumbled incessantly together; you jostle against the

shoulders of one, you rub elbows with another, you clamber over the

knees of a third; the members of the company are thrust together more

closely than husband and wife in the narrowest household, and there is

no exhaustless spousal love, no nameless mutual charm of man and woman,

to relieve the sharpness of contact. Every man's peculiarities come out;

and as there is no space between one and another, every man's

peculiarities jar upon those of his neighbor. One is rampant just when

another is moodily silent; one wishes to sleep when another must shout

or split.

For a while, however, these idiosyncrasies amuse. We are rather pleased

with them as a resource than vexed by them as an annoyance. We are as

yet full of the sense of power; we are equal to occasion, and like to

feel our independence of outward support. So our young people run out

into all sorts of riotous fun, and, sooth to say, the older do not

always refuse a helping hand. The "Nightingale Club" becomes a

"Night-Owl Club"; there are whistling choruses, laughing choruses,

weeping, howling, stamping choruses, choruses of huzzas, of

mock-complaint; there are burglaries, spectres, lampoons, and what not?

At last these follies became tiresome, and every man was brought to the

marrow-bones of his endurance.

Now, then, impatience, impatience! The abominable cooking, the dawdling

progress,--how was one to endure them? Especially when we had turned

homeward, and were sluggishly repeating the ground already traversed,

did the delay become almost insupportable. At length, on the 24th of

August, we fairly said good-bye to Labrador, and came sweeping southward

with the matchless speed of which our schooner was capable when she got

a chance. It wellnigh tore Bradford's heart-strings to leave his

icebergs once and for all behind; for a more fascinated human being I

believe there never was than this true enthusiast while on that coast.

He _must_ paint the bergs with rare power, must get the very spirit and

suggestion of them on canvas, or his soul will quit him, and make off

north!

P----, the indefatigable, would also have gladly stayed longer, I

believe. Our voyage had not extended so far as he desired to go, but had

been fruitful of results, nevertheless. Besides making important

observations upon the action of glacial and coast ice, counting upwards

of seventy-five raised beaches, obtaining convincing indications of a

great central table-land, and establishing by abundant detail a

resemblance amounting almost to identity between the insect Fauna of

Labrador and that of the summit of Mount Washington, he had been able to

collect indubitable evidence that there exists a sub-Arctic group of

marine animals inhabiting the shores of Labrador and Newfoundland. This

last is a result of especial importance, as this group, owing to the

want of material, had been overlooked by preceding naturalists. This

gentleman, whose industry and zeal in scientific research are literally

boundless, and are matched with much penetration, designs visiting the

North of Europe to make comparisons between the land of the Lapps and

Finns and the sub-Arctic regions of America; and I make no doubt that

American science will obtain honor in his person.

The rest of us, however, breathed freer now that we were

HOMEWARD BOUND.

Wide swells aloft the snowy sail,

New life comes flowing on the gale.

Joy! joy! our exile all is past!

We're homeward bound, homeward at last!

Ill fates are strong, but God is stronger;

The loved that wait shall wait no longer;

Our wake is white with happy foam,

And blithe the skies to fan us home.

O bliss of friendship, bliss of heaven!

O heart of love, earth's angel leaven!

The speed of winds is in your feet,

Soon hands will join and lips will meet.

Now through our land roll far and wide

War's lurid flame and crimson tide;

But glory blushes through her woe,

And both to share with joy we go.

Farewell, grim North! Possess thy throne,

And reign amid thy bergs alone;

Now turn our hearts to truer poles,

To native shores and kindred souls.

Ill fates are strong, but God is stronger;

The loved that wait shall wait no longer;

Our wake is white with happy foam,

And blithe the skies to fan us home.

_September 1._--The Gulf had waylaid us, with a fierce storm in

readiness. Our reckoning was wrong; we just escaped going ashore in the

pitchy darkness; and, to mend all, the ship took fire! The flames were

soon quenched, but St. Lawrence Neptune kept trying to put them out for

twelve hours afterward; and such a drenching! But here we are between

the shores of Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Isle. Fort Mulgrave, two miles

away over the calm water and beneath the floods of sunshine, looks like

a little paradise, (painted white,) after all my reviling it. And

fields, too!--green fields and forests! Could one ever again wish more

pleasure than to look on swarded fields and wooded hills? Yes,--besides

this, the pleasure of _remembering_ Labrador!

FOOTNOTES:

[C] Possibly sienite. I omitted to make a note, and speak from

recollection. If sienite, very hard, the quartz element predominating,

as the feldspar does farther north.

NOTES OF A PIANIST.

III.

New York, _February, 1862._--One thing surprises me. It is to find New

York, to say the least of it, as brilliant as when I took my departure

for the Antilles in 1857. In general, the press abroad relates the

events of our war with such a predetermined pessimist spirit, that at a

distance it is impossible to form a correct estimate of the state of the

country. For the last year I have read in the papers statements to this

effect:--"The theatres are closed; the terrorism of Robespierre sinks

into insignificance, compared to the excesses of the Americans; the

streets of New York are deluged with blood" (I very nearly had a duel in

Puerto Rico for venturing to question the authenticity of this last

assertion, propounded by a Spanish officer); "in short, the North is in

a starving condition."

"How can you think of giving concerts to people who are in want of

bread?" was the remark of my friends, on being apprised of my resolution

to return to the United States; and, in all humility, I must acknowledge

that the same question suggested itself not unfrequently to my mind,

when I discussed within me the expediency of my voyage. I have still in

my possession a newspaper in which a correspondent states the

depreciation of our currency to be such that he actually saw a baker

refuse to take a dollar from a famished laborer in exchange for a loaf

of bread.

The number of these trustworhy correspondents has increased in the

direct ratio of our prosperity, the development of our resources, and

the umbrage these blessings give to the enemies of democratic

principles. There are very few governments that would not deem it a

matter of duty to exult over the ruin of our republican edifice. Fear

actuates the less enlightened; jealousy is the motive of the more

liberal. A celebrated statesman once said to me, "A republic is

theoretically a very fine thing, but it is a Utopia." Like the man in

antiquity, who, on hearing motion denied, refuted the assertion simply

by rising and walking, we had hitherto put the "Utopia" into practice;

and the _thing did_ march on, and proved a reality. The argument was

peremptory. A principle can be discussed; a fact is undeniable. Although

refracted by the organs of the foreign press, the light of truth still

flashed at times upon the people in Europe, and taught it to reflect.

When our troubles broke out, I was in Martinique. In all the

Antilles,--Spanish, French, Danish, English, Swedish, Dutch,--it was but

one unanimous cry, "Did not we say so?" and the truthful and independent

correspondents immediately embraced this opportunity to redouble their

zeal, and forthwith began to multiply like mosquitoes in a tropical

swamp after a summer shower.

But it is not my province to pronounce upon lofty political and moral

questions. I would merely say that New York, for a deserted city, is

singularly animated; that Broadway yesterday was thronged with pretty

women, who, famished as they are, present, nevertheless, the delusive

appearance of health, and brave with heroic indifference the bloody

tumults of which our streets are daily the theatre; that Art is not so

utterly dead among us but that Maretzek gives "Un Ballo in Maschera" to

crowded houses, and Church sees his studio filled with amateurs desirous

of admiring his magnificent and strange "Icebergs," which he has just

finished.

It is difficult to account for the extreme ignorance of many foreigners

with regard to the political and intellectual standing of the United

States, when one considers the extent of our commerce, which covers the

entire world like a vast net, or when one views the incessant tide of

immigration which thins the population of Europe to our profit. A French

admiral, Viscount Duquesne, inquired of me at Havana, in 1853, if it

were possible to venture in the vicinity of St. Louis without

apprehending being massacred by the Indians. The father of a talented

French pianist who resides in this country wrote a few years since to

his son to know if the furrier business in the city of New York was

exclusively carried on by Indians. Her Imperial Highness the

Grand-Duchess of Russia, on seeing Barnum's name in an American paper,

requested me to tell her if he were not one of our prominent statesmen.

For very many individuals in Europe, the United States have remained

just what they were when Chateaubriand wrote "Les Natchez," and saw

parrots(?) on the boughs of the trees which the majestic "_Mechasebe_"

rolled down the current of its mighty waters. All this may seem

improbable, but I advance nothing that I am not fully prepared to prove.

There is, assuredly, an intelligent class of people who read and know

the truth; but, unfortunately, it is not the most numerous, nor the most

inclined to render us justice. Proudhon himself--that bold, vast mind,

ever struggling for the triumph of light and progress--regards the

pioneer of the West merely as an heroic outlaw, and the Americans in

general as half-civilized savages. From Talleyrand, who said,

"_L'Amerique est un pays de cochons sales et de sales cochons,_" down to

Zimmermann, the director of the piano-classes at the Conservatory of

Paris, who, without hearing me, gave as a reason for refusing to receive

me in 1841, that "America was a country that could produce nothing but

steam-engines," there is scarcely an eminent man abroad who has not made

a thrust at the Americans.--It may not be irrelevant to say here that

the little Louisianian who was refused as a pupil in 1841 was called

upon in 1851 to sit as a judge on the same bench with Zimmermann, at the

"_Concours_" of the Conservatory.

Unquestionably there are many blanks in certain branches of our

civilization. Our appreciation of the fine arts is not always as

enlightened, as discriminating, as elevated, as it might be. We look

upon them somewhat as interlopers, parasites, occupying a place to which

they have no legitimate right. Our manners, like the machinery of our

government, are too new to be smooth and polished; they occasionally

grate. We are more prone to worship the golden calf, in bowing down

before the favorites of Fortune, than disposed to kill the fatted calf

in honor of the elect of thought and mind. Each and every one of us

thinks himself as good and better than any other man: an invaluable

creed, when it engenders self-respect; but, alas! when we put it in

practice, it is generally with a view of pulling down to our level those

whose level we could never hope to reach. Fortunately, these little

weaknesses are not national traits. They are inherent in all new

societies, and will completely disappear when we shall attain the full

development of our civilization with the maturity of age.

* * * * *

My _impresarios_, Strakosch and Gran, have made the important discovery,

that my first concert in New York, on my return from Europe in 1853,

took place the 11th of February, and consequently have decided to defer

my reappearance for a few days in order that it may fall upon the 11th

of February, 1862. The public (which takes not the remotest interest in

the thing) has been duly informed of this memorable coincidence by all

the papers.

Query by some of my friends: "Why do you say such and such things in the

advertisements? Why do you not eliminate such and such epithets from the

bills?"

Answer: Alas! are you ignorant of the fact that the artist is a piece of

merchandise, which the _impresario_ has purchased, and which he sets off

to the best advantage according to his own taste and views? You might as

well upbraid certain pseudo-gold-mines for declaring dividends which

they will never pay, as to render the artist responsible for the puffs

of his managers. A poor old negress becomes, in the hands of the Jupiter

of the Museum, the nurse of Washington; after that, can you marvel at

the magniloquent titles coupled with my name?

The artist is like the stock which is to be quoted at the board and

thrown upon the market. The _impresario_ and his agents, the broker and

his clique, cry out that it is "excellent, superb, unparalleled,--the

shares are being carried off as by magic,--there remain but very few

reserved seats." (The house will perhaps be full of dead-heads, and the

broker may be meditating a timely failure.) Nevertheless, the public

rushes in, and the money follows a similar course. If the stock be

really good, the founders of the enterprise become millionnaires. If the

artist has talent, the _impresario_ occasionally makes his (the

_impresario's_) fortune. In case both stock and artist prove bad, they

fall below par and vanish after having made (quite innocently) a certain

number of victims. Now, in all sincerity, of the two humbugs, do you not

prefer that of the _impresario_? At all events, it is less expensive.

* * * * *

I heard Brignoli yesterday evening in "Martha." The favorite tenor has

still his charming voice, and has retained, despite the progress of an

_embonpoint_ that gives him some uneasiness, the aristocratic elegance

which, added to his fine hair and "beautiful throat," has made him so

successful with the fair sex. Brignoli, notwithstanding the defects his

detractors love to heap upon him, is an artist I sincerely admire. The

reverse of vocalists, who, I am sorry to say, are for the most part

vulgar ignoramuses, he is a thorough musician, and perfectly qualified

to judge a musical work. His enemies would be surprised to learn that he

knows by heart Hummel's Concerto in A minor. He learned it as a child

when he contemplated becoming a pianist, and still plays it charmingly.

Brignoli knows how to sing, and, were it not for the excessive fear that

paralyzes all his faculties before an audience, he would rank among the

best singers of the day.

I met Brignoli for the first time at Paris in 1849. He was then very

young, and had just made his _debut_ at the Theatre Italien, in "L'

Elisire d' Amore," under the sentimental patronage of Mme. R., wife of

the celebrated barytone. In those days Brignoli was very thin, very

awkward, and his timidity was rendered more apparent by the proximity of

his protectress. Mme. R. was an Italian of commanding stature,

impassioned and jealous. She sang badly, although possessed of a fine

voice, which she was less skilful in showing to advantage than in

displaying the luxuriant splendor of her raven hair. The public,

initiated into the secret of the green-room, used to be intensely amused

at the piteous attitudes of Nemorino Brignoli, contrasting, as they did,

with the ardent pantomime of Adina R., who looked by his side like a

wounded lioness. Poor woman! What has been your fate? The glossy tresses

of which you were so proud in your scenes of insanity, those tresses

that brought down the house when your talent might have failed to do so,

are now frosted with the snow of years. Your husband has forsaken you.

After a long career of success, he has buried his fame under the

orange-groves of the Alhambra. There he directs, according to his own

statement, (but I can scarce credit it,) the phantom of a Conservatory

for singing. I am convinced he has too much taste to break in upon the

poetical silence of the old Moorish palace with _portamenti_, trills,

and scales, and I flatter myself that the plaintive song of the

nightingales of the Generalife and the soft murmur of the Fountain of

the Lions are the only concerts that echo gives to the breeze that

gently sighs at night from the mountains of the Sierra Nevada. Alas!

poor woman, your locks are silvered, and Brignoli--has grown fat! "_Sic

transit gloria mundi!_"

DIPLOMACY OF THE REVOLUTION.

When a European speaks about the American Revolution, he speaks of it as

the work of Washington and Franklin. These two names embody for his mind

all the phases of the contest, and explain its result. The military

genius of Washington, going hand in hand with the civil genius of

Franklin, fills the foreground of his picture. He has heard of other

names, and may remember some of them; but these are the only ones which

have taken their place in his memory at the side of the great names of

European history.

In part this is owing to the importance which all Europeans attach to

the French alliance as one of the chief causes of our success. For then,

as now, France held a place among the great powers of the world which

gave importance to all her movements. With direct access to two of the

principal theatres of European strife and easy access to the third, she

never raised her arm without drawing immediate attention. If less

powerful than England on the ocean, she was more powerful there than any

other nation; and even England's superiority was often, and sometimes

successfully, contested. The adoption by such a power of the cause of a

people so obscure as the people of the "Thirteen Colonies" then were

was, in the opinion of European statesmen, decisive of its success. The

fact of our actual poverty was known to all; few, if any, knew that we

possessed exhaustless sources of wealth. Our weakness was on the

surface, palpable, manifest, forcing itself upon attention; our strength

lay out of sight, in rich veins which none but eyes familiar with their

secret windings could trace. Thus the French alliance, as the European

interpreted it, was the alliance of wealth with poverty, of strength

with weakness,--a magnanimous recognition of efforts which without that

recognition would have been vain. What, then, must have been the

persuasive powers, the commanding genius, of the man who procured that

recognition!

Partly, also, this opinion is owing to the personal character and

personal position of Franklin. Franklin was preeminently a wise man,

wise in the speculative science and wise in the practical art of life.

Something of the maturity of age seems to have tempered the liveliest

sallies of his youth, and much of the vivacity of youth mingles with the

sober wisdom of his age. Thoughtful and self-controlling at twenty, at

seventy his ripe experience was warmed by a genial glow. He entered upon

life with the feeling that he had a part to perform, and the conviction

that his happiness would depend upon his performing it well. What that

part was to be was his earliest study; and a social temperament,

combining with a sound judgment, quickly taught him that the happiness

of the individual is inseparably connected with the happiness of the

species. Thus life became his study as a condition of happiness; man and

Nature, as the means of obtaining it. He sought to control his passions

as he sought to control the lightning, that he might strip them of their

power to harm. Sagacious in the study of causes, he was still more

sagacious in tracing their connection with effects; and his speculations

often lose somewhat of their grandeur by the simple and unpretending

directness with which he adapts them to the common understanding and

makes them minister to the common wants of life. The ambition which

quickened his early exertions met an early reward. He was ambitious to

write well, and he became one of the best writers in our language. He

was ambitious of knowledge, and he laid it up in such stores that men

sought his conversation in order to learn from him. He was ambitious of

pecuniary independence, and he accumulated a fortune that made him

master of his time and actions. He was ambitious of influence, and he

obtained a rare control over the thoughts and the passions of men. He

was ambitious of fame, and he connected his name with the boldest and

grandest discovery of his age.

Living thus in harmony with himself, he enjoyed the rare privilege of

living in equal harmony with the common mind and the advanced mind of

his contemporaries. He entered into every-day wants and feelings as if

he had never looked beyond them, and thus made himself the counsellor of

the people. He appreciated the higher wants and nobler aspirations of

our nature, and thus became the companion and friend of the philosopher.

His interest in the present--and it was a deep and active interest--did

not prevent him from looking forward with kindling sympathies to the

future. Like the diligent husbandman of whom Cicero tells us, he could

plant trees without expecting to see their fruit. If he detected folly

with a keen eye, he did not revile it with a bitter heart. Human

weakness, in his estimate of life, formed an inseparable part of human

nature, the extremes of virtue often becoming the starting-points of

vice,--better treated, all of them, by playful ridicule than by stern

reproof. He might never have gone with Howard in search of abuses, but

he would have drawn such pictures of those near home as would have made

some laugh and some blush and all unite heartily in doing away with

them. With nothing of the ascetic, he could impose self-denial and bear

it. Like Erasmus, he may not have aspired to become a martyr,--but in

those long voyages and journeys, which, in his infirm old age, he

undertook in his country's service, there was much of the sublimest

spirit of martyrdom. His philosophy, a philosophy of observation and

induction, had taught him caution in the formation of opinions, and

candor in his judgments. With distinct ideas upon most subjects, he was

never so wedded to his own views as to think that all who did not see

things as he did must be wilfully blind. His justly tempered faculties

lost none of their serene activity or gentle philanthropy by age.

Hamilton himself, at thirty, did not labor with more earnestness in the

formation of the Constitution than Franklin at eighty-one; and as if in

solemn record of his own interpretation of it, his last public act, with

eternity full in view, was to head a memorial to Congress for the

abolition of the slave-trade.

That such a man should produce a strong impression upon the excitable

mind of France must be evident to every one who knows how excitable that

mind is. But to understand his public as well as his personal position,

not so much at the French Court as at the court of French opinion, we

must go back a dozen years and see what that opinion had been since the

Peace of 1763.

The Treaty of Paris, like all treaties between equals founded upon the

temporary superiority of one over the other, had deeply wounded, not the

vanity only, but the pride of France. Humbled in the eyes of her rival,

humbled in the eyes of Europe, she was still more profoundly humbled in

her own eyes. It was a barbed and venomous arrow, haughtily left to

rankle in the wound. For highminded Frenchmen, it was henceforth the

wisdom as well as the duty of France to prepare the means and hasten the

hour of revenge. It was then that the eyes of French statesmen were

first opened to the true position of the American Colonies. It was then

that they first saw how much the prosperity of the parent state depended

upon the sure and constant flow of wealth and strength from this

exhaustless source. Then, too, they first, saw, these Colonies, in due

time, must grow into independence; and in this, independence, in this

severing of ties which they foresaw English pride would cling to long

after English avidity had stripped them of their natural strength, there

was the prospect of full and sweet revenge.

Scarce a twelvemonth had passed from the signing of the Treaty of

Paris, when the first French emissary, an officer of the French navy,

was already at his work in the Colonies. Passing to and fro, travelling

here and there, moving from place to place as any common traveller might

have done, his eyes and his ears were ever open, his note-book was ever

in his hand, and, without awakening the suspicions of England, the first

steps in a work to which the Duke of Choiseul looked forward as the

crowning glory of his administration were wisely and surely taken. They

were promptly followed up. The French Ambassador in England established

relations with Colonial agents in London which enabled him to follow the

progress of the growing discontent and anticipate the questions which

must soon be brought forward for decision. Franklin's examination before

the House of Commons became the text of an elaborate despatch,

harmonizing with the report of his secret agent, and opening a prospect

which even the weary eyes of Louis XV. could not look upon without some

return of the spirit that had won for his youth the long forfeited title

of the Well-Beloved. It was not the first time that the name of the

great philosopher had been heard in the council-chamber of Versailles.

But among the secret agents of France we now meet for the first time the

name of De Kalb, a name consecrated in American history by the life that

he laid down for us on the fatal field of Camden. Scarce a step was

taken by the English Ministry that was not instantly communicated by the

Ambassador in London to the French Minister at Versailles, with

speculations, always ingenious, often profound, upon its probable

results. Scarce a step was taken in the Colonies without attracting the

instant attention of the French agent. Never were events more closely

studied or their character better understood. When troops were sent to

Boston, the English Ministry was not without serious apprehensions of

resistance. But when the tidings of their peaceful landing came, while

the English were exulting in their success, the French Ambassador

rejoiced that the wisdom of the Colonial leaders had withheld them from

a form of opposition for which they were not yet ready. The English

Ministry was preparing to enter upon a system of coercion at the point

of the bayonet. "If the Colonists submit under the pressure," said

Choiseul, "it will only be in appearance and for a short time."

Meanwhile his active brain was teeming with projects; the letters of his

agents were teeming with suggestions. Frances counsels caution, dreads

the effects of hasty measures; for the Colonists have not yet learned to

look upon France as a friend, and premature action might serve only to

bind them more firmly to England. Du Chatelet proposes that France and

Spain, sacrificing their old colonial system, should open their colonial

ports to the products of the English Colonies,--thus inflicting a fatal

blow upon England's commerce, while they supplant her in the affections

of the Colonists. A clerk in the Department of Commerce goes still

farther, advocating a full emancipation of the French Colonies, both to

throw off a useless burden and to increase the irritation of the English

Colonies by the spectacle of an independence which they were not

permitted to share.

There is nothing in history more humiliating than to see on what small

hinges great events sometimes turn. Of all the disgraceful intrigues of

a palace filled with intrigues from the day of its foundation, there is

none half so disgraceful as the overthrow of the Duke of Choiseul in

1770. And yet, vile as it was both by its motive and by its agents, it

marks an important point in the progress of American independence. A bow

more, a sarcasm less, might have confirmed the power of a man whose

deep-rooted hatred of England was fast hastening to its natural

termination, an open rupture; and a premature rupture would have brought

the Colonists into the field, either as the subjects of England or as

the allies of France. To secure the dependence of the Colonies, England

would have been compelled to make large concessions; and timely

concessions might have put off the day of separation for another

century. To secure the alliance of the Colonies, France would have been

compelled to take upon herself the burden of the war; a French general

might have led our armies; French gold might have paid our troops; we

might have been spared the sufferings of Valley Forge, the humiliation

of bankruptcy; but where would have been the wise discipline of

adversity? and if great examples be as essential to the formation of

national as of individual character, what would the name of independence

have been to us, without the example of our Washington?

French diplomacy had little to do with the American events of the next

five years. England, unconscious how near she had been to a new war with

her old enemy, held blindly on in her course of irritation and

oppression; the Colonies continued to advance by sure steps from

resistance by votes and resolves to resistance by the sword. When Louis

XVI. ascended the throne in 1774, and Vergennes received the portfolio

of Foreign Affairs, domestic interests pressed too hard upon them to

allow of their resuming at once the vast plans of the fallen minister.

Unlike that Minister, Vergennes, a diplomatist by profession, preferred

watching and waiting events to hastening or anticipating hem. But to

watch and wait events like those which were then passing in the Colonies

without being drawn into the vortex was beyond the power of even his

well-trained and sagacious mind. In 1775, a French emissary was again

taking the measure of American perseverance, French ambassadors were

again bringing forward American questions as the most important

questions of their correspondence. That expression which has been put

into so many mouths as a summing up of the value of a victory was

applied in substance by Vergennes to the Battle of Bunker Hill,--"Two

more victories of this kind, and the English will have no army left in

America."

And while thus tempted by this proof of American strength, his wavering

mind was irritated by the apprehension of some sudden outbreak of

English arrogance; for the Ambassador wrote that Whigs and Tories might

yet unite in a war against France in order to put an end to the troubles

in the Colonies,--and no Frenchman had forgotten that England began the

War of 1755 by an open violation of international law, by seizing three

hundred French merchant ships and casting into prison ten thousand

French sailors before the declaration of hostilities. Thus events

prepared the way for American diplomacy, and, more powerful than the

prudence of Vergennes or the pacific longings of Louis XVI., compelled

them to decide and act, when they would still gladly have discussed and

waited.

And, moreover, a new element had been introduced into the councils of

statesmen,--or rather, an element hitherto circumscribed and resisted

had begun to act with irresistible force. Public opinion, speaking

through the press by eloquent pens, through coffee-houses and saloons by

eloquent voices, called loudly for action in the name of humanity and in

the still more exciting name of French honor. Little as most Frenchmen

knew about America, they knew enough about England to believe that in

her disputes with other nations she was apt to be in the wrong,--and if

with other nations, why not with her own colonies? The longing for

revenge, which ever since the Treaty of Paris filled some corner of

every French heart, grew stronger at the near approach of so abundant a

harvest; nor did it lose any of its sweetness from the reflection that

their enemy himself was doing what they never could have done alone to

prepare it for them.

But humanity, too, was a powerful word. Men could not read Rousseau

without being led to think more earnestly, if not always more

profoundly, upon the laws of social organization. They could not read

Voltaire without a clearer perception of abuses and a more vigorous

contempt for the systems which had put the many into the hands of the

few to be butchered or butchers at their will. They could not read

Montesquieu without feeling that there was a future in store for them

for which the long past had been patiently laboring, and longing, as

they read, to hasten its coming. In that future, mankind were to rise

higher than they had ever risen before; rulers and ruled were to act in

fruitful harmony for their common good; the brightest virtues of Greece,

the purest virtues of Rome, were to revive in some new form of society,

not very definitely conceived by the understanding, but which floated in

magnificent visions before the glowing imagination.

I hasten reluctantly over this part of my subject; for the formation of

public opinion in France and its action upon Government, even while all

the forms of an almost absolute monarchy were preserved, is an important

chapter in the history of European civilization. But hasten I must,

merely calling attention to the existence of this element, and reminding

my reader, that, chronologically, of the two parts which composed this

opinion, hatred for England had been at work ever since 1763, while

sympathy with the Colonists was rather an individual than a public

feeling till late in 1776.

It was at Versailles, and not at Paris, that action began. Vergennes's

first step was to send another agent, no longer merely to observe and

report, but to ascertain, though without compromising the French

Government, how far the Americans were prepared for French intervention.

English suspicions were already awakened. Already the English Minister

had informed the French Ambassador, upon the authority of a private

letter of General Lee to General Burgoyne, that the Americans were sure

of French aid. It was not without great difficulty that the new agent,

De Bonvouloir, could find a safe conveyance. But by December he was

already in Philadelphia, and, though still pretending to be a mere

traveller, soon in full communication with the Committee of Secret

Correspondence.

The appointment of this committee, on the 29th of November, 1775, is the

beginning of the history of our foreign relations. Then began our

attempts to gain admission into the great family of nations as an

independent power,--attempts not always judiciously directed, attended

in some instances with disappointment and mortification, but crowned at

last with as full a measure of success as those who understood monarchy

and Europe could have anticipated. Two of its members, Franklin and

Dickinson, were already known abroad, where, at a later day, Jay also

was to make himself an enduring name. The other two, Johnson and

Harrison, enjoyed and merited a high Colonial reputation.

There can be but little doubt that Franklin's keen eye quickly

penetrated the veil under which De Bonvouloir attempted to conceal his

real character. It was not the first time that he had been brought into

contact with French diplomacy, nor the first proof he had seen that

France was watching the contest in the hope of abasing the power of her

rival. While agent in London for four Colonies,--a true ambassador, if

to watch events, study character, give timely warning and wise counsel

be the office of an ambassador,--he had lived on a friendly footing with

the French legation, and profited by it to give them correct views of

the character and feelings of the Colonies. And now, reducing the

question to these simple heads, he asked,--

"How is France disposed towards us? If favorably, what assurance will

she give us of it?

"Can we have from France two good engineers, and how shall we apply for

them?

"Can we have, by direct communication, arms and munitions of war, and

free entrance and exit for our vessels in French ports?"

But whatever reliance they may have placed on the French emissary, the

Committee were unwilling to confine themselves to this as the only means

of opening communication with European powers. During a visit to

Holland, Franklin had formed the acquaintance of a Swiss gentleman of

the name of Dumas,--a man of great learning and liberal sentiments, and

whose social position gave him access to sure sources of information. To

him he now addressed himself with the great question of the moment:--"If

we throw off our dependence upon Great Britain, will any court enter

into alliance with us and aid us for the sake of our commerce?"

Such, then, was the starting-point of our diplomatic history, the end

and aim of all our negotiations: alliance and aid for the sake of our

commerce.

But we should greatly mistake the character of the times, if we supposed

that this point was reached without many and warm debates. When the

question was first started in Congress, that body was found to be as

much divided upon this as upon any of the other subjects which it was

called upon to discuss. With Franklin, one party held, that, instead of

asking for treaties with European powers, we should first conquer our

independence, when those powers, allured by our commerce, would come and

ask us; the other, with John Adams, that, as our true policy and a mark

of respect from a new nation to old ones, we ought to send ministers to

all the great courts of Europe, in order to obtain the recognition of

our independence and form treaties of amity and commerce. Franklin, who

had already outlived six treaties of "firm and lasting peace," and now

saw the seventh swiftly approaching its end, might well doubt the

efficacy of those acts to which his young and impetuous colleague

attached so much importance. But in Congress the majority was with

Adams, and for a while there was what Gouverneur Morris called a rage

for treaties.

The Committee of Secret Correspondence, as I have already said, was

formed in November, 1775. One of its first measures was to appoint

agents,--Arthur Lee for London, Dumas for the Hague, and, early in the

following year, Silas Deane for France. Lee immediately opened relations

with the French Court by means of the French Ambassador in London; and

Deane, on his arrival in France in June, followed them up with great

intelligence and zeal. A million of livres was placed by Vergennes in

the hands of Beaumarchais, who assumed the name of Hortalez & Co., and

arranged with Deane the measures for transmitting the amount to America

in the shape of arms and supplies.

And now the Declaration of Independence came to add the question of

recognition to the question of aid. But recognition was a declaration of

war, and to bring the French Government to this decisive pass required

the highest diplomatic skill supported by dignity and weight of

character. The Colonies had but one man possessed of these

qualifications, and that man was Franklin.

The history of diplomacy, with its long record of solemn entrances and

brilliant processions, its dazzling pictures of thrones and courts,

which make the head dizzy and the heart sick, has no scene half so grand

as the entrance of this unattended, unushered old man into France, in

December, 1776. No one knew of his coming until he stood among them; and

then, as they looked upon his serene, yet grave and thoughtful

face,--upon his gray hairs, which carried memory back to the fatal year

of Ramillies and the waning glories of the great Louis,--on the right

hand which had written words of persuasive wisdom for prince and

peasant, which had drawn the lightning from its home in the heavens, and

was now stretched forth with such an imperial grasp to strip a sceptre

they all hated of its richest jewel,--a feeling of reverential awe came

over them, and they bowed themselves before him as in the secret depths

of their hearts they had never bowed to emperor or king. "He is at

Nantes, he is on the road," was whispered from mouth to mouth in the

saloons of the capital, as his landing became known. Some asserted

confidently that he had already reached Paris, others that he might be

hourly expected. Then came the certainty: he had slept at Versailles the

night of the 21st, had come to Paris at two the next afternoon, and now

was at his lodgings in the Rue de l'Universite.

No one, perhaps, was more surprised than Franklin to find himself the

object of such universal attention. But no one knew better than he how

to turn it to account for the accomplishment of his purpose. In a few

days he withdrew to the quiet little village of Passy, at easy distance

both from the city and the court,--and, without endeavoring to increase

the public curiosity by an air of mystery or seclusion, kept himself

sufficiently in the background to prevent that curiosity from losing its

stimulant by too great a familiarity with its object. Where men of

science met for the discussion of a new theory or the trial of a new

experiment, he was to be seen amongst them with an unpretending air of

intelligent interest, and wise suggestions, never indiscreetly

proffered, never indiscreetly withheld. Where humane men met to discuss

some question of practical benevolence, or philosophers to debate some

principle of social organization, he was always prepared to take his

part with apt and far-reaching illustrations from the stores of his

meditation and experience. Sometimes he was to be seen in places of

amusement, and always with a genial smile, as if in his sympathy with

the enjoyment of others he had forgotten his own perplexities and cares.

In a short time he had drawn around him the best minds of the capital,

and laid his skilful hand on the public pulse with an unerring accuracy

of touch, which told him when to speak and when to be silent, when to

urge and when to leave events to their natural progress. Ever active,

ever vigilant, no opportunity was suffered to escape him, and yet no one

whose good-will it was desirable to propitiate was disgusted by

injudicious importunity. Even Vergennes, who knew that his coming was

the signal of a new favor to be asked, found in his way of asking it

such a cheerful recognition of its true character, so considerate an

exposition of the necessities which made it urgent, that he never saw

him come without pleasure. If he had been a vain man, he would have

enjoyed his position too much to make good use of it for the cause he

came to serve. If he had been a weak man, he would have fallen under the

control of the opinion which it was his office to guide. If he had not

possessed a pure and genuine sympathy with human nature, he would not

have been able, at the age of seventy, to enter into the feelings of a

people so different from those among whom he had always lived. And if he

had not been stimulated by earnest convictions, and governed by high

principles, he would not have been able to withstand the frequent and

insidious attempts that were made to shake his fortitude and undermine

his fidelity. But in him, as in Washington, there was a rare

predominance of that sound common-sense which is man's surest guide in

his relations with events, and that firm belief in the progress of

humanity which is his best reliance in his relations with men.

Congress had given him two associates in his commission to

France,--Silas Deane of Connecticut, and Arthur Lee of Virginia. Deane

had been a member of Congress, was active, enterprising, and

industrious; but his judgment was not sound, his knowledge of men not

extensive, his acquaintance with great interests and his experience of

great affairs insufficient for the important position in which he was

placed. Lee had lived long in England, was an accomplished scholar, a

good writer, familiar with the character of European statesmen and the

politics of European courts,--but vain, jealous, irritable, suspicious,

ambitious of the first honors, and disposed to look upon every one who

attracted more attention than himself as his natural enemy. Deane,

deeply impressed with the importance of Franklin's social position for

the fulfilment of their common duties, although energetic and active,

cheerfully yielded the precedence to his more experienced colleague.

Lee, conscious of his own accomplishments, regarded the deference paid

to Franklin as an insult to himself, and promptly resumed in Paris the

war of petty intrigue and secret accusation which a few years before he

had waged against him in England. In this vile course Congress soon

unwittingly gave him a worthy coadjutor, by appointing, as Commissioner

to Tuscany, Ralph Izard of South Carolina, who, without rendering a

single service, without even going near the court to which he was

accredited, continued for two years to draw his salary and abuse Dr.

Franklin.

When Franklin reached Paris, he found that Deane had already made

himself a respectable position, and that, through Caron de Beaumarchais,

the brilliant author of "Figaro," the French Government had begun that

system of pecuniary aid which it continued to render through the whole

course of the war. Vergennes granted the Commissioners an early

interview, listened respectfully to their statements, asked them for a

memorial to lay before the King, assured them of the personal protection

of the French Court, promised them every commercial facility not

incompatible with treaty obligations with Great Britain, and advised

them to seek an interview with the Spanish Ambassador. The memorial was

promptly drawn up and presented. A copy of it was given to the Spanish

Ambassador to lay before the Court of Madrid. Negotiations were fairly

opened.

But Franklin soon became convinced that the French Government had marked

out for itself a line of policy, from which, as it was founded upon a

just appreciation of its own interests, it would not swerve,--that it

wished the Americans success, was prepared to give them secret aid in

arms and money and by a partial opening of its ports,--but that it was

compelled by the obligations of the Family Compact to time its own

movements in a certain measure by those of Spain, and was not prepared

to involve itself in a war with England by an open acknowledgment of the

independence of the Colonies, until they had given fuller proof of the

earnestness of their intentions and of their ability to bear their part

in the contest. Nor was he long in perceiving that the French Government

was giving the Colonies money which it sorely needed for paying its own

debts and defraying its own expenses,--and thus, that, however

well-disposed it might be, there were certain limits beyond which it was

not in its power to go. It was evident, therefore, to his just and

sagacious mind, that to accept the actual policy of France as the gauge

of a more open avowal under more favorable circumstances, and to

recognize the limits which her financial embarrassments set to her

pecuniary grants, was the only course that he could pursue without

incurring the danger of defeating his own negotiations by excess of

zeal. Meanwhile there was enough to do in strengthening the ground

already gained, in counteracting the insidious efforts of English

emissaries, in correcting erroneous impressions, in awakening just

expectations, in keeping up that public interest which had so large a

part in the formation of public opinion, and in so regulating the action

of that opinion as to make it bear with a firm and consistent and not

unwelcome pressure upon the action of Government. And in doing this he

had to contend not only with the local difficulties of his position, but

with the difficulty of uncertain communications: months often

intervening between the sending of a despatch and the receiving of an

answer, and affording newsmongers abundant opportunities for idle

reports and unfounded conjectures, and enemies ample scope for malicious

falsehoods.

It was a happy circumstance for the new state, that her chief

representative was a man who knew how to wait with dignity and when to

act with energy; for it was this just appreciation of circumstances that

gave him such a strong hold upon the mind of Vergennes, and imparted

such weight to all his applications for aid. No sooner had Congress

begun to receive money from Europe than it began to draw bills upon its

agents there, and often without any certainty that those agents would be

in a condition to meet them. Bills were drawn on Mr. Jay when he was

sent to Spain, and his already difficult position made doubly difficult

and humiliating. Bills were drawn on Mr. Adams in Holland, and he was

unable to meet them. But such was the confidence of the French Court in

the representations of Dr. Franklin, that he was enabled not only to

meet all the drafts which were made upon him directly, but to relieve

his less fortunate colleagues from the embarrassments in which the

precipitation of their own Government had involved them.

And thus passed the first twelve months of his residence in

France,--cloudy and anxious months, more especially during the summer of

1777, when it was known that Burgoyne was coming down by Lake Champlain,

and Howe preparing for a great expedition to the northward. Then came

the tidings that Howe had taken Philadelphia. "Say rather," said

Franklin, with that air of conviction which carries conviction with it,

"that Philadelphia has taken Howe." Men paused as they repeated his

words, and suspended their judgment; and when the news of the Battle of

Germantown and the surrender of Burgoyne followed, they felt deeper

reverence for the calm old man who had reasoned so wisely when all

others desponded. It was on the 4th of December that these welcome

tidings reached Paris; and the Commissioners lost no time in

communicating them to the Court. The second day after, the secretary of

the King's Council came to them with official congratulations.

Negotiations were resumed and carried on rapidly, nothing but a desire

to consult the Court of Madrid being allowed to retard them; and on the

6th of February, 1778, the first treaty between the United States and a

foreign power was signed with all the formalities which custom has

attached to these acts. On the 20th of March the Commissioners were

presented to the King.

Nor was it mere curiosity which filled the halls of the royal palace

with an eager throng on that eventful day. These were the halls which

had witnessed the gathering of powerful men and of great men to the

footstool of the haughtiest of French kings,--which had seen a Conde and

a Turenne lay down their laurels at the royal feet, a Bossuet and a

Boileau check the flow of independent thought to bask them in the beams

of the royal smile, a Fenelon retiring with saddened brow to record for

posterity the truths which he was not permitted to utter to the royal

ear, a Racine shrinking from the cold glance of the royal eye and going

home to die of a broken heart. Here Louis had signed the decree which

sent his dragoons to force his Protestant subjects to the mass and the

confessional; here he had received with a smile of triumph the tidings

that the Pope himself had been compelled to yield to his arrogant

pretensions; and here he had listened in haughty state, when one of the

last of the glorious republics of the Middle Ages, the city of Columbus

and Andrew Doria, which had once covered the Mediterranean with her

ships, and sent forth her hardy mariners, as from a nursery of brave

men, to impart their skill and communicate their enterprising genius to

the rest of Europe, humbled herself before him through her Doge, as,

bowing his venerable head, the old man asked pardon in her name, not for

the wrongs that she had committed, but for the wrongs that she had

borne.

And now, up those marble stairs, through those tapestried halls, came

three men of humble birth, two of whom had wrought for their daily bread

and eaten it in the sweat of their brows, to receive their recognition

as the representatives of a power which had taken its place among the

nations, not by virtue of the divine right of kings, but in the name of

the inalienable rights of the people. Happy would it have been for the

young King who sat in Louis's seat, if he could have understood the full

meaning of his act, and recognized at the same moment the claims of his

own people to participate in that government which derived its strength

from their labor and its security from their love!

Nothing could have demonstrated more clearly the wisdom of Franklin's

confidence in the sincerity of the French Government than the generous

and liberal terms of the treaty. No present advantage was taken of the

dependent condition of their new ally; no prospective advantage was

reserved for future contingencies. Only one condition was

stipulated,--and that as much in the interest of the Colonies as of

France,--that they should never return to their allegiance. Only one

reciprocal obligation was assumed,--that neither party should make peace

with England without the knowledge and consent of the other. All the

rest was full and free reciprocation in the future, and the assurance of

efficient aid in the present; no ambiguities, no doubtful expressions,

no debatable ground for interpretation to build upon and weave the mazes

of her subtile web,--but clear, distinct, and definite, a mutual

specification of mutual duties and mutual rights. Equal could not have

treated more firmly with equal than this new power, as yet unrecognized

in the congress of nations, with the oldest monarchy of Europe.

I have already alluded to the rage for treaties which prevailed for a

while in Congress. It was this that sent William and Arthur Lee upon

their bootless errands to Vienna and Berlin, Francis Dana to St.

Petersburg, John Jay to encounter embarrassment and mortification at

Madrid, and gave Ralph Izard an opportunity to draw an unearned salary,

through two successive years, from the scanty funds of the Congressional

banker at Paris.

Jay's situation was peculiarly trying. He had been Chief Justice of New

York, President of Congress, had written some of the most eloquent state

papers that were issued in the name of that body whose state papers were

ranked by Chatham among the best that ever were written, and, at a

personal sacrifice, had exchanged a position of honor and dignity at

home for a doubtful position abroad. A clear-headed, industrious,

decided man, he had to contend for more than two years with the two

qualities most alien to his nature,--habitual dilatoriness and

diplomatic reticence.

Spain, like France, had marked out a path for herself, and it was

impossible to move her from it. Jay obtained some money to help him pay

some of the drafts of Congress, but neither treaty nor recognition.

"They have taken four years," wrote Franklin, "to consider whether they

would treat with us. I would give them forty, and let us mind our own

business." And still viewing the question as he had viewed it in the

beginning, he wrote in his diary in May, 1782,--"It seems to me that we

have in most instances hurt our credit and importance by sending all

over Europe, begging alliances and soliciting declarations of our

independence. The nations, perhaps from thence, seemed to think that our

independence is something they have to sell, and that we do not offer

enough for it."[D]

The most important European event in its American bearings, after the

recognition by France, was the armed neutrality of the Northern

powers,--a court intrigue in Russia, though a sober act in Spain,--and

which was followed, in December, 1780, by the addition of Holland to the

open enemies of England.

Attempts had already been made to form a treaty with Holland,--first

through William Lee, with such prospect of success as to induce Congress

to send Henry Laurens to the Hague to continue the negotiations. Laurens

was captured by an English cruiser, and soon after John Adams was

directed to take his place. At Paris, Adams had failed singularly as a

negotiator,--lending a ready ear to Lee, hardly attempting to disguise

his jealousy of Franklin, and enforcing his own opinions in a manner

equally offensive to the personal feelings of the Minister and the

traditional usages of the Court. But at the Hague he found a field

better suited to his ardent temperament, and, backed by the brilliant

success of the campaign of 1781, and the votes of the House of Commons

in favor of reconciliation, succeeded in obtaining a public recognition

in the spring of 1782, and concluding a treaty in the autumn.

All these things were more or less upon the surface,--done and doing

more or less openly. But under the surface the while, and known only to

those directly concerned therein, were covert attempts on the part of

England to open communications with Franklin by means of personal

friends. There had been nothing but the recognition of our independence

that England would not have given to prevent the alliance with France;

and now there was nothing that she was not ready to do to prevent it

from accomplishing its purpose. And it adds wonderfully to our

conception of Franklin to think of him as going about with this

knowledge, in addition to the knowledge of so much else, in his

mind,--this care, in addition to so many other cares, ever weighing upon

his heart. Little did jealous, intriguing Lee know of these things;

petulant, waspish Izard still less. A mind less sagacious than

Franklin's might have grown suspicious under the influences that were

employed to awaken his distrust of Vergennes. And a character less

firmly established would have lost its hold upon Vergennes amid the

constant efforts that were made to shake his confidence in the gratitude

and good faith of America. But Franklin, who believed that timely faith

was a part of wisdom, went directly to the French Minister with the

propositions of the English emissaries, and frankly telling him all

about them, and taking counsel of him as to the manner of meeting them,

not only stripped them of their power to harm him, but converted the

very measures which his enemies had so insidiously, and, as they deemed,

so skilfully prepared for his ruin, into new sources of strength.

Of the proffers of mediation in which first Spain and then Russia and

the German Emperor were to take so important a part, as they bore no

fruit, it is sufficient to observe, in passing, how little European

statesmen understood the business in which they were so ready to

intermeddle, and what a curious spectacle Catharine and Kaunitz present,

seeking to usher into the congress of kings the first true

representative of that great principle of popular sovereignty which was

to make all their thrones totter and tremble under them. It may be

added, that they furnished that self-dependence of John Adams which too

often degenerated into arrogance an occasion to manifest itself in a

nobler light; for he refused to take part in the discussions in any

other character than as the representative of an independent power.

Meanwhile events were hastening the inevitable termination. In Europe,

England stood alone, without either open or secret sympathy. In June,

1779, a war with Spain had followed the French war of 1778. In July,

1780, the "armed neutrality" had defined the position of the Northern

powers adversely to her maritime pretensions. War was declared with

Holland in December of the same year. In America, the campaign of 1781

had stripped her of her Southern conquests, and effaced the impression

of her early victories. At home her people were daily growing more and

more restless under the pressure of taxation; and even the country

gentlemen, who had stood by the Ministry so long in the hope of

transferring their own burden to the shoulders of their American

brethren, began to give evident tokens of discontent. It was clear that

England must consent to peace. And yet she still stood bravely up,

presenting a bold front to each new enemy: a grand spectacle in one

light, for there is always something grand in indomitable courage; but a

sad one in the true light, and one from which a hundred years hence the

philosophic historian will turn with a shudder, when, summing up all

these events, and asking what all this blood was shed for, he shows that

the only principle at stake on her part was that pernicious claim to

control the industry of the world, which, had she succeeded, would have

dried up the sources of prosperity in America, as it is fast drying them

up in Ireland and in India.[E]

Nor was peace less necessary to her rival. The social revolution which

the two last reigns had rendered inevitable was moving with gigantic

strides towards its bloody consummation. The last well-founded hope of

reforms that should probe deep enough to anticipate revolution had

disappeared with Turgot. The statesmanship of Vergennes had no remedy

for social disease. It was a statesmanship of alliances and treaties and

wars, traditional and sometimes brilliant, but all on the surface,

leaving the wounded heart untouched, the sore spirit unconsoled. The

financial skill of Necker could not reach the evil. It was mere banking

skill, and nothing more,--very respectable in its time and place,

filling a few mouths more with bread, but failing to see, although told

of it long ago by one who never erred, that "man does not live by bread

alone." The finances were in hopeless disorder. The resources of the

country were almost exhausted. Public faith had been strained to the

utmost. National forbearance had been put to humiliating tests under the

last reign by the partition of Poland and the Peace of Kainardji; and

the sense of self-respect had not been fully restored by the American

War. And although no one yet dreamed of what seven swift years were to

bring forth, all minds were agitated by a mysterious consciousness of

the approaching tempest.

In 1782 the overtures of England began to assume a more definite form.

Franklin saw that the time for decisive action was at hand, and prepared

himself for it with his wonted calm and deliberate appreciation of

circumstances. That France was sincere he could not doubt, after all the

proofs she had given of her sincerity; nor could he doubt that she would

concur heartily in preparing the way for a lasting peace. He had the

instructions of Congress to guide him in what America would claim; and

his own mind was quickly made up as to what England must yield. Four

points were indispensable: a full recognition of independence; an

immediate withdrawal of her troops; a just settlement of

boundaries,--those of Canada being confined, at least, to the limits of

the Act of 1774; and the freedom of the fisheries. Without these there

could be no treaty. But to make the work of peace sure, he suggested, as

equally useful to both parties, four other concessions, the most

important of which were the giving up of Canada, and securing equal

privileges in English and Irish ports to the ships of both nations. The

four necessary articles became the real basis of the treaty.

John Adams, John Jay, and Henry Laurens were joined with him in the

commission. Jay was first on the ground, reaching Paris in June; Adams

came in October; Laurens not till November, when the preliminary

articles were ready for signature. They all accepted Franklin's four

articles as the starting-point. But, unfortunately, they did not all

share Franklin's well-founded confidence in the sincerity of the French

Government. Jay's mind was embittered by the tergiversations of Spain.

Adams had not forgotten his former disagreements with Vergennes, and

hated Franklin so bitterly that he could hardly be prevailed upon to

treat him with the civility which his age and position demanded, much

less with the consideration which the interest of his country required.

Both Jay and Adams were under the influence of that hostility to France

which prevailed as extensively in the Colonies as in the mother

country,--an hostility which neither of them was at sufficient pains to

conceal, although neither of them, perhaps, was fully conscious of it.

It was this feeling that kept them both aloof from the French Minister,

and made them so accessible to English influences. And it was a

knowledge of this feeling which three years later suggested to George

III. that well-known insinuation about Adams's dislike to French

manners, which would have been a scathing sarcasm, if it had not been an

inexcusable impertinence.

The English agents availed themselves skilfully of those

sentiments,--sowing suspicions, fostering doubts, and not shrinking,

there is strong reason to suppose, from gross exaggeration and

deliberate falsehood. The discussion of articles, like all such

discussions, was protracted by the efforts of each party to make the

best terms, and the concealing of real intentions in the hope of

extorting greater concessions. But England was really prepared to yield

all that America was really prepared to claim; France, in spite of the

suspicions of Adams and Jay, was really sincere; and on the 30th of

November, 1782, the preliminary articles were signed.

Franklin's position was difficult and delicate. He knew the importance

of peace. He knew that the instructions of Congress required perfect

openness towards the French Minister. He believed that the Minister

deserved, both by his past kindness and present good intentions, to be

treated with perfect openness. But both his colleagues were against him.

What should he do? Refer the difference to Congress, and meanwhile hold

the country in painful and expensive suspense? What could he do but

submit, as he had done through life, to the circumstances which he could

not control, and give the appearance of unanimity to an act which the

good of his country required to be unanimous?

He signed the preliminaries, and submitted to the reproach of personal

and public ingratitude as he had submitted to the taunts of Wedderburn.

History has justified his confidence,--the most careful research having

failed to bring to light any confirmation of the suspicions of his

colleagues. And Vergennes, though nettled for the moment, understood

Franklin's position too well to lay the act at his door as an expression

of a real opinion.

Much time and long discussions were still required to convert the

preliminaries into a final treaty; for the complicated interests of

England, France, and Spain were to be taken into the account. But each

party longed for peace; each party needed it; and on the 3d of

September, 1783, another Treaty of Paris gave once more the short-lived,

though precious boon to Europe and America.

During Franklin's residence at the Court of France, and mainly through

his influence, that court had advanced to Congress three millions of

livres a year as a loan, had increased it to four millions in 1781, had

the same year added six millions as a free gift to the three millions

with which she began, and become security for the regular payment of the

interest upon a loan of ten millions to be raised in Holland.[F]

Nor will it be inappropriate to add, that, before he sailed upon his

mission to France, he called in all the money he could command in specie

(between three and four thousand pounds) and put it into the public

treasury as a loan,--and that while the young men, Adams and Jay, were

provided with competent secretaries of legation, he, though bowed down

by age and disease, and with ten times their work to do, was left to his

own resources, and, but for the assistance of his grandson, would have

been compelled to do it all with his own hand.

FOOTNOTES:

[D] Franklin's Works, Vol. IX. p. 284, Sparks's edition.

[E] I cannot deny myself the pleasure of referring in this connection to

Mr. Carey's admirable exposition of this fact in his "Principles of

Political Science."

[F] In all, eighteen millions as a loan, and nine millions as a free

gift.

OUR BATTLE-LAUREATE.

"How came the Muses to settle in Connecticut?" This was the question of

a writer in the "Atlantic Monthly" last February, whose history of the

"Pleiades" of that State we read with a pleasure which we doubt not was

shared by all who saw it, except perhaps a few who did not relish the

familiar way in which the feather duster was whisked about the

statuettes of the seven _dii minorum gentium_ who once reigned in

Hartford and New Haven.

"There still remain inventive machinists, acute money-changers, acutest

peddlers; but the seed of the Muses has run out. No more Pleiades at

Hartford."

In the July number of our elder brother, the "North American," one of

the ablest of American critic's said of an author who had just published

a small volume, "In him the nation has found a new poet, vigorous,

original, and thoroughly native." "We have had no such war-poetry, nor

anything like it. His 'River-Fight' is the finest lyric of the kind

since Drayton's 'Battle of Agincourt.'"

The author of this volume, which is entitled "Lyrics of a Day, or

Newspaper Poetry, by a Volunteer in the U. S. Service," and of which a

second edition has just been issued by Carleton in New York, is Mr.

HENRY HOWARD BROWNELL of East Hartford, taught in a school at that

place, a graduate of Trinity College, a nephew of the late Bishop

Brownell of Connecticut. The good which came out of Nazareth, as all

remember, claimed another birthplace. If the author of the "Pleiades"

asks Nathanael's question, putting Hartford for Nazareth, and we tell

him to come and see, we shall have to say that Providence was our new

poet's birthplace, and that his lineage divides itself between Rhode

Island and Massachusetts. But the good has come to us from the

Connecticut Nazareth.

If Drayton had fought at Agincourt, if Campbell had held a sabre at

Hohenlinden, if Scott had been in the saddle with Marmion, if Tennyson

had charged with the Six Hundred at Balaklava, each of these poets might

possibly have pictured what he said as faithfully and as fearfully as

Mr. Brownell has painted the sea-fights in which he took part as a

combatant. But no man can tell a story at second hand with the truth of

incident which belongs to an eye-witness who was part of what he saw. As

a mere relator, therefore, of the sights and sounds of great naval

battles, Mr. Brownell has a fresh story to tell. Not only so, but these

naval battles are not like any the Old World ever saw. One or two

"Monitors" would have settled in half an hour the fight which Aeschylus

shared at Salamis. The galleys "rammed" each other at Actium; but there

was no Dahlgren or Sawyer to thunder from their decks or turrets. The

artillery roared at Trafalgar; but there were no iron-clads to tilt at

each other, meeting with a shock as of ten thousand knights in armor

moulded into one mailed Centaur and crashing against such another

monster.

But, again, a man may see a fight and be able to describe it truthfully,

yet he may be unable to describe it dramatically. He must have the

impressibility of the poetical nature to take in all its scenes, and the

vocabulary of an artist to reproduce them. But, for some reason or

other, poets are not very often found under fire, unless it be that of

the critics. The temperament which makes men insensible to danger is

rarely the gift of those who are so organized as to be sensitive to the

more ethereal skyey influences. The violet end of the spectrum and the

invisible rays beyond it belong to the poet, farthest from the red,

which is the light that shines round the soldier.

It happens rarely that poets put their delicate-fibred brains in the

paths of bullets, but it does happen. Koerner fell with his last song on

his lips. Fitz-James O'Brien gave his life as well as his chants to our

cause. Mr. Brownell has weathered the great battle-storms on the same

deck with Farragut, and has told their story as nobly as his leader made

the story for him to tell. We cannot find any such descriptions as his,

if for no other reason than that already mentioned, that there have been

no such scenes to describe.

But Mr. Brownell's genius is exceptional, as well as his experience. He

can compose his verses while the battle is going on around him. During

the engagement with Fort Powell, he was actually pencilling down some

portions of the "Bay Fight," when he received a polite invitation to

step down to the gun-deck and "try a shot at 'em with the Sawyer." He

took minutes of everything as it happened during the contest, so that

the simple record and the poetical delineation run into each other. We

take the liberty to quote a few words from a note he kindly sent in

answer to some queries of our own.

"Some of the descriptions [in the 'Bay Fight'] might seem exaggerated,

but better authorities than I am say they are not. To be sure, blood and

powder are pretty freely mixed for the painting of it; but these were

the predominant elements of the scene,--the noise being almost

indescribable, and the ship, for all the forward half of her, being an

absolute 'slaughter-house.' Though we had only twenty-five killed and

twenty-eight wounded (some of whom afterwards died) on that day, yet

numbers were torn into fragments, (men with their muscles tense,

subjected to violent concussion, seem as _brittle as glass_,) causing

the deck and its surroundings to present a most strange spectacle."

We can understand better after this the lines--

"And now, as we looked ahead,

All for'ard, the long white deck

Was growing a strange dull red,...

Red from mainmast to bitts!

Red on bulwark and wale,--

Red by combing and hatch,--

Red o'er netting and rail!"

The two great battle-poems begin, each of them, with beautiful

descriptive lines, move on with gradually kindling fire, reach the

highest intensity of action, till the words themselves have the weight

and the rush of shot and shell, and the verses seem aflame with the

passion of the conflict,--then, as the strife calms itself after the

victory is won, the wild dithyrambic stanzas rock themselves into sweet,

even cadences. No one can fail to be struck with the freedom and

robustness of the language, the irregular strength of the rhythm, the

audacious felicities of the rhyme. There are hints which remind us of

many famous poets,--hints, not imitations. There can be no doubt that

these were either coincidences or unconscious tricks of memory. To us

they seem beauties, not defects, in poems of such originality, as in a

new musical composition a few notes in some well-remembered sequence

often seem to harmonize the crudeness of the newer strain,--as in many

flowers and fruits Nature herself repeats a streak of color or a dash of

flavor belonging to some alien growth.

Thus, Drayton says,--

"With Spanish yew so strong.

Arrows a cloth-yard long,

That like to serpents _stung_."

And Brownell,--

"Trust me, our berth was hot;

Ah, wickedly well they shot;

How their death-bolts howled and _stung_!"

A mere coincidence, in all probability, but the word one which none but

a poet could have used. There are reminiscences of Cowper's grand and

simple lines on the "Loss of the Royal George," of Campbell's "Battle of

the Baltic," of Tennyson's "Charge of the Six Hundred," not one of which

but has a pleasing effect in the midst of such vigorous pictures as the

new poet has given us fresh from the terrible original. The most obvious

criticism is one which applies to the "River Fight," and which is

directed against what might be thought an overstraining of the singular

power in the use of words which is one of Mr. Brownell's most

remarkable characteristics. "General Orders," not essential to the

poem, may be admired as a _tour de force_, but cannot be properly called

poetry. It is a condensed, versified edict,--true, no doubt, to the

prose original, but on the whole better printed by itself, if printed at

all, than suffered to distract the reader from the main narration by its

elaborate ingenuity.

These two poems--the "River Fight" and the "Bay Fight"--are better

adapted for public reading and declamation than almost any in our

literature. They hush any circle of listeners, and many cannot hear

those exquisitely tender passages which are found toward the close of

each without yielding them the tribute of their tears. They are to all

the drawing-room battle-poems as the torn flags of our victorious

armadas to the stately ensigns that dressed their ships in the harbor.

Such pictures, if they do not kill everything hung on the walls with

them, make even a brilliant canvas look comparatively lustreless. Yet

the first poem of Mr. Brownell's which ever attracted our attention,

"The Fall of Al Accoub," is of great force, and shows much of the same

red light and black shadow, much of the same Vulcanic power over words,

as with blast and forge and hammer, which startle us in the two

battle-pieces. The lines "Annus Memorabilis," dated Jan. 6th, 1861, read

like prophecy in 1865. "Wood and Coal" (November, 1863) gives a presage

of the fire which the flame of the conflict would kindle. "The Burial of

the Dane" shows the true human sympathy of the writer, in its simple,

pathetic narrative; and the story of the "Old Cove" had a wider

circulation and a heartier reception than almost any prose effort which

has been called forth by the "All we ask is to be let alone" of the arch

traitor.

The "Lyrics of a Day" are too modestly named. Our literature cannot

forget the masterpieces in this little volume in a day, a year, or an

age. The War of Freedom against Slavery has created a devilish enginery

of its own: iron for wood, steam for wind and muscle, "Swamp-Angels" and

thousand-pounders in place of the armaments that gained the Battle of

the Nile and toppled over the chimneys of Copenhagen. New modes of

warfare thundered their demand for a new poet to describe them; and

Nature has answered in the voice of our Battle-Laureate, Henry Howard

Brownell.

DOCTOR JOHNS.

XVI.

Miss Eliza being fairly seated in the Doctor's study, with great

eagerness to hear what might be the subject of his communication, the

parson, with the letter in his hand, asked if she remembered an old

college friend, Maverick, who had once paid them a vacation visit at

Canterbury.

"Perfectly," said Miss Eliza, whose memory was both keen and retentive;

"and I remember that you have said he once passed a night with you,

during the lifetime of poor Rachel, here at Ashfield. You have a letter

from him?"

"I have," said the parson; "and it brings a proposal about which I wish

your opinion." And the Doctor cast his eye over the letter.

"He expresses deep sympathy at my loss, and alludes very pleasantly to

the visit you speak of, all which I will not read; after this he says,

'I little thought, when bantering you in your little study upon your

family prospects, that I too was destined to become the father of a

child, within a couple of years. Yet it is even so; and the

responsibility weighs upon me greatly. I love my Adele with my whole

heart; I am sure you cannot love your boy more, though perhaps more

wisely."

"And he had never told you of his marriage?" said the spinster.

"Never; it is the only line I have had from him since his visit ten

years ago."

The Doctor goes on with the reading:--

"It may be from a recollection of your warnings and of your distrust of

the French character, or possibly it may be from the prejudices of my

New England education, but I cannot entertain pleasantly the thought of

her growing up to womanhood under the influences which are about her

here. What those influences are you will not expect me to explain in

detail. I am sure it will be enough to win upon your sympathy to say

that they are Popish and thoroughly French. I feel a strong wish,

therefore,--much as I am attached to the dear child,--to give her the

advantages of a New England education and training. And with this wish,

my thought reverts naturally to the calm quietude of your little town

and of your household; for I cannot doubt that it is the same under the

care of your sister as in the old time."

"I am glad he thinks so well of me," said Miss Eliza, but with an irony

in her tone that she was sure the good parson would never detect.

The Doctor looks at her thoughtfully a moment, over the edge of the

letter,--as if he, too, had his quiet comparisons to make,--then goes on

with the letter:--

"This wish may surprise you, since you remember my old battlings with

what I counted the rigors of a New England 'bringing-up'; but in this

case I should not fear them, provided I could assure myself of your

kindly supervision. For my little Adele, besides inheriting a great flow

of spirits (from her father, you will say) and French blood, has been

used thus far to a catholic latitude of talk and manner in all about

her, which will so far counterbalance the gravities of your region as to

leave her, I think, upon a safe middle ground. At any rate, I see enough

to persuade me to choose rather the errors that may grow upon her

girlhood there than those that would grow upon it here.

"Frankly, now, may I ask you to undertake, with your good sister, for a

few years, the responsibility which I have suggested?"

The Doctor looked over the edge of the sheet toward Miss Eliza.

"Read on, Benjamin," said she.

"The matter of expenses, I am happy to say, is one which need not enter

into your consideration of the question. My business successes have been

such that any estimate which you may make of the moneys required will be

at your call at the office of our house in Newburyport.

"I have the utmost faith in you, my dear Johns; and I want you to have

faith in the earnestness with which I press this proposal on your

notice. You will wonder, perhaps, how the mother of my little Adele can

be a party to such a plan; but I may assure you, that, if your consent

be gained, it will meet with no opposition in that quarter. This fact

may possibly confirm some of your worst theories in regard to French

character; and in this letter, at least, you will not expect me to

combat them.

"I have said that she has lived thus far under Popish influences; but

her religious character is of course unformed; indeed, she has as yet

developed in no _serious_ direction whatever; I think you will find a

_tabula rasa_ to write your tenets upon. But, if she comes to you, do

not, I beg of you, grave them too harshly; she is too bird-like to be

treated with severity; and I know that under all your gravity, my dear

Johns, there is a kindliness of heart, which, if you only allowed it

utterance, would win greatly upon this little fondling of mine. And I

think that her open, laughing face may win upon you.