CHAPTER I.

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THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

* * * * *

VOL. XII.--AUGUST, 1863.--NO. LXX.

* * * * *

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by TICKNOR AND

FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of

Massachusetts.

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AN AMERICAN IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS.

Having in a former number of this magazine attempted to give some

account of the House of Commons, and to present some sketches of its

leading members,[1] I now design to introduce my readers to the House of

Lords.

[Footnote 1: _Atlantic Monthly_ for December, 1861.]

It is obviously unnecessary to repeat so much of the previous

description as applies to the general external and internal appearance

of the New Palace of Westminster. It only remains to speak of the hall

devoted to the sessions of the House of Lords. And certainly it is an

apartment deserving a more extended notice than our limits will allow.

As the finest specimen of Gothic civil architecture in the world,

perfect in its proportions, beautiful and appropriate in its

decorations, the frescoes perpetuating some of the most striking scenes

in English history, the stained glass windows representing the Kings and

Queens of the United Kingdom from the accession of William the Conqueror

down to the present reign, the niches filled with effigies of the Barons

who wrested Magna Charta from King John, the ceiling glowing with gold

and colors presenting different national symbols and devices in most

elaborate workmanship and admirable intricacy of design, it is

undeniably worthy of the high purpose to which it is dedicated.

The House of Lords also contains the throne occupied by the reigning

sovereign at the opening and prorogation of Parliament. Perhaps its more

appropriate designation would be a State-Chair. In general form and

outline it is substantially similar to the chairs in which the

sovereigns of England have for centuries been accustomed to sit at their

coronations. We need hardly add that no expense has been spared to give

to the throne such intrinsic value, and to adorn it with such emblems of

national significance, as to furnish renewed evidence of England's

unwavering loyalty to the reigning house.

In pointing out what is peculiar to the House of Lords, I am aware that

there is danger of falling into the error of stating what is already

familiar to some of my readers. And yet a traveller's narrative is not

always tiresome to the tourist who has himself visited the same

localities and witnessed the same scenes. If anxious for the "diffusion

of useful knowledge," he will cheerfully consent that the curiosity of

others, who have not shared his good fortune, should be gratified,

although it be at his expense. At the same time, he certainly has a

right to insist that the extraordinary and improbable stories told to

the too credulous _voyageur_ by some lying scoundrel of a courier or

some unprincipled _valet-de-place_ shall not be palmed upon the

unsuspecting public as genuine tales of travel and adventure.

The House of Lords is composed of lords spiritual and lords temporal. As

this body is now constituted, the lords spiritual are two archbishops,

twenty-four bishops, and four Irish representative prelates. The lords

temporal are three peers of the blood royal, twenty dukes, nineteen

marquises, one hundred and ten earls, twenty-two viscounts, two hundred

and ten barons, sixteen Scotch representative peers, and twenty-eight

Irish representative peers. There are twenty-three Scotch peers and

eighty-five Irish peers who have no seats in Parliament. The

representative peers for Scotland are elected for every Parliament,

while the representative peers for Ireland are elected for life. As has

been already intimated, this enumeration applies only to the present

House of Lords, which comprises four hundred and fifty-eight

members,--an increase of about thirty noblemen in as many years.

The persons selected from time to time for the honor of the peerage are

members of families already among the nobility, eminent barristers,

military and naval commanders who have distinguished themselves in the

service, and occasionally persons of controlling and acknowledged

importance in commercial life. Lord Macaulay is the first instance in

which this high compliment has been conferred for literary merit; and it

was well understood, when the great essayist and historian was ennobled,

that the exception in his favor was mainly due to the fact that he was

unmarried. With his untimely death the title became extinct. Lord

Overstone, formerly Mr. Loyd, and a prominent member of the banking firm

of Jones, Loyd, and Co. of London, elevated to the peerage in 1850, is

without heirs apparent or presumptive, and there is good reason to

believe that this circumstance had a material bearing upon his

well-deserved promotion. But these infrequent exceptions, these rare

concessions so ungraciously made, only prove the rigor of the rule.

Practically, to all but members of noble families, and men distinguished

for military, naval, or political services, or eminent lawyers or

clergymen, the House of Lords is unattainable. Brown may reach the

highest range of artistic excellence, he may achieve world-wide fame as

an architect, his canvas may glow with the marvellous coloring of Titian

or repeat the rare and delicate grace of Correggio, the triumphs of his

chisel may reflect honor upon England and his age; the inventive genius

of Jones, painfully elaborating, through long and suffering years of

obscure poverty, the crude conceptions of his boyhood, may confer

inestimable benefits upon his race; the scientific discoveries of

Robinson may add incalculable wealth to the resources of his nation: but

let them not dream of any other nobility than that conferred by Nature;

let them be content to live and die plain, untitled Brown, Jones, and

Robinson, or at best look forward only to the barren honors of

knighthood. Indeed, it is not too much to say that for plebeian merit

the only available avenues to the peerage are the Church and the Bar.

The proportion of law lords now in the House of Lords is unusually

large,--there being, besides Lord Westbury, the present

Lord-High-Chancellor, no fewer than six Ex-Lord-Chancellors, each

enjoying the very satisfactory pension of five thousand pounds per

annum. Lord Lyndhurst still survives at the ripe age of ninety-one; and

Lord Brougham, now in his eighty-sixth year, has made good his promise

that he would outlive Lord Campbell, and spare his friends the pain of

seeing his biography added to the lives of the Lord-Chancellors to

whom, in Lord Brougham's opinion, Lord Campbell had done such inadequate

justice.

The course of proceeding in the House of Lords differs considerably from

that pursued in the House of Commons. The Lord-High-Chancellor, seated

on the wool-sack,--a crimson cushion, innocent of any support to the

back, and by no means suggestive of comfort, or inviting deliberations

of the peers, but is never addressed by the speakers. "My lords" is the

phrase with which every peer commences his remarks.

Another peculiarity patent to the stranger is the small number usually

present at the debates. The average attendance is less than fifty, and

often one sees only fifteen or twenty peers in their seats. Two or three

leading members of the Ministry, as many prominent members of the

opposition, a bishop or two, a score of deluded, but well-meaning

gentlemen, who obstinately adhere to the unfashionable notion, that,

where great political powers are enjoyed, there are certain serious

duties to the public closely connected therewith, a few prosy and

pompous peers who believe that their constant presence is essential to

the welfare and prosperity of the kingdom,--such, I think, is a correct

classification of the ordinary attendance of noblemen at the House of

Lords.

This body possesses several obvious advantages over any other

deliberative assembly now existing. Not the least among these is the

fact that the oldest son of every peer is prepared by a careful course

of education for political and diplomatic life. Every peer, except some

of recent creation, has from childhood enjoyed all conceivable

facilities for acquiring a finished education. In giving direction to

his studies at school and at the university, special reference has been

had to his future Parliamentary career. Nothing that large wealth could

supply, or the most powerful family-influence could command, has been

spared to give to the future legislator every needed qualification for

the grave and responsible duties which he will one day be called to

assume. His ambition has been stimulated by the traditional achievements

of a long line of illustrious ancestors, and his pride has been awakened

and kept alive by the universal deference paid to his position as the

heir apparent or presumptive of a noble house.

This view is so well presented in "The Caxtons," that I need offer no

apology for making an extract from that most able and discriminating

picture of English society. "The fact is, that Lord Castleton had been

taught everything that relates to property (a knowledge that embraces

very wide circumference). It had been said to him, 'You will be an

immense proprietor: knowledge is essential to your self-preservation.

You will be puzzled, ridiculed, duped every day of your life, if you do

not make yourself acquainted with all by which property is assailed or

defended, impoverished or increased. You have a stake in the country:

you must learn all the interests of Europe, nay, of the civilized world;

for these interests react on the country, and the interests of the

country are of the greatest possible consequence to the interests of the

Marquis of Castleton.' Thus, the state of the Continent, the policy of

Metternich, the condition of the Papacy, the growth of Dissent, the

proper mode of dealing with the spirit of democracy which was the

epidemic of European monarchies, the relative proportions of the

agricultural and manufacturing population, corn-laws, currency, and the

laws that regulate wages, a criticism on the leading speakers in the

House of Commons, with some discursive observations on the importance of

fattening cattle, the introduction of flax into Ireland, emigration, the

condition of the poor: these and such-like stupendous subjects for

reflection--all branching more or less intricately from the single idea

of the Castleton property--the young lord discussed and disposed of in

half a dozen prim, poised sentences, evincing, I must say in justice, no

inconsiderable information, and a mighty solemn turn of mind. The

oddity was, that the subjects so selected and treated should not come

rather from some young barrister, or mature political economist, than

from so gorgeous a lily of the field."

But to all these preëminent advantages of early education and training

there must be added the invaluable opportunities of enlarged and

extended legislative experience in the House of Commons. If we examine

the antecedents of some of the most prominent men now in the House of

Lords, we shall discover abundant evidence of this fact. Earl Russell

was a member of the House of Commons for more than thirty years; Earl

Derby, more than twenty-five years; the Earl of Shaftesbury, for about

twenty-four years; the Duke of Richmond, the Earl of Shrewsbury, and the

Duke of Rutland, for about the same period. And of the present House of

Commons more than fifty members are heirs apparent or presumptive to

existing peerages.

And then there is the further circumstance that seats in the House of

Lords are for life. Members of this body do not stand in fear of removal

by the votes of disappointed or indignant constituents. Entirely

independent of public opinion, they can defy the disapprobation of the

masses, and smile at the denunciation of the press. Undoubtedly, this

fact has a twofold bearing, and deprives the peers of that strong

incentive to active exertion and industrious legislation which the House

of Commons, looking directly to the people for support and continuance,

always possesses. Yet the advantages in point of prolonged experience

and ever increasing familiarity with the details of public business are

unquestionable.

As a matter of course, there are many noblemen upon whom these rare

facilities of education and this admirable training for public life

would seem to have been wasted. As Americans, we must be pardoned for

expressing our belief in the venerable doctrine that there is no royal

road to learning. If a peer of the realm is determined to be a dunce,

nothing in the English Constitution prevents him from being a dunce, and

"not all the blood of all the Howards" can make him a scholar or a

statesman. If, resting securely in the conviction that a nobleman does

not need to be instructed, he will not condescend to study, and does not

avail himself of his most enviable advantages, whatever may be his

social rank, his ignorance and incapacity cannot be disguised, but will

even become more odious and culpable in the view of impartial criticism

by reason of his conspicuous position and his neglect of these very

advantages.

But frequent as these instances are, it will not be for a moment

supposed that the whole peerage would justly fall under such censure.

Nor will it be thought surprising that the House of Lords contains a

considerable number of men of sterling ability, statesmen of broad and

comprehensive views, accustomed to deal with important questions of

public interest and national policy with calm, deliberate judgment, and

far-reaching sagacity. Hampered as they certainly are by a traditional

conservatism often as much at variance with sound political philosophy

as it is with the lessons of all history, and characterized as their

attitude towards foreign nations always has been by a singular want of

all generosity, still it must be confessed that their steady and

unwavering adherence to a line of conduct which has made England feared

and her power respected by every country in the world has a certain

element of dignity and manly self-reliance which compels our admiration.

And while they have been of late so frequently outwitted by the

flexible, if not tortuous, policy of Louis Napoleon, it yet remains to

be seen whether the firm and unyielding course of the English Ministry

will not in the end prove quite as successful as the more Machiavellian

management of the French Emperor.

I hardly know how to describe accurately the impression made upon the

mind of an American by his first visit to the House of Lords. What

memories haunt him of the Norman Conquest and the Crusades, of Magna

Charta and the King-Maker, of noblemen who suffered with Charles I. and

supped with Charles II., and of noblemen still later whose family-pride

looked down upon the House of Hanover, and whose banded political power

and freely lavished wealth checked the brilliant career of Napoleon, and

maintained, the supremacy of England on sea and land!

Enter, then, the House of Lords with these stirring memories, and

confess frankly to a feeling of disappointment. Here are seated a few

well-behaved gentlemen of all ages, often carelessly dressed, and almost

invariably in English morning-costume. They are sleepily discussing some

uninteresting question, and you are disposed to retire in view of the

more powerful attractions of Drury Lane or the Haymarket, or the chance

of something better worth hearing in the House of Commons. Take my

advice, and wait until the adjournment. It will not be long, and by

leaving now you may lose an important debate and the sight of some men

whose fame is bounded only by the limits of Christendom. Even now there

is a slight stir in the House. A nobleman has entered whose movements

you will do well to follow. He takes his place just at the left of the

Lord-Chancellor, but remains seated only for a moment. If you are

familiar with the pencil of Punch, you will recognize him at a glance. A

thin, wiry, yet muscular frame, a singularly marked and expressive face

and mobile features, a nose that defies description, a high cravat like

a poultice covered with a black silk bandage, clothes that seem to have

been made for a much larger man, and always a pair of old-fashioned

checked trousers,--of course, this can only be Lord Brougham. He is

eighty-five years old, and yet his physical activity would do no

injustice to a man in the prime of life. If you watch him a few moments,

you will have abundant evidence of his restless energy. While we look,

he has crossed to the opposite side of the House, and is enjoying a

hearty laugh with the Bishop of Oxford. The round, full face of

"Slippery Sam" (as he is disrespectfully called throughout England) is

beaming with appreciative delight; but before the Bishop has time to

reply, the titled humorist is on the wing again, and in an instant we

see him seated between Earl Granville and the Duke of Somerset,

conversing with all the vivacity and enthusiasm of a school-boy. In a

moment he is in motion again, and has shaken hands with half a dozen

peers. Undeterred by the supernaturally solemn countenance of the

Marquis of Normanby, he has actually addressed a joke to that dignified

fossil, and has passed on without waiting to observe its effect. A few

words with Earl Derby, a little animated talk with the Earl of

Ellenborough, and he has made the circuit of the House, everywhere

received with a welcoming smile and a kindly grasp of the hand, and

everywhere finding willing and gratified listeners. Possibly that is

pardoned to his age and eminence which would be resented as impertinence

in a younger man, but certainly he enjoys a license accorded to no one

else in this aristocratic assembly.

The dull debate of the past hour is now concluded, the House is thin,

and there are indications of immediate adjournment. Remain a little

longer, however, and your patience may possibly be richly rewarded.

There is no order in the discussion of topics, and at any moment while

the House continues in session there may spring up a debate calling out

all the ability of the leading peers in attendance. After a short pause

the quiet is broken by an aged nobleman on the opposition benches. He

rises slowly and feebly with the assistance of a cane, but his voice is

firm and his manner is forcible. That he is a man of mark is evident

from the significant silence and the deferential attention with which

his first words are received. You ask his name, and with ill-disguised

amazement at your ignorance a gentleman by your side informs you that

the speaker is Lord Lyndhurst.

Perhaps the life of no public man in England has so much of interest to

an American as that of this distinguished nobleman. Born in Boston while

we were still in a condition of colonial dependence, he has lived to see

his native land emerge from her state of vassalage, pass through a

long-protracted struggle for liberty with the most powerful nation on

earth, successfully maintain her right to be free and independent,

advance with giant strides in a career of unexampled prosperity, assume

an undisputed position as one of the great powers of Christendom, and

finally put forth the most gigantic efforts to crush a rebellion

compared with which the conspiracy of Catiline was but the impotent

uprising of an angry dwarf.

Lord Lyndhurst was called to the bar of England in 1804. It was before

the splendid forensic successes of Erskine had been rewarded by a seat

on the wool-sack, or Wellington had completed his brilliant and decisive

campaign in India, or the military glory of Napoleon had culminated at

Austerlitz, or Pitt, turning sadly from the map of Europe and saying,

"Henceforth we may close that map for half a century," had gone

broken-hearted to an early grave, or Nelson had defeated the combined

navies of France and Spain at Trafalgar. Lord Byron had not yet entered

Cambridge University, Sir Walter Scott had not published his first poem,

and Canova was still in the height of his well-earned fame. It was

before the first steamboat of Robert Fulton had vexed the quiet waters

of the Hudson, or Aaron Burr had failed in his attempted treason, or

Daniel Welter had entered upon his professional career, or Thomas

Jefferson had completed his first official term as President of the

United States.

Lord Lyndhurst's advancement to the highest honors of his profession and

to a commanding place in the councils of his adopted country was rapid

almost beyond precedent. He was appointed Solicitor-General in 1819,

Attorney-General in 1823, Master of the Rolls in 1826, and

Lord-Chancellor in 1827. He remained in this office until 1830, and

retired only to be created Lord-Chief-Baron of the Exchequer. In 1835 he

was again appointed Lord-Chancellor, and once more, for the third time,

in 1841.

The characteristic qualities of the oratory of Lord Lyndhurst, when in

his prime, were perfect coolness and self-possession, a most pleasing

and plausible manner, singular ingenuity in dealing with a difficult

question or in weakening the effect of an argument really unanswerable,

a clear and musical voice, great ease and felicity of expression, and a

wonderful command, always discreetly used, of all the weapons of irony

and invective. He is, perhaps, the only nobleman in the House of Lords

whom Lord Brougham has ever feared to encounter. All these elements of

successful oratory Lord Lyndhurst has retained to an extraordinary

degree until within a year or two.

I chanced to hear this remarkable man during an evening in the month of

July, 1859. The House of Lords was thinly attended. There had been a

short and uninteresting debate on "The Atlantic-Telegraph Bill," and an

early adjournment seemed certain. But at this juncture Lord Lyndhurst

rose, and, after adverting to the fact that he had previously given

notice of his design to draw their lordships' attention to the military

and naval defences of the country, proceeded to address the House upon

this question. It should be borne in mind that this was a period of

great and engrossing excitement in England, created by the supposed

danger of invasion by France. Volunteer rifle-companies were springing

up all over the kingdom, newspapers were filled with discussions

concerning the sufficiency of the national defences, and speculations on

the chances for and against such an armed invasion. There was,

meanwhile, a strong peace-party which earnestly deprecated all agitation

of the subject, maintained that the sentiments of the French Emperor and

the French nation were most friendly to England, and contended that to

incur largely increased expenses for additional war-preparations was

unnecessary, impolitic, and ruinously extravagant. At the head of this

party were Cobden and Bright.

It was to answer these arguments, to convince England that there was a

real and positive peril, and to urge upon Her Majesty's Government the

paramount importance of preparing to meet not only a possible, but a

probable danger, that Lord Lyndhurst addressed the House of Lords. He

began by impressing upon their lordships the fact that the policy which

he advocated was not aggressive, but strictly defensive. He reviewed the

history of previous attempts to invade England. He pointed out the

significant circumstance, that these attempts had hitherto failed mainly

by reason of the casualties to which sailing-vessels were always

exposed. He pressed upon their attention the change which

steam-navigation had recently wrought in naval warfare. He quoted the

pithy remark of Lord Palmerston, that "steam had converted the Channel

into a river, and thrown a bridge across it."

He demonstrated from recent history the facility with which France could

transport large forces by sea to distant points. Then, in tones

tremulous with emotion, he drew upon the resources of his own marvellous

memory. "I have experienced, my lords, something like a sentiment of

humiliation in going through these details. I recollect the day when

every part of the opposite coast was blockaded by an English fleet. I

remember the victory of Camperdown, and that of St. Vincent, won by Sir

J. Jervis. I do not forget the great victory of the Nile, nor, last of

all, that triumphant fight at Trafalgar, which almost annihilated the

navies of France and Spain, I contrast the position which we occupied at

that period with that which we now hold. I recollect the expulsion of

the French from Egypt, the achievement of victory after victory in

Spain, the British army established in the South of France, and then the

great battle by which that war was terminated. I cannot glance back over

that series of events without feeling some degree of humiliation when I

am called upon to state in this House the measures which I deem it to be

necessary to take in order to provide for the safety of the country."

Then pausing a moment and overcoming his evident emotion, he continued,

with a force of manner and dignity of bearing which no words can fitly

describe,--"But I may be asked, 'Why do you think such measures

requisite? Are we not in alliance with France? Are we not on terms of

friendship with Russia? What other power can molest us?' To these

questions, my lords, my answer shall be a short and simple one. I will

not consent to live in dependence on the friendship or forbearance of

any country. I rely solely on my own vigor, my own exertion, and my own

intelligence." It will be readily believed that cheer after cheer rang

through the House when this bold and manly announcement was made.

Then, after alluding to the immense armament by sea and land which

France had hurled with such incredible rapidity upon the Austrian Empire

during the recent war in Italy, he concluded by saying,--"Are we to sit

supine on our own shores, and not to prepare the means necessary in case

of war to resist that power? I do not wish to say that we should do this

for any aggressive purpose. What I insist upon is, that we are bound to

make every effort necessary for our own shelter and protection. Beside

this, the question of expense and of money sinks into insignificance. It

is the price we must pay for our insurance, and it is but a moderate

price for so important an insurance. I know there are persons who will

say, 'Let us run the risk.' Be it so. But, my lords, if the calamity

should come, if the conflagration should take place, what words can

describe the extent of the calamity, or what imagination can paint the

overwhelming ruin that would fall upon us? I shall be told, perhaps,

that these are the timid counsels of old age. My lords, for myself, I

should run no risk. Personally I have nothing to fear. But to point out

possible peril and how to guard effectively against it,--that is surely

to be considered not as timidity, but as the dictate of wisdom and

prudence. I have confined myself to facts that cannot be disputed. I

think I have confined myself to inferences that no man can successfully

contravene. I hope what I have said has been in accordance with your

feelings and opinions. I shall terminate what I have to say in two

emphatic words, '_Voe victis!_'--words of solemn and most significant

import."

So spoke the Nestor of the English nation. Has our country no lesson to

learn from the well-considered words of this aged and accomplished

statesman? Are we not paying a large insurance to secure permanent

national prosperity? And is it not a wise and profitable investment, at

any cost of blood and treasure, if it promises the supremacy of our

Constitution, the integrity of our Union, and the impartial enforcement

of our laws?

When it is remembered that Lord Lyndhurst was at this time in his

eighty-eighth year, this speech of nearly an hour in length, giving no

evidence from first to last of physical debility or mental decay,

delivered in a firm, clear, and unfaltering voice, admirable for its

logical arrangement, most forcible and telling in its treatment of the

subject, and irresistible in its conclusions, must be considered as

hardly finding a parallel in ancient or modern times. We might almost

call it his valedictory; for his lordship's subsequent speeches have

been infrequent, and, with, we believe, a single exception, short, and

he is now rarely, if ever, seen in the House of Lords.

I shall not dwell upon the speeches that followed this earnest and

eloquent appeal to the wisdom and patriotism of the listening peers.

They were mainly confined to grateful recognition of the service which

Lord Lyndhurst had rendered to the nation by his frank and fearless

avowal of those principles which alone could preserve the honor and

independence of England. The opposition urged the most vigorous

preparations for resisting invasion, while Her Majesty's ministers

disclaimed any intention of weakening or neglecting the national

defences. As the speeches, however exhibited little worthy of mention

beyond the presentation of these points, I have supposed that a more

general description of some of the leading members of the Upper House

would be more interesting to my readers than a detailed account of what

was said upon this particular occasion.

I have already alluded to the personal appearance and bearing of Lord

Brougham. By reason of his great age, his long Parliamentary experience,

(he has been in the House of Commons and House of Lords for nearly fifty

years,) his habit of frequent speaking, and the commanding ability of

many of his public efforts, his name as an orator is perhaps more widely

known, and his peculiar style of declamation more correctly appreciated,

than those of any other man now living. It would therefore seem

unnecessary to give any sketch of his oratory, or of his manner in

debate. Very few educated men in this country are unfamiliar with his

eloquent defence of Queen Caroline, or his most bitter attack upon Mr.

Canning, or his brilliant argument for Mr. Williams when prosecuted by

the Durham clergy. Lord Brougham retains to this day the same fearless

contempt of all opposition, the same extravagant and often inconsistent

animosity to every phase of conservative policy, and the same fiery zeal

in advocating every measure which he has espoused, that have ever

characterized his erratic career. The witty author of "The Bachelor of

the Albany" has tersely, and not without a certain spice of truth,

described him as "a man of brilliant incapacity, vast and various

misinformation, and immense moral requirements."

The Duke of Argyle deserves more than a passing mention. Although

comparatively a young man, he has already had a most creditable career,

and given new lustre to an old and honored name. In politics he is a

decided and consistent Liberal, and he merits the favorable

consideration of all loyal Americans from the fact that he has not

failed on every proper occasion to advocate our cause with such

arguments as show clearly that he fully understands our position and

appreciates the importance of the principles for which we are

contending. It is a curious coincidence, that his style of address bears

a close resemblance to what may be called the American manner. Rapid,

but distinct, in utterance, facile and fluent in speech, natural and

graceful in gesticulation, he might almost be transplanted to the halls

of Congress at Washington without betraying his foreign birth and

education.

Lord Derby is undoubtedly the most skillful Parliamentary tactician and

the most accomplished speaker in the House of Lords. In 1834, (when he

was a member of the House of Commons,) Macaulay said of him, that "his

knowledge of the science of parliamentary defence resembled an

instinct." He is the acknowledged leader of the Tories or Conservatives

in England, and dictates the policy of his party with absolute

despotism. Belonging to one of the oldest peerages in the kingdom,

having already filled some of the most important offices in Her

Majesty's Government, occupying the highly honorable position of

Chancellor of the University of Oxford, (as successor of the first Duke

of Wellington,) an exact and finished scholar, enjoying an immense

income, and the proprietor of vast landed estates, he may be justly

considered one of the best types of England's aristocracy. He has that

unmistakable air of authority without the least alloy of arrogance, that

"pride in his port," which quietly asserts the dignity of long descent.

As a speaker, his manner is impressive and forcible, with a rare command

of choice language, an accurate and comprehensive knowledge of all

subjects connected with the administration of public affairs, and that

entire self-control which comes from life-long contact on terms of

equality with the best society in Europe and a thorough confidence in

his own mental resources. Lord Derby is preëminently a Parliamentary

orator, and furnishes one of the unusual instances where a reputation

for eloquence earned in the House of Commons has been fully sustained by

a successful trial in the House of Lords.

Another debater of marked ability in this body is Dr. Samuel

Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford. He is the third son of William

Wilberforce, the celebrated philanthropist, but by no means inherits the

simplicity of character and singular absence of all personal ambition

which made his father so widely beloved and respected. He is known as

the leading exponent of High-Church views, and has been heard in the

House of Lords on every question directly or indirectly affecting the

interests of the Establishment. It was long ago said of him, that, had

he been in political life, he would surely and easily have risen to the

position of Premier. He has for years been charged with a marked

proclivity to the doctrines of the Puseyites; and his adroitness in

baffling all attempted investigation into the manner in which he has

conducted the discipline of his diocese has perhaps contributed more

than any other cause to fasten upon him the significant _sobriquet_ to

which I have already alluded.

Any sketch of the prominent members of the House of Lords would be

imperfect which should omit to give some account of Lord Westbury, the

present Lord-High-Chancellor. Having been Solicitor-General in two

successive Administrations, he was filling for the second time the

position of Attorney-General, when, upon the death of Lord Campbell, he

was raised to the wool-sack. As a Chancery practitioner he was for years

at the head of his profession, and is supposed to have received the

largest income ever enjoyed by an English barrister. During the four

years next preceding his elevation to the peerage his average annual

earnings at the bar were twenty thousand pounds. In the summer of 1860

it was my good fortune to hear the argument of Lord Westbury (then Sir

Richard Bethell) in a case of great interest and importance, before

Vice-Chancellor Wood. The point at issue involved the construction of a

marriage-settlement between the Earl of Shrewsbury and the Prince

Borghese of Rome, drawn up on the occasion of the marriage of the Prince

with Lady Talbot, second daughter of the Earl. The interpretation of the

terms of the contract was by express stipulation to be in accordance

with the Roman common law. A commission sent to Rome to ascertain the

meaning of certain provisions contained in the contract resulted in

several folio volumes, embodying "the conflicting opinions of the most

eminent Roman lawyers," supported by references to the Canonists, the

decisions of the "Sacred Rota," the great text-writers upon

jurisprudence, the Institutes and Pandects, and ascending still higher

to the laws of the Roman Republic and the Augustan era.

The leading counsel in the kingdom were retained in the case, and

unusual public interest was enlisted. The amount at stake was twenty

thousand pounds, and it was estimated that nearly, if not quite, that

amount had already been consumed in costs. Legal proceedings are not an

inexpensive luxury anywhere; but "the fat contention and the flowing

fee" have a significance to English ears which we can hardly appreciate

in this country.

It will be at once apparent even to the unprofessional reader that most

difficult and complicated questions were presented by this

case,--questions turning on the exact interpretation of contracts,

involving delicate verbal distinctions, and demanding a thorough

comprehension of an immense and unwieldy mass of Roman law embraced in

the dissenting _dicta_ of Roman lawyers. It required the exercise of the

very highest legal ability, trained and habituated by long and patient

discipline to grapple with great issues.

The argument of Sir Richard Bethell abundantly demonstrated his capacity

to satisfy the demands of the occasion, and displayed most triumphantly

his perfect mastery of the whole subject. As the time drew near when he

was expected to close for the defence, barristers and students-at-law

began to flock into the small and inconveniently arranged courtroom. A

stranger and a foreigner could not but see at once that the

Attorney-General was the cynosure of all eyes. And, indeed, no one in

the room more thoroughly appreciated the fact that he was the central

and controlling attraction than Sir Richard himself. I must be pardoned

for using an English slang-phrase, but I can convey the impression which

he inevitably makes upon a spectator in no other way than by saying that

he is "a most magnificent swell." And I do this with the more confidence

as I have heard him characterized in precisely these words by members of

the English bar. Every motion, every attitude, indicates an intense

self-consciousness. The Earl of Chatham had not a greater passion for

theatrical effect, nor has a more consummate and finished actor ever

graced the stage. If the performance had been less perfect, it would

have been ludicrous in the extreme; for it did not overlook the minutest

details. He could not examine his brief, or make a suggestion to one of

his associates, or note an important point in the argument of opposing

counsel, or listen to an intimation of opinion from the Bench, without

an obvious eye to dramatic propriety. During the trial, an attorney's

clerk handed him a letter, and the air with which it was opened, read,

and answered was of itself a study. Yet it was all in the highest style

of the art. No possible fault could be found with the execution. Not a

single spectator ventured to smile. The supremacy of undoubted genius

was never more apparent, and never exacted nor received more willing

worship. Through the kindness of a friendly barrister I was introduced

to one of the juniors of the Attorney-General,--a stripling of about

fifty years of age. While we were conversing about the case, Sir Richard

turned and made some comment upon the conduct of the trial; but my

friend would no more have thought of introducing me to the leader of the

bar than he would have ventured to stop the carriage of the Queen in

Hyde Park and present me then and there to Her Majesty.

I remember as well as if it were but yesterday how attorneys and junior

counsel listened with the utmost deference to every suggestion which he

condescended to address to them, how narrowly the law-students watched

him, as if some legal principle were to be read in his cold, hard

countenance, and, as he at last rose slowly and solemnly to make his

long-expected argument, how court, bar, and by-standers composed

themselves to hear. He spoke with great deliberation and distinctness,

with singular precision and propriety of language, without any parade of

rhetoric or attempt at eloquence. After a very short and appropriate

exordium, he proceeded directly to the merits of the case. His words

were well-weighed, and his manner was earnest and impressive. It was, in

short, the perfection of reason confidently addressed to a competent

tribunal.

And yet his manner was by no means that of a man seeking to persuade a

superior, but rather that of one comparing opinions with an equal, if

not an inferior mind, elevated by some accident to a position of

factitious importance. One could not but feel that here was a power

behind the throne greater than the throne itself.

It cannot be doubted that this consciousness of mental and professional

preëminence, sustained by the unanimous verdict of public opinion, has

given to Lord Westbury a defiant, if not an insolent bearing. The story

is current at the English bar, that, some years ago, when offered a seat

on the Bench, with a salary of five thousand pounds, he promptly

declined, saying, "I would rather earn ten thousand pounds a year by

talking sense than five thousand pounds a year by hearing other men talk

nonsense." Anecdotes are frequent in illustration of his supercilious

treatment of attorneys and clients while he was a barrister. And since

his elevation to the wool-sack there has been no abatement or

modification of his offensive manner. His demeanor toward counsel

appearing before him has been the subject of constant and indignant

complaint. It will be remembered by some of my readers, that, not long

since, during a session of the House of Lords, he gave the lie direct to

one of the peers,--an occurrence almost without precedent in that

decorous body. Far different from this was the tone in which Lord

Thurlow, while Lord-Chancellor, asserted his independence and vindicated

his title to respect in his memorable rebuke addressed to the Duke of

Grafton. If the testimony of English travellers in this country is to be

believed, the legislative assemblies of our own land have hitherto

enjoyed the unenviable monopoly of this species of retort.

The House of Lords contains other peers of marked ability and protracted

Parliamentary experience, among whom are Earl Granville, the Earl of

Ellenborough, the Duke of Somerset, and the Earl of Shaftesbury; but we

cannot dwell in detail upon their individual characteristics as

speakers, or upon the share they have severally taken in the public

councils, without extending this article beyond its legitimate limits.

As genius is not necessarily or usually transmitted from generation to

generation, while a seat in the House of Lords is an inheritable

privilege, it will be readily believed that there is a considerable

number of peers with no natural or acquired fitness for legislative

duties,--men whose dullness in debate, and whose utter incapacity to

comprehend any question of public interest or importance, cannot be

adequately described. They speak occasionally, from a certain

ill-defined sense of what may be due to their position, yet are

obviously aware that what they say is entitled to no weight, and are

greatly relieved when the unwelcome and disagreeable duty has been

discharged. They are the men who hesitate and stammer, whose hats and

canes are always in their way, and who have no very clear notions about

what should be done with their hands. A visitor who chances to spend an

evening in the House of Lords for the first and last time, while

noblemen of this stamp are quieting their tender consciences by a

statement of their views upon the subject under discussion, will be sure

to retire with a very unfavorable and wholly incorrect estimate of the

speaking talent of English peers.

It would hardly seem necessary to devote time or space to those members

of the House of Lords who are rarely, if ever, present at the debates.

As has been already stated, the whole number of peers is about four

hundred and sixty, of whom less than twenty-five are minors, while the

average attendance is less than fifty. The right to vote by proxy is a

peculiar and exclusive privilege of the Upper House, and vicarious

voting to a great extent is common on all important issues. Macaulay,

many years ago, pronounced the House of Lords "a small and torpid

audience"; and certainly, since the expression of this opinion, there

has been no increase of average attendance. A considerable proportion of

the absentees will be found among the "fast noblemen" of the

kingdom,--the men who prostitute their exalted social position to the

basest purposes, squandering their substance and wasting their time in

degrading dissipation, the easy prey of accomplished sharpers, and a

burning disgrace to their order. Sometimes, indeed, they pause on the

brink of utter ruin, only to become in their turn apostles of iniquity,

and to lure others to a like destruction. The unblushing and successful

audacity of these titled _roués_ is beginning to attract the attention

and awaken the fears of the better part of the English people. Their

pernicious example is bearing most abundant and bitter fruit in the

depraved morals of what are called the "lower classes" of society, and

their misdeeds are repeated in less fashionable quarters, with less

brilliant surroundings. Against this swelling tide of corrupting

influence the press of England is now raising its warning voice, and the

statements which are publicly and unreservedly made, and the predictions

which are confidently given, are very far from being welcome to English

eyes or grateful to English ears.

Another class of the House of Lords, and it is a large one, is most

happily characterized by Sydney Smith in his review of "Granby." "Lord

Chesterton we have often met with, and suffered a good deal from his

lordship: a heavy, pompous, meddling peer, occupying a great share of

the conversation, saying things in ten words which required only two,

and evidently convinced that he is making a great impression; a large

man, with a large head, and a very landed manner; knowing enough to

torment his fellow-creatures, not to instruct them; the ridicule of

young ladies, and the natural butt and target of wit. It is easy to talk

of carnivorous animals and beasts of prey; but does such a man, who lays

waste a whole civilized party of beings by prosing, reflect upon the joy

he spoils and the misery he creates in the course of his life, and that

any one who listens to him through politeness would prefer toothache or

ear-ache to his conversation? Does he consider the great uneasiness

which ensues, when the company has discovered a man to be an extremely

absurd person, at the same time that it is absolutely impossible to

convey by words or manner the most distant suspicion of the discovery?"

Now, most unfortunately, the noble House of Chesterton is still extant,

and its numerous representatives cherish with jealous care every

inherited absurdity of the family. Their favorite field of operations is

the House of Lords, partly because the strict proprieties of the place

protect them from rude and inconvenient interruption, and partly because

they can be sure of a "fit audience found, though few,"--an audience

of equals, whom it is no condescension to address. In the House of

Commons they would be coughed down or groaned down before they had

wasted ten minutes of the public time, and that they escape as swift

suppression in the House of Lords is much more creditable to the

courtesy of that body than to its just appreciation of the shortness of

human life. There is rarely a debate of importance in the House of Lords

during which some one of the Chesterton family does not contribute his

morsel of pompous imbecility, or unfold his budget of obsolete and

exploded prejudices, or add his mite of curious misinformation. That

such painful exhibitions of callow and contracted bigotry should so

frequently be made in a body claiming for itself the finest culture and

the highest civilization in Christendom is certainly a most mortifying

circumstance, and serves to show that narrow views and unstatesmanlike

opinions are not confined to democratic deliberative assemblies, and

that the choicest advantages of education, literary and political, are

not at all inconsistent with ignorance and arrogance.

But we will allow his lordship to tell his own story. Here is his set

speech, only slightly modified from evening to evening, as may be

demanded by the difference in the questions under debate.

"My lords, the noble lord who has just taken his seat, although, I am

bound to say, presenting his view of the case with that candor which my

noble friend (if the noble lord will allow me to call him so) always

displays, yet, my lords, I cannot but add, omitted one important feature

of the subject. Now, my lords, I am exceedingly reluctant to take up the

time of your lordships with my views upon the subject-matter of this

debate; yet, my lords, as the noble and learned lord who spoke last but

one, as well as the noble earl at the head of Her Majesty's Government,

and the noble marquis who addressed your lordships early in the evening,

have all fallen into the same mistake, (if these noble lords will permit

me to presume that they could be mistaken,) I must beg leave to call

your lordships' attention to the significant fact, that each and all of

these noble lords have failed to point out to your lordships, that,

important and even conclusive as the arguments and statistics of their

lordships may at first sight appear, yet they have not directed your

lordships to the very suspicious circumstance that our noble ancestors

have never discovered the necessity of resorting to this singular

expedient.

"For myself, my lords, I confess that I am filled with the most gloomy

forebodings for the future of this country, when I hear a question of

this transcendent importance gravely discussed by noble lords without

the slightest allusion to this vital consideration. I beg to ask noble

lords, Are we wiser than our forefathers? Are any avenues of information

open to us which were closed to them? Were they less patriotic, less

intelligent, less statesmanlike, than the present generation? Why, then,

I most earnestly put it to your lordships, should we disregard, or,

certainly, lose sight of their wisdom and their experience? I implore

noble lords to pause before it is too late. I solemnly call upon them to

consider that the proposed measure is, after all, only democracy under a

thin disguise. Has it never occurred to noble lords that this project

did not originate in this House? that its warmest friends and most

ardent and persevering advocates are found among those who come from the

people, and who, from the very nature of the case, are incompetent to

decide upon what will be for the, best interests of the kingdom? My

lords, I feel deeply upon this subject, and I must be pardoned for

expressing myself in strong terms. I say again, that I see here the

clearest evidence of democratic tendencies, a contempt for existing and

ancient institutions, and an alarming want of respect for time-honored

precedents, which, I am bound to say, demand our prompt and indignant

condemnation," etc., etc., etc.[2]

[Footnote 2: If any one of my readers is inclined to suspect that I have

drawn upon my imagination for this specimen speech, I will only say,

that, if he were my bitterest enemy, I could wish him no more severe

punishment than to undergo as I have done, (_horresco referens_,) an

hour of the Marquis of Normanby, the Earl of Malmesbury, and a few other

kindred spirits. If he have no opportunity of subjecting the truth of my

statement and the accuracy of my report to this most grievous test, I

beg to assure him that I have given no fancy sketch, but that I have

heard speeches from these noblemen in precisely this tone and to exactly

this effect.]

This is the regular speech, protracted in the same strain for perhaps

half an hour. Of the manner of the noble orator I will not venture a

description. Any attempt to convey an idea of the air of omniscience

with which these dreary platitudes are delivered would surely result in

failure. It is enough to say that the impression which the noble lord

leaves upon an unprejudiced and un-English mind is in all respects

painful. Indeed, one sees at a glance how absolutely hopeless would be

any finite effort to convince him of the absurdity of his positions or

the weakness of his understanding. There he stands, a solemn, shallow,

conceited, narrow-minded, imperturbable, impracticable, incorrigible

blockhead, on whom everything in the shape of argument is utterly

wasted, and from whom all the arrows of wit and sarcasm fall harmless to

the ground. In fact, he is perfectly proof against any intellectual

weapons forged by human skill or wielded by mortal arm, and he awaits

and receives every attack with a stolid and insulting indifference which

must be maddening to an opponent.

I hasten to confess my entire incapacity to describe the uniform

personal bearing of a Chesterton in or out of the House of Lords. It is

strictly _sui generis_. It has neither the quiet, unassuming dignity of

the Derbys, the Shaftesburys, or the Warwicks, nor the vulgar vanity of

the untravelled Cockney. It simply defies accurate delineation. Dickens

has attempted to paint the portrait of such a character in "Bleak

House"; but Sir Leicester Dedlock, even in the hands of this great

artist, is not a success,--merely because, in the case of the Baronet,

selfishness and self-importance are only a superficial crust, while with

your true Chesterton these attributes penetrate to the core and are as

much a part of the man as any limbs or any feature of his face. A

genuine Chesterton is as unlike his stupid caricature in our own

theaters in the person of "Lord Dundreary," as the John Bull of the

French stage, leading a woman by a halter around her neck, and

exclaiming, "G---- d----! I will sell my wife at Smithfield," is unlike

the Englishman of real life. Lord Chesterton does not wear a small glass

in his right eye, nor commence every other sentence with "Aw! weally

now." He does not stare you out of countenance in a _café_, nor wonder

"what the Devil that fellaw means by his insolence." So much by way of

negative description. To appreciate him positively, one must see him and

hear him. No matter when or where you encounter him, you will find him

ever the same; and you will at last conclude that his manners are not

unnatural to a very weak man inheriting the traditions of an ancient and

titled family, and educated from childhood to believe that he belongs to

a superior order of beings.

Of course the strong point of a Chesterton is what he calls his

"conservatism." He values everything in proportion to its antiquity, and

prefers a time-honored abuse to a modern blessing. With a former Duke of

Somerset, he would pity Adam, "because he had no ancestors." His

sympathies, so far as he has any sentiments which deserve to be

dignified by that name, are ever on the side of tyranny. He condescends

to give his valuable sanction to the liberal institutions of England,

not because they are liberal, but because they are English. Next after

the Established Church, the reigning sovereign and the royal family, his

own order and his precious self, his warmest admiration is bestowed on

some good old-fashioned, thorough-going, grinding despotism. He defends

the Emperor of Austria, and considers the King of Naples a much-abused

monarch.

If his lordship has ever been in diplomatic life,--an event highly

probable,--he becomes the most intolerable nuisance that ever belied the

noblest sentiments of civilized society or blocked the wheels of public

debate. Flattered by the interested attention of despotic courts, his

poor weak head has been completely turned. He has seen everything _en

couleur de rose_. He assures their lordships that he has never known a

single well-authenticated case of oppression of the lower classes, while

it is within his personal knowledge that many of the best families (in

Italy, for instance) have been compelled to leave all their property

behind them, and fly for their lives before an insolent and unreasoning

mob. How he deluges the House with distorted facts and garbled

statistics! How he warns noble lords against the wiles of Mazzini, the

unscrupulous ambition of Victor Emmanuel, and the headlong haste of

Garibaldi!

Of course, his lordship's bitterest hatred and intensest aversion are

reserved for democratic institutions. Against these he wages a constant

crusade. Armed _cap-à-pie_ in his common-sense-proof coat of mail, he

charges feebly upon them with his blunt lance, works away furiously with

his wooden sword, and then ambles off with a triumphant air very

ludicrous to behold. Democracy is the _bête noir_ of all the

Chestertons. They attack it not only because they consider it a recent

innovation, but also because it threatens the permanence of their order.

About the practical working of a republic they have no better

information than they have about the institutions of Iceland or the

politics of Patagonia. It is quite enough for them to know that the

theory of democracy is based on the equality of man, and that where

democracy prevails a privileged class is unknown.

It is hardly necessary to add, that the present condition of the United

Stales is a perfect godsend to the whole family of Chestertons. Have

they not long predicted our disgrace and downfall? Have they not,

indeed, ever since our unjustifiable Declaration of Independence,

anticipated precisely what has happened? Have they not always and

everywhere contended that a republic had no elements of national

cohesion? In a word, have they not feared our growing power and

population as only such base and ignoble spirits can fear the sure and

steady progress of a rival nation? Unhappily, their influence in the

councils of the kingdom is by no means inconsiderable. The prestige of

an ancient family, the obsequious deference paid in England to exalted

social position, and the power of patronage, all combine to confer on

the Chestertons a commanding and controlling authority absurdly out of

proportion to their intrinsic ability.

There has been a prevalent notion in this country that England was

slowly, but certainly, tending towards a more democratic form of

government, and a more equal and equitable distribution of power among

the different orders of society. This is very far from being the case.

It has been well said, that "it is always considered a piece of

impertinence in England, if a man of less than two or three thousand a

year has any opinions at all upon important subjects." But if this

income is quadrupled, and the high honor of a seat in the House of Lords

is superadded, it is not difficult to understand that the titled

recipient of such a revenue will find that his opinions command the

greatest consideration. The organization of the present Cabinet of

England is a fresh and conclusive illustration of this principle. It is

not too much to say, that at this moment the home and foreign

administration of the government is substantially in the hands of the

House of Lords. Indeed, the aristocratic element of English society is

as powerful to-day as it has been at any time during the past century.

To fortify this statement by competent authority, we make an extract

from a leader in the London "Times," on the occasion of the elevation of

Lord John Russell to the peerage. "But however welcome to the House of

Lords may be the accession of Lord John Russell, the House of Commons,

we apprehend, will contemplate it with very little satisfaction. While

the House of Lords does but one-twentieth part of the business of the

House of Commons, it boasts a lion's share of the present

administration. Three out of our five Secretaries of State, the

Lord-Chancellor, the First Lord of the Admiralty, the Lord-President of

the Council, the Postmaster-General, the Lord Privy Seal, all hold seats

in the Upper House, while the Home-Secretary, and the Secretary for

India, the First Lord of the Treasury, the Chancellor of the Exchequer,

the President of the Board of Trade, the President of the Poor-Law

Board, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and the Secretary for

Ireland hold seats in the House of Commons. Lord John Russell goes to

give more to that which had already too much. At the present moment, the

two ministers whose united departments distribute between twenty and

thirty millions of the national revenue sit in the House which does not

represent the people. In voting the army and navy estimates, the House

of Commons received this year from the Under-Secretaries that

information which they ought to have from the best and most authentic,

sources. To these is now added the all-important department of Foreign

Affairs; so that, if things remain as they are, the representatives of

the people must be content to feed on second-hand information.... Most

of us can remember a time when it was a favorite topic with popular

agitators to expatiate on the number of lords which a government

contained, as if every peer of Parliament wielded an influence

necessarily hostile to the liberties of the country. We look down in the

present age with contempt on such vulgar prejudices; but we seem to be

running into the contrary extreme, when we allow almost all the

important offices of our government to be monopolized by a chamber where

there is small scope for rhetorical ability, and the short sittings and

unbusiness-like habits of which make it very unsuited for the

enforcement of ministerial responsibility. The statesmen who have charge

of large departments of expenditure, like the army and navy, and of the

highest interests of the nation, ought to be in the House of Commons, is

necessarily superior to a member of the House of the House of Lords, but

it is to the House of Commons that these high functionaries are

principally accountable, and because, if they forfeit the confidence of

the House of Commons, the House of Lords can avail them but little. The

matter is of much importance and much difficulty. We can only hope that

the opportunity of redressing this manifest imperfection in the

structure of the present government will not be lost, and that the House

of Commons may recover those political privileges which it has hitherto

been its pride to enjoy."

This distribution of power in the English Cabinet furnishes a sufficient

solution of the present attitude of the English Government towards this

country. The ruling classes of England can have no sincere sympathy with

the North, because its institutions and instincts are democratic. They

give countenance to the South, because at heart and in practice it is

essentially an aristocracy. To remove the dangerous example of a

successful and powerful republic, where every man has equal rights,

civil and religious, and where a privileged order in Church and State is

impossible, has become in the minds of England's governing classes an

imperious necessity. Compared with the importance of securing this

result, all other considerations weigh as nothing. Brothers by blood,

language, and religion, as they have been accustomed to call us while we

were united and formidable, we are now, since civil war has weakened us

and great national questions have distracted our councils, treated as

aliens, if not as enemies. On the other hand, the South, whose leaders

have ever been first to take hostile ground against England, and whose

"peculiar institution" has drawn upon us the eloquent and unsparing

denunciations of English philanthropists, is just now in high favor with

the "mother-country." Not only has the ill-disguised dislike of the

Tories ripened into open animosity, not only are we the target for the

shallow scorn of the Chestertons, (even a donkey may dare to kick a

dying lion,) but we have lost the once strongly pronounced friendship of

such ardent anti-slavery men as Lord Brougham and the Earl of

Shaftesbury. Why is this? Does not the explanation lie in a nutshell? We

were becoming too strong. We were disturbing the balance of power. We

were demonstrating too plainly the inherent activity and irresistible

energy of a purely democratic form of government. Therefore _Carthago

delenda est_. "But yet the pity of it, Iago!" Mark how a Christian

nation deals with a Christian ally. Our destruction is to be

accomplished, not by open warfare, but by the delusive and dastardly

pretence of neutrality. There is to be no diplomatic recognition of an

independent Southern Confederacy, but a formidable navy is to be

furnished to our enemies, and their armies are to be abundantly supplied

with the munitions of war. But how? By the English Government? Oh, no!

This would be in violation of solemn treaties. Earl Russell says, "We

have long maintained relations of peace and amity" with the United

States. England cannot officially recognize or aid the South without

placing herself in a hostile attitude towards this country. Yet

meanwhile English capitalists can publicly subscribe to the loan which

our enemies solicit, and from English ship-yards a fleet of iron-clad

war-vessels can be sent to lay waste our commerce and break our blockade

of Southern ports. What the end will be no one may venture to foretell;

but it needs no prophet to predict that many years will not obliterate

from the minds of the American people the present policy of the English

Cabinet, controlled as it is by the genius of English aristocracy.

* * * * *

THEODORE WINTHROP'S WRITINGS.

"The first time I saw Theodore Winthrop," said one to me a few days ago,

"he came into my office with a common friend. They were talking as they

entered, and Winthrop said, 'Yes, the fellows who came over in the

Mayflower can't afford to do that!'

"'There,' thought I to myself, 'there's another of the Mayflower men! I

wish to my soul that ship had sunk on her voyage out!' But when I came

to know him, I quickly learned that with him origin was not a matter of

vain pride, but a fact inciting him to all nobleness of thought and

life, and spurring him on to emulate the qualities of his ancestor."

That is to say, he was not a prig, or a snob, but a gentleman. And if he

remembered that he "came over in the Mayflower," it was because he felt

that that circumstance bound him to higher enterprises, to better work,

than other men's. And he believed in his heart, as he wrote in the

opening chapter of "John Brent," that "deeds of the heroic and chivalric

times do not utterly disdain our day. There are men," he continues, "as

ready to gallop for love and strike for love now as in the age of

Amadis." Ay, and for a nobler love than the love of woman--for love of

country, and of liberty--he was ready to strike, and to die.

Ready to do, when the time came; but also--what required a greater

soul--ready to wait in cheerful content till the fitting time should

come. Think of these volumes lying in his desk at home, and he, their

author, going about his daily tasks and pleasures, as hearty and as

unrepining as though no whisper of ambition had ever come to his

soul,--as though he had no slightest desire for the pleasant fame which

a successful book gives to a young man. Think of it, O race of

scribblers, to whom a month in the printer's hands seems a monstrous

delay, and who bore publishers with half-finished manuscripts, as

impatient hens begin, untimely, to cackle before the egg is laid.

That a young man, not thirty-three when he died, should have written

these volumes, so full of life, so full of strange adventure, of wide

reading, telling of such large and thorough knowledge of books and men

and Nature, is a remarkable fact in itself. That he should have let the

manuscripts lie in his desk has probably surprised the world more. But,

much as he wrote, Winthrop, perhaps, always felt that his true life was

not that of the author, but of the actor. He has often told me that it

was a pleasure to write,--probably such a pleasure as it is to an old

tar to spin his yarns. His mind was active, stored with the accumulated

facts of a varied experience. How keen an observer of Nature he was,

those who have read "John Brent" or the "Canoe and Saddle" need not be

told; how appreciative an observer of every-day life, was shown in that

brilliant story which appeared in these pages some eighteen months ago,

under the title of "Love and Skates." Our American life lost by his

death one who, had he lived, would have represented it, reported it to

the world, soul and body together; for he comprehended its spirit, as

well as saw its outer husk; he was in sympathy with all its

manifestations.

That quick, intelligent eye saw everything; that kindly, sympathetic

spirit comprehended always the soul of things; and no life, however

common, rugged, or coarse, was to him empty. If he added always

something of his own nobility of heart, if he did not pry out with

prurient eyes the meannesses of life around him, the picture he drew was

none the less true,--was, indeed, it seems to me, all the more true.

Therefore I say that his early death was a loss to American literature,

or, to speak more accurately, to that too small part of our literature

which concerns itself with American life. To him the hard-featured

Yankee had something besides hard features and ungainly manners; he saw

the better part as well as the grosser of the creature, and knew that

"Poor lone Hannah,

Sitting by the window, binding shoes,"

had somewhat besides coarse hands and red eyes. He was not tainted with

the vicious habit of caricature, which is the excuse with which

superficial and heartless writers impose their false art upon the

public. Nor did he need that his heroes should wear kid gloves,--though

he was himself the neatest-gloved man I knew. "Armstrong of Oregon" was

a rough figure enough; but how well he knew how to bring out the kindly

traits in that rude lumberman's character! how true to Nature is that

sketch of a gentleman in homespun! And even Jake Shamberlain, the Mormon

mail-carrier, a rollicking, untidy rover, fond of whiskey, and doubtless

not too scrupulous in a "trade," has yet, in Winthrop's story, qualities

which draw us to him.

To sit down to "John Brent" after rending one of the popular novels of

these days, by one of the class of writers who imagine photography the

noblest of arts, is like getting out of a fashionable "party" into the

crisp air of a clear, starlight, December night. And yet Winthrop was a

"society" man; one might almost say he knew that life better than the

other, the freer, the nobler, which he loved to describe, as he loved to

live it.

A neat, active figure of a man, carefully dressed, as one who pays all

proper honor to the body in which he walks about; a gentleman, not only

in the broader and more generous sense, but also according to the

narrower, conventional meaning of the term; plainly a scholarly man,

fond of books, and knowing the best books; with that modest, diffident

air which bookish men have; with a curious shyness, indeed, as of one

who was not accustomed and did not like to come into too close contact

with the every-day world: such Theodore Winthrop appeared to me. I

recollect the surprise with which I heard--not from him--that he had

ridden across the Plains, had camped with Lieutenant Strain, had

"roughed it" in the roughest parts of our continent. But if you looked a

little closely into the face, you saw in the fine lines of the mouth the

determination of a man who can bear to carry his body into any peril or

difficulty; and in the eye--he had the eye of a born sailor, an eye

accustomed to measure the distance for a dangerous leap, quick to

comprehend all parts of a novel situation--you saw there presence of

mind, unfaltering readiness, and a spirit equal to anything the day

might bring forth.

In the Memoir prefixed to "Cecil Dreeme" Curtis has drawn a portrait,

tender and true, of his friend and neighbor. The few words which have

written themselves here tell of him only as he appeared to one who knew

him less intimately, who saw him not often.

I come now to speak of the writings which Winthrop left. These have the

singular merit, that they are all American. From first to last, they are

plainly the work of a man who had no need to go to Europe for characters

or scenery or plot,--who valued and understood the peculiar life and

the peculiar Nature of this continent, and, like a true artist and poet,

chose to represent that life and Nature of which he was a part. His

stories smack of the soil; his characters--especially in "John Brent,"

where his own ride across the continent is dramatized--are as fresh and

as true as only a true artist could make them. Take, for instance, the

"Pike," the border-ruffian transplanted to a California "ranch,"--not a

ruffian, as he says, but a barbarian.

"America is manufacturing several new types of men. The Pike is one of

the newest. He is a bastard pioneer. With one hand he clutches the

pioneer vices; with the other he beckons forward the vices of

civilization. It is hard to understand how a man can have so little

virtue in so long a body, unless the shakes are foes to virtue in the

soul, as they are to beauty in the face.

"He is a terrible shock, this unlucky Pike, to the hope that the new

race on the new continent is to be a handsome race. I lose that faith,

which the people about me now have nourished, when I recall the Pike. He

is hung together, not put together. He inserts his lank fathom of a man

into a suit of molasses-colored homespun. Frowzy and husky is the hair

Nature crowns him with; frowzy and stubby the beard. He shambles in his

walk. He drawls in his talk. He drinks whiskey by the tank. His oaths

are to his words as Falstaff's sack to his bread. I have seen Maltese

beggars, Arab camel-drivers, Dominican friars, New-York aldermen, Digger

Indians; the foulest, frowziest creatures I have ever seen are

thorough-bred Pikes."

This is not complimentary, but any one who has seen the creature knows

that it is a portrait done by a first-rate artist.

Take, again, that other vulgarer ruffian, "Jim Robinson," "a little man,

stockish, oily, and red in the face, a jaunty fellow, too, with a

certain shabby air of coxcombry even in his travel-stained attire,"--and

how accurately does he describe the metamorphosis of this nauseous grub

into a still more disgusting butterfly!

"I can imagine him when he arrives at St. Louis, blossomed into a purple

coat with velvet lappels, a brocaded waistcoat, diamond shirt-studs, or

a flamboyant scarf pinned with a pinchbeck dog, and red-legged,

patent-leather boots, picking his teeth on the steps of the Planters'

House."

Or, once more, that more saintly villain, the Mormon Elder Sizzum.

"Presently Sizzum appeared. He had taken time to tone down the pioneer

and develop the deacon in his style, and a very sleek personage he had

made of himself. He was clean shaved: clean shaving is a favorite

coxcombry of the deacon class. His long black hair, growing rank from a

muddy skin, was sleekly put behind his ears. A large white blossom of

cravat expanded under his nude, beefy chin, and he wore a black

dress-coat, creased with its recent packing. Except that his pantaloons

were thrust into boots with the maker's name (Abel Gushing, Lynn, Mass.)

stamped in gold on a scarlet morocco shield in front, he was in correct

go-to-meetin' costume,--a Chadband of the Plains."

When you see one of these men, you will know him again. Winthrop has

sketched these rascals with a few touches, as felicitous as any of

Dickens's, and they will bear his mark forever: _T.W. fecit._

As for Jake Shamberlain, with his odd mixture of many religious and

irreligious dialects, what there is of him is as good as Sam Weller or

Mrs. Poyser.

"'Hillo, Shamberlain!' hailed Brent, riding up to the train.

"'Howdydo? Howdydo? No swap!' responded Jake, after the Indian fashion.

'Bung my eyes, ef you're not the mate of all mates I'm glad to see! Pax

vobiscrum, my filly! You look as fresh as an Aperel shad. Praisèd be the

Lord,' continued he, relapsing into Mormon slang, 'who has sent thee

again, like a brand from the burning, to fall into paths of pleasantness

with the Saints, as they wander from the Promised Land to the mean

section where the low-lived Gentiles ripen their souls for hell!'"

Or Jake's droll commentary on the story of Old Bridger, ousted from his

fort, and robbed of his goods, by the Saints, in the name of the Prophet

Brigham.

"'It's olluz so,' says Jake; 'Paul plants, and Apollyon gets the

increase. Not that Bridger's like Paul, any more 'n we're like Apollyon;

but we're goan to have all the cider off his apple-trees.'"

Or, again, Jake's compliments to "Armstrong of Oregon," that galloping

Vigilant Committee of one.

"I'll help you, if I know how, Armstrong. I ha'n't seen no two in my

life, Old Country or New Country, Saints or Gentiles, as I'd do more for

'n you and your brother. I've olluz said, ef the world was chock full of

Armstrongs, Paradise wouldn't pay, and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob mout

just as well blow out their candle and go under a bushel-basket,--unless

a half-bushel would kiver 'em."

But the true hero of the book is the horse Don Fulano. It is easy to see

that Winthrop was a first-rate horseman, from the loving manner in which

he describes and dwells on the perfections of the matchless stallion.

None but one who knew every point of a horse, none but one of the

Centaur breed, could have drawn Don Fulano,--just as none but a born

skater could have written those inimitable skating-scenes in his story

of "Love and Skates."

"He was an American horse,--so they distinguish in California one

brought from the old States,--A SUPERB YOUNG STALLION, PERFECTLY BLACK,

WITHOUT MARK. It was magnificent to see him, as he circled about me,

fire in his eye, pride in his nostril, tail flying like a banner, power

and grace from tip to tip. No one would ever mount him, or ride him,

unless it was his royal pleasure. He was conscious of his representative

position, and showed his paces handsomely."

This is the creature who takes the lead in that stirring and matchless

"Gallop of Three" to the Luggernel Spring, to quote from which would be

to spoil it. It must be read entire.

In the "Canoe and Saddle" is recorded Winthrop's long ride across the

continent. Setting out in a canoe, from Port Townsend, in Vancouver's

Island, he journeyed, without company of other white men, to the Salt

Lake City and thence to "the States,"--a tedious and barbarous

experience, heightened, in this account of it, by the traveller's cheery

spirits, his ardent love of Nature, and capacity to describe the grand

natural scenery, of the effect of which upon himself he says, at the

end,--

"And in all that period, while I was so near to Nature, the great

lessons of the wilderness deepened into my heart day by day, the hedges

of conventionalism withered away from my horizon, and all the pedantries

of scholastic thought perished out of my mind forever."

He bore hardships with the courage and imperturbable good-nature of a

born gentleman. It is when men are starving, when the plating of romance

is worn off by the chafe of severe and continued suffering,--it is then

that "blood tells." Winthrop had evidently that keen relish for rough

life which the gently nurtured and highly cultivated man has oftener

than his rude neighbor, partly because, in his case, contrast lends a

zest to the experience. Thus, when he camps with a gang of

"road-makers," in the farthest Western wilderness,--a part of Captain

McClellan's Pacific Railroad Expedition,--how thoroughly he enjoys the

rough hospitality and rude wit of these pioneers!

"In such a Platonic republic as this a man found his place according to

his powers. The cooks were no base scullions; they were brethren, whom

conscious ability, sustained by universal suffrage, had endowed with the

frying-pan."

"My hosts were a stalwart gang.... Their talk was as muscular as their

arms. When these laughed, as only men fresh and hearty and in the open

air can laugh, the world became mainly grotesque: it seemed at once a

comic thing to live,--a subject for chuckling, that we were bipeds, with

noses,--a thing to roar at, that we had all met there from the wide

world, to hobnob by a frolicsome fire with tin pots of coffee, and

partake of crisped bacon and toasted dough-boys in ridiculous abundance.

Easy laughter infected the atmosphere. Echoes ceased to be pensive, and

became jocose. A rattling humor pervaded the forest, and Green River

rippled with noise of fantastic jollity. Civilization and its

_dilettante_ diners-out sneer when Clodpole at Dives's table doubles his

soup, knifes his fish, tilts his plate into his lap, puts muscle into

the crushing of his _méringue_, and tosses off the warm beaker in his

finger-bowl. Camps by Tacoma sneer not at all, but candidly roar, at

parallel accidents. Gawky makes a cushion of his flapjack. Butterfingers

drops his red-hot rasher into his bosom, or lets slip his mug of coffee

into his boot drying at the fire,--a boot henceforth saccharine. A mule,

slipping his halter, steps forward unnoticed, puts his nose into the

circle, and brays resonant. These are the jocular boons of life, and at

these the woodsmen guffaw with lusty good-nature. Coarse and rude the

jokes may be, but not nasty, like the innuendoes of pseudo-refined

cockneys. If the woodsmen are guilty of uncleanly wit, it differs from

the uncleanly wit of cities as the mud of a road differs from the sticky

slime of slums.

"It is a stout sensation to meet masculine, muscular men at the brave

point of a penetrating Boston hooihut,--men who are mates,--men to whom

technical culture means nought,--men to whom myself am nought, unless I

can saddle, lasso, cook, sing, and chop,--unless I am a man of nerve and

pluck, and a brother in generosity and heartiness. It is restoration to

play at cudgels of jocoseness with a circle of friendly roughs, not one

of whom ever heard the word bore,--with pioneers, who must think and

act, and wrench their living from the closed hand of Nature."

And here is a dinner "in the open."

"Upon the _carte du jour_ at Restaurant Sowee was written Grouse. 'How

shall we have them?' said I, cook and convive, to Loolowcan, marmiton

and convive. 'One of these cocks of the mountain shall be fried, since

gridiron is not,' responded I to myself, after meditation; 'two shall be

spitted and roasted; and, as Azrael may not want us before breakfast

to-morrow, the fourth shall go upon the _carte de déjeuner'_.

"'O Pork! what a creature thou art!' continued I, in monologue, cutting

neat slices of that viand with my bowie-knife, and laying them

fraternally, three in a bed, in the frying-pan. 'Blessed be Moses, who

forbade thee to the Jews, whereby we, of freer dispensations, heirs of

all the ages, inherit also pigs more numerous and bacon cheaper! O Pork!

what could campaigners do without thy fatness, thy leanness, thy

saltness, thy portableness?'

"Here Loolowcan presented me the three birds, plucked featherless as

Plato's man. The two roasters we planted carefully on spits before a

sultry spot of the fire. From a horizontal stick, supported on forked

stakes, we suspended by a twig over each roaster an automatic baster, an

inverted cone of pork, ordained to yield its spicy juices to the wooing

flame, and drip bedewing on each bosom beneath. The roasters ripened

deliberately, while keen and quick fire told upon the frier, the first

course of our feast. Meanwhile I brewed a pot of tea, blessing Confucius

for that restorative weed, as I had blessed Moses for his abstinence

from porkers.

"Need I say that the grouse were admirable, that everything was

delicious, and the Confucian weed first chop? Even a scouse of mouldy

biscuit met the approval of Loolowcan. Feasts cooked under the greenwood

tree, and eaten by their cooks after a triumphant day of progress, are

sweeter than the conventional banquets of languid Christendom."

"Life in the Open Air"--containing sketches of travel among the

mountains and lakes of Maine, as well as the story of "Love and Skates,"

which has been spoken of, "The March of the Seventh Regiment,"

"Washington as a Camp," an essay descriptive of Church's great picture,

"The Heart of the Andes," and two fragments, one of them the charming

commencement of a story which promised to be one of his best and most

enjoyable efforts in this direction--is the concluding volume of

Winthrop's collected writings. I speak of it in this place, because it

is in some part a companion-book to the volumes we have been discussing.

It is as full of buoyant life, of fresh and noble thought, of graceful

wit and humor, as those; in parts it contains the most finished of his

literary work. Few Americans who read it at the time will ever forget

that stirring description of the march of the New-York Seventh; it is a

piece of the history of our war which will live and be read as long as

Americans read their history. It moved my blood, in the reading,

tonight, as it did in those days--which seem already some centuries old,

so do events crowd the retrospect--when we were all reading it in the

pages of the "Atlantic." In the unfinished story of "Brightly's Orphan"

there is a Jew boy from Chatham Street, an original of the first water,

who, though scarce fairly introduced, will, I am sure, make a place for

himself and for his author in the memories of all who relish humor of

the best kind.

"Cecil Dreeme" and "Edwin Brothertoft" are quite other books than these

we have spoken of. Here Winthrop tried a different vein,--two different

veins, perhaps. Both are stories of suffering and crime, stories of the

world and society. In one it is a woman, in the other a man, who is

wronged. One deals with New York city-life of the very present day; the

other is a story of the Revolutionary War, and of Tories and Patriots.

The popular verdict has declared him successful, even here. "Cecil

Dreeme" has run through no less than fifteen editions.

In this story we are shown New York "society" as doubtless Winthrop knew

it to be. Yet the book has a curious air of the Old-World; it might be a

story of Venice, almost. It tells us of Old-World vices and crimes, and

the fittings and furnishings are of a piece. The localities, indeed, are

sketched so faithfully, that a stranger to the city, coming suddenly, in

his wanderings, upon Chrysalis College Buildings, could not fail to

recognize them at once,--as indeed happened to a country friend of mine

recently, to his great delight. But the men are Americans, bred and

formed--and for the most part spoiled--in Europe; Americans who have

gone to Paris before their time, if it be true, what a witty Bostonian

said, that good Americans go to Paris when they die. With all this, the

book has a strange charm, so that it takes possession of you in spite of

yourself. It is as though it drew away the curtain, for one slight

moment, from the mysteries which "society" decorously hides,--as though

he who drew the curtain stood beside it, pointing with solemn finger and

silent indignation to the baseness of which he gives you a glimpse. Yet

even here the good carries the day, and that in no maudlin way, but

because the true men are the better men.

These, then, are Winthrop's writings,--the literary works of a young man

who died at thirty-two, and who had spent a goodly part of his mature

life in the saddle and the canoe, exploring his own country, and in

foreign travel. As we look at the volumes, we wonder how he found time

for so much; but when we have read, we wonder yet more at the excellence

of all he wrote. In all and through all shines his own noble spirit; and

thus these books of his, whose printed pages he never saw, will keep his

memory green amongst us; for, through them, all who read may know that

there wrote a true gentleman.

Once he wrote,--

"Let me not waste in skirmishes my power,

In petty struggles. Rather in the hour

Of deadly conflict may I nobly die,

In my first battle perish gloriously."

Even so he fell; but in these written works, as in his gallant death, he

left with us lessons which will yet win battles for the good cause of

American liberty, which he held dearest in his heart.

* * * * *

HILARY.

Hilary,

Summer calls thee, o'er the sea!

Like white flowers upon the tide,

In and out the vessels glide;

But no wind on all the main

Sends thy blithe soul home again:

Every salt breeze moans for thee,

Hilary!

Hilary,

Welcome Summer's step will be,

Save to those beside whose door

Doleful birds sit evermore

Singing, "Never comes he here

Who made every season's cheer!"

Dull the June that brings not thee,

Hilary!

Hilary,

What strange world has sheltered thee?

Here the soil beneath thy feet

Rang with songs, and blossomed sweet;

Blue skies ask thee yet of Earth,

Blind and dumb without thy mirth:

With thee went her heart of glee,

Hilary!

Hilary,

All things shape a sigh for thee!

O'er the waves, among the flowers,

Through the lapse of odorous hours,

Breathes a lonely, longing sound,

As of something sought, unfound:

Lorn are all things, lorn are we,

Hilary!

Hilary,

Oh, to sail in quest of thee,

To the trade-wind's steady tune,

Past the hurrying monsoon,

Into torrid seas, that lave

Dry, hot sands,--a breathless grave,--

Sad as vain the search would be,

Hilary!

Hilary,

Chase the sorrow from the sea!

Summer-heart, bring summer near,

Warm, and fresh, and airy-clear!

--Dead thou art not: dead is pain;

Now Earth sees and sings again:

Death, to hold thee, Life must be,

Hilary!

* * * * *

DEBBY'S DÉBUT.

On a cheery June day Mrs. Penelope Carroll and her niece Debby Wilder

were whizzing along on their way to a certain gay watering-place, both

in the best of humors with each other and all the world beside. Aunt Pen

was concocting sundry mild romances, and laying harmless plots for the

pursuance of her favorite pastime, match-making; for she had invited her

pretty relative to join her summer jaunt, ostensibly that the girl might

see a little of fashionable life, but the good lady secretly proposed to

herself to take her to the beach and get her a rich husband, very much

as she would have proposed to take her to Broadway and get her a new

bonnet; for both articles she considered necessary, but somewhat

difficult for a poor girl to obtain.

Debby was slowly getting her poise, after the excitement of a first

visit to New York; for ten days of bustle had introduced the young

philosopher to a new existence, and the working-day world seemed to have

vanished when she made her last pat of butter in the dairy at home. For

an hour she sat thinking over the good-fortune which had befallen her,

and the comforts of this life which she had suddenly acquired. Debby was

a true girl,--with all a girl's love of ease and pleasure; and it must

not be set down against her that she surveyed her pretty travelling-suit

with much complacency, rejoicing inwardly that she could use her hands

without exposing fractured gloves, that her bonnet was of the newest

mode, needing no veil to hide a faded ribbon or a last year's shape,

that her dress swept the ground with fashionable untidiness, and her

boots were guiltless of a patch,--that she was the possessor of a mine

of wealth in two of the eight trunks belonging to her aunt, that she was

travelling like any lady of the land with man-and maid-servant at her

command, and that she was leaving work and care behind her for a month

or two of novelty and rest.

When these agreeable facts were fully realized, and Aunt Pen had fallen

asleep behind her veil, Debby took out a book, and indulged in her

favorite luxury, soon forgetting past, present, and future in the

inimitable history of Martin Chuzzlewit. The sun blazed, the cars

rattled, children cried, ladies nodded, gentlemen longed for the solace

of prohibited cigars, and newspapers were converted into sun-shades,

nightcaps, and fans; but Debby read on, unconscious of all about her,

even of the pair of eyes that watched her from the opposite corner of

the car. A gentleman with a frank, strong-featured face sat therein, and

amused himself by scanning with thoughtful gaze the countenances of his

fellow-travellers. Stout Aunt Pen, dignified even in her sleep, was a

"model of deportment" to the rising generation; but the student of human

nature found a more attractive subject in her companion, the girl with

an apple-blossom face and merry brown eyes, who sat smiling into her

book, never heeding that her bonnet was awry, and the wind taking

unwarrantable liberties with her ribbons and her hair.

Innocent Debby turned her pages, unaware that her fate sat opposite in

the likeness of a serious, black-bearded gentleman, who watched the

smiles rippling from her lips to her eyes with an interest that deepened

as the minutes passed. If his paper had been full of anything but

"Bronchial Troches" and "Spalding's Prepared Glue," he would have found

more profitable employment; but it wasn't, and with the usual readiness

of idle souls he fell into evil ways, and permitted curiosity, that

feminine sin, to enter in and take possession of his manly mind. A great

desire seized him to discover what book so interested his pretty

neighbor; but a cover hid the name, and he was too distant to catch it

on the fluttering leaves. Presently a stout Emerald-Islander, with her

wardrobe oozing out of sundry paper parcels, vacated the seat behind the

two ladies; and it was soon quietly occupied by the individual for whom

Satan was finding such indecorous employment. Peeping round the little

gray bonnet, past a brown braid and a fresh cheek, the young man's eye

fell upon the words the girl was reading, and forgot to look away again.

Books were the desire of his life; but an honorable purpose and an

indomitable will kept him steady at his ledgers till he could feel that

he had earned the right to read. Like wine to many another was an open

page to him; he read a line, and, longing for more, took a hasty sip

from his neighbor's cup, forgetting that it was a stranger's also.

Down the page went the two pairs of eyes, and the merriment from Debby's

seemed to light up the sombre ones behind her with a sudden shine that

softened the whole face and made it very winning. No wonder they

twinkled, for Elijah Pogram spoke, and "Mrs. Hominy, the mother of the

modern Gracchi, in the classical blue cap and the red cotton

pocket-handkerchief, came down the room in a procession of one." A low

laugh startled Debby, though it was smothered like the babes in the

Tower; and, turning, she beheld the trespasser scarlet with confusion,

and sobered with a tardy sense of his transgression. Debby was not a

starched young lady of the "prune and prism" school, but a frank,

free-hearted little body, quick to read the sincerity of others, and to

take looks and words at their real value. Dickens was her idol; and for

his sake she could have forgiven a greater offence than this. The

stranger's contrite countenance and respectful apology won her good-will

at once; and with a finer courtesy than any Aunt Pen would have taught,

she smilingly bowed her pardon, and, taking another book from her

basket, opened it, saying, pleasantly,--

"Here is the first volume, if you like it, Sir. I can recommend it as an

invaluable consolation for the discomforts of a summer day's journey,

and it is heartily at your service."

As much surprised as gratified, the gentleman accepted the book, and

retired behind it with the sudden discovery that wrong-doing has its

compensation in the pleasurable sensation of being forgiven. Stolen

delights are well known to be specially saccharine; and much as this

pardoned sinner loved books, it seemed to him that the interest of the

story flagged, and that the enjoyment of reading was much enhanced by

the proximity of a gray bonnet and a girlish profile. But Dickens soon

proved more powerful than Debby, and she was forgotten, till, pausing to

turn a leaf, the young man met her shy glance, as she asked, with the

pleased expression of a child who has shared an apple with a playmate,--

"Is it good?"

"Oh, very!"--and the man looked as honestly grateful for the book as the

boy would have done for the apple.

Only five words in the conversation, but Aunt Pen woke, as if the

watchful spirit of propriety had roused her to pluck her charge from the

precipice on which she stood.

"Dora, I'm astonished at you! Speaking to strangers in that free manner

is a most unladylike thing. How came you to forget what I have told you

over and over again about a proper reserve?"

The energetic whisper reached the gentleman's ear, and he expected to be

annihilated with a look when his offence was revealed; but he was spared

that ordeal, for the young voice answered, softly,--

"Don't faint, Aunt Pen; I only did as I'd be done by; for I had two

books, and the poor man looked so hungry for something to read that I

couldn't resist sharing my 'goodies.' He will see that I'm a countrified

little thing in spite of my fine feathers, and won't be shocked at my

want of rigidity and frigidity; so don't look dismal, and I'll be prim

and proper all the rest of the way,--if I don't forget it."

"I wonder who he is; may belong to some of our first families, and in

that case it might be worth while to exert ourselves, you know. Did you

learn his name, Dora?" whispered the elder lady.

Debby shook her head, and murmured, "Hush!"--but Aunt Pen had heard of

matches being made in cars as well as in heaven; and as an experienced

general, it became her to reconnoitre, when one of the enemy approached

her camp. Slightly altering her position, she darted an

all-comprehensive glance at the invader, who seemed entirely absorbed,

for not an eyelash stirred during the scrutiny. It lasted but an

instant, yet in that instant he was weighed and found wanting; for that

experienced eye detected that his cravat was two inches wider than

fashion ordained, that his coat was not of the latest style, that his

gloves were mended, and his handkerchief neither cambric nor silk. That

was enough, and sentence was passed forthwith,--"Some respectable clerk,

good-looking, but poor, and not at all the thing for Dora"; and Aunt Pen

turned to adjust a voluminous green veil over her niece's bonnet, "To

shield it from the dust, dear," which process also shielded the face

within from the eye of man.

A curious smile, half mirthful, half melancholy, passed over their

neighbor's lips; but his peace of mind seemed undisturbed, and he

remained buried in his book till they reached ----, at dusk. As he

returned it, he offered his services in procuring a carriage or

attending to luggage; but Mrs. Carroll, with much dignity of aspect,

informed him that her servants would attend to those matters, and,

bowing gravely, he vanished into the night.

As they rolled away to the hotel, Debby was wild to run down to the

beach whence came the solemn music of the sea, making the twilight

beautiful. But Aunt Pen was too tired to do anything but sup in her own

apartment and go early to bed; and Debby might as soon have proposed to

walk up the Great Pyramid as to make her first appearance without that

sage matron to mount guard over her; so she resigned herself to pie and

patience, and fell asleep, wishing it were to-morrow.

At five, A.M., a nightcapped head appeared at one of the myriad windows

of the ---- Hotel, and remained there as if fascinated by the miracle of

sunrise over the sea. Under her simplicity of character and girlish

merriment Debby possessed a devout spirit and a nature full of the real

poetry of life, two gifts that gave her dawning womanhood its sweetest

charm, and made her what she was. As she looked out that summer dawn

upon the royal marriage of the ocean and the sun, all petty hopes and

longings faded out of sight, and her young face grew luminous with

thoughts too deep for words. Her day was happier for that silent hour,

her life richer for the aspirations that uplifted her like beautiful

strong angels, and left a blessing when they went. The smile of the June

sky touched her lips, the morning red seemed to linger on her cheek, and

in her eye arose a light kindled by the shimmer of that broad sea of

gold; for Nature rewarded her young votary well, and gave her beauty,

when she offered love. How long she leaned there Debby did not know;

steps from below roused her from her reverie, and led her back into the

world again. Smiling at herself, she stole to bed, and lay wrapped in

waking dreams as changeful as the shadows dancing on her chamber-wall.

The advent of her aunt's maid, Victorine, some two hours later, was the

signal to be "up and doing"; and she meekly resigned herself into the

hands of that functionary, who appeared to regard her in the light of an

animated pin-cushion, as she performed the toilet-ceremonies with an

absorbed aspect, which impressed her subject with a sense of the

solemnity of the occasion.

"Now, Mademoiselle, regard yourself, and pronounce that you are

ravishing," Victorine said at length, folding her hands with a sigh of

satisfaction, as she fell back in an attitude of serene triumph.

Debby obeyed, and inspected herself with great interest and some

astonishment; for there was a sweeping amplitude of array about the

young lady whom she beheld in the much-befrilled gown and embroidered

skirts, which somewhat alarmed her as to the navigation of a vessel

"with such a spread of sail," while a curious sensation of being

somebody else pervaded her from the crown of her head, with its shining

coils of hair, to the soles of the French slippers, whose energies

seemed to have been devoted to the production of marvellous rosettes.

"Yes, I look very nice, thank you; and yet I feel like a doll, helpless

and fine, and fancy I was more of a woman in my fresh gingham, with a

knot of clovers in my hair, than I am now. Aunt Pen was very kind to get

me all these pretty things; but I'm afraid my mother would look

horrified to see me in such a high state of flounce externally and so

little room to breathe internally."

"Your mamma would not flatter me, Mademoiselle; but come now to Madame;

she is waiting to behold you, and I have yet her toilet to make"; and,

with a pitying shrug, Victorine followed Debby to her aunt's room.

"Charming! really elegant!" cried that lady, emerging from her towel

with a rubicund visage. "Drop that braid half an inch lower, and pull

the worked end of her handkerchief out of the right-hand pocket, Vic.

There! Now, Dora, don't run about and get rumpled, but sit quietly down

and practise repose till I am ready."

Debby obeyed, and sat mute, with the air of a child in its Sunday-best

on a week-day, pleased with the novelty, but somewhat oppressed with the

responsibility of such unaccustomed splendor, and utterly unable to

connect any ideas of repose with tight shoes and skirts in a rampant

state of starch.

* * * * *

"Well, you see, I bet on Lady Gay against Cockadoodle, and if you'll

believe me--Hullo! there's Mrs. Carroll, and deuse take me if she hasn't

got a girl with her! Look, Seguin!"--and Joe Leavenworth, a "man of the

world," aged twenty, paused in his account of an exciting race to make

the announcement.

Mr. Seguin, his friend and Mentor, as much his senior in worldly

wickedness as in years, tore himself from his breakfast long enough to

survey the new-comers, and then returned to it, saying, briefly,--

"The old lady is worth cultivating,--gives good suppers, and thanks you

for eating them. The girl is well got up, but has no style, and blushes

like a milk-maid. Better fight shy of her, Joe."

"Do you think so? Well, now I rather fancy that kind of thing. She's

new, you see, and I get on with that sort of girl the best, for the old

ones are so deused knowing that a fellow has no chance of a--By the Lord

Harry, she's eating bread and milk!"

Young Leavenworth whisked his glass into his eye, and Mr. Seguin put

down his roll to behold the phenomenon. Poor Debby! her first step had

been a wrong one.

All great minds have their weak points. Aunt Pen's was her breakfast,

and the peace of her entire day depended upon the success of that meal.

Therefore, being down rather late, the worthy lady concentrated her

energies upon the achievement of a copious repast, and, trusting to

former lessons, left Debby to her own resources for a few fatal moments.

After the flutter occasioned by being scooped into her seat by a

severe-nosed waiter, Debby had only courage enough left to refuse tea

and coffee and accept milk. That being done, she took the first familiar

viand that appeared, and congratulated herself upon being able to get

her usual breakfast. With returning composure, she looked about her and

began to enjoy the buzz of voices, the clatter of knives and forks, and

the long lines of faces all intent upon the business of the hour; but

her peace was of short duration. Pausing for a fresh relay of toast,

Aunt Pen glanced toward her niece with the comfortable conviction that

her appearance was highly creditable; and her dismay can be imagined,

when she beheld that young lady placidly devouring a great cup of

brown-bread and milk before the eyes of the assembled multitude. The

poor lady choked in her coffee, and between her gasps whispered irefully

behind her napkin,--

"For Heaven's sake, Dora, put away that mess! The Ellenboroughs are

directly opposite, watching everything you do. Eat that omelet, or

anything respectable, unless you want me to die of mortificátion."

Debby dropped her spoon, and, hastily helping herself from the dish her

aunt pushed toward her, consumed the leathery compound with as much

grace as she could assume, though unable to repress a laugh at Aunt

Pen's disturbed countenance. There was a slight lull in the clatter, and

the blithe sound caused several heads to turn toward the quarter whence

it came, for it was as unexpected and pleasant a sound as a bobolink's

song in a cage of shrill-voiced canaries.

"She's a jolly little thing and powerful pretty, so deuse take me if I

don't make up to the old lady and find out who the girl is. I've been

introduced to Mrs. Carroll at our house; but I suppose she won't

remember me till I remind her."

The "deuse" declining to accept of his repeated offers, (probably

because there was still too much honor and honesty in the boy,) young

Leavenworth sought out Mrs. Carroll on the piazza, as she and Debby were

strolling there an hour later.

"Joe Leavenworth, my dear, from one of our first families,--very

wealthy,--fine match,--pray, be civil,--smooth your hair, hold back your

shoulders, and put down your parasol," murmured Aunt Pen, as the

gentleman approached with as much pleasure in his countenance as it was

consistent with manly dignity to express upon meeting two of the

inferior race.

"My niece, Miss Dora Wilder. This is her first season at the beach, and

we must endeavor to make it pleasant for her, or she will be getting

homesick and running away to mamma," said Aunt Pen, in her society-tone,

after she had returned his greeting, and perpetrated a polite fiction,

by declaring that she remembered him perfectly, for he was the image of

his father.

Mr. Leavenworth brought the heels of his varnished boots together with a

click, and executed the latest bow imported, then stuck his glass in his

eye and stared till it fell out, (the glass, not the eye,) upon which he

fell into step with them, remarking,--

"I shall be most happy to show the lions: they are deused tame ones, so

you needn't be alarmed, Miss Wilder."

Debby was good-natured enough to laugh; and, elated with that success,

he proceeded to pour forth his stores of wit and learning in true

collegian style, quite unconscious that the "jolly little thing" was

looking him through and through with the smiling eyes that were

producing such pleasurable sensations under the mosaic studs. They

strolled toward the beach, and, meeting an old acquaintance, Aunt Pen

fell behind, and beamed upon the young pair as if her prophetic eye even

at this early stage beheld them walking altarward in a proper state of

blond white vest and bridal awkwardness.

"Can you skip a stone, Mr. Leavenworth?" asked Debby, possessed with a

mischievous desire to shock the piece of elegance at her side.

"Eh? what's that?" he inquired, with his head on one side, like an

inquisitive robin.

Debby repeated her question, and illustrated it by sending a stone

skimming over the water in the most scientific manner. Mr. Joe was

painfully aware that this was not at all "the thing," that his sisters

never did so, and that Seguin would laugh confoundedly, if he caught him

at it; but Debby looked so irresistibly fresh and pretty under her

rose-lined parasol that he was moved to confess that he _had_ done such

a thing, and to sacrifice his gloves by poking in the sand, that he

might indulge in a like unfashionable pastime.

"You'll be at the hop tonight, I hope, Miss Wilder," he observed,

introducing a topic suited to a young lady's mental capacity.

"Yes, indeed; for dancing is one of the joys of my life, next to husking

and making hay"; and Debby polked a few steps along the beach, much to

the edification of a pair of old gentlemen, serenely taking their first

"constitutional."

"Making what?" cried Mr. Joe, polking after her.

"Hay; ah, that is the pleasantest fun in the world,--and better

exercise, my mother says, for soul and body, than dancing till dawn in

crowded rooms, with everything in a state of unnatural excitement. If

one wants real merriment, let him go into a new-mown field, where all

the air is full of summer odors, where wild-flowers nod along the walls,

where blackbirds make finer music than any band, and sun and wind and

cheery voices do their part, while windrows rise, and great loads go

rumbling through the lanes with merry brown faces atop. Yes, much as I

like dancing, it is not to be compared with that; for in the one case we

shut out the lovely world, and in the other we become a part of it, till

by its magic labor turns to poetry, and we harvest something better than

dried buttercups and grass."

As she spoke, Debby looked up, expecting to meet a glance of

disapproval; but something in the simple earnestness of her manner had

recalled certain boyish pleasures as innocent as they were hearty, which

now contrasted very favorably with the later pastimes in which fast

horses, and that lower class of animals, fast men, bore so large a part.

Mr. Joe thoughtfully punched five holes in the sand, and for a moment

Debby liked the expression of his face; then the old listlessness

returned, and, looking up, he said, with an air of _ennui_ that was half

sad, half ludicrous, in one so young and so generously endowed with

youth, health, and the good gifts of this life,--

"I used to fancy that sort of thing years ago, but I'm afraid I should

find it a little slow now, though you describe it in such an inviting

manner that I should be tempted to try it, if a hay-cock came in my way;

for, upon my life, it's deused heavy work loafing about at these

watering-places all summer. Between ourselves, there's a deal of humbug

about this kind of life, as you will find, when you've tried it as long

as I have."

"Yes, I begin to think so already; but perhaps you can give me a few

friendly words of warning from the stores of your experience, that I may

be spared the pain of saying what so many look,--'Grandma, the world is

hollow; my doll is stuffed with sawdust; and I should like to go into a

convent, if you please.'"

Debby's eyes were dancing with merriment; but they were demurely

downcast, and her voice was perfectly serious.

The milk of human kindness had been slightly curdled for Mr. Joe by

sundry college-tribulations; and having been "suspended," he very

naturally vibrated between the inborn jollity of his temperament and the

bitterness occasioned by his wrongs. He had lost at billiards the night

before, had been hurried at breakfast, had mislaid his cigar-case, and

splashed his boots; consequently the darker mood prevailed that morning,

and when his counsel was asked, he gave it like one who had known the

heaviest trials of this "Piljin Projiss of a wale."

"There's no justice in the world, no chance for us young people to enjoy

ourselves, without some penalty to pay, some drawback to worry us like

these confounded 'all-rounders.' Even here, where all seems free and

easy, there's no end of gossips and spies who tattle and watch till you

feel as if you lived in a lantern. 'Every one for himself, and the Devil

take the hindmost': that's the principle they go on, and you have to

keep your wits about you in the most exhausting manner, or you are done

for before you know it. I've seen a good deal of this sort of thing, and

hope you'll get on better than some do, when it's known that you are the

rich Mrs. Carroll's niece; though you don't need that fact to enhance

your charms,--upon my life, you don't."

Debby laughed behind her parasol at this burst of candor; but her

independent nature prompted her to make a fair beginning, in spite of

Aunt Pen's polite fictions and well-meant plans.

"Thank you for your warning, but I don't apprehend much annoyance of

that kind," she said, demurely. "Do you know, I think, if young ladies

were truthfully labelled when they went into society, it would be a

charming fashion, and save a world of trouble? Something in this

style:--'Arabella Marabout, aged nineteen, fortune $100,000, temper

warranted'; 'Laura Eau-de-Cologne, aged twenty-eight, fortune $30,000,

temper slightly damaged'; 'Deborah Wilder, aged eighteen, fortune, one

pair of hands, one head, indifferently well filled, one heart, (not in

the market,) temper decided, and _no expectations_.' There, you see,

that would do away with much of the humbug you lament, and we poor

souls would know at once whether we were sought for our fortunes or

ourselves, and that would be so comfortable!"

Mr. Leavenworth turned away, with a convicted sort of expression, as she

spoke, and, making a spyglass of his hand, seemed to be watching

something out at sea with absorbing interest. He had been guilty of a

strong desire to discover whether Debby was an heiress, but had not

expected to be so entirely satisfied on that important subject, and was

dimly conscious that a keen eye had seen his anxiety, and a quick wit

devised a means of setting it at rest forever. Somewhat disconcerted, he

suddenly changed the conversation, and, like many another distressed

creature, took to the water, saying briskly,--

"By-the-by, Miss Wilder, as I've engaged to do the honors, shall I have

the pleasure of bathing with you when the fun begins? As you are fond of

haymaking, I suppose you intend to pay your respects to the old

gentleman with the three-pronged pitchfork?"

"Yes, Aunt Pen means to put me through a course of salt water, and any

instructions in the art of navigation will be gratefully received; for I

never saw the ocean before, and labor under a firm conviction, that,

once in, I never shall come out again till I am brought, like Mr.

Mantilini, a 'damp, moist, unpleasant body.'"

As Debby spoke, Mrs. Carroll hove in sight, coming down before the wind

with all sails set, and signals of distress visible long before she

dropped anchor and came along-side. The devoted woman had been strolling

slowly for the girl's sake, though oppressed with a mournful certainty

that her most prominent feature was fast becoming a fine copper-color;

yet she had sustained herself like a Spartan matron, till it suddenly

occurred to her that her charge might be suffering a like

"sea-change

Into something rich and strange."

Her fears, however, were groundless, for Debby met her without a

freckle, looking all the better for her walk; and though her feet were

wet with chasing the waves, and her pretty gown the worse for salt

water, Aunt Pen never chid her for the destruction of her raiment, nor

uttered a warning word against an unladylike exuberance of spirits, but

replied to her inquiry most graciously,--

"Certainly, my love, we shall bathe at eleven, and there will be just

time to get Victorine and our dresses; so run on to the house, and I

will join you as soon as I have finished what I am saying to Mrs.

Earle,"--then added, in a stage-aside, as she put a fallen lock off the

girl's forehead, "You are doing beautifully! He is evidently struck;

make yourself interesting, and don't burn your nose, I beg of you."

Debby's bright face clouded over, and she walked on with so much

stateliness that her escort wondered "what the deuse the old lady had

done to her," and exerted himself to the utmost to recall her merry

mood, but with indifferent success.

* * * * *

"Now I begin to feel more like myself, for this is getting back to first

principles, though I fancy I look like the little old woman who fell

asleep on the king's highway and woke up with abbreviated drapery; and

you look funnier still, Aunt Pen," said Debby, as she tied on her

pagoda-hat, and followed Mrs. Carroll, who walked out of her

dressing-room an animated bale of blue cloth surmounted by a gigantic

sun-bonnet.

Mr. Leavenworth was in waiting, and so like a blond-headed lobster in

his scarlet suit that Debby could hardly keep her countenance as they

joined the groups of bathers gathering along the breezy shore.

For an hour each day the actors and actresses who played their different

_rôles_ at the ---- Hotel with such precision and success put off their

masks and dared to be themselves. The ocean wrought the change, for it

took old and young into its arms, and for a little while they played

like children in their mother's lap. No falsehood could withstand its

rough sincerity; for the waves washed paint and powder from worn faces,

and left a fresh bloom there. No ailment could entirely resist its

vigorous cure; for every wind brought healing on its wings, endowing

many a meagre life with another year of health. No gloomy spirit could

refuse to listen to its lullaby, and the spray baptized it with the

subtile benediction of a cheerier mood. No rank held place there; for

the democratic sea toppled down the greatest statesman in the land, and

dashed over the bald pate of a millionnaire with the same white-crested

wave that stranded a poor parson on the beach and filled a fierce

reformer's mouth with brine. No fashion ruled, but that which is as old

as Eden,--the beautiful fashion of simplicity. Belles dropped their

affectations with their hoops, and ran about the shore blithe-hearted

girls again. Young men forgot their vices and their follies, and were

not ashamed of the real courage, strength, and skill they had tried to

leave behind them with their boyish plays. Old men gathered shells with

the little Cupids dancing on the sand, and were better for that innocent

companionship; and young mothers never looked so beautiful as when they

rocked their babies on the bosom of the sea.

Debby vaguely felt this charm, and, yielding to it, splashed and sang

like any beach-bird, while Aunt Pen bobbed placidly up and down in a

retired corner, and Mr. Leavenworth swam to and fro, expressing his firm

belief in mermaids, sirens, and the rest of the aquatic sisterhood,

whose warbling no manly ear can resist.

"Miss Wilder, you must learn to swim. I've taught quantities of young

ladies, and shall be delighted to launch the 'Dora,' if you'll accept me

as a pilot. Stop a bit; I'll get a life-preserver"; and leaving Debby to

flirt with the waves, the scarlet youth departed like a flame of fire.

A dismal shriek interrupted his pupil's play, and looking up, she saw

her aunt beckoning wildly with one hand, while she was groping in the

water with the other. Debby ran to her, alarmed at her tragic

expression, and Mrs. Carroll, drawing the girl's face into the privacy

of her big bonnet, whispered one awful word, adding, distractedly,--

"Dive for them! oh, dive for them! I shall be perfectly helpless, if

they are lost!"

"I can't dive, Aunt Pen; but there is a man, let us ask him," said

Debby, as a black head appeared to windward.

But Mrs. Carroll's "nerves" had received a shock, and, gathering up her

dripping garments, she fled precipitately along the shore and vanished

into her dressing-room.

Debby's keen sense of the ludicrous got the better of her respect, and

peal after peal of laughter broke from her lips, till a splash behind

her put an end to her merriment, and, turning, she found that this

friend in need was her acquaintance of the day before. The gentleman

seemed pausing for permission to approach, with much the appearance of a

sagacious Newfoundland, wistful and wet.

"Oh, I'm very glad it's you, Sir!" was Debby's cordial greeting, as she

shook a drop off the end of her nose, and nodded, smiling.

The new comer immediately beamed upon her like an amiable Triton,

saying, as they turned shoreward,--

"Our first interview opened with a laugh on my side, and our second with

one on yours. I accept the fact as a good omen. Your friend seemed in

trouble; allow me to atone for my past misdemeanors by offering my

services now. But first let me introduce myself; and as I believe in the

fitness of things, let me present you with an appropriate card"; and,

stooping, the young man wrote "Frank Evan" on the hard sand at Debby's

feet.

The girl liked his manner, and, entering into the spirit of the thing,

swept as grand a curtsy as her limited drapery would allow, saying,

merrily,--

"I am Debby Wilder, or Dora, as aunt prefers to call me; and instead of

laughing, I ought to be four feet under water, looking for something we

have lost; but I can't dive, and my distress is dreadful, as you see."

"What have you lost? I will look for it, and bring it back in spite of

the kelpies, if it is a human possibility," replied Mr. Evan, pushing

his wet locks out of his eyes, and regarding the ocean with a determined

aspect.

Debby leaned toward him, whispering with solemn countenance,--

"It is a set of teeth, Sir."

Mr. Evan was more a man of deeds than words, therefore he disappeared at

once with a mighty splash, and after repeated divings and much laughter

appeared bearing the chief ornament of Mrs. Penelope Carroll's comely

countenance. Debby looked very pretty and grateful as she returned her

thanks, and Mr. Evan was guilty of a secret wish that all the worthy

lady's features were at the bottom of the sea, that he might have the

satisfaction of restoring them to her attractive niece; but curbing this

unnatural desire, he bowed, saying, gravely,--

"Tell your aunt, if you please, that this little accident will remain a

dead secret, so far as I am concerned, and I am very glad to have been

of service at such a critical moment."

Whereupon Mr. Evan marched again into the briny deep, and Debby trotted

away to her aunt, whom she found a clammy heap of blue flannel and

despair. Mrs. Carroll's temper was ruffled, and though she joyfully

rattled in her teeth, she said, somewhat testily, when Debby's story was

done,--

"Now that man will have a sort of claim on us, and we must be civil,

whoever he is. Dear! dear! I wish it had been Joe Leavenworth instead.

Evan,--I don't remember any of our first families with connections of

that name, and I dislike to be under obligations to a person of that

sort, for there's no knowing how far he may presume; so, pray, be

careful, Dora."

"I think you are very ungrateful, Aunt Pen; and if Mr. Evan should

happen to be poor, it does not become me to turn up my nose at him, for

I'm nothing but a make-believe myself just now. I don't wish to go down

upon my knees to him, but I do intend to be as kind to him as I should

to that conceited Leavenworth boy; yes, kinder even; for poor people

value such things more, as I know very well."

Mrs. Carroll instantly recovered her temper, changed the subject, and

privately resolved to confine her prejudices to her own bosom, as they

seemed to have an aggravating effect upon the youthful person whom she

had set her heart on disposing of to the best advantage.

Debby took her swimming-lesson with much success, and would have

achieved her dinner with composure, if white-aproned gentlemen had not

effectually taken away her appetite by whisking bills-of-fare into her

hands, and awaiting her orders with a fatherly interest, which induced

them to congregate mysterious dishes before her, and blandly rectify

her frequent mistakes. She survived the ordeal, however, and at four

P.M. went to drive with "that Leavenworth boy" in the finest turnout

---- could produce. Aunt Pen then came off guard, and with a sigh of

satisfaction subsided into a peaceful doze, still murmuring, even in

her sleep,--

"Propinquity, my love, propinquity works wonders."

* * * * *

"Aunt Pen, are you a modest woman?" asked the young crusader against

established absurdities, as she came into the presence-chamber that

evening ready for the hop.

"Bless the child, what does she mean?" cried Mrs. Carroll, with a start

that twitched her back-hair out of Victorine's hands.

"Would you like to have a daughter of yours go to a party looking as I

look?" continued her niece, spreading her airy dress, and standing very

erect before her astonished relative.

"Why, of course I should, and be proud to own such a charming

creature," regarding the slender white shape with much

approbation,--adding, with a smile, as she met the girl's eye,--

"Ah, I see the difficulty, now; you are disturbed because there is not a

bit of lace over these pretty shoulders of yours. Now don't be absurd,

Dora; the dress is perfectly proper, or Madame Tiphany never would have

sent it home. It is the fashion, child; and many a girl with such a

figure would go twice as _décolletée_, and think nothing of it, I assure

you."

Debby shook her head with an energy that set the pink heather-bells

a-tremble in her hair, and her color deepened beautifully as she said,

with reproachful eyes,--

"Aunt Pen, I think there is a better fashion in every young girl's heart

than any Madame Tiphany can teach. I am very grateful for all you have

done for me, but I cannot go into public in such an undress as this; my

mother would never allow it, and father never forgive it. Please don't

ask me to, for indeed I cannot do it even for you."

Debby looked so pathetic that both mistress and maid broke into a laugh

which, somewhat reassured the young lady, who allowed her determined

features to relax into a smile, as she said,--

"Now, Aunt Pen, you want me to look pretty and be a credit to you; but

how would you like to see my face the color of those geraniums all the

evening?"

"Why, Dora, you are out of your mind to ask such a thing, when you know

it's the desire of my life to keep your color down and make you look

more delicate," said her aunt, alarmed at the fearful prospect of a

peony-faced _protégée_.

"Well, I should be anything but that, if I wore this gown in its present

waistless condition; so here is a remedy which will prevent such a

calamity and ease my mind."

As she spoke, Debby tied on her little _blonde fichu_ with a gesture

which left nothing more to be said.

Victorine scolded, and clasped her hands; but Mrs. Carroll, fearing to

push her authority too far, made a virtue of necessity, saying,

resignedly,--

"Have your own way, Dora, but in return oblige me by being agreeable to

such persons as I may introduce to you; and some day, when I ask a

favor, remember how much I hope to do for you, and grant it cheerfully."

"Indeed I will, Aunt Pen, if it is anything I can do without disobeying

mother's 'notions', as you call them. Ask me to wear an orange-colored

gown, or dance with the plainest, poorest man in the room, and I'll do

it; for there never was a kinder aunt than mine in all the world," cried

Debby, eager to atone for her seeming wilfulness, and really grateful

for her escape from what seemed to her benighted mind a very imminent

peril.

Like a clover-blossom in a vase of camellias little Debby looked that

night among the dashing or languid women who surrounded her; for she

possessed the charm they had lost,--the freshness of her youth. Innocent

gayety sat smiling in her eyes, healthful roses bloomed upon her cheek,

and maiden modesty crowned her like a garland. She _was_ the creature

that she seemed, and, yielding to the influence of the hour, danced to

the music of her own blithe heart. Many felt the spell whose secret they

had lost the power to divine, and watched the girlish figure as if it

were a symbol of their early aspirations dawning freshly from the

dimness of their past. More than one old man thought again of some

little maid whose love made his boyish days a pleasant memory to him

now. More than one smiling fop felt the emptiness of his smooth speech,

when the truthful eyes looked up into his own; and more than one pale

woman sighed regretfully within herself, "I, too, was a happy-hearted

creature once!"

"That Mr. Evan does not seem very anxious to claim our acquaintance,

after all, and I think better of him on that account. Has he spoken to

you tonight, Dora?" asked Mrs. Carroll, as Debby dropped down beside her

after a "splendid polka."

"No, Ma'am, he only bowed. You see some people are not so presuming as

other people thought they were; for we are not the most attractive

beings on the planet; therefore a gentleman can be polite and then

forget us without breaking any of the Ten Commandments. Don't be

offended with him yet, for he may prove to be some great creature with a

finer pedigree than any of 'our first families.' Mr. Leavenworth, as you

know everybody, perhaps you can relieve Aunt Pen's mind, by telling her

something about the tall, brown man standing behind the lady with

salmon-colored hair."

Mr. Joe, who was fanning the top of Debby's head with the best

intentions in life, took a survey, and answered readily,--

"Why, that's Frank Evan. I know him, and a deused good fellow he

is,--though he don't belong to our set, you know."

"Indeed! pray, tell us something about him, Mr. Leavenworth. We met in

the cars, and he did us a favor or two. Who and what is the man?" asked

Mrs. Carroll, relenting at once toward a person who was favorably spoken

of by one who did belong to her "set."

"Well, let me see," began Mr. Joe, whose narrative powers were not

great. "He is a book-keeper in my Uncle Josh Loring's importing concern,

and a powerful smart man, they say. There's some kind of clever story

about his father's leaving a load of debts, and Frank's working a deused

number of years till they were paid. Good of him, wasn't it? Then, just

as he was going to take things easier and enjoy life a bit, his mother

died, and that rather knocked him up, you see. He fell sick, and came to

grief generally, Uncle Josh said; so he was ordered off to get righted,

and here he is, looking like a tombstone. I've a regard for Frank, for

he took care of me through the smallpox a year ago, and I don't forget

things of that sort; so, if you wish to be introduced, Mrs. Carroll,

I'll trot him out with pleasure, and make a proud man of him."

Mrs. Carroll glanced at Debby, and as that young lady was regarding Mr.

Joe with a friendly aspect, owing to the warmth of his words, she

graciously assented, and the youth departed on his errand. Mr. Evan went

through the ceremony with a calmness wonderful to behold, considering

the position of one lady and the charms of the other, and soon glided

into the conversation with the ease of a more accomplished courtier.

"Now I must tear myself away, for I'm engaged to that stout Miss

Bandoline for this dance. She 's a friend of my sister's, and I must do

the civil, you know; powerful slow work it is, too, but I pity the poor

soul,--upon my life, I do"; and Mr. Joe assumed the air of a martyr.

Debby looked up with a wicked smile in her eyes, as she said,--

"Ah, that sounds very amiable here; but in five minutes you'll be

murmuring in Miss Bandoline's ear,--'I've been pining to come to you

this half hour, but I was obliged to take out that Miss Wilder, you

see,--countrified little thing enough, but not bad-looking, and has a

rich aunt; so I've done my duty to her, but deuse take me if I can stand

it any longer.'"

Mr. Evan joined in Debby's merriment; but Mr. Joe was so appalled at the

sudden attack that he could only stammer a remonstrance and beat a hasty

retreat, wondering how on earth she came to know that his favorite style

of making himself agreeable to one young lady was by decrying another.

"Dora, my love, that is very rude, and 'Deuse' is not a proper

expression for a woman's lips. Pray, restrain your lively tongue, for

strangers may not understand that it is nothing but the sprightliness of

your disposition which sometimes runs away with you."

"It was only a quotation, and I thought you would admire anything Mr.

Leavenworth said, Aunt Pen," replied Debby, demurely.

Mrs. Carroll trod on her foot, and abruptly changed the conversation, by

saying, with an appearance of deep interest,--

"Mr. Evan, you are doubtless connected with the Malcoms of Georgia; for

they, I believe, are descended from the ancient Evans of Scotland. They

are a very wealthy and aristocratic family, and I remember seeing their

coat-of-arms once: three bannocks and a thistle."

Mr. Evan had been standing before them with a composure which impressed

Mrs. Carroll with a belief in his gentle blood, for she remembered her

own fussy, plebeian husband, whose fortune had never been able to

purchase him the manners of a gentleman. Mr. Evan only grew a little

more erect, as he replied, with an untroubled mien,--

"I cannot claim relationship with the Malcoms of Georgia or the Evans of

Scotland, I believe, Madam. My father was a farmer, my grandfather a

blacksmith, and beyond that my ancestors may have been street-sweepers,

for anything I know; but whatever they were, I fancy they were honest

men, for that has always been our boast, though, like President

Jackson's, our coat-of-arms is nothing but 'a pair of shirt-sleeves.'"

From Debby's eyes there shot a bright glance of admiration for the young

man who could look two comely women in the face and serenely own that he

was poor. Mrs. Carroll tried to appear at ease, and, gliding out of

personalities, expatiated on the comfort of "living in a land where fame

and fortune were attainable by all who chose to earn them," and the

contempt she felt for those "who had no sympathy with the humbler

classes, no interest in the welfare of the race," and many more moral

reflections as new and original as the Multiplication-Table or the

Westminster Catechism. To all of which Mr. Evan listened with polite

deference, though there was something in the keen intelligence of his

eye that made Debby blush for shallow Aunt Pen, and rejoice when the

good lady got out of her depth and seized upon a new subject as a

drowning mariner would a hen-coop.

"Dora, Mr. Ellenborough is coming this way; you have danced with him but

once, and he is a very desirable partner; so, pray, accept, if he asks

you," said Mrs. Carroll, watching a far-off individual who seemed

steering his zigzag course toward them.

"I never intend to dance with Mr. Ellenborough again, so please don't

urge me, Aunt Pen"; and Debby knit her brows with a somewhat irate

expression.

"My love, you astonish me! He is a most agreeable and accomplished young

man,--spent three years in Paris, moves in the first circles, and is

considered an ornament to fashionable society. What _can_ be your

objection, Dora?" cried Mrs. Carroll, looking as alarmed as if her niece

had suddenly announced her belief in the Koran.

"One of his accomplishments consists in drinking Champagne till he is

not a 'desirable partner' for any young lady with a prejudice in favor

of decency. His moving in 'circles' is just what I complain of; and if

he is an ornament, I prefer my society undecorated. Aunt Pen, I cannot

make the nice distinctions you would have me, and a sot in broadcloth is

as odious as one in rags. Forgive me, but I cannot dance with that

silver-labelled decanter again."

Debby was a genuine little piece of womanhood; and though she tried to

speak lightly, her color deepened, as she remembered looks that had

wounded her like insults, and her indignant eyes silenced the excuses

rising to her aunt's lips. Mrs. Carroll began to rue the hour she ever

undertook the guidance of Sister Deborah's headstrong child, and for an

instant heartily wished she had left her to bloom unseen in the shadow

of the parsonage; but she concealed her annoyance, still hoping to

overcome the girl's absurd resolve, by saying, mildly,--

"As you please, dear; but if you refuse Mr. Ellenborough, you will be

obliged to sit through the dance, which is your favorite, you know."

Debby's countenance fell, for she had forgotten that, and the Lancers

was to her the crowning rapture of the night. She paused a moment, and

Aunt Pen brightened; but Debby made her little sacrifice to principle

as heroically as many a greater one had been made, and, with a wistful

look down the long room, answered steadily, though her foot kept time to

the first strains as she spoke,--

"Then I will sit, Aunt Pen; for that is preferable to staggering about

the room with a partner who has no idea of the laws of gravitation."

"Shall I have the honor of averting either calamity?" said Mr. Evan,

coming to the rescue with a devotion beautiful to see; for dancing was

nearly a lost art with him, and the Lancers to a novice is equal to a

second Labyrinth of Crete.

"Oh, thank you!" cried Debby, tumbling fan, bouquet, and handkerchief

into Mrs. Carroll's lap, with a look of relief that repaid him fourfold

for the trials he was about to undergo. They went merrily away together,

leaving Aunt Pen to wish that it was according to the laws of etiquette

to rap officious gentlemen over the knuckles, when they introduce their

fingers into private pies without permission from the chief cook. How

the dance went Debby hardly knew, for the conversation fell upon books,

and in the interest of her favorite theme she found even the "grand

square" an impertinent interruption, while her own deficiencies became

almost as great as her partner's; yet, when the music ended with a

flourish, and her last curtsy was successfully achieved, she longed to

begin all over again, and secretly regretted that she was engaged four

deep.

"How do you like our new acquaintance, Dora?" asked Aunt Pen, following

Joe Leavenworth with her eye, as the "yellow-haired laddie" whirled by

with the ponderous Miss Flora.

"Very much; and I'm glad we met as we did, for it makes things free and

easy, and that is so agreeable in this ceremonious place," replied

Debby, looking in quite an opposite direction.

"Well, I'm delighted to hear you say so, dear, for I was afraid you had

taken a dislike to him, and he is really a very charming young man, just

the sort of person to make a pleasant companion for a few weeks. These

little friendships are part of the summer's amusement, and do no harm;

so smile away, Dora, and enjoy yourself while you may."

"Yes, Aunt, I certainly will, and all the more because I have found a

sensible soul to talk to. Do you know, he is very witty and well

informed, though he says he never had much time for self-cultivation?

But I think trouble makes people wise, and he seems to have had a good

deal, though he leaves it for others to tell of. I am glad you are

willing I should know him, for I shall enjoy talking about my pet heroes

with him as a relief from the silly chatter I must keep up most of the

time."

Mrs. Carroll was a woman of one idea; and though a slightly puzzled

expression appeared in her face, she listened approvingly, and answered,

with a gracious smile,--

"Of course, I should not object to your knowing such a person, my love;

but I'd no idea Joe Leavenworth was a literary man, or had known much

trouble, except his father's death and his sister Clementina's

runaway-marriage with her drawing-master."

Debby opened her brown eyes very wide, and hastily picked at the down on

her fan, but had no time to correct her aunt's mistake, for the real

subject of her commendations appeared at that moment, and Mrs. Carroll

was immediately absorbed in the consumption of a large pink ice.

* * * * *

"That girl is what I call a surprise-party, now," remarked Mr. Joe

confidentially to his cigar, as he pulled off his coat and stuck his

feet up in the privacy of his own apartment. "She looks as mild as

strawberries and cream till you come to the complimentary, then she

turns on a fellow with that deused satirical look of hers, and makes him

feel like a fool. I'll try the moral dodge to-morrow, and see what

effect that will have; for she is mighty taking, and I must amuse myself

somehow, you know."

"How many years will it take to change that fresh-hearted little girl

into a fashionable belle, I wonder?" thought Frank Evan, as he climbed

the four flights that led to his "sky-parlor."

"What a curious world this is!" mused Debby, with her nightcap in her

hand. "The right seems odd and rude, the wrong respectable and easy, and

this sort of life a merry-go-round, with no higher aim than pleasure.

Well, I have made my Declaration of Independence, and Aunt Pen must be

ready for a Revolution, if she taxes me too heavily."

As she leaned her hot cheek on her arm, Debby's eye fell on the quaint

little cap made by the motherly hands that never were tired of working

for her. She touched it tenderly, and love's simple magic swept the

gathering shadows from her face, and left it clear again, as her

thoughts flew home like birds into the shelter of their nest.

"Good night, mother! I'll face temptation steadily. I'll try to take

life cheerily, and do nothing that shall make your dear face a reproach,

when it looks into my own again."

Then Debby said her prayers like any pious child, and lay down to dream

of pulling buttercups with Baby Bess, and sinking in the twilight on her

father's knee.

* * * * *

The history of Debby's first day might serve as a sample of most that

followed, as week after week went by with varying pleasures and

increasing interest to more than one young _débutante_. Mrs. Carroll did

her best, but Debby was too simple for a belle, too honest for a flirt,

too independent for a fine lady; she would be nothing but her sturdy

little self, open as daylight, gay as a lark, and blunt as any Puritan.

Poor Aunt Pen was in despair, till she observed that the girl often

"took" with the very peculiarities which she was lamenting; this

somewhat consoled her, and she tried to make the best of the pretty bit

of homespun which would not and could not become velvet or brocade.

Seguin, Ellenborough, & Co. looked with lordly scorn upon her, as a worm

blind to their attractions. Miss MacFlimsy and her "set" quizzed her

unmercifully behind her back, after being worsted in several passages of

arms; and more than one successful mamma condoled with Aunt Pen upon the

terribly defective education of her charge, till that stout matron could

have found it in her heart to tweak off their caps and walk on them,

like the irascible Betsey Trotwood.

But Debby had a circle of admirers who loved her with a sincerity few

summer queens could boast; for they were real friends, won by gentle

arts, and retained by the gracious sweetness of her nature. Moon-faced

babies crowed and clapped their chubby hands when she passed by their

wicker thrones; story-loving children clustered round her knee, and

never were denied; pale invalids found wild-flowers on their pillows;

and forlorn papas forgot the state of the money-market when she sang for

them the homely airs their daughters had no time to learn. Certain plain

young ladies poured their woes into her friendly ear, and were

comforted; several smart Sophomores fell into a state of chronic

stammer, blush, and adoration, when she took a motherly interest in

their affairs; and a melancholy old Frenchman blessed her with the

enthusiasm of his nation, because she put a posy in the button-hole of

his rusty coat, and never failed to smile and bow as he passed by. Yet

Debby was no Edgeworth heroine, preternaturally prudent, wise, and

untemptable; she had a fine crop of piques, vanities, and dislikes

growing up under this new style of cultivation. She loved admiration,

enjoyed her purple and fine linen, hid new-born envy, disappointed hope,

and wounded pride behind a smiling face, and often thought with a sigh

of the humdrum duties that awaited her at home. But under the airs and

graces Aunt Pen cherished with such sedulous care, under the flounces

and furbelows Victorine daily adjusted with groans, under the polish

which she acquired with feminine ease, the girl's heart still beat

steadfast and strong, and conscience kept watch and ward that no

traitor should enter in to surprise the citadel which mother-love had

tried to garrison so well.

In pursuance of his sage resolve, Mr. Joe tried the "moral dodge," as he

elegantly expressed it, and, failing in that, followed it up with the

tragic, religious, negligent, and devoted ditto; but acting was not his

forte, so Debby routed him in all; and at last, when he was at his wit's

end for an idea, she suggested one, and completed her victory by saying

pleasantly,--

"You took me behind the curtain too soon, and now the paste diamonds and

cotton-velvet don't impose upon me a bit. Just be your natural self, and

we shall get on nicely, Mr. Leavenworth."

The novelty of the proposal struck his fancy, and after a few relapses

it was carried into effect, and thenceforth, with Debby, he became the

simple, good-humored lad Nature designed him to be, and, as a proof of

it, soon fell very sincerely in love.

Frank Evan, seated in the parquet of society, surveyed the dress-circle

with much the same expression that Debby had seen during Aunt Pen's

oration; but he soon neglected that amusement to watch several actors in

the drama going on before his eyes, while a strong desire to perform a

part therein slowly took possession of his mind. Debby always had a look

of welcome when he came, always treated him with the kindness of a

generous woman who has had an opportunity to forgive, and always watched

the serious, solitary man with a great compassion for his loss, a

growing admiration for his upright life. More than once the beach birds

saw two figures pacing the sands at sunrise with the peace of early day

upon their faces and the light of a kindred mood shining in their eyes.

More than once the friendly ocean made a third in the pleasant

conversation, and its low undertone came and went between the mellow

bass and silvery treble of the human voices with a melody that lent

another charm to interviews which soon grew wondrous sweet to man and

maid. Aunt Pen seldom saw the twain together, seldom spoke of Evan; and

Debby held her peace, for, when she planned to make her innocent

confessions, she found that what seemed much to her was nothing to

another ear and scarcely worth the telling; so, unconscious as yet

whither the green path led, she went on her way, leading two lives, one

rich and earnest, hoarded deep within herself, the other frivolous and

gay for all the world to criticize. But those venerable spinsters, the

Fates, took the matter into their own hands, and soon got the better of

those short-sighted matrons, Mesdames Grundy and Carroll; for, long

before they knew it, Frank and Debby had begun to read together a book

greater than Dickens ever wrote, and when they had come to the fairest

part of the sweet story Adam first told Eve, they looked for the name

upon the title-page, and found that it was "Love."

Eight weeks came and went,--eight wonderfully happy weeks to Debby and

her friend; for "propinquity" had worked more wonders than poor Mrs.

Carroll knew, as the only one she saw or guessed was the utter

captivation of Joe Leavenworth. He had become "himself" to such an

extent that a change of identity would have been a relief; for the

object of his adoration showed no signs of relenting, and he began to

fear, that, as Debby said, her heart was "not in the market." She was

always friendly, but never made those interesting betrayals of regard

which are so encouraging to youthful gentlemen "who fain would climb,

yet fear to fall." She never blushed when he pressed her hand, never

fainted or grew pale when he appeared with a smashed trotting-wagon and

a black eye, and actually slept through a serenade that would have won

any other woman's soul out of her body with its despairing quavers.

Matters were getting desperate; for horses lost their charms, "flowing

bowls" palled upon his lips, ruffled shirt-bosoms no longer delighted

him, and hops possessed no soothing power to allay the anguish of his

mind. Mr. Seguin, after unavailing ridicule and pity, took compassion

on him, and from his large experience suggested a remedy, just as he was

departing for a more congenial sphere.

"Now don't be an idiot, Joe, but, if you want to keep your hand in and

go through a regular chapter of flirtation, just right about face, and

devote yourself to some one else. Nothing like jealousy to teach

womankind their own minds, and a touch of it will bring little Wilder

round in a jiffy. Try it, my boy, and good luck to you!"--with which

Christian advice Mr. Seguin slapped his pupil on the shoulder, and

disappeared, like a modern Mephistopheles, in a cloud of cigar-smoke.

"I'm glad he's gone, for in my present state of mind he's not up to my

mark at all. I'll try his plan, though, and flirt with Clara West; she's

engaged, so it won't damage her affections; her lover isn't here, so it

won't disturb his; and, by Jove! I must do something, for I can't stand

this suspense."

Debby was infinitely relieved by this new move, and infinitely amused as

she guessed the motive that prompted it but the more contented she

seemed, the more violently Mr. Joe flirted with her rival, till at last

weak-minded Miss Clara began to think her absent George the most

undesirable of lovers, and to mourn that she ever said "Yes" to a

merchant's clerk, when she might have said it to a merchant's son. Aunt

Pen watched and approved this stratagem, hoped for the best results, and

believed the day won when Debby grew pale and silent, and followed with

her eyes the young couple who were playing battledoor and shuttlecock

with each other's hearts, as if she took some interest in the game. But

Aunt Pen clashed her cymbals too soon; for Debby's trouble had a better

source than jealousy, and in the silence of the sleepless nights that

stole her bloom she was taking counsel of her own full heart, and

resolving to serve another woman as she would herself be served in a

like peril, though etiquette was outraged and the customs of polite

society turned upside down.

* * * * *

"Look, Aunt Pen! what lovely shells and moss I've got! Such a splendid

scramble over the rocks as I've had with Mrs. Duncan's boys! It seemed

so like home to run and sing with a troop of topsy-turvy children that

it did me good; and I wish you had all been there to see," cried Debby,

running into the drawing-room, one day, where Mrs. Carroll and a circle

of ladies sat enjoying a dish of highly flavored scandal, as they

exercised their eyesight over fancy-work.

"My dear Dora, spare my nerves; and if you have any regard for the

proprieties of life, don't go romping in the sun with a parcel of noisy

boys. If you could see what an object you are, I think you would try to

imitate Miss Clara, who is always a model of elegant repose."

Miss West primmed up her lips, and settled a fold in her ninth flounce,

as Mrs. Carroll spoke, while the whole group fixed their eyes with

dignified disapproval on the invader of their refined society. Debby had

come like a fresh wind into a sultry room; but no one welcomed the

healthful visitant, no one saw a pleasant picture in the bright-faced

girl with wind-tossed hair and rustic hat heaped with moss and

many-tinted shells; they only saw that her gown was wet, her gloves

forgotten, and her scarf trailing at her waist in a manner no well-bred

lady could approve. The sunshine faded out of Debby's face, and there

was a touch of bitterness in her tone, as she glanced at the circle of

fashion-plates, saying, with an earnestness which caused Miss West to

open her pale eyes to their widest extent,--

"Aunt Pen, don't freeze me yet,--don't take away my faith in simple

things, but let me be a child a little longer,--let me play and sing and

keep my spirit blithe among the dandelions and the robins while I can;

for trouble comes soon enough, and all my life will be the richer and

the better for a happy youth."

Mrs. Carroll had nothing at hand to offer in reply to this appeal, and

four ladies dropped their work to stare; but Frank Evan looked in from

the piazza, saying, as he beckoned like a boy,--

"I'll play with you, Miss Dora; come and make sand pies upon the shore.

Please let her, Mrs. Carroll; we'll be very good, and not wet our

pinafores or feet."

Without waiting for permission, Debby poured her treasures into the lap

of a certain lame Freddy, and went away to a kind of play she had never

known before. Quiet as a chidden child, she walked beside her companion,

who looked down at the little figure, longing to take it on his knee and

call the sunshine back again. That he dared not do; but accident, the

lover's friend, performed the work, and did him a good turn beside. The

old Frenchman was slowly approaching, when a frolicsome wind whisked off

his hat and sent it skimming along the beach. In spite of her late

lecture, away went Debby, and caught the truant chapeau just as a wave

was hurrying up to claim it. This restored her cheerfulness, and when

she returned, she was herself again.

"A thousand thanks; but does Mademoiselle remember the forfeit I might

demand to add to the favor she has already done me?" asked the gallant

old gentleman, as Debby took the hat off her own head, and presented it

with a martial salute.

"Ah, I had forgotten that; but you may claim it, Sir,--indeed, you may;

I only wish I could do something more to give you pleasure"; and Debby

looked up into the withered face which had grown familiar to her, with

kind eyes, full of pity and respect.

Her manner touched the old man very much; he bent his gray head before

her, saying, gratefully,--

"My child, I am not good enough to salute these blooming cheeks; but I

shall pray the Virgin to reward you for the compassion you bestow on the

poor exile, and I shall keep your memory very green through all my

life."

He kissed her hand, as if it were a queen's, and went on his way,

thinking of the little daughter whose death left him childless in a

foreign land.

Debby softly began to sing, "Oh, come unto the yellow sands!" but

stopped in the middle of a line, to say,--

"Shall I tell you why I did what Aunt Pen would call a very unladylike

and improper thing, Mr. Evan?"

"If you will be so kind"; and her companion looked delighted at the

confidence about to be reposed in him.

"Somewhere across this great wide sea I hope I have a brother," Debby

said, with softened voice and a wistful look into the dim horizon. "Five

years ago he left us, and we have never heard from him since, except to

know that he landed safely in Australia. People tell us he is dead; but

I believe he will yet come home; and so I love to help and pity any man

who needs it, rich or poor, young or old, hoping that as I do by them

some tender-hearted woman far away will do by Brother Will."

As Debby spoke, across Frank Evan's face there passed the look that

seldom comes but once to any young man's countenance; for suddenly the

moment dawned when love asserted its supremacy, and putting pride,

doubt, and fear underneath its feet, ruled the strong heart royally and

bent it to its will. Debby's thoughts had floated across the sea; but

they came swiftly back when her companion spoke again, steadily and

slow, but with a subtile change in tone and manner which arrested them

at once.

"Miss Dora, if you should meet a man who had known a laborious youth, a

solitary manhood, who had no sweet domestic ties to make home beautiful

and keep his nature warm, who longed most ardently to be so blessed, and

made it the aim of his life to grow more worthy the good gift, should it

ever come,--if you should learn that you possessed the power to make

this fellow-creature's happiness, could you find it in your gentle heart

to take compassion on him for the love of 'Brother Will'?"

Debby was silent, wondering why heart and nerves and brain were stirred

by such a sudden thrill, why she dared not look up, and why, when she

desired so much to speak, she could only answer, in a voice that sounded

strange to her own ears,--

"I cannot tell."

Still, steadily and slow, with strong emotion deepening and softening

his voice, the lover at her side went on,--

"Will you ask yourself this question in some quiet hour? For such a man

has lived in the sunshine of your presence for eight happy weeks, and

now, when his holiday is done, he finds that the old solitude will be

more sorrowful than ever, unless he can discover whether his summer

dream will change into a beautiful reality. Miss Dora, I have very

little to offer you; a faithful heart to cherish you, a strong arm to

work for you, an honest name to give into your keeping,--these are all;

but if they have any worth in your eyes, they are most truly yours

forever."

Debby was steadying her voice to reply, when a troop of bathers came

shouting down the bank, and she took flight into her dressing-room,

there to sit staring at the wall, till the advent of Aunt Pen forced her

to resume the business of the hour by assuming her aquatic attire and

stealing shyly down into the surf.

Frank Evan, still pacing in the footprints they had lately made, watched

the lithe figure tripping to and fro, and, as he looked, murmured to

himself the last line of a ballad Debby sometimes sang,--

"Dance light! for my heart it lies under your feet, love!"

Presently a great wave swept Debby up, and stranded her very near him,

much to her confusion and his satisfaction. Shaking the spray out of her

eyes, she was hurrying away, when Frank said,--

"You will trip, Miss Dora; let me tie these strings for you"; and,

suiting the action to the word, he knelt down and began to fasten the

cords of her bathing-shoe.

Debby stood looking down at the tall head bent before her, with a

curious sense of wonder that a look from her could make a strong man

flush and pale, as he had done; and she was trying to concoct some

friendly speech, when Frank, still fumbling at the knots, said, very

earnestly and low,--

"Forgive me, if I am selfish in pressing for an answer; but I must go

to-morrow, and a single word will change my whole future for the better

or the worse. Won't you speak it, Dora?"

If they had been alone, Debby would have put her arms about his neck,

and said it with all her heart; but she had a presentiment that she

should cry, if her love found vent; and here forty pairs of eyes were on

them, and salt water seemed superfluous. Besides, Debby had not breathed

the air of coquetry so long without a touch of the infection; and the

love of power, that lies dormant in the meekest woman's breast, suddenly

awoke and tempted her.

"If you catch me before I reach that rock, perhaps I will say 'Yes,'"

was her unexpected answer; and before her lover caught her meaning, she

was floating leisurely away.

Frank was not in bathing-costume, and Debby never dreamed that he would

take her at her word; but she did not know the man she had to deal with;

for, taking no second thought, he flung hat and coat away, and dashed

into the sea. This gave a serious aspect to Debby's foolish jest. A

feeling of dismay seized her, when she saw a resolute face dividing the

waves behind her, and thought of the rash challenge she had given; but

she had a spirit of her own, and had profited well by Mr. Joe's

instructions; so she drew a long breath, and swam as if for life,

instead of love. Evan was incumbered by his clothing, and Debby had much

the start of him; but, like a second Leander, he hoped to win his Hero,

and, lending every muscle to the work, gained rapidly upon the little

hat which was his beacon through the foam. Debby heard the deep

breathing drawing nearer and nearer, as her pursuer's strong arms cleft

the water and sent it rippling past her lips. Something like terror took

possession of her; for the strength seemed going out of her limbs, and

the rock appeared to recede before her; but the unconquerable blood of

the Pilgrims was in her veins, and "_Nil desperandum_" her motto; so,

setting her teeth, she muttered, defiantly,--

"I'll not be beaten, if I go to the bottom!"

A great splashing arose, and when Evan recovered the use of his eyes,

the pagoda-hat had taken a sudden turn, and seemed making for the

farthest point of the goal. "I am sure of her now," thought Frank; and,

like a gallant sea-god, he bore down upon his prize, clutching it with a

shout of triumph. But the hat was empty, and like a mocking echo came

Debby's laugh, as she climbed, exhausted, to a cranny in the rock.

"A very neat thing, by Jove! Deuse take me if you a'n't 'an honor to

your teacher, and a terror to the foe,' Miss Wilder," cried Mr. Joe, as

he came up from a solitary cruise and dropped anchor at her side. "Here,

bring along the hat, Evan; I'm going to crown the victor with

appropriate what-d'-ye-call-'ems," he continued, pulling a handful of

sea-weed that looked like well-boiled greens.

Frank came up, smiling; but his lips were white, and in his eye a look

Debby could not meet; so, being full of remorse, she naturally assumed

an air of gayety, and began to sing the merriest air she knew, merely

because she longed to throw herself upon the stones and cry violently.

"It was 'most as exciting as a regatta, and you pulled well, Evan; but

you had too much ballast aboard, and Miss Wilder ran up false colors

just in time to save her ship. What was the wager?" asked the lively

Joseph, complacently surveying his marine millinery, which would have

scandalized a fashionable mermaid.

"Only a trifle," answered Debby, knotting up her braids with a

revengeful jerk.

"It's taken the wind out of your sails, I fancy, Evan, for you look

immensely Byronic with the starch minus in your collar and your hair in

a poetic toss. Come, I'll try a race with you; and Miss Wilder will

dance all the evening with the winner. Bless the man, what's he doing

down there? Burying sunfish, hey?"

Frank had been sitting below them on a narrow strip of sand, absently

piling up a little mound that bore some likeness to a grave. As his

companion spoke, he looked at it, and a sudden flush of feeling swept

across his face, as he replied,--

"No, only a dead hope."

"Deuse take it, yes, a good many of that sort of craft founder in these

waters, as I know to my sorrow"; and, sighing tragically, Mr. Joe turned

to help Debby from her perch, but she had glided silently into the sea,

and was gone.

For the next four hours the poor girl suffered the sharpest pain she had

ever known; for now she clearly saw the strait her folly had betrayed

her into. Frank Evan was a proud man, and would not ask her love again,

believing she had tacitly refused it; and how could she tell him that

she had trifled with the heart she wholly loved and longed to make her

own? She could not confide in Aunt Pen, for that worldly lady would have

no sympathy to bestow. She longed for her mother; but there was no time

to write, for Frank was going on the morrow,--might even then be gone;

and as this fear came over her, she covered up her face and wished that

she were dead. Poor Debby! her last mistake was sadder than her first,

and she was reaping a bitter harvest from her summer's sowing. She sat

and thought till her cheeks burned and her temples throbbed; but she

dared not ease her pain with tears. The gong sounded like a Judgment-Day

trump of doom, and she trembled at the idea of confronting many eyes

with such a telltale face; but she could not stay behind, for Aunt Pen

must know the cause. She tried to play her hard part well; but wherever

she looked, some fresh anxiety appeared, as if every fault and folly of

those months had blossomed suddenly within the hour. She saw Frank Evan

more sombre and more solitary than when she met him first, and cried

regretfully within herself, "How could I so forget the truth I owed

him?" She saw Clara West watching with eager eyes for the coming of

young Leavenworth, and sighed, "This is the fruit of my wicked vanity!"

She saw Aunt Pen regarding her with an anxious face, and longed to say,

"Forgive me, for I have not been sincere!" At last, as her trouble grew,

she resolved to go away and have a quiet "think,"--a remedy which had

served her in many a lesser perplexity; so, stealing out, she went to a

grove of cedars usually deserted at that hour. But in ten minutes Joe

Leavenworth appeared at the door of the summer-house, and, looking in,

said, with a well-acted start of pleasure and surprise,--

"Beg pardon, I thought there was no one here. My dear Miss Wilder, you

look contemplative; but I fancy it wouldn't do to ask the subject of

your meditations, would it?"

He paused with such an evident intention of remaining that Debby

resolved to make use of the moment, and ease her conscience of one care

that burdened it; therefore she answered his question with her usual

directness,--

"My meditations were partly about you."

Mr. Joe was guilty of the weakness of blushing violently and looking

immensely gratified; but his rapture was of short duration, for Debby

went on very earnestly,--

"I believe I am going to do what you may consider a very impertinent

thing; but I would rather be unmannerly than unjust to others or untrue

to my own sense of right. Mr. Leavenworth, if you were an older man, I

should not dare to say this to you; but I have brothers of my own, and,

remembering how many unkind things they do for want of thought, I

venture to remind you that a woman's heart is a perilous plaything, and

too tender to be used for a selfish purpose or an hour's pleasure. I

know this kind of amusement is not considered wrong; but it _is_ wrong,

and I cannot shut my eyes to the fact, or sit silent while another woman

is allowed to deceive herself and wound the heart that trusts her. Oh,

if you love your own sisters, be generous, be just, and do not destroy

that poor girl's happiness, but go away before your sport becomes a

bitter pain to her!"

Joe Leavenworth had stood staring at Debby with a troubled countenance,

feeling as if all the misdemeanors of his life were about to be paraded

before him; but, as he listened to her plea, the womanly spirit that

prompted it appealed more loudly than her words, and in his really

generous heart he felt regret for what had never seemed a fault before.

Shallow as he was, nature was stronger than education, and he admired

and accepted what many a wiser, worldlier man would have resented with

auger or contempt. He loved Debby with all his little might; he meant to

tell her so, and graciously present his fortune and himself for her

acceptance; but now, when the moment came, the well-turned speech he had

prepared vanished from his memory, and with the better eloquence of

feeling he blundered out his passion like a very boy.

"Miss Dora, I never meant to make trouble between Clara and her lover;

upon my soul, I didn't, and wish Seguin had not put the notion into my

head, since it has given you pain. I only tried to pique you into

showing some regret, when I neglected you; but you didn't, and then I

got desperate and didn't care what became of any one. Oh, Dora, if you

knew how much I loved you, I am sure you'd forgive it, and let me prove

my repentance by giving up everything that you dislike. I mean what I

say; upon my life I do; and I'll keep my word, if you will only let me

hope."

If Debby had wanted a proof of her love for Frank Evan, she might have

found it in the fact that she had words enough at her command now, and

no difficulty in being sisterly pitiful toward her second suitor.

"Please get up," she said; for Mr. Joe, feeling very humble and very

earnest, had gone down upon his knees, and sat there entirely regardless

of his personal appearance.

He obeyed; and Debby stood looking up at him with her kindest aspect, as

she said, more tenderly than she had ever spoken to him before,--

"Thank you for the affection you offer me, but I cannot accept it, for I

have nothing to give you in return but the friendliest regard, the most

sincere good-will. I know you will forgive me, and do for your own sake

the good things you would have done for mine, that I may add to my

esteem a real respect for one who has been very kind to me."

"I'll try,--indeed, I will, Miss Dora, though it will be powerful hard

without yourself for a help and a reward."

Poor Joe choked a little, but called up an unexpected manliness, and

added, stoutly,--

"Don't think I shall be offended at your speaking so, or saying 'No' to

me,--not a bit; it 's all right, and I'm much obliged to you. I might

have known you couldn't care for such a fellow as I am, and don't blame

you, for nobody in the world is good enough for you. I'll go away at

once, I'll try to keep my promise, and I hope you'll be very happy all

your life."

He shook Debby's hands heartily, and hurried down the steps, but at the

bottom paused and looked back. Debby stood upon the threshold with

sunshine dancing on her winsome face, and kind words trembling on her

lips; for the moment it seemed impossible to part, and, with an

impetuous gesture, he cried to her,--

"Oh, Dora, let me stay and try to win you! for everything is possible to

love, and I never knew how dear you were to me till now!"

There were sudden tears in the young man's eyes, the flush of a genuine

emotion on his cheek, the tremor of an ardent longing in his voice, and,

for the first time, a very true affection strengthened his whole

countenance. Debby's heart was full of penitence; she had given so much

pain to more than one that she longed to atone for it,--longed to do

some very friendly thing, and soothe some trouble such as she herself

had known. She looked into the eager face uplifted to her own and

thought of Will, then stooped and touched her lover's forehead with the

lips that softly whispered, "No."

If she had cared for him, she never would have done it; poor Joe knew

that, and murmuring an incoherent "Thank you!" he rushed away, feeling

very much as he remembered to have felt when his baby sister died and he

wept his grief away upon his mother's neck. He began his preparations

for departure at once, in a burst of virtuous energy quite refreshing to

behold, thinking within himself, as he flung his cigar-case into the

grate, kicked a billiard-ball into a corner, and suppressed his favorite

allusion to the Devil,--

"This is a new sort of thing to me, but I can bear it, and upon my life

I think I feel the better for it already."

And so he did; for though he was no Augustine to turn in an hour from

worldly hopes and climb to sainthood through long years of inward

strife, yet in after-times no one knew how many false steps had been

saved, how many small sins repented of, through the power of the memory

that far away a generous woman waited to respect him, and in his secret

soul he owned that one of the best moments of his life was that in which

little Debby Wilder whispered "No," and kissed him.

As he passed from sight, the girl leaned her head upon her hand,

thinking sorrowfully to herself,--

"What right had I to censure him, when my own actions are so far from

true? I have done a wicked thing, and as an honest girl I should undo

it, if I can. I have broken through the rules of a false propriety for

Clara's sake; can I not do as much for Frank's? I will. I'll find him,

if I search the house,--and tell him all, though I never dare to look

him in the face again, and Aunt Pen sends me home to-morrow."

Full of zeal and courage, Debby caught up her hat and ran down the

steps, but, as she saw Frank Evan coming up the path, a sudden panic

fell upon her, and she could only stand mutely waiting his approach.

It is asserted that Love is blind; and on the strength of that popular

delusion novel heroes and heroines go blundering through three volumes

of despair with the plain truth directly under their absurd noses: but

in real life this theory is not supported; for to a living man the

countenance of a loving woman is more eloquent than any language, more

trustworthy than a world of proverbs, more beautiful than the sweetest

love-lay ever sung.

Frank looked at Debby, and "all her heart stood up in her eyes," as she

stretched her hands to him, though her lips only whispered very low,--

"Forgive me, and let me say the 'Yes' I should have said so long ago."

Had she required any assurance of her lover's truth, or any reward for

her own, she would have found it in the change that dawned so swiftly in

his face, smoothing the lines upon his forehead, lighting the gloom of

his eye, stirring his firm lips with a sudden tremor, and making his

touch as soft as it was strong. For a moment both stood very still,

while Debby's tears streamed down like summer rain; then Frank drew her

into the green shadow of the grove, and its peace soothed her like a

mother's voice, till she looked up smiling with a shy delight her glance

had never known before. The slant sunbeams dropped a benediction on

their heads, the robins peeped, and the cedars whispered, but no rumor

of what further passed ever went beyond the precincts of the wood; for

such hours are sacred, and Nature guards the first blossoms of a human

love as tenderly as she nurses May-flowers underneath the leaves.

* * * * *

Mrs. Carroll had retired to her bed with a nervous headache, leaving

Debby to the watch and ward of friendly Mrs. Earle, who performed her

office finely by letting her charge entirely alone. In her dreams Aunt

Pen was just imbibing a copious draught of Champagne at the

wedding-breakfast of her niece, "Mrs. Joseph Leavenworth," when she was

roused by the bride elect, who passed through the room with a lamp and a

shawl in her hand.

"What time is it, and where are you going, dear?" she asked, dozily

wondering if the carriage for the wedding-tour was at the door so soon.

"It's only nine, and I am going for a sail, Aunt Pen."

As Debby spoke, the light flashed full into her face, and a sudden

thought into Mrs. Carroll's mind. She rose up from her pillow, looking

as stately in her nightcap as Maria Theresa is said to have done in like

unassuming head-gear.

"Something has happened, Dora! What have you done? What have you said? I

insist upon knowing immediately," she demanded, with somewhat startling

brevity.

"I have said 'No' to Mr. Leavenworth and 'Yes' to Mr. Evan; and I should

like to go home to-morrow, if you please," was the equally concise

reply.

Mrs. Carroll fell flat in her bed, and lay there stiff and rigid as

Morlena Kenwigs. Debby gently drew the curtains, and stole away, leaving

Aunt Pen's wrath to effervesce before morning.

The moon was hanging luminous and large on the horizon's edge, sending

shafts of light before her till the melancholy ocean seemed to smile,

and along that shining pathway happy Debby and her lover floated into

that new world where all things seem divine.

* * * * *

WET-WEATHER WORK.

BY A FARMER.

III.

Will any of our artists ever give us, on canvas, a good, rattling, saucy

shower? There is room in it for a rare handling of the brush:--the

vague, indistinguishable line of hills, (as I see them to-day,)--the

wild scud of gray, with fine gray lines, slanted by the wind, and

trending eagerly downward,--the swift, petulant dash into the little

pools of the highway, making fairy bubbles that break as soon as they

form,--the land smoking with excess of moisture,--and the pelted leaves

all wincing and shining and adrip.

I know no painter who has so well succeeded in putting a wet sky into

his pictures as Turner; and in this I judge him by the literal

_chiaroscuro_ of engraving. In proof of it, I take down from my shelf

his "Rivers of France": a book over which I have spent a great many

pleasant hours, and idle ones too,--if it be idle to travel leagues at

the turning of a page, and to see hill-sides spotty with vineyards, and

great bridges wallowing through the Loire, and to watch the fishermen of

Honfleur putting to sea. There are skies, as I said, in some of these

pictures which make a man instinctively think of his umbrella, or of his

distance from home: no actual rain-drift stretching from them, but such

unmistakable promise of a rainy afternoon, in their little parallel

wisps of dark-bottomed clouds, as would make a provident farmer order

every scythe out of the field.

In the "Chair of Gargantua," on which my eye falls, as I turn over the

pages, an actual thunder-storm is breaking. The scene is somewhere upon

the Lower Seine. From the middle of the left of the picture the lofty

river-bank stretches far across, forming all the background;--its

extreme distance hidden by a bold thrust of the right bank, which juts

into the picture just far enough to shelter a white village, which lies

gleaming upon the edge of the water. On all the foreground lies the

river, broad as a bay. The storm is coming down the stream. Over the

left spur of the bank, and over the meeting of the banks, it broods

black as night. Through a little rift there is a glimpse of serene sky,

from which a mellow light streams down upon the edges and angles of a

few cliffs upon the farther shore. All the rest is heavily shadowed. The

edges of the coming tempest are tortuous and convulsed, and you know

that a fierce wind is driving the black billows on; yet all the water

under the lee of the shores is as tranquil as a dream; a white sail,

near to the white village, hangs slouchingly to the mast: but in the

foreground the tempest has already caught the water; a tall lugger is

scudding and careening under it as if mad; the crews of three

fishermen's boats, that toss on the vexed water, are making a confused

rush to shorten sail, and you may almost fancy that you hear their

outcries sweeping down the wind. In the middle scene, a little steamer

is floating tranquilly on water which is yet calm; and a column of smoke

piling up from its tall chimney rises for a space placidly enough, until

the wind catches and whisks it before the storm. I would wager ten to

one, upon the mere proof in the picture, that the fishermen and the

washerwomen in the foreground will be drenched within an hour.

When I have once opened the covers of Turner,--especially upon such a

wet day as this,--it is hard for me to leave him until I have wandered

all up and down the Loire, revisited Tours and its quiet cathedral, and

Blois with its stately chateau, and Amboise with its statelier, and

coquetted again with memories of the Maid of Orléans.

From the Upper Loire it is easy to slip into the branching valleys

which sidle away from it far down into the country of the Auvergne.

Turner does not go there, indeed; the more's the pity; but I do, since

it is the most attractive region rurally (Brittany perhaps excepted) in

all France. The valleys are green, the brooks are frequent, the rivers

are tortuous, the mountains are high, and luxuriant walnut-trees embower

the roads. It was near to Moulins, on the way hither, through the

pleasant Bourbonnois, that Tristram Shandy met with the poor,

half-crazed Maria, piping her evening service to the Virgin.

And at that thought I must do no less than pull down my "Tristram

Shandy," (on which the dust of years has accumulated,) and read again

that tender story of the lorn maiden, with her attendant goat, and her

hair caught up in a silken fillet, and her shepherd's pipe, from which

she pours out a low, plaintive wail upon the evening air.

It is not a little singular that a British author should have supplied

the only Arcadian resident of all this Arcadian region. The Abbé Delille

was, indeed, born hereabout, within sight of the bold Puy de Dome, and

within marketing-distance of the beautiful Clermont. But there is very

little that is Arcadian, in freshness or simplicity, in either the

"Gardens" or the other verse of Delille.

Out of his own mouth (the little green-backed book, my boy) I will

condemn him:--

"Ce n'est plus cette simple et rustique déesse

Qui suit ses vieilles lois; c'est une enchanteresse

Qui, la baguette en main, par des hardis travaux

Fait naître des aspects et des trésors nouveaux,

Compose un sol plus riche et des races plus belles,

Fertilise les monts, dompte les rocs rebelles."

The _baguette_ of Delille is no shepherd's crook; it has more the

fashion of a drumstick,--_baguette de tambour_.

If I follow on southward to Provence, whither I am borne upon the scuds

of rain over Turner's pictures, and the pretty Bourbonnois, and the

green mountains of Auvergne, I find all the characteristic literature of

that land of olives is only of love or war: the vines, the

olive-orchards, and the yellow hill-sides pass for nothing. And if I

read an old _Sirvente_ of the Troubadours, beginning with a certain

redolence of the fields, all this yields presently to knights, and

steeds caparisoned,--

"Cavalliers ab cavals armatz."

It is smooth reading, and is attributed to Bertrand de Born,[3] who

lived in the time when even the lion-hearted King Richard turned his

brawny fingers to the luting of a song. Let us listen:--

"The beautiful spring delights me well,

When flowers and leaves are growing;

And it pleases my heart to hear the swell

Of the birds' sweet chorus flowing

In the echoing wood;

And I love to see, all scattered around,

Pavilions and tents on the martial ground;

And my spirit finds it good

To see, on the level plains beyond,

Gay knights and steeds caparisoned."

[Footnote 3: M. Raynouard, _Poésies de Troubadours_, II. 209.]

But as the Troubadour nestles more warmly into the rhythm of his verse,

the birds are all forgotten, and the beautiful spring, and there is a

sturdy clang of battle, that would not discredit our own times:--

"I tell you that nothing my soul can cheer,

Or banqueting or reposing,

Like the onset cry of 'Charge them!' rung

From each side, as in battle closing;

Where the horses neigh,

And the call to 'aid' is echoing loud,

And there, on the earth, the lowly and proud

In the foss together lie,

And yonder is piled the mingled heap

Of the brave that scaled the trenches steep.

"Barons! your castles in safety place,

Your cities and villages, too,

Before ye haste to the battle-scene:

And Papiol! quickly go,

And tell the lord of 'Yes and No'

That peace already too long hath been!"[4]

[Footnote 4: I cannot forbear taking a bit of margin to print the

closing stanzas of the original, which carry the clash of sabres in

their very sound.

"Ie us dic que tan no m' a sabor

Manjars ni beure ni dormir

Cum a quant aug cridar: A lor!

D'ambas las partz; et aug agnir

Cavals voitz per l'ombratge,

Et aug cridar: Aidatz! Aidatz!

E vei cazer per los fossatz

Paucs e grans per l'erbatge,

E vei los mortz que pels costatz

An los tronsons outre passatz.

"Baros, metetz et gatge

Castels e vilas e ciutatz,

Enans q' usquecs no us guerreiatz.

"Papiol, d'agradatge

Ad _Oc e No_ t' en vai viatz,

Dic li que trop estan en patz."

It would seem that the men of that time, like men of most times, bore a

considerable contempt for people who said "Yes" one day, and "No" the

next.]

I am on my way to Italy, (it may as well be confessed,) where I had

fully intended to open my rainy day's work; but Turner has kept me, and

then Auvergne, and then the brisk battle-song of a Troubadour.

When I was upon the Cajano farm of Lorenzo the Magnificent, during my

last "spell of wet," it was uncourteous not to refer to the pleasant

commemorative poem of "Ambra," which Lorenzo himself wrote, and which,

whatever may be said against the conception and conduct of it, shows in

its opening stanzas that the great Medici was as appreciative of rural

images--fir-boughs with loaded snows, thick cypresses in which late

birds lurked, sharp-leaved junipers, and sturdy pines fighting the

wind--as ever he had been of antique jewels, or of the rhythm of such as

Politiano. And if I have spoken slightingly of this latter poet, it was

only in contrast with Virgil, and in view of his strained Latinity. When

he is himself, and wraps his fancies only in his own sparkling Tuscan,

we forget his classic frigidities, and his quarrels with Madonna

Clarice, and are willing to confess that no pen of his time was dipped

with such a relishing _gusto_ into the colors of the hyacinths and

trembling pansies, and into all the blandishments of a gushing and

wanton spring.[5]

[Footnote 5: See Wm. Parr Greswell's _Memoirs of Politiano_, with

translations.]

But classical affectation was the fashion of that day. A certain

Bolognese noble, Berò by name, wrote ten Latin books on rural affairs:

Tiraboschi says he never saw them; neither have I. Another scholar,

Pietro da Barga, who astonished his teachers by his wonderful

proficiency at the age of twelve, and who was afterward guest of the

French ambassador in Venice, wrote a poem on rural matters, to which,

with an exaggerated classicism, he gave the Greek name of

"_Cynegeticon_"; and about the same time Giuseppe Voltolina composed

three books on kitchen-gardening. I name these writers only out of

sympathy with their topics: I would not advise the reading of them: it

would involve a long journey and scrupulous search to find them, through

I know not what out-of-the-way libraries; and if found, no essentially

new facts or theories could be counted on which are not covered by the

treatise of Crescenzi. The Pisans or Venetians may possibly have

introduced a few new plants from the East; the example of the Medici may

have suggested some improvements in the arrangement of forcing-houses,

or the outlay of villas; but in all that regarded general husbandry,

Crescenzi was still the man.

I linger about this period, and the writers of this time, because I

snuff here and there among them the perfume of a country bouquet, which

carries the odor of the fields with it, and transports me to the

"empurpled hill-sides" of Tuscany. Shall I name Sannazaro, with his

"Arcadia"?--a dead book now,--or "Amyntas," who, before he is tall

enough to steal apples from the lowest boughs, (so sings Tasso,) plunges

head and ears in love with Sylvia, the fine daughter of Montano, who has

a store of cattle, "_richissimo d'armenti_"?

Then there is Rucellai, who, under the pontificate of Leo X., came to

be Governor of the Castle of Sant' Angelo, and yet has left a poem of

fifteen hundred lines devoted to Bees. In his suggestions for the

allaying of a civil war among these winged people, he is quite beyond

either Virgil or Columella or Mr. Lincoln. "Pluck some leafy branch," he

says, "and with it sprinkle the contending factions with either honey or

sweet grape-juice, and you shall see them instantly forego their

strife":--

"The two warring bands joyful unite,

And foe embraces foe: each with its lips

Licking the others' wings, feet, arms, and breast,

Whereon the luscious mixture hath been shed,

And all inebriate with delight."

So the Swiss,[6] he continues, when they fall out among themselves, are

appeased by some grave old gentleman, who says a few pleasant words, and

orders up a good stoop of sweet wine, in which all parties presently dip

their beards, and laugh and embrace and make peace, and so forget

outrage. It may have been the sixteenth-century way of closing a battle.

[Footnote 6:

"Come quando nei Suizzeri si muove

Sedizione, e che si grida a l' arme;

Se qualche nom grave allor si leva in piede

E comincia a parlar con dolce lingua,

Mitiga i petti barbari e feroci;

E intanto fa portare ondanti vasi

Pieni di dolci ed odorati vini;

Ahora ognun le labbra e 'l mento immerge

Ne' le spumanti tazze," etc.

]

Guarini, with all his affectations, has little prettinesses which charm

like the chirping of a bird;--as where he paints (in the very first

scene of the "Pastor Fido") the little sparrow flitting from fir to

beech, and from beech to myrtle, and twittering, "How I love! how I

love!" And the bird-mate ("_il suo dolce desio_") twitters in reply,

"How I love, how I love, too!" "_Ardo d' amore anch' io._"

Messer Pietro Bembo was a different man from Guarini. I cannot imagine

him listening to the sparrows; I cannot imagine him plucking a

flower,--except he have some courtly gallantry in hand, perhaps toward

the Borgia. He was one of those pompous, stiff, scholastic prigs who

wrote by rules of syntax; and of syntax he is dead. He was clever and

learned; he wrote in Latin, Italian, Castlian: but nobody reads him; he

has only a little crypt in the "Autori Diversi." I think of him as I

think of fine women who must always rustle in brocade embossed with hard

jewels, and who never win the triumphs that belong to a charming morning

_déshabillé_ with only the added improvisation of a rose.

In his "Asolani" Bembo gives a very full and minute description of the

gardens at Asolo, which relieved the royal retirement of Caterina, the

Queen of Cyprus. Nothing could be more admirable than the situation:

there were skirts of mountain which were covered, and are still covered,

with oaks; there were grottos in the sides of cliffs, and water so

disposed--in jets, in pools inclosed by marble, and among rocks--as to

counterfeit all the wildness of Nature; there was the same stately array

of cypresses, and of clipped hedges, which had belonged to the villas of

Pliny; temples were decorated with blazing frescoes, to which, I dare

say, Carpaccio may have lent a hand, if not that wild rake, Giorgione.

Here the pretty Queen, with eight thousand gold ducats a year, (whatever

that amount may have been,) and some seventy odd retainers, held her

court; and here Bembo, a dashing young fellow at that time of seven or

eight and twenty, became a party to those disquisitions on Love, and to

those recitations of song, part of which he has recorded in the

"Asolani." I am sorry to say, the beauty of the place, so far as regards

its artificial features, is now all gone. The hall, which may have

served as the presence-chamber of the Queen, was only a few years since

doing service as a farmer's barn; and the traces of a Diana and an

Apollo were still coloring the wall under which a few cows were

crunching their clover-hay.

All the gardening of Italy at that period, as, indeed, at almost all

times, depended very much upon architectural accessories: colonnades and

wall-veil with frescoes make a large part of Italian gardening to this

day. The Isola Bella in the Lago Maggiore, and the Borghese Garden at

Rome, are fair types. And as I recall the sunny vistas of this last, and

the noontide loungings upon the marble seats, counting white flecks of

statues amid the green of cypresses, and watching the shadow which some

dense-topped pine flings upon a marble flight of steps or a marble

balustrade, I cannot sneer at the Italian gardening, or wish it were

other than it is. The art-life of Italy is the crowning and the

overlapping life. The Campagna seems only a bit of foreground to carry

the leaping arches of the aqueducts, and to throw the hills of Tivoli

and Albano to a purple distance. The farmers (_fattori_) who gallop

across the fields, in rough sheepskin wrappers, and upon scurvy-looking

ponies, are more picturesque than thrifty; and if I gallop in company

with one of them to his home upon the farther edge of the Campagna,

(which is an allowable wet-day fancy,) I shall find a tall stone house

smeared over roughly with plaster, and its ground-floor devoted to a

crazy cart, a pony, a brace of cows, and a few goats; a rude court is

walled in adjoining the house, where a few pigs are grunting. Ascending

an oaken stair-way within the door, I come upon the living-room of the

_fattore_; the beams overhead are begrimed with smoke, and garnished

here and there with flitches of bacon; a scant fire of fagots is

struggling into blaze upon an open hearth; and on a low table bare of

either cloth or cleanliness, there waits him his supper of _polenta_,

which is nothing more or less than our plain boiled Indian-pudding. Add

to this a red-eyed dog, that seems to be a savage representative of a

Scotch colley,--a lean, wrinkled, dark-faced woman, who is unwinding the

bandages from a squalling _Bambino_,--a mixed odor of garlic and of

goats, that is quickened with an ammoniacal pungency,--and you may form

some idea of the home of a small Roman farmer in our day. It falls away

from the standard of Cato; and so does the man.

He takes his twenty or thirty acres, upon shares, from some wealthy

proprietor of Rome, whose estate may possibly cover a square mile or two

of territory. He sells vegetables, poultry, a little grain, a few curds,

and possibly a butt or two of sour wine. He is a type of a great many

who lived within the limits of the old Papal territory; whether he and

they have dropped their musty sheepskins and shaken off their unthrift

under the new government, I cannot say.

Around Bologna, indeed, there was a better race of farmers: the

intervening thrift of Tuscany had always its influence. The meadows of

Terni, too, which are watered by the Velino, bear three full crops of

grass in the season; the valley of the Clitumnus is like a miniature of

the Genesee; and around Perugia the crimson-tasselled clovers, in the

season of their bloom, give to the fields the beauty of a garden.

The old Duke of Tuscany, before he became soured by his political

mishaps, was a great patron of agricultural improvements. He had

princely farms in the neighborhood both of his capital and of Pisa. Of

the latter I cannot speak from personal observation; but the dairy-farm,

_Cascina_, near to Florence, can hardly have been much inferior to the

Cajano property of the great Lorenzo. The stables were admirably

arranged, and of permanent character; the neatness was equal to that of

the dairies of Holland. The Swiss cows, of a pretty dun-color, were kept

stalled, and luxuriously fed upon freshly cut ray-grass, clover, or

vetches, with an occasional sprinkling of meal; the calves were

invariably reared by hand; and the average _per diem_ of milk,

throughout the season, was stated at fourteen quarts; and I think

Madonna Clarice never strained more than this into the cheese-tubs of

Ambra. I trust the burghers of Florence, and the new _Gonfaloniere_,

whoever he may be, will not forget the dun cows of the Cascina, or their

baitings with the tender vetches.

The redemption of the waste marshlands in the Val di Chiana by the

engineering skill of Fossombroni, and the consequent restoration of many

thousands of acres which seemed hopelessly lost to fertility, is a

result of which the Medici would hardly have dreamed, and which would do

credit to any age or country.

About the better-cultivated portions of Lombardy there is an almost

regal look. The roads are straight, and of most admirable construction.

Lines of trees lift their stateliness on either side, and carry trailing

festoons of vines. On both sides streams of water are flowing in

artificial canals, interrupted here and there by cross sluices and

gates, by means of which any or all of the fields can be laid under

water at pleasure, so that old meadows return three and four cuttings of

grass in the year. There are patches of Indian-corn which are equal to

any that can be seen on the Miami; hemp and flax appear at intervals,

and upon the lower lands rice. The barns are huge in size, and are

raised from the ground upon columns of masonry.

I have a dapper little note-book of travel, from which these facts are

mainly taken; and at the head of one of its pages I observe an old

ink-sketch of a few trees, with festoons of vines between. It is

yellowed now, and poor always; for I am but a dabbler at such things.

Yet it brings back, clearly and briskly, the broad stretch of Lombard

meadows, the smooth Macadam, the gleaming canals of water, the white

finials of Milan Cathedral shining somewhere in the distance, the

thrushes, as in the "Pastor Fido," filling all the morning air with

their sweet

"Ardo d' amore! ardo d' amore!"

the dewy clover-lots, looking like wavy silken plush, the green glitter

of mulberry-leaves, and the beggar in steeple-crowned hat, who says,

"_Grazia_," and "_Á rivedervi!_" as I drop him a few kreutzers, and

rattle away to the North, and out of Italy.

* * * * *

About the year 1570, a certain Conrad Heresbach, who was Councillor to

the Duke of Cleves, (brother to that unfortunate Anne of Cleves who was

one of the wife-victims of Henry VIII.,) wrote four Latin books on

rustic affairs, which were translated by Barnaby Googe, a Lincolnshire

farmer and poet, who was in his day gentleman-pensioner to Queen

Elizabeth. Our friend Barnaby introduces his translation in this

style:--"I haue thought it meet (good Reader) for thy further profit &

pleasure, to put into English these foure Bookes of Husbandry, collected

& set forth by Master Conrade Heresbatch, a great & a learned Counceller

of the Duke of Cleues: not thinking it reason, though I haue altered &

increased his worke, _with mine owne readings & obseruations_, joined

with the experience of sundry my friends, to take from him (as diuers in

the like case haue done) the honour & glory of his owne trauaile:

Neither is it my minde, that this either his doings or mine, should

deface, or any waves darken the good enterprise, or painfull trauailes

of such our countrymen, of England, as haue plentifully written of this

matter: but always haue, & do giue them the reuerence & honour due to so

vertuous, & well disposed Gentlemen, namely, _Master Fitz herbert_, &

_Master Tusser_: whose workes may, in my fancie, without any

presumption, compare with any, either _Varro_, _Columella_, or

_Palladius_ of _Rome_."

The work is written in the form of a dialogue, the parties being Cono, a

country-gentleman, Metella, his wife, Rigo, a courtier, and Hermes, a

servant. The first book relates to tillage, and farm-practice in

general; the second, to orcharding, gardens, and woods; the third, to

cattle; and the fourth, to fowl, fish, and bees. He had evidently been

an attentive reader of the older authors I have discussed, and his

citations from them are abundant. He had also opportunity for every-day

observation in a region which, besides being one of the most fertile,

was probably at that time the most highly cultivated in Europe; and his

work may be regarded as the most important contribution to agricultural

literature since the days of Crescenzi. He reaffirms, indeed, many of

the old fables of the Latinists,--respects the force of proper

incantations, has abiding faith in "the moon being aloft" in time of

sowing, and insists that the medlar can be grafted on the pine, and the

cherry upon the fir. Rue, he tells us, "will prosper the better for

being stolen"; and "If you breake to powder the horne of a Ram & sowe it

watrying it well, it is thought it will come to be good Sperage"

(Asparagus). He assures us that he has grafted the pear successfully

when in full bloom; and furthermore, that he has seen apples which have

been kept sound for three years.

Upon the last page are some rules for purchasing land, which I suspect

are to be attributed to the poet of Lincolnshire, rather than to

Heresbach. They are as good as they were then; and the poetry none the

worse:--

"First see that the land be clear

In title of the seller;

And that it stand in danger

Of no woman's dowrie;

See whether the tenure be bond or free,

And release of every fee of fee;

See that the seller be of age,

And that it lie not in mortgage;

Whether ataile be thereof found,

And whether it stand in statute bound;

Consider what service longeth thereto,

And what quit rent thereout must goe;

And if it become of a wedded woman,

Think thou then on covert baron;

And if thou may in any wise,

Make thy charter in warrantise,

To thee, thine heyres, assignes also;

Thus should a wise purchaser doe."

The learned Lipsius was a contemporary of Councillor Heresbach, and

although his orthodoxy was somewhat questionable, and his Calvinism

somewhat stretchy, there can be no doubt of the honest rural love which

belongs to some of his letters, and especially to this smack of verse (I

dare not say poetry) with which he closes his _Eighth (Cent. I.)_

"Vitam si liceat mihi

Formare arbitriis meis:

Non fasces cupiam aut opes,

Non clarus niveis equis

Captiva agmina traxerim.

In solis habitem locis,

Hortos possideam atque agros,

Illic ad strepitus aquæ

Musarum studiis fruar.

Sic cum fata mihi ultima

Pernerit Lachesis mea;

Tranquillus moriar senex."

And with this I will have done with a dead language; for I am come to a

period now when I can garnish my talk with the flowers of good old

English gardens. At the very thought of them, I seem to hear the royal

captive James pouring madrigals through the window of his Windsor

prison,--

"the hymnis consecrat

Of lovis use, now soft, now loud among,

That all the gardens and the wallis rung."

And through the "Dreme" of Chaucer I seem to see the great plain of

Woodstock stretching away under my view, all white and green, "green

y-powdered with daisy." Upon the half-ploughed land, lying yonder veiled

so tenderly with the mist and the rain, I could take oath to the very

spot where five hundred years ago the plowman of Chaucer, all "forswat,"

"plucked up his plowe

Whan midsomer mone was comen in

And shoke off shear, and coulter off drowe,

And honged his harnis on a pinne,

And said his beasts should ete enowe

And lie in grasse up to the chin."

But Chaucer was no farmer, or he would have known it to be bad husbandry

(even for poetry) to allow cattle steaming from the plough to lie down

in grass of that height.

* * * * *

Sir Anthony Fitz-herbert is the first duly accredited writer on British

husbandry. There are some few earlier ones, it is true,--a certain

"Mayster Groshede, Bysshop of Lyncoln," and a Henri Calcoensis, among

them. Indeed, Mr. Donaldson, who has compiled a bibliography of British

farm-writers, and who once threatened a poem on kindred subjects, has

the effrontery to include Lord Littleton. Now I have a respect for Lord

Littleton, and for Coke on Littleton, but it is tempered with some early

experiences in a lawyer's office, and some later experiences of the

legal profession; he may have written well upon "Tenures," but he had

not enough of tenderness even for a teasel.

I think it worthy of remark, in view of the mixed complexion which I

have given to these wet-day studies, that the oldest printed copy of

that sweet ballad of the "Nut Browne Mayde" has come to us in a

Chronicle of 1503, which contains also a chapter upon "the crafte of

graffynge & plantynge & alterynge of fruyts." What could be happier than

the conjunction of the knight of "the grenwode tree" with a good chapter

on "graffynge"?

Fitz-herbert's work is entitled a "Boke of Husbandrie," and counts,

among other headings of discourse, the following:--

"Whether is better a plough of horses or a plough of oxen."

"To cary out dounge & mucke, & to spreade it."

"The fyrste furryng of the falowes."

"To make a ewe to love hir lambe."

"To bye lean cattel."

"A shorte information for a young gentyleman that entendeth to thryve."

"What the wyfe oughte to dooe generally."

(_seq._) "To kepe measure in spendynge."

"What be God's commandments."

By all which it may be seen that Sir Anthony took as broad a view of

husbandry as did Xenophon.

Among other advices to the "young gentyleman that entendeth to thryve"

he counsels him to rise betime in the morning, and if "he fynde any

horses, mares, swyne, shepe, beastes in his pastures that be not his

own; or fynde a gap in his hedge, or any water standynge in his pasture

uppon his grasse, whereby he may take double herte, bothe losse of his

grasse, & rotting of his shepe, & calves; or if he fyndeth or seeth

anything that is amisse, & wold be amended, let him take out his tables

& wryte the defautes; & when he commeth home to dinner, supper, or at

nyght, then let him call his bayley, & soo shewe him the defautes. For

this," says he, "used I to doo x or xi yeres or more; & yf he cannot

wryte, lette him nycke the defautes uppon a stycke."

Sir Anthony is gracious to the wife, but he is not tender; and it may be

encouraging to country-housewives nowadays to see what service was

expected of their mothers in the days of Henry VIII.

"It is a wives occupacion to winow al maner of cornes, to make malte,

wash & wring, to make hey, to shere corne, & in time of neede to helpe

her husbande to fyll the mucke wayne or donge carte, dryve the plough,

to lode hay corne & such other. Also to go or ride to the market to sell

butter, chese, mylke, egges, chekens, kapons, hennes, pygges, gees & al

maner of corne. And also to bye al maner of necessary thinges belonging

to a household, & to make a true rekening & accompt to her husband what

she hath receyved & what she hathe payed. And yf the husband go to

market to bye or sell as they ofte do, he then to shew his wife in lyke

maner. For if one of them should use to disceive the other, he

disceyveth himselfe, & he is not lyke to thryve, & therfore they must be

true ether to other."

* * * * *

I come next to Master Tusser,--poet, farmer, chorister, vagabond,

happily dead at last, and with a tomb whereon some wag wrote this:--

"Tusser, they tell me, when thou wert alive,

Thou teaching thrift, thyself could never thrive;

So, like the whetstone, many men are wont

To sharpen others when themselves are blunt."

I cannot help considering poor Tusser's example one of warning to all

poetically inclined farmers.

He was born at a little village in the County of Essex. Having a good

voice, he came early in life to be installed as singer at Wallingford

College; and showing here a great proficiency, he was shortly after

impressed for the choir of St. Paul's Cathedral. Afterward he was for

some time at Eton, where he had the ill-luck to receive some fifty-four

stripes for his shortcomings in Latin; thence he goes to Trinity

College, Cambridge, where he lives "in clover." It appears that he had

some connections at Court, through whose influence he was induced to go

up to London, where he remained some ten years,--possibly as

singer,--but finally left in great disgust at the vices of the town, and

commenced as farmer in Suffolk,--

"To moil and to toil

With loss and pain, to little gain,

To cram Sir Knave";--

from which I fancy that he had a hard landlord, and but little sturdy

resolution. Thence he goes to Ipswich, or its neighborhood, with no

better experience. Afterward we hear of him with a second wife at

Dereham Abbey; but his wife is young and sharp-tempered, and his

landlord a screw: so he does not thrive here, but goes to Norwich and

commences chorister again; but presently takes another farm in

Fairstead, Essex, where it would seem he eked out a support by

collecting tithes for the parson. But he says,--

"I spyed, if parson died,

(All hope in vain,) to hope for gain

I might go dance."

Possibly he did go dance: he certainly left the tithe-business, and

after settling in one more home, from which he ran to escape the plague,

we find him returned to London, to die,--where he was buried in the

Poultry.

There are good points in his poem, showing close observation, good

sense, and excellent judgment. His rules of farm-practice are entirely

safe and judicious, and make one wonder how the man who could give such

capital advice could make so capital a failure. In the secret lies all

the philosophy of the difference between knowledge and practice. The

instance is not without its modern support: I have the honor of

acquaintance with several gentlemen who lay down charming rules for

successful husbandry, every time they pay the country a visit; and yet

even their poultry-account is always largely against the constipated

hens.

What is specially remarkable about Tusser is his air of entire

resignation amid all manner of vicissitudes: he does not seem to count

his hardships either wonderful or intolerable or unmerited. He tells us

of the thrashing he had at Eton, (fifty-four licks,) without greatly

impugning the head-master; and his shiftlessness in life makes us

strongly suspect that he deserved it all.

Fuller, in his "Worthies," says Tusser "spread his bread with all sorts

of butter, yet none would stick thereon." In short, though the poet

wrote well on farm-practice, he certainly was not a good exemplar of

farm-successes. With all his excellent notions about sowing and reaping,

and rising with the lark, I should look for a little more of stirring

mettle and of dogged resolution in a man to be recommended as a tenant.

I cannot help thinking less of him as a farmer than as a kind-hearted

poet; too soft of the edge to cut very deeply into hard-pan, and too

porous and flimsy of character for any compacted resolve: yet taking

life tenderly, withal; good to those poorer than himself; making a

rattling appeal for Christmas charities; hospitable, cheerful, and

looking always to the end with an honest clearness of vision:--

"To death we must stoop, be we high, be we low,

But how, and how suddenly, few be that know,

What carry we, then, but a sheet to the grave,

(To cover this carcass,) of all that we have?"

* * * * *

I now come to Sir Hugh Platt, called by Mr. Weston, in his catalogue of

English authors, "the most ingenious husbandman of his age."[7] He is

elsewhere described as a gentleman of Lincoln's Inn, who had two

estates in the country, besides a garden in St. Martin's Lane. He was an

enthusiast in agricultural, as well as horticultural inquiries,

corresponding largely with leading farmers, and conducting careful

experiments within his own grounds. In speaking of that "rare and

peerless plant, the grape," he insists upon the wholesomeness of the

wines he made from his Bednall-Greene garden: "And if," he says, "any

exception shold be taken against the race and delicacie of them, I am

content to submit them to the censure of the best mouthes, that professe

any true skill in the judgment of high country wines: although for their

better credit herein, I could bring in the French Ambassador, who (now

almost two yeeres since, comming to my house of purpose to tast these

wines) gaue this sentence upon them: that he neuer drank any better new

wine in France."

[Footnote 7: Latter part of sixteenth century; and was living, according

to Johnson, as late as 1606.]

I must confess to more doubt of the goodness of the wine than of the

speech of the ambassador; French ambassadors are always so complaisant!

Again he indulges us in the story of a pretty conceit whereby that

"delicate Knight," Sir Francis Carew, proposed to astonish the Queen by

a sight of a cherry-tree in full bearing, a month after the fruit had

gone by in England. "This secret he performed, by straining a Tent or

couer of canuass ouer the whole tree, and wetting the same now and then

with a scoope or horne, as the heat of the weather required: and so, by

witholding the sunne beams from reflecting upon the berries, they grew

both great, and were very long before they had gotten their perfect

cherrie-colour: and when he was assured of her Majestie's comming, he

remoued the Tent, and a few sunny daies brought them to their full

maturities."

These notices are to be found in his "Flores Paradise." Another work,

entitled "Dyuers Soyles for manuring pasture & arable land," enumerates,

in addition to the usual odorous galaxy, such extraordinarily new

matters (in that day) as "salt, street-dirt, clay, Fullers earth,

moorish earth, fern, hair, calcination of all vegetables, malt dust,

soap-boilers ashes, and marle." But what I think particularly commends

him to notice, and makes him worthy to be enrolled among the pioneers,

is his little tract upon "The Setting of Corne."[8]

[Footnote 8: This is not mentioned either by Felton in his _Portraits_,

etc., or by Johnson in his _History of Gardening_. Donaldson gives the

title, and the headings of the chapters.]

In this he anticipates the system of "dibbling" grain, which,

notwithstanding, is spoken of by writers within half a century[9] as a

new thing; and which, it is needless to say, still prevails extensively

in many parts of England. If the tract alluded to be indeed the work of

Sir Hugh Platt, it antedates very many of the suggestions and

improvements which are usually accorded to Tull. The latter, indeed,

proposed the drill, and repeated tillage; but certain advantages, before

unconsidered, such as increased tillering of individual plants, economy

of seed, and facility of culture, are common to both systems. Sir Hugh,

in consecutive chapters, shows how the discovery came about; "why the

corne shootes into so many eares"; how the ground is to be dug for the

new practice; and what are the several instruments for making the holes

and covering the grain.

[Footnote 9: See Young, _Annals of Agriculture_, Vol. III. p. 219, _et

seq._]

I cannot take a more courteous leave of this worthy gentleman than by

giving his own _envoi_ to the most considerable of his books:--"Thus,

gentle Reader, having acquainted thee with my long, costly, and

laborious collections, not written at Adventure, or by an imaginary

conceit in a Scholler's private studie, but wrung out of the earth, by

the painfull hand of experience: and having also given thee a touch of

Nature, whom no man as yet ever durst send naked into the worlde without

her veyle: and Expecting, by thy good entertainement of these, some

encouragement for higher and deeper discoveries hereafter, I leave thee

to the God of Nature, from whom all the true light of Nature

proceedeth."

* * * * *

Gervase Markham must have been a roistering gallant about the time that

Sir Hugh was conducting his experiments on "Soyles"; for, in 1591, he

had the honor to be dangerously wounded in a duel which he fought in

behalf of the Countess of Shrewsbury; there are also some painful rumors

current (in old books) in regard to his habits in early life, which

weaken somewhat our trust in him as a quiet country counsellor. I

suspect, that, up to mature life, at any rate, he knew much more about

the sparring of a game-cock than the making of capons. Yet he wrote

books upon the proper care of beasts and fowls, as well as upon almost

every subject connected with husbandry. And that these were good books,

or at least in large demand, we have in evidence the memorandum of a

promise which some griping bookseller extorted from him, under date of

July, 1617:--

"I, Gervase Markham, of London, Gent, do promise hereafter never to

write any more book or books to be printed of the diseases or cures of

any cattle, as horse, oxe, cowe, sheepe, swine and goates, &c. In

witness whereof, I have hereunto sett my hand, the 24th day of Julie.

"GERVIS MARKHAM."

He seems to have been a man of some literary accomplishments, and one

who knew how to turn them to account. He translated the "Maison

Rustique" of Liebault, and had some hand in the concoction of one or two

poems which kindled the ire of the Puritan clergy. There is no doubt but

he was an adroit bookmaker; and the value of his labors, in respect to

practical husbandry, was due chiefly to his art of arranging,

compacting, and illustrating the maxims and practices already received.

His observations upon diseases of cattle and upon horsemanship were

doubtless based on experimental knowledge; for he was a rare and ardent

sportsman, and possessed all a sportsman's keenness in the detection of

infirmities.

I suspect, moreover, that there were substantial grounds for that

acquaintance with gastronomy shown in the "Country Housewife." In this

book, after discoursing upon cookery and great feasts, he gives the

details of a "humble feast of a proportion which any good man may keep

in his family."

"As thus:--first, a shield of brawn with mustard; secondly, a boyl'd

capon; thirdly, a boyl'd piece of beef; fourthly, a chine of beef

rosted; fifthly, a neat's tongue rosted; sixthly, a pig rosted;

seventhly chewits baked; eighthly, a goose rosted; ninthly, a swan

rosted; tenthly, a turkey rosted; eleventh, a haunch of venison rosted;

twelfth, a pasty of venison; thirteenth, a kid with a pudding in the

belly; fourteenth, an olive pye; the fifteenth, a couple of capons; the

sixteenth, a custard or dowsets."

This is what Master Gervase calls a frugal dinner, for the entertainment

of a worthy friend; is it any wonder that he wrote about "Country

Contentments"?

* * * * *

My chapter is nearly full; and a burst of sunshine is flaming over all

the land under my eye; and yet I am but just entered upon the period of

English literary history which is most rich in rural illustration. The

mere backs of the books relating thereto, as my glance ranges over them,

where they stand in tidy platoon, start a delightfully confused picture

to my mind.

I think it possible that Sir Hugh Platt may some day entertain at his

Bednall-Greene garden the worshipful Francis Bacon, who is living down

at Twickenham, and who is a thriving lawyer, and has written essays,

which Sir Hugh must know,--in which he discourses shrewdly upon gardens,

as well as many kindred matters; and through his wide correspondence,

Sir Hugh must probably have heard of certain new herbs which have been

brought home from Virginia and the Roanoke, and very possibly he is

making trial of a tobacco-plant in his garden, to be submitted some day

to his friend, the French Ambassador.

I can fancy Gervase Markham "making a night of it" with those rollicking

bachelors, Beaumont and Fletcher, at the "Mermaid," or going with them

to the Globe Theatre to see two Warwickshire brothers, Edmund and Will

Shakspeare, who are on the boards there,--the latter taking the part of

Old Knowell, in Ben Jonson's play of "Every Man in his Humour." His

friends say that this Will has parts.

Then there is the fiery and dashing Sir Philip Sidney, who threatened to

thrust a dagger into the heart of poor Molyneux, his father's steward,

for opening private letters (which poor Molyneux never did); and Sir

Philip knows all about poetry and the ancients; and in virtue of his

knowledges, he writes a terribly magniloquent and tedious "Arcadia,"

which, when he comes to die gallantly in battle, is admired and read

everywhere: nowadays it rests mostly on the shelf. But the memory of his

generous and noble spirit is far livelier than his book. It was through

him, and his friendship, probably, that the poet Spenser was gifted by

the Queen with a fine farm of three thousand acres among the Bally-Howra

hills of Ireland.

And it was here that Sir Walter Raleigh, that "shepherd of the sea,"

visited the poet, and found him seated

"amongst the coolly shade

Of the green alders, by the Mulla's shore."

Did the gallant privateer possibly talk with the farmer about the

introduction of that new esculent, the potato? Did they talk tobacco?

Did Colin Clout have any observations to make upon the rot in sheep, or

upon the probable "clip" of the year?

Nothing of this; but

"He pip'd, I sung; and when he sung, I pip'd:

By chaunge of tunes each making other merry."

The lines would make a fair argument of the poet's bucolic life. I have

a strong faith that his farming was of the higgledy-piggledy order; I do

not believe that he could have set a plough into the sod, or have made a

good "cast" of barley. It is certain, that, when the Tyrone rebels

burned him out of Kilcolman Castle, he took no treasure with him but his

Elizabeth and the two babes; and the only treasures he left were the

ashes of the dear child whose face shone on him there for the last

time,--

"bright with many a curl

That clustered round her head."

I wish I could love his "Shepherd's Calendar"; but I cannot. Abounding

art of language, exquisite fancies, delicacies innumerable there may be;

but there is no exhilarating air from the mountains, no crisp breezes,

no songs that make the welkin ring, no river that champs the bit, no

sky-piercing falcon.

And as for the "Faëry Queene," if I must confess it, I can never read

far without a sense of suffocation from the affluence of its beauties.

It is a marvellously fair sea and broad,--with tender winds blowing over

it, and all the ripples are iris-hued; but you long for some brave blast

that shall scoop great hollows in it, and shake out the briny beads from

its lifted waters, and drive wild scuds of spray among the screaming

curlew.

In short, I can never read far in Spenser without taking a rest--as we

farmers lean upon our spades, when the digging is in unctuous fat soil

that lifts heavily.

And so I leave the matter,--with the "Faëry Queene" in my thought, and

leaning on my spade.

* * * * *

CIVIC BANQUETS.

It has often perplexed me to imagine how an Englishman will be able to

reconcile himself to any future state of existence from which the

earthly institution of dinner shall be excluded. Even if he fail to take

his appetite along with him, (which it seems to me hardly possible to

believe, since this endowment is so essential to his composition,) the

immortal day must still admit an interim of two or three hours during

which he will be conscious of a slight distaste, at all events, if not

an absolute repugnance, to merely spiritual nutriment. The idea of

dinner has so imbedded itself among his highest and deepest

characteristics, so illuminated itself with intellect and softened

itself with the kindest emotions of his heart, so linked itself with

Church and State, and grown so majestic with long hereditary customs and

ceremonies, that, by taking it utterly away, Death, instead of putting

the final touch to his perfection, would leave him infinitely less

complete than we have already known him. He could not be roundly happy.

Paradise, among all its enjoyments, would lack one daily felicity which

his sombre little island possessed. Perhaps it is not irreverent to

conjecture that a provision may have been made, in this particular, for

the Englishman's exceptional necessities. It strikes me that Milton was

of the opinion here suggested, and may have intended to throw out a

delightful and consolatory hope for his countrymen, when he represents

the genial archangel as playing his part with such excellent appetite at

Adam's dinner-table, and confining himself to fruit and vegetables only

because, in those early days of her housekeeping, Eve had no more

acceptable viands to set before him. Milton, indeed, had a true English

taste for the pleasures of the table, though refined by the lofty and

poetic discipline to which he had subjected himself. It is delicately

implied in the refection in Paradise, and more substantially, though

still elegantly, betrayed in the sonnet proposing to "Laurence, of

virtuous father virtuous son," a series of nice little dinners in

midwinter; and it blazes fully out in that untasted banquet which,

elaborate as it was, Satan tossed up in a trice from the kitchen-ranges

of Tartarus.

Among this people, indeed, so wise in their generation, dinner has a

kind of sanctity quite independent of the dishes that may be set upon

the table; so that, if it be only a mutton-chop, they treat it with due

reverence, and are rewarded with a degree of enjoyment which such

reckless devourers as ourselves do not often find in our richest

abundance. It is good to see how stanch they are after fifty or sixty

years of heroic eating, still relying upon their digestive powers and

indulging a vigorous appetite; whereas an American has generally lost

the one and learned to distrust the other long before reaching the

earliest decline of life; and thenceforward he makes little account of

his dinner, and dines at his peril, if at all. I know not whether my

countrymen will allow me to tell them, though I think it scarcely too

much to affirm, that, on this side of the water, people never dine. At

any rate, abundantly as Nature has provided us with most of the material

requisites, the highest possible dinner has never yet been eaten in

America. It is the consummate flower of civilization and refinement; and

our inability to produce it, or to appreciate its admirable beauty, if a

happy inspiration should bring it into bloom, marks fatally the limit of

culture which we have attained.

It is not to be supposed, however, that the mob of cultivated Englishmen

know how to dine in this elevated sense. The unpolishable ruggedness of

the national character is still an impediment to them, even in that

particular line where they are best qualified to excel. Though often

present at good men's feasts, I remember only a single dinner, which,

while lamentably conscious that many of its higher excellences were

thrown away upon me, I yet could feel to be a perfect work of art. It

could not, without unpardonable coarseness, be styled a matter of animal

enjoyment, because out of the very perfection of that lower bliss there

had arisen a dream-like development of spiritual happiness. As in the

master-pieces of painting and poetry, there was a something intangible,

a final deliciousness that only fluttered about your comprehension,

vanishing whenever you tried to detain it, and compelling you to

recognize it by faith rather than sense. It seemed as if a diviner set

of senses were requisite, and had been partly supplied, for the special

fruition of this banquet, and that the guests around the table (only

eight in number) were becoming so educated, polished, and softened, by

the delicate influences of what they ate and drank, as to be now a

little more than mortal for the nonce. And there was that gentle,

delicious sadness, too, which we find in the very summit of our most

exquisite enjoyments, and feel it a charm beyond all the gayety through

which it keeps breathing its undertone. In the present case, it was

worth a heavier sigh, to reflect that such a festal achievement,--the

production of so much art, skill, fancy, invention, and perfect

taste,--the growth of all the ages, which appeared to have been ripening

for this hour, since man first began to eat and to moisten his food with

wine,--must lavish its happiness upon so brief a moment, when other

beautiful things can be made a joy forever. Yet a dinner like this is no

better than we can get, any day, at the rejuvenescent Cornhill

Coffee-House, unless the whole man, with soul, intellect, and stomach,

is ready to appreciate it, and unless, moreover, there is such a harmony

in all the circumstances and accompaniments, and especially such a pitch

of well-according minds, that nothing shall jar rudely against the

guest's thoroughly awakened sensibilities. The world, and especially our

part of it, being the rough, ill-assorted and tumultuous place we find

it, a beefsteak is about as good as any other dinner.

The foregoing reminiscence, however, has drawn me aside from the main

object of my sketch, in which I purposed to give a slight idea of those

public or partially public banquets, the custom of which so thoroughly

prevails among the English people, that nothing is ever decided upon, in

matters of peace or war, until they have chewed upon it in the shape of

roast-beef, and talked it fully over in their cups. Nor are these

festivities merely occasional, but of stated recurrence in all

considerable municipalities and associated bodies. The most ancient

times appear to have been as familiar with them as the Englishmen of

to-day. In many of the old English towns, you find some stately Gothic

hall or chamber in which the Mayor and other authorities of the place

have long held their sessions; and always, in convenient contiguity,

there is a dusky kitchen, with an immense fireplace, where an ox might

lie roasting at his ease, though the less gigantic scale of modern

cookery may now have permitted the cobwebs to gather in its chimney. St.

Mary's Hall, in Coventry, is so good a specimen of an ancient

banqueting-room that perhaps I may profitably devote a page or two to

the description of it.

In a narrow street, opposite to St. Michael's Church, one of the three

famous spires of Coventry, you behold a mediæval edifice, in the

basement of which is such a venerable and now deserted kitchen as I have

above alluded to, and, on the same level, a cellar, with low stone

pillars and intersecting arches, like the crypt of a cathedral. Passing

up a well-worn staircase, the oaken balustrade of which is as black as

ebony, you enter the fine old hall, some sixty feet in length, and broad

and lofty in proportion. It is lighted by six windows of modern stained

glass, on one side, and by the immense and magnificent arch of another

window at the farther end of the room, its rich and ancient panes

constituting a genuine historical piece, in which are represented some

of the kingly personages of old times, with their heraldic blazonries.

Notwithstanding the colored light thus thrown into the hall, and though

it was noonday when I last saw it, the panelling of black oak, and some

faded tapestry that hung round the walls, together with the cloudy vault

of the roof above, made a gloom which the richness only illuminated into

more appreciable effect. The tapestry is wrought with figures in the

dress of Henry VI.'s time, (which is the date of the hall,) and is

regarded by antiquaries as authentic evidence both for the costume of

that epoch, and, I believe, for the actual portraiture of men known in

history. They are as colorless as ghosts, however, and vanish drearily

into the old stitch-work of their substance, when you try to make them

out. Coats-of-arms were formerly emblazoned all round the hall, but have

been almost rubbed out by people hanging their overcoats against them,

or by women with dish-clouts and scrubbing-brushes, obliterating

hereditary glories in their blind hostility to dust and spiders' webs.

Full-length portraits of several English kings, Charles II. being the

earliest, hang on the walls; and on the daïs, or elevated part of the

floor, stands an antique chair of state, which more than one royal

character is traditionally said to have occupied while feasting here

with their loyal subjects of Coventry. It is roomy enough for a person

of kingly bulk, or even two such, but angular and uncomfortable,

reminding me of the oaken settles which used to be seen in old-fashioned

New-England kitchens.

Overhead, supported by a self-sustaining power, without the aid of a

single pillar, is the original ceiling of oak, precisely similar in

shape to the roof of a barn, with all the beams and rafters plainly to

be seen. At the remote height of sixty feet, you hardly discern that

they are carved with figures of angels, and doubtless many other

devices, of which the admirable Gothic art is wasted in the duskiness

that has so long been brooding there. Over the entrance of the hall,

opposite the great arched window, the party-colored radiance of which

glimmers faintly through the interval, is a gallery for minstrels; and a

row of ancient suits of armor is suspended from its balustrade. It

impresses me, too, (for, having gone so far, I would fain leave nothing

untouched upon,) that I remember, somewhere about these venerable

precincts, a picture of the Countess Godiva on horseback, in which the

artist has been so niggardly of that illustrious lady's hair, that, if

she had no ampler garniture, there was certainly much need for the good

people of Coventry to shut their eyes. After all my pains, I fear that I

have made but a poor hand at the description, as regards a transference

of the scene from my own mind to the reader's. It gave me a most vivid

idea of antiquity that had been very little tampered with; insomuch

that, if a group of steel-clad knights had come clanking through the

door-way, and a bearded and beruffed old figure had handed in a stately

dame, rustling in gorgeous robes of a long-forgotten fashion, unveiling

a face of beauty somewhat tarnished in the mouldy tomb, yet stepping

majestically to the trill of harp and viol from the minstrels' gallery,

while the rusty armor responded with a hollow ringing sound

beneath,--why, I should have felt that these shadows, once so familiar

with the spot, had a better right in St. Mary's Hall than I, a stranger

from a far country which has no Past. But the moral of the foregoing

pages is to show how tenaciously this love of pompous dinners, this

reverence for dinner as a sacred institution, has caught hold of the

English character; since, from, the earliest recognizable period, we

find them building their civic banqueting-halls as magnificently as

their palaces or cathedrals.

I know not whether the hall just described is still used for festive

purposes, but others of similar antiquity and splendor are so. For

example, there is Barber-Surgeons' Hall, in London, a very fine old

room, adorned with admirably carved wood-work on the ceiling and walls.

It is also enriched with Holbein's master-piece, representing a grave

assemblage of barbers and surgeons, all portraits, (with such extensive

beards that methinks one-half of the company might have been profitably

occupied in trimming the other,) kneeling before King Henry VIII. Sir

Robert Peel is said to have offered a thousand pounds for the liberty of

cutting out one of the heads from this picture, he conditioning to have

a perfect fac-simile painted in. The room has many other pictures of

distinguished members of the company in long-past times, and of some of

the monarchs and statesmen of England, all darkened with age, but

darkened into such ripe magnificence as only age could bestow. It is not

my design to inflict any more specimens of ancient hall-painting on the

reader; but it may be worth while to touch upon other modes of

stateliness that still survive in these time-honored civic feasts, where

there appears to be a singular assumption of dignity and solemn pomp by

respectable citizens, who would never dream of claiming any privilege of

rank outside of their own sphere. Thus, I saw two caps of state for the

warden and junior warden of the company, caps of silver (real coronets

or crowns, indeed, for these city-grandees) wrought in open-work and

lined with crimson velvet. In a strong-closet, opening from the hall,

there was a great deal of rich plate to furnish forth the banquet-table,

comprising hundreds of forks and spoons, a vast silver punch-bowl, the

gift of some jolly king or other, and, besides a multitude of less

noticeable vessels, two Loving-Cups, very elaborately wrought in silver

gilt, one presented by Henry VIII., the other by Charles II. These cups,

including the covers and pedestals, are very large and weighty, although

the bowl-part would hardly contain more than half a pint of wine, which,

when the custom was first established, each guest was probably expected

to drink off at a draught. In passing them from hand to hand adown a

long table of compotators, there is a peculiar ceremony which I may

hereafter have occasion to describe. Meanwhile, if I might assume such a

liberty, I should be glad to invite the reader to the official

dinner-table of his Worship, the Mayor, at a large English seaport where

I spent several years.

The Mayor's dinner-parties occur as often as once a fortnight, and,

inviting his guests by fifty or sixty at a time, his Worship probably

assembles at his board most of the eminent citizens and distinguished

personages of the town and neighborhood more than once during his year's

incumbency, and very much, no doubt, to the promotion of good feeling

among individuals of opposite parties and diverse pursuits in life. A

miscellaneous party of Englishmen can always find more comfortable

ground to meet upon than as many Americans, their differences of opinion

being incomparably less radical than ours, and it being the sincerest

wish of all their hearts, whether they call themselves Liberals or what

not, that nothing in this world shall ever be greatly altered from what

it has been and is. Thus there is seldom such a virulence of political

hostility that it may not be dissolved in a glass or two of wine,

without making the good liquor any more dry or bitter than accords with

English taste.

The first dinner of this kind at which I had the honor to be present

took place during assize time, and included among the guests the judges

and the prominent members of the bar. Reaching the Town-Hall at seven

o'clock, I communicated my name to one of several splendidly dressed

footmen, and he repeated it to another on the first staircase, by whom

it was passed to a third, and thence to a fourth at the door of the

reception-room, losing all resemblance to the original sound in the

course of these transmissions; so that I had the advantage of making my

entrance in the character of a stranger, not only to the whole company,

but to myself as well. His Worship, however, kindly recognized me, and

put me on speaking-terms with two or three gentlemen, whom I found very

affable, and all the more hospitably attentive on the score of my

nationality. It is very singular how kind an Englishman will almost

invariably be to an individual American, without ever bating a jot of

his prejudice against the American character in the lump. My new

acquaintances took evident pains to put me at my ease; and, in requital

of their good-nature, I soon began to look round at the general company

in a critical spirit, making my crude observations apart, and drawing

silent inferences, of the correctness of which I should not have been

half so well satisfied a year afterwards as at that moment.

There were two judges present, a good many lawyers, and a few officers

of the army in uniform. The other guests seemed to be principally of the

mercantile class, and among them was a ship-owner from Nova Scotia, with

whom I coalesced a little, inasmuch as we were born with the same sky

over our heads, and an unbroken continuity of soil between his abode and

mine. There was one old gentleman, whose character I never made out,

with powdered hair, clad in black breeches and silk stockings, and

wearing a rapier at his side; otherwise, with the exception of the

military uniforms, there was little or no pretence of official costume.

It being the first considerable assemblage of Englishmen that I had

seen, my honest impression about them was, that they were a heavy and

homely set of people, with a remarkable roughness of aspect and

behavior, not repulsive, but beneath which it required more familiarity

with the national character than I then possessed always to detect the

good-breeding of a gentleman. Being generally middle-aged, or still

farther advanced, they were by no means graceful in figure; for the

comeliness of the youthful Englishman rapidly diminishes with years, his

body appearing to grow longer, his legs to abbreviate themselves, and

his stomach to assume the dignified prominence which justly belongs to

that metropolis of his system. His face (what with the acridity of the

atmosphere, ale at lunch, wine at dinner, and a well-digested abundance

of succulent food) gets red and mottled, and develops at least one

additional chin, with a promise of more; so that, finally, a stranger

recognizes his animal part at the most superficial glance, but must take

time and a little pains to discover the intellectual. Comparing him with

an American, I really thought that our national paleness and lean habit

of flesh gave us greatly the advantage in an æsthetic point of view. It

seemed to me, moreover, that the English tailor had not done so much as

he might and ought for these heavy figures, but had gone on wilfully

exaggerating their uncouthness by the roominess of their garments: he

had evidently no idea of accuracy of fit, and smartness was entirely out

of his line. But, to be quite open with the reader, I afterwards learned

to think that this aforesaid tailor has a deeper art than his brethren

among ourselves, knowing how to dress his customers with such individual

propriety that they look as if they were born in their clothes, the fit

being to the character rather than the form. If you make an Englishman

smart, (unless he be a very exceptional one, of whom I have seen a few,)

you make him a monster: his best aspect is that of ponderous

respectability.

To make an end of these first impressions, I fancied that not merely the

Suffolk bar, but the bar of any inland county in New England, might show

a set of thin-visaged, green-spectacled men, looking wretchedly worn,

sallow with the intemperate use of strong coffee, deeply wrinkled across

the forehead, and grimly furrowed about the month, with whom these

heavy-cheeked English lawyers, slow-paced and fat-witted as they must

needs be, would stand very little chance in a professional contest. How

that matter might turn out I am unqualified to decide. But I state these

results of my earliest glimpses of Englishmen, not for what they are

worth, but because I ultimately gave them up as worth little or nothing.

In course of time, I came to the conclusion that Englishmen of all ages

are a rather good-looking people, dress in admirable taste from their

own point of view, and, under a surface never silken to the touch, have

a refinement of manners too thorough and genuine to be thought of as a

separate endowment,--that is to say, if the individual himself be a man

of station, and has had gentlemen for his father and grandfather. The

sturdy Anglo-Saxon nature does not refine itself short of the third

generation. The tradesmen, too, and all other classes, have their own

proprieties. The only value of my criticisms, therefore, lay in their

exemplifying the proneness of a traveller to measure one people by the

distinctive characteristics of another,--as English writers invariably

measure us, and take upon themselves to be disgusted accordingly,

instead of trying to find out some principle of beauty with which we may

be in conformity.

In due time we were summoned to the table, and went thither in no solemn

procession, but with a good deal of jostling, thrusting behind, and

scrambling for places when we reached our destination. The legal

gentlemen, I suspect, were responsible for this indecorous zeal, which I

never afterwards remarked in a similar party. The dining-hall was of

noble size, and, like the other rooms of the suite, was gorgeously

painted and gilded and brilliantly illuminated. There was a splendid

table-service, and a noble array of footmen, some of them in plain

clothes, and others wearing the town-livery, richly decorated with

gold-lace, and themselves excellent specimens of the blooming

young-manhood of Britain. When we were fairly seated, it was certainly

an agreeable spectacle to look up and down the long vista of earnest

faces, and behold them so resolute, so conscious that there was an

important business in hand, and so determined to be equal to the

occasion. Indeed, Englishman or not, I hardly know what can be prettier

than a snow-white table-cloth, a huge heap of flowers as a central

decoration, bright silver, rich china, crystal glasses, decanters of

Sherry at due intervals, a French roll and an artistically folded napkin

at each plate, all that airy portion of a banquet, in short, that comes

before the first mouthful, the whole illuminated by a blaze of

artificial light, without which a dinner of made-dishes looks spectral,

and the simplest viands are the best. Printed bills-of-fare were

distributed, representing an abundant feast, no part of which appeared

on the table until called for in separate plates. I have entirely

forgotten what it was, but deem it no great matter, inasmuch as there is

a pervading commonplace and identicalness in the composition of

extensive dinners, on account of the impossibility of supplying a

hundred guests with anything particularly delicate or rare. It was

suggested to me that certain juicy old gentlemen had a private

understanding what to call for, and that it would be good policy in a

stranger to follow in their footsteps through the feast. I did not care

to do so, however, because, like Sancho Panza's dip out of Camacho's

caldron, any sort of pot-luck at such a table would be sure to suit my

purpose; so I chose a dish or two on my own judgment, and, getting

through my labors betimes, had great pleasure in seeing the Englishmen

toil onward to the end.

They drank rather copiously, too, though wisely; for I observed that

they seldom took Hock, and let the Champagne bubble slowly away out of

the goblet, solacing themselves with Sherry, but tasting it warily

before bestowing their final confidence. Their taste in wines, however,

did not seem so exquisite, and certainly was not so various, as that to

which many Americans pretend. This foppery of an intimate acquaintance

with rare vintage: does not suit a sensible Englishman, as he is very

much in earnest about his wines, and adopts one or two as his life-long

friends, seldom exchanging them for any Delilahs of a moment, and

reaping the reward of his constancy in an unimpaired stomach, and only

so much gout as he deems wholesome and desirable. Knowing well the

measure of his powers, he is not apt to fill his glass too often.

Society, indeed, would hardly tolerate habitual imprudences of that

kind, though, in my opinion, the Englishmen now upon the stage could

carry off their three bottles, at need, with as steady a gait as any of

their forefathers. It is not so very long since the three-bottle heroes

sank finally under the table. It may be (at least, I should be glad if

it were true) that there was an occult sympathy between our

temperance-reform, now somewhat in abeyance, and the almost simultaneous

disappearance of hard-drinking among the respectable classes in England.

I remember a middle-aged gentleman telling me (in illustration of the

very slight importance attached to breaches of temperance within the

memory of men not yet old) that he had seen a certain magistrate, Sir

John Linkwater, or Drinkwater,--but I think the jolly old knight could

hardly have staggered under so perverse a misnomer as this last,--while

sitting on the magisterial bench, pull out a crown-piece and hand it to

the clerk. "Mr. Clerk," said Sir John, as if it were the most

indifferent fact in the world, "I was drunk last night. There are my

five shillings."

During the dinner, I had a good deal of pleasant conversation with the

gentlemen on either side of me. One of them, a lawyer, expatiated with

great unction on the social standing of the judges. Representing the

dignity and authority of the Crown, they take precedence, during

assize-time, of the highest military men in the kingdom, of the

Lord-Lieutenant of the county, of the Archbishops, of the royal Dukes,

and even of the Prince of Wales. For the nonce, they are the greatest

men in England. With a glow of professional complacency that amounted to

enthusiasm, my friend assured me, that, in case of a royal dinner, a

judge, if actually holding an assize, would be expected to offer his arm

and take the Queen herself to the table. Happening to be in company with

some of these elevated personages, on subsequent occasions, it appeared

to me that the judges are fully conscious of their paramount claims to

respect, and take rather more pains to impress them on their ceremonial

inferiors than men of high hereditary rank are apt to do. Bishops, if it

be not irreverent to say so, are sometimes marked by a similar

characteristic. Dignified position is so sweet to an Englishman, that he

needs to be born in it, and to feel it thoroughly incorporated with his

nature from its original germ, in order to keep him from flaunting it

obtrusively in the faces of innocent by-standers.

My companion on the other side was a thick-set, middle-aged man, uncouth

in manners, and ugly where none were handsome, with a dark, roughly hewn

visage, that looked grim in repose, and seemed to hold within itself the

machinery of a very terrific frown. He ate with resolute appetite, and

let slip few opportunities of imbibing whatever liquids happened to be

passing by. I was meditating in what way this grisly-featured

table-fellow might most safely be accosted, when he turned to me with a

surly sort of kindness, and invited me to take a glass of wine. We then

began a conversation that abounded, on his part, with sturdy sense, and,

somehow or other, brought me closer to him than I had yet stood to an

Englishman. I should hardly have taken him to be an educated man,

certainly not a scholar of accurate training; and yet he seemed to have

all the resources of education and trained intellectual power at

command. My fresh Americanism, and watchful observation of English

characteristics, appeared either to interest or amuse him, or perhaps

both. Under the mollifying influences of abundance of meat and drink, he

grew very gracious, (not that I ought to use such a phrase to describe

his evidently genuine good-will,) and by-and-by expressed a wish for

further acquaintance, asking me to call at his rooms in London and

inquire for Sergeant Wilkins,--throwing out the name forcibly, as if he

had no occasion to be ashamed of it. I remembered Dean Swift's retort to

Sergeant Bettesworth on a similar announcement,--"Of what regiment,

pray, Sir?"--and fancied that the same question might not have been

quite amiss, if applied to the rugged individual at my side. But I heard

of him subsequently as one of the prominent men at the English bar, a

rough customer, and a terribly strong champion in criminal cases; and it

caused me more regret than might have been expected, on so slight an

acquaintanceship, when, not long afterwards, I saw his death announced

in the newspapers. Not rich in attractive qualities, he possessed, I

think, the most attractive one of all,--thorough manhood.

After the cloth was removed, a goodly group of decanters were set before

the Mayor, who sent them forth on their outward voyage, full freighted

with Port, Sherry, Madeira, and Claret, of which excellent liquors,

methought, the latter found least acceptance among the guests. When

every man had filled his glass, his Worship stood up and proposed a

toast. It was, of course, "Our gracious Sovereign," or words to that

effect; and immediately a band of musicians, whose preliminary tootings

and thrummings I had already heard behind me, struck up "God save the

Queen," and the whole company rose with one impulse to assist in singing

that famous national anthem. It was the first time in my life that I had

ever seen a body of men, or even a single man, under the active

influence of the sentiment of Loyalty; for, though we call ourselves

loyal to our country and institutions, and prove it by our readiness to

shed blood and sacrifice life in their behalf, still the principle is as

cold and hard, in an American bosom, as the steel spring that puts in

motion a powerful machinery. In the Englishman's system, a force similar

to that of our steel spring is generated by the warm throbbings of human

hearts. He clothes our bare abstraction in flesh and blood,--at present,

in the flesh and blood of a woman,--and manages to combine love, awe,

and intellectual reverence, all in one emotion, and to embody his

mother, his wife, his children, the whole idea of kindred, in a single

person, and make her the representative of his country and its laws. We

Americans smile superior, as I did at the Mayor's table; and yet, I

fancy, we lose some very agreeable titillations of the heart in

consequence of our proud perogative of caring no more about our

President than for a man of straw, or a stuffed scarecrow straddling in

a cornfield.

But, to say the truth, the spectacle struck me rather ludicrously, to

see this party of stout middle-aged and elderly gentlemen, in the

fulness of meat and drink, their ample and ruddy faces glistening with

wine, perspiration, and enthusiasm, rumbling out those strange old

stanzas from the very bottom of their hearts and stomachs, which two

organs, in the English interior arrangement, lie closer together than in

ours. The song seemed to me the rudest old ditty in the world; but I

could not wonder at its universal acceptance and indestructible

popularity, considering how inimitably it expresses the national faith

and feeling as regards the inevitable righteousness of England, the

Almighty's consequent respect and partiality for that redoubtable little

island, and His presumed readiness to strengthen its defence against the

contumacious wickedness and knavery of all other principalities or

republics. Tennyson himself, though evidently English to the very last

prejudice, could not write half so good a song for the purpose. Finding

that the entire dinner-table struck in, with voices of every pitch

between rolling thunder and the squeak of a cartwheel, and that the

strain was not of such delicacy as to be much hurt by the harshest of

them, I determined to lend my own assistance in swelling the triumphant

roar. It seemed but a proper courtesy to the first Lady in the land,

whose guest, in the largest sense, I might consider myself. Accordingly,

my first tuneful efforts (and probably my last, for I purpose not to

sing any more, unless it be "Hail Columbia" on the restoration of the

Union) were poured freely forth in honor of Queen Victoria. The

Sergeant smiled like the carved head of a Swiss nutcracker, and the

other gentlemen in my neighborhood, by nods and gestures, evinced grave

approbation of so suitable a tribute to English superiority; and we

finished our stave and sat down in an extremely happy frame of mind.

Other toasts followed in honor of the great institutions and interests

of the country, and speeches in response to each were made by

individuals whom the Mayor designated or the company called for. None of

them impressed me with a very high idea of English postprandial oratory.

It is inconceivable, indeed, what ragged and shapeless utterances most

Englishmen are satisfied to give vent to, without attempting anything

like artistic shape, but clapping on a patch here and another there, and

ultimately getting out what they want to say, and generally with a

result of sufficiently good sense, but in some such disorganized mass as

if they had thrown it up rather than spoken it. It seemed to me that

this was almost as much by choice as necessity. An Englishman, ambitious

of public favor, should not be too smooth. If an orator is glib, his

countrymen distrust him. They dislike smartness. The stronger and

heavier his thoughts, the better, provided there be an element of

commonplace running through them; and any rough, yet never vulgar force

of expression, such as would knock an opponent down, if it hit him, only

it must not be too personal, is altogether to their taste; but a studied

neatness of language, or other such superficial graces, they cannot

abide. They do not often permit a man to make himself a fine orator of

malice aforethought, that is, unless he be a nobleman, (as, for example,

Lord Stanley, of the Derby family,) who, as an hereditary legislator and

necessarily a public speaker, is bound to remedy a poor natural delivery

in the best way he can. On the whole, I partly agree with them, and, if

I cared for any oratory whatever, should be as likely to applaud theirs

as our own. When an English speaker sits down, you feel that you have

been listening to a real man, and not to an actor; his sentiments have a

wholesome earth-smell in them, though, very likely, this apparent

naturalness is as much an art as what we expend in rounding a sentence

or elaborating a peroration.

It is one good effect of this inartificial style, that nobody in England

seems to feel any shyness about shovelling the untrimmed and untrimmable

ideas out of his mind for the benefit of an audience. At least, nobody

did on the occasion now in hand, except a poor little Major of

Artillery, who responded for the Army in a thin, quavering voice, with a

terribly hesitating trickle of fragmentary ideas, and, I question not,

would rather have been bayoneted in front of his batteries than to have

said a word. Not his own mouth, but the cannon's, was this poor Major's

proper organ of utterance.

While I was thus amiably occupied in criticizing my fellow-guests, the

Mayor had got up to propose another toast; and listening rather

inattentively to the first sentence or two, I soon became sensible of a

drift in his Worship's remarks that made me glance apprehensively

towards Sergeant Wilkins. "Yes," grumbled that gruff personage, shoving

a decanter of Port towards me, "it is your turn next"; and seeing in my

face, I suppose, the consternation of a wholly unpractised orator, he

kindly added,--"It is nothing. A mere acknowledgment will answer the

purpose. The less you say, the better they will like it." That being the

case, I suggested that perhaps they would like it best, if I said

nothing at all. But the Sergeant shook his head. Now, on first receiving

the Mayor's invitation to dinner, it had occurred to me that I might

possibly be brought into my present predicament; but I had dismissed the

idea from my mind as too disagreeable to be entertained, and, moreover,

as so alien from my disposition and character that Fate surely could not

keep such a misfortune in store for me. If nothing else prevented, an

earthquake or the crack of doom would certainly interfere before I need

rise to speak. Yet here was the Mayor getting on inexorably,--and,

indeed, I heartily wished that he might get on and on forever, and of

his wordy wanderings find no end.

If the gentle reader, my kindest friend and closest confidant, deigns to

desire it, I can impart to him my own experience as a public speaker

quite as indifferently as if it concerned another person. Indeed, it

does concern another, or a mere spectral phenomenon, for it was not I,

in my proper and natural self, that sat there at table or subsequently

rose to speak. At the moment, then, if the choice had been offered me

whether the Mayor should let off a speech at my head or a pistol, I

should unhesitatingly have taken the latter alternative. I had really

nothing to say, not an idea in my head, nor, which was a great deal

worse, any flowing words or embroidered sentences in which to dress out

that empty Nothing, and give it a cunning aspect of intelligence, such

as might last the poor vacuity the little time it had to live. But time

pressed; the Mayor brought his remarks, affectionately eulogistic of the

United States and highly complimentary to their distinguished

representative at that table, to a close, amid a vast deal of cheering;

and the band struck up "Hail Columbia," "Old Hundred," or "God save the

Queen" over again, for anything that I should have known or cared. When

the music ceased, there was an intensely disagreeable instant, during

which I seemed to rend away and fling off the habit of a lifetime, and

rose, still void of ideas, but with preternatural composure, to make a

speech. The guests rattled on the table, and cried, "Hear!" most

vociferously, as if now, at length, in this foolish and idly garrulous

world, had come the long-expected moment when one golden word was to be

spoken; and in that imminent crisis, I caught a glimpse of a little bit

of an effusion of international sentiment, which it might, and must, and

should do to utter.

Well; it was nothing, as the Sergeant had said. What surprised me most

was the sound of my own voice, which I had never before heard at a

declamatory pitch, and which impressed me as belonging to some other

person, who, and not myself, would be responsible for the speech: a

prodigious consolation and encouragement under the circumstances! I went

on without the slightest embarrassment, and sat down amid great

applause, wholly undeserved by anything that I had spoken, but well won

from Englishmen, methought, by the new development of pluck that alone

had enabled me to speak at all. "It was handsomely done!" quoth Sergeant

Wilkins; and I felt like a recruit who had been for the first time under

fire.

I would gladly have ended my oratorical career then and there forever,

but was often placed in a similar or worse position, and compelled to

meet it as I best might; for this was one of the necessities of an

office which I had voluntarily taken on my shoulders, and beneath which

I might be crushed by no moral delinquency on my own part, but could not

shirk without cowardice and shame. My subsequent fortune was various.

Once, though I felt it to be a kind of imposture, I got a speech by

heart, and doubtless it might have been a very pretty one, only I forgot

every syllable at the moment of need, and had to improvise another as

well as I could. I found it a better method to prearrange a few points

in my mind, and trust to the spur of the occasion, and the kind aid of

Providence, for enabling me to bring them to bear. The presence of any

considerable proportion of personal friends generally dumbfounded me. I

would rather have talked with an enemy in the gate. Invariably, too, I

was much embarrassed by a small audience, and succeeded better with a

large one,--the sympathy of a multitude possessing a buoyant effect,

which lifts the speaker a little way out of his individuality and tosses

him towards a perhaps better range of sentiment than his private one.

Again, if I rose carelessly and confidently, with an expectation of

going through the business entirely at my ease, I often found that I

had little or nothing to say; whereas, if I came to the scratch in

perfect despair, and at a crisis when failure would have been horrible,

it once or twice happened that the frightful emergency concentrated my

poor faculties, and enabled me to give definite and vigorous expression

to sentiments which an instant before looked as vague and far-off as the

clouds in the atmosphere. On the whole, poor as my own success may have

been, I apprehend that any intelligent man with a tongue possesses the

chief requisite of oratorical power, and may develop many of the others,

if he deems it worth while to bestow a great amount of labor and pains

on an object which the most accomplished orators, I suspect, have not

found altogether satisfactory to their highest impulses. At any rate, it

must be a remarkably true man who can keep his own elevated conception

of truth when the lower feeling of a multitude is assailing his natural

sympathies, and who can speak out frankly the best that there is in him,

when by adulterating it a little, or a good deal, he knows that he may

make it ten times as acceptable to the audience.

* * * * *

This slight article on the civic banquets of England would be too

wretchedly imperfect, without an attempted description of a Lord-Mayor's

dinner at the Mansion-House in London. I should have preferred the

annual feast at Guildhall, but never had the good-fortune to witness it.

Once, however, I was honored with an invitation to one of the regular

dinners, and gladly accepted it,--taking the precaution, nevertheless,

though it hardly seemed necessary, to inform the City-King, through a

mutual friend, that I was no fit representative of American eloquence,

and must humbly make it a condition that I should not be expected to

open my mouth, except for the reception of his Lordship's bountiful

hospitality. The reply was gracious and acquiescent; so that I presented

myself in the great entrance-hall of the Mansion-House, at half-past six

o'clock, in a state of most enjoyable freedom from the pusillanimous

apprehensions that often tormented me at such times. The Mansion-House

was built in Queen Anne's days, in the very heart of old London, and is

a palace worthy of its inhabitant, were he really as great a man as his

traditionary state and pomp would seem to indicate. Times are changed,

however, since the days of Whittington, or even of Hogarth's Industrious

Apprentice, to whom the highest imaginable reward of life-long integrity

was a seat in the Lord-Mayor's chair. People nowadays say that the real

dignity and importance have perished out of the office, as they do,

sooner or later, out of all earthly institutions, leaving only a painted

and gilded shell like that of an Easter egg, and that it is only

second-rate and third-rate men who now condescend to be ambitious of the

Mayoralty. I felt a little grieved at this; for the original emigrants

of New England had strong sympathies with the people of London, who were

mostly Puritans in religion and Parliamentarians in politics, in the

early days of our country; so that the Lord-Mayor was a potentate of

huge dimensions in the estimation of our forefathers, and held to be

hardly second to the prime-minister of the throne. The true great men of

the city now appear to have aims beyond city-greatness, connecting

themselves with national politics, and seeking to be identified with the

aristocracy of the country.

In the entrance-hall I was received by a body of footmen dressed in a

livery of blue and buff, in which they looked wonderfully like American

Revolutionary generals, only bedizened with far more lace and embroidery

than those simple and grand old heroes ever dreamed of wearing. There

were likewise two very imposing figures, whom I should have taken to be

military men of rank, being arrayed in scarlet coats and large silver

epaulets; but they turned out to be officers of the Lord-Mayor's

household, and were now employed in assigning to the guests the places

which they were respectively to occupy at the dinner-table. Our names

(for I had included myself in a little group of friends) were announced;

and ascending the staircase, we met his Lordship in the door-way of the

first reception-room, where, also, we had the advantage of a

presentation to the Lady-Mayoress. As this distinguished couple retired

into private life at the termination of their year of office, it is

inadmissible to make any remarks, critical or laudatory, on the manners

and bearing of two personages suddenly emerging from a position of

respectable mediocrity into one of preëminent dignity within their own

sphere. Such individuals almost always seem to grow nearly or quite to

the full size of their office. If it were desirable to write an essay on

the latent aptitude of ordinary people for grandeur, we have an

exemplification in our own country, and on a scale incomparably greater

than that of the Mayoralty, though invested with nothing like the

outward magnificence that gilds and embroiders the latter. If I have

been correctly informed, the Lord-Mayor's salary is exactly double that

of the President of the United States, and yet is found very inadequate

to his necessary expenditure.

There were two reception-rooms, thrown into one by the opening of wide

folding-doors; and though in an old style, and not yet so old as to be

venerable, they are remarkably handsome apartments, lofty as well as

spacious, with carved ceilings and walls, and at either end a splendid

fireplace of white marble, ornamented with sculptured wreaths of flowers

and foliage. The company were about three hundred, many of them

celebrities in politics, war, literature, and science, though I

recollect none preëminently distinguished in either department. But it

is certainly a pleasant mode of doing honor to men of literature, for

example, who deserve well of the public, yet do not often meet it face

to face, thus to bring them together, under genial auspices, in

connection with persons of note in other lines. I know not what may be

the Lord-Mayor's mode or principle of selecting his guests, nor whether,

during his official term, he can proffer his hospitality to every man of

noticeable talent in the wide world of London, nor, in fine, whether his

Lordship's invitation is much sought for or valued; but it seemed to me

that this periodical feast is one of the many sagacious methods which

the English have contrived for keeping up a good understanding among

different sorts of people. Like most other distinctions of society,

however, I presume that the Lord-Mayor's card does not often seek out

modest merit, but comes at last when the recipient is conscious of the

bore, and doubtful about the honor.

One very pleasant characteristic, which I never met with at any other

public or partially public dinner, was the presence of ladies. No doubt,

they were principally the wives and daughters of city-magnates; and if

we may judge from the many sly allusions in old plays and satirical

poems, the city of London has always been famous for the beauty of its

women and the reciprocal attractions between them and the men of

quality. Be that as it might, while straying hither and thither through

those crowded apartments, I saw much reason for modifying certain

heterodox opinions which I had inbibed, in my Transatlantic newness and

rawness, as regarded the delicate character and frequent occurrence of

English beauty. To state the entire truth, (being, at this period, some

years old in English life,) my taste, I fear, had long since begun to be

deteriorated by acquaintance with other models of feminine loveliness

than it was my happiness to know in America. I often found, or seemed to

find, if I may dare to confess it, in the persons of such of my dear

countrywomen as I now occasionally met, a certain meagreness, (Heaven

forbid that I should call it scrawniness!) a deficiency of physical

development, a scantiness, so to speak, in the pattern of their material

make, a paleness of complexion, a thinness of voice,--all which

characteristics, nevertheless, only made me resolve so much the more

sturdily to uphold these fair creatures as angels, because I was

sometimes driven to a half-acknowledgment, that the English ladies,

looked at from a lower point of view, were perhaps a little finer

animals than they. The advantages of the latter, if any they could

really be said to have, were all comprised in a few additional lumps of

clay on their shoulders and other parts of their figures. It would be a

pitiful bargain to give up the ethereal charm of American beauty in

exchange for half a hundred-weight of human clay!

At a given signal we all found our way into an immense room, called the

Egyptian Hall, I know not why, except that the architecture was classic,

and as different as possible from the ponderous style of Memphis and the

Pyramids. A powerful band played inspiringly as we entered, and a

brilliant profusion of light shone down on two long tables, extending

the whole length of the hall, and a cross-table between them, occupying

nearly its entire breadth. Glass gleamed and silver glistened on an acre

or two of snowy damask, over which were set out all the accompaniments

of a stately feast. We found our places without much difficulty, and the

Lord-Mayor's chaplain implored a blessing on the food,--a ceremony which

the English never omit, at a great dinner or a small one, yet consider,

I fear, not so much a religious rite as a sort of preliminary relish

before the soup.

The soup, of course, on this occasion, was turtle, of which, in

accordance with immemorial custom, each guest was allowed two platefuls,

in spite of the otherwise immitigable law of table-decorum. Indeed,

judging from the proceedings of the gentlemen near me, I surmised that

there was no practical limit, except the appetite of the guests and the

capacity of the soup-tureens. Not being fond of this civic dainty, I

partook of it but once, and then only in accordance with the wise maxim,

always to taste a fruit, a wine, or a celebrated dish, at its indigenous

site; and the very fountain-head of turtle-soup, I suppose, is in the

Lord-Mayor's dinner-pot. It is one of those orthodox customs which

people follow for half a century without knowing why, to drink a sip of

rum-punch, in a very small tumbler, after the soup. It was excellently

well-brewed, and it seemed to me almost worth while to sup the soup for

the sake of sipping the punch. The rest of the dinner was catalogued in

a bill-of-fare printed on delicate white paper within an arabesque

border of green and gold. It looked very good, not only in the English

and French names of the numerous dishes, but also in the positive

reality of the dishes themselves, which were all set on the table to be

carved and distributed by the guests. This ancient and honest method is

attended with a good deal of trouble, and a lavish effusion of gravy,

yet by no means bestowed or dispensed in vain, because you have thereby

the absolute assurance of a banquet actually before your eyes, instead

of a shadowy promise in the bill-of-fare, and such meagre fulfilment as

a single guest can contrive to get upon his individual plate. I wonder

that Englishmen, who are fond of looking at prize-oxen in the shape of

butcher's-meat, do not generally better estimate the æsthetic gormandism

of devouring the whole dinner with their eyesight, before proceeding to

nibble the comparatively few morsels which, after all, the most heroic

appetite and widest stomachic capacity of mere mortals can enable even

an alderman really to eat. There fell to my lot three delectable things

enough, which I take pains to remember, that the reader may not go away

wholly unsatisfied from the Barmecide feast to which I have bidden

him,--a red mullet, a plate of mushrooms, exquisitely stewed, and part

of a ptarmigan, a bird of the same family as the grouse, but feeding

high up towards the summit of the Scotch mountains, whence it gets a

wild delicacy of flavor very superior to that of the artificially

nurtured English game-fowl. All the other dainties have vanished from my

memory as completely as those of Prospero's banquet after Ariel had

clapped his wings over it. The band played at intervals, inspiriting us

to new efforts, as did likewise the sparkling wines which the footmen

supplied from an inexhaustible cellar, and which the guests quaffed with

little apparent reference to the disagreeable fact that there comes a

to-morrow morning after every feast. As long as that shall be the case,

a prudent man can never have full enjoyment of his dinner.

Nearly opposite to me, on the other side of the table, sat a young lady

in white, whom I am sorely tempted to describe, but dare not, because

not only the supereminence of her beauty, but its peculiar character,

would cause the sketch to be recognized, however rudely it might be

drawn. I hardly thought that there existed such a woman outside of a

picture-frame, or the covers of a romance: not that I had ever met with

her resemblance even there, but, being so distinct and singular an

apparition, she seemed likelier to find her sisterhood in poetry and

picture than in real life. Let us turn away from her, lest a touch too

apt should compel her stately and cold and soft and womanly grace to

gleam out upon my page with a strange repulsion and unattainableness in

the very spell that made her beautiful. At her side, and familiarly

attentive to her, sat a gentleman of whom I remember only a hard outline

of the nose and forehead, and such a monstrous portent of a beard that

you could discover no symptom of a mouth, except when he opened it to

speak, or to put in a morsel of food. Then, indeed, you suddenly became

aware of a cave hidden behind the impervious and darksome shrubbery.

There could be no doubt who this gentleman and lady were. Any child

would have recognized them at a glance. It was Bluebeard and a new wife

(the loveliest of the series, but with already a mysterious gloom

overshadowing her fair young brow) travelling in their honey-moon, and

dining, among other distinguished strangers, at the Lord-Mayor's table.

After an hour or two of valiant achievement with knife and fork came the

dessert; and at the point of the festival where finger-glasses are

usually introduced, a large silver basin was carried round to the

guests, containing rose-water, into which we dipped the ends of our

napkins and were conscious of a delightful fragrance, instead of that

heavy and weary odor, the hateful ghost of a defunct dinner. This seems

to be an ancient custom of the city, not confined to the Lord-Mayor's

table, but never met with westward of Temple Bar.

During all the feast, in accordance with another ancient custom, the

origin or purport of which I do not remember to have heard, there stood

a man in armor, with a helmet on his head, behind his Lordship's chair.

When the after-dinner wine was placed on the table, still another

official personage appeared behind the chair, and proceeded to make a

solemn and sonorous proclamation, (in which he enumerated the principal

guests, comprising three or four noblemen, several baronets, and plenty

of generals, members of Parliament, aldermen, and other names of the

illustrious, one of which sounded strangely familiar to my ears,) ending

in some such style as this: "and other gentlemen and ladies, here

present, the Lord-Mayor drinks to you all in a loving-cup,"--giving a

sort of sentimental twang to the two words,--"and sends it round among

you!" And forthwith the loving-cup--several of them, indeed, on each

side of the tables--came slowly down with all the antique ceremony.

The fashion of it is thus. The Lord-Mayor, standing up and taking the

covered cup in both hands, presents it to the guest at his elbow, who

likewise rises, and removes the cover for his Lordship to drink, which

being successfully accomplished, the guest replaces the cover and

receives the cup into his own hands. He then presents it to his next

neighbor, that the cover may be again removed for himself to take a

draught, after which the third person goes through a similar manoeuvre

with a fourth, and he with a fifth, until the whole company find

themselves inextricably intertwisted and entangled in one complicated

chain of love. When the cup came to my hands, I examined it critically,

both inside and out, and perceived it to be an antique and richly

ornamented silver goblet, capable of holding about a quart of wine.

Considering how much trouble we all expended in getting the cup to our

lips, the guests appeared to content themselves with wonderfully

moderate potations. In truth, nearly or quite the original quart of wine

being still in the goblet, it seemed doubtful whether any of the company

had more than barely touched the silver rim before passing it to their

neighbors,--a degree of abstinence that might be accounted for by a

fastidious repugnance to so many compotators in one cup, or possibly by

a disapprobation of the liquor. Being curious to know all about these

important matters, with a view of recommending to my countrymen whatever

they might usefully adopt, I drank an honest sip from the loving-cup,

and had no occasion for another,--ascertaining it to be Claret of a poor

original quality, largely mingled with water, and spiced and sweetened.

It was good enough, however, for a merely spectral or ceremonial drink,

and could never have been intended for any better purpose.

The toasts now began in the customary order, attended with speeches

neither more nor less witty and ingenious than the specimens of

table-eloquence which had heretofore delighted me. As preparatory to

each new display, the herald, or whatever he was, behind the chair of

state, gave awful notice that the Right Honorable the Lord-Mayor was

about to propose a toast. His Lordship being happily delivered thereof,

together with some accompanying remarks, the band played an appropriate

tune, and the herald again issued proclamation to the effect that such

or such a nobleman, or gentleman, general, dignified clergyman, or what

not, was going to respond to the Right Honorable the Lord-Mayor's toast;

then, if I mistake not, there was another prodigious flourish of

trumpets and twanging of stringed instruments; and finally the doomed

individual, waiting all this while to be decapitated, got up and

proceeded to make a fool of himself. A bashful young earl tried his

maiden oratory on the good citizens of London, and having evidently got

every word by heart, (even including, however he managed it, the most

seemingly casual improvisations of the moment,) he really spoke like a

book, and made incomparably the smoothest speech I ever heard in

England.

The weight and gravity of the speakers, not only on this occasion, but

all similar ones, was what impressed me as most extraordinary, not to

say absurd. Why should people eat a good dinner, and put their spirits

into festive trim with Champagne, and afterwards mellow themselves into

a most enjoyable state of quietude with copious libations of Sherry and

old Port, and then disturb the whole excellent result by listening to

speeches as heavy as an after-dinner nap, and in no degree so

refreshing? If the Champagne had thrown its sparkle over the surface of

these effusions, or if the generous Port had shone through their

substance with a ruddy glow of the old English humor, I might have seen

a reason for honest gentlemen prattling in their cups, and should

undoubtedly have been glad to be a listener. But there was no attempt

nor impulse of the kind on the part of the orators, nor apparent

expectation of such a phenomenon on that of the audience. In fact, I

imagine that the latter were best pleased when the speaker embodied his

ideas in the figurative language of arithmetic, or struck upon any hard

matter of business or statistics, as a heavy-laden bark bumps upon a

rock in mid-ocean. The sad severity, the too earnest utilitarianism, of

modern life, have wrought a radical and lamentable change, I am afraid,

in this ancient and goodly institution of civic banquets. People used to

come to them, a few hundred years ago, for the sake of being jolly; they

come now with an odd notion of pouring sober wisdom into their wine by

way of wormwood-bitters, and thus make such a mess of it that the wine

and wisdom reciprocally spoil one another.

Possibly, the foregoing sentiments have taken a spice of acridity from a

circumstance that happened about this stage of the feast, and very much

interrupted my own further enjoyment of it. Up to this time, my

condition had been exceedingly felicitous, both on account of the

brilliancy of the scene, and because I was in close proximity with three

very pleasant English friends. One of them was a lady, whose honored

name my readers would recognize as a household word, if I dared write

it; another, a gentleman, likewise well known to them, whose fine taste,

kind heart, and genial cultivation are qualities seldom mixed in such

happy proportion as in him. The third was the man to whom I owed most in

England, the warm benignity of whose nature was never weary of doing me

good, who led me to many scenes of life, in town, camp, and country,

which I never could have found out for myself, who knew precisely the

kind of help a stranger needs, and gave it as freely as if he had not

had a thousand more important things to live for. Thus I never felt

safer or cozier at anybody's fireside, even my own, than at the

dinner-table of the Lord-Mayor.

Out of this serene sky came a thunderbolt. His Lordship got up and

proceeded to make some very eulogistic remarks upon "the literary and

commercial"--I question whether those two adjectives were ever before

married by a copulative conjunction, and they certainly would not live

together in illicit intercourse, of their own accord--"the literary and

commercial attainments of an eminent gentleman there present," and then

went on to speak of the relations of blood and interest between Great

Britain and the aforesaid eminent gentleman's native country. Those

bonds were more intimate than had ever before existed between two great

nations, throughout all history, and his Lordship felt assured that that

whole honorable company would join him in the expression of a fervent

wish that they might be held inviolably sacred, on both sides of the

Atlantic, now and forever. Then came the same wearisome old toast, dry

and hard to chew upon as a musty sea-biscuit, which had been the text of

nearly all the oratory of my public career. The herald sonorously

announced that Mr. So-and-so would now respond to his Right Honorable

Lordship's toast and speech, the trumpets sounded the customary flourish

for the onset, there was a thunderous rumble of anticipatory applause,

and finally a deep silence sank upon the festive hall.

All this was a horrid piece of treachery on the Lord-Mayor's part, after

beguiling me within his lines on a pledge of safe-conduct; and it seemed

very strange that he could not let an unobtrusive individual eat his

dinner in peace, drink a small sample of the Mansion-House wine, and go

away grateful at heart for the old English hospitality. If his Lordship

had sent me an infusion of ratsbane in the loving-cup, I should have

taken it much more kindly at his hands. But I suppose the secret of the

matter to have been somewhat as follows.

All England, just then, was in one of those singular fits of panic

excitement, (not fear, though as sensitive and tremulous as that

emotion,) which, in consequence of the homogeneous character of the

people, their intense patriotism, and their dependence for their ideas

in public affairs on other sources than their own examination and

individual thought, are more sudden, pervasive, and unreasoning than any

similar mood of our own public. In truth, I have never seen the American

public in a state at all similar, and believe that we are incapable of

it. Our excitements are not impulsive, like theirs, but, right or wrong,

are moral and intellectual. For example, the grand rising of the North,

at the commencement of this war, bore the aspect of impulse and passion

only because it was so universal, and necessarily done in a moment, just

as the quiet and simultaneous getting-up of a thousand people out of

their chairs would cause a tumult that might be mistaken for a storm. We

were cool then, and have been cool ever since, and shall remain cool to

the end, which we shall take coolly, whatever it may be. There is

nothing which the English find it so difficult to understand in us as

this characteristic. They imagine us, in our collective capacity, a kind

of wild beast, whose normal condition is savage fury, and are always

looking for the moment when we shall break through the slender barriers

of international law and comity, and compel the reasonable part of the

world, with themselves at the head, to combine for the purpose of

putting us into a stronger cage. At times this apprehension becomes so

powerful, (and when one man feels it, a million do,) that it resembles

the passage of the wind over a broad field of grain, where you see the

whole crop bending and swaying beneath one impulse, and each separate

stalk tossing with the self-same disturbance as its myriad companions.

At such periods all Englishmen talk with a terrible identity of

sentiment and expression. You have the whole country in each man; and

not one of them all, if you put him strictly to the question, can give a

reasonable ground for his alarm. There are but two nations in the

world--our own country and France--that can put England into this

singular state. It is the united sensitiveness of a people extremely

well-to-do, most anxious for the preservation of the cumbrous and

moss-grown prosperity which they have been so long in consolidating, and

incompetent (owing to the national half-sightedness, and their habit of

trusting to a few leading minds for their public opinion) to judge when

that prosperity is really threatened.

If the English were accustomed to look at the foreign side of any

international dispute, they might easily have satisfied themselves that

there was very little danger of a war at that particular crisis, from

the simple circumstance that their own Government had positively not an

inch of honest ground to stand upon, and could not fail to be aware of

the fact. Neither could they have met Parliament with any show of a

justification for incurring war. It was no such perilous juncture as

exists now, when law and right are really controverted on sustainable or

plausible grounds, and a naval commander may at any moment fire off the

first cannon of a terrible contest. If I remember it correctly, it was a

mere diplomatic squabble, which the British ministers, with the politic

generosity which they are in the habit of showing towards their official

subordinates, had tried to browbeat us for the purpose of sustaining an

ambassador in an indefensible proceeding; and the American Government

(for God had not denied us an administration of Statesmen then) had

retaliated with stanch courage and exquisite skill, putting inevitably a

cruel mortification upon their opponents, but indulging them with no

pretence whatever for active resentment.

Now the Lord-Mayor, like any other Englishman, probably fancied that War

was on the western gale, and was glad to lay hold of even so

insignificant an American as myself, who might be made to harp on the

rusty old strings of national sympathies, identity of blood and

interest, and community of language and literature, and whisper peace

where there was no peace, in however weak an utterance. And possibly his

Lordship thought, in his wisdom, that the good feeling which was sure to

be expressed by a company of well-bred Englishmen, at his august and

far-famed dinner-table, might have an appreciable influence on the grand

result. Thus, when the Lord-Mayor invited me to his feast, it was a

piece of strategy. He wanted to induce me to fling myself, like a lesser

Curtius, with a larger object of self-sacrifice, into the chasm of

discord between England and America, and, on my ignominious demur, had

resolved to shove me in with his own right-honorable hands, in the hope

of closing up the horrible pit forever. On the whole, I forgive his

Lordship. He meant well by all parties,--himself, who would share the

glory, and me, who ought to have desired nothing better than such an

heroic opportunity,--his own country, which would continue to get cotton

and breadstuffs, and mine, which would get everything that men work with

and wear.

As soon as the Lord-Mayor began to speak, I rapped upon my mind, and it

gave forth a hollow sound, being absolutely empty of appropriate ideas.

I never thought of listening to the speech, because I knew it all

beforehand in twenty repetitions from other lips, and was aware that it

would not offer a single suggestive point. In this dilemma, I turned to

one of my three friends, a gentleman whom I knew to possess an enviable

flow of silver speech, and obtested him, by whatever he deemed holiest,

to give me at least an available thought or two to start with, and, once

afloat, I would trust to my guardian-angel for enabling me to flounder

ashore again, He advised me to begin with some remarks complimentary to

the Lord-Mayor, and expressive of the hereditary reverence in which his

office was held--at least, my friend thought that there would be no harm

in giving his Lordship this little sugar-plum, whether quite the fact or

no--was held by the descendants of the Puritan forefathers. Thence, if I

liked, getting flexible with the oil of my own eloquence, I might easily

slide off into the momentous subject of the relations between England

and America, to which his Lordship had made such weighty allusion.

Seizing this handful of straw with a death-grip, and bidding my three

friends bury me honorably, I got upon my legs to save both countries, or

perish in the attempt. The tables roared and thundered at me, and

suddenly were silent again. But, as I have never happened to stand in a

position of greater dignity and peril, I deem it a stratagem of sage

policy here to close the sketch, leaving myself still erect in so heroic

an attitude.

* * * * *

THE GEOLOGICAL MIDDLE AGE.

I shall pass lightly over the Permian and Triassic epochs, as being more

nearly related in their organic forms to the Carboniferous epoch, with

which we are already somewhat familiar, while in those next in

succession, the Jurassic and Cretaceous epochs, the later conditions of

animal life begin to be already foreshadowed. But though less

significant for us in the present stage of our discussion, it must not

be supposed that the Permian and Triassic epochs were unimportant in the

physical and organic history of Europe. A glance at any geological map

of Europe will show the reader how the Belgian island stretched

gradually in a southwesterly direction during the Permian epoch,

approaching the coast of France by slowly increasing accumulations, and

thus filling the Burgundian channel; a wide border of Permian deposits

around the coal-field of Great Britain marks the increase of this region

also during the same time, and a very extensive tract of a like

character is to be seen in Russia. The latter is, however, still under

doubt and discussion among geologists, and more recent investigations

tend to show that this Russian region, supposed at first to be

exclusively Permian, is at least in part Triassic.

With the coming in of the Triassic epoch began the great deposits of Red

Sandstone, Muschel-Kalk, and Keuper, in Central Europe. They united the

Belgian island to the region of the Vosges and the Black Forest, while

they also filled to a great extent the channel between Belgium and the

Bohemian island. Thus the land slowly gained upon the Triassic ocean,

shutting it within ever-narrowing limits, and preparing the large inland

seas so characteristic of the later Secondary times. The character of

the organic world still retained a general resemblance to that of the

Carboniferous epoch. Among Radiates, the Corals were more nearly allied

to those of the earlier ages than to those of modern times, and Crinoids

abounded still, though some of the higher Echinoderm types were already

introduced. Among Mollusks, the lower Bivalves, that is, the Brachiopods

and Bryozoa, still prevailed, while Ammonites continued to be very

numerous, differing from the earlier ones chiefly in the ever-increasing

complications of their inner partitions, which become so deeply

involuted and cut upon their margins, before the type disappears, as to

make an intricate tracery of very various patterns on the surface of

these shells. The most conspicuous type of Articulates continues as

before to be that of Crustacea; but Trilobites have finished their

career, and the Lobster-like Crustacea make their appearance for the

first time. It does not seem that the class of Insects has greatly

increased since the Carboniferous epoch; and Worms are still as

difficult to trace as ever, being chiefly known by the cases in which

they sheltered themselves. Among Vertebrates, the Fishes still resemble

those of the Carboniferous epoch, belonging principally to the

Selachians and Ganoids. They have, however, approached somewhat toward a

modern pattern, the lobes of the tail being more evenly cut, and their

general outline more like that of common fishes. The gigantic marsh

Reptiles have become far more numerous and various. They continue

through several epochs, but may be said to reach their culminating point

in the Jurassic and Cretaceous deposits.

I cannot pass over the Triassic epoch without some allusion to the

so-called bird-tracks, so generally believed to mark the introduction of

Birds at this time. It is true that in the deposits of the Trias there

have been found many traces of footsteps, indicating a vast number of

animals which, except for these footprints, remain unknown to us. In the

sandstone of the Connecticut Valley they are found in extraordinary

numbers, as if these animals, whatever they were, had been in the habit

of frequenting that shore. They appear to have been very diversified;

for some of the tracks are very large, others quite small, while some

would seem, from the way in which the footsteps follow each other, to

have been quadrupedal, and others bipedal. We can even measure the

length of their strides, following the impressions which, from their

succession in a continuous line, mark the walk of a single animal.[10]

The fact that we find these footprints without any bones or other

remains to indicate the animals by which they were made is accounted for

by the mode of deposition of the sandstone. It is very unfavorable for

the preservation of bones; but, being composed of minute sand mixed with

mud, it affords an admirable substance for the reception of these

impressions, which have been thus cast in a mould, as it were, and

preserved through ages. These animals must have been large, when

full-grown, for we find strides measuring six feet between, evidently

belonging to the same animal. In the quadrupedal tracks, the front feet

seem to have been smaller than the hind ones. Some of the tracks show

four toes all turned forward, while in others three toes are turned

forward and one backward. It happened that the first tracks found

belonged to the latter class; and they very naturally gave rise to the

idea that these impressions were made by birds, on account of this

formation of the foot. This, however, is a mere inference; and since the

inductive method is the only true one in science, it seems to me that we

should turn to the facts we have in our possession for the explanation

of these mysterious footprints, rather than endeavor to supply by

assumption those which we have not. As there are no bones found in

connection with these tracks, the only way to arrive at their true

character, in the present state of our knowledge, is by comparing them

with bones found in other localities in the deposits of the same period

in the world's history. Now there have never been found in the Trias any

remains of Birds, while it contains innumerable bones of Reptiles; and

therefore I think that it is in the latter class that we shall

eventually find the solution of this mystery.

[Footnote 10: For all details respecting these tracks see Hitchcock's

_Ichnology of New England_. Boston, 1858. 4to.]

It is true that the bones of the Triassic Reptiles are scattered and

disconnected; no complete skeleton has yet been discovered, nor has any

foot been found; so that no direct comparison can be made with the

steps. It is, however, my belief, from all we know of the character of

the Animal Kingdom in those days, that these animals were reptilian, but

combined, like so many of the early types, characters of their own class

with those of higher animals yet to come. It seems to me probable, that,

in those tracks where one toe is turned backward, the impression is made

not by a toe, but by a heel, or by a long sole projecting backward; for

it is not pointed, like those of the front toes, but is blunt. It is

true that there is a division of joints in the toes, which seems in

favor of the idea that they were those of Birds; for when the three toes

are turned forward, there are two joints on the inner one, three on the

middle, and four on the outer one, as in Birds. But this feature is not

peculiar to Birds; it is found in Turtles also. The correspondence of

these footprints with each other leaves no doubt that they were all by

one kind of animal; for both the bipedal and the quadrupedal tracks have

the same character. The only quadrupedal animals now known to us which

walk on two legs are the Kangaroos. They raise themselves on their hind

legs, using the front ones to bring their food to their mouth. They leap

with the hind legs, sometimes bringing down their front feet to steady

themselves after the spring, and making use also of their tails, to

balance the body after leaping. In these tracks we find traces of a tail

between the feet. I do not bring this forward as any evidence that these

animals were allied to Kangaroos, since I believe that nothing is more

injurious in science than assumptions which do not rest on a broad basis

of facts; but I wish only to show that these tracks recall other animals

besides Birds, with which they have been universally associated. And

seeing, as we do, that so many of the early types prophesy future forms,

it seems not improbable that they may have belonged to animals which

combined with reptilian characters some birdlike features, and also some

features of the earliest and lowest group of Mammalia, the Marsupials.

To sum up my opinion respecting these footmarks, I believe that they

were made by animals of a prophetic type, belonging to the class of

Reptiles, and exhibiting many synthetic characters.

The more closely we study past creations, the more impressive and

significant do the synthetic types, presenting features of the higher

classes under the guise of the lower ones, become. They hold the promise

of the future. As the opening overture of an opera contains all the

musical elements to be therein developed, so this living prelude of the

Creative work comprises all the organic elements to be successively

developed in the course of time. When Cuvier first saw the teeth of a

Wealden Reptile, he pronounced them to be those of a Rhinoceros, so

mammalian were they in their character. So, when Sommering first saw the

remains of a Jurassic Pterodactyl, he pronounced them to be those of a

Bird. These mistakes were not due to a superficial judgment in men who

knew Nature so well, but to this prophetic character in the early types

themselves, in which features were united never known to exist together

in our days.

* * * * *

The Jurassic epoch, next in succession, was a very important one in the

history of Europe. It completed the junction of several of the larger

islands, filling the channel between the central plateau of France and

the Belgian island, as well as that between the former and the island of

Bretagne, so that France was now a sort of crescent of land holding a

Jurassic sea in its centre, Bretagne and Belgium forming the two horns.

This Jurassic basin or inland sea united England and France, and it may

not be amiss to say a word here of its subsequent transformations.

During the long succession of Jurassic periods, the deposits of that

epoch, chiefly limestone and clays, with here and there a bed of sand,

were accumulated at its bottom. Upon these followed the chalk deposits

of the Cretaceous epoch, until the basin was gradually filled, and

partially, at least, turned to dry land. But at the close of the

Cretaceous epoch a fissure was formed, allowing the entrance of the sea

at the western end, so that the constant washing of the tides and storms

wore away the lower, softer deposits, leaving the overhanging chalk

cliffs unsupported. These latter, as their support were undermined,

crumbled down, thus widening the channel gradually. This process must,

of course, have gone on more rapidly at the western end, where the sea

rushed on with most force, till the channel was worn through to the

German Ocean on the other side, and the sea then began to act with like

power at both ends of the channel. This explains its form, wider at the

western end, narrower between Dover and Calais, and widening again at

the eastern extremity. This ancient basin, extending from the centre of

France into England, is rich in the remains of a number of successive

epochs. Around its margin we find the Jurassic deposits, showing that

there must have been some changes of level which raised the shores and

prevented later accumulations from covering them, while in the centre

the Jurassic deposits are concealed by those of the Cretaceous epoch

above them, these being also partially hidden under the later Tertiary

beds. Let us see, then, what this inland sea has to tell us of the

organic world in the Jurassic epoch.

At that time the region where Lyme-Regis is now situated in modern

England was an estuary on the shore of that ancient sea. About forty

years ago a discovery of large and curious bones, belonging to some

animal unknown to the scientific world, turned the attention of

naturalists to this locality, and since then such a quantity and variety

of such remains have been found in the neighborhood as to show that the

Sharks, Whales, Porpoises, etc., of the present ocean are not more

numerous and diversified than were the inhabitants of this old bay or

inlet. Among these animals, the Ichthyosauri (Fish-Lizards) form one of

the best-known and most prominent groups. They are chiefly found in the

Lias, the lowest set of beds of the Jurassic deposits, and seem to have

come in with the close of the Triassic epoch. It is greatly to be

regretted that all that is known of the Triassic Reptiles antecedent to

the Ichthyosauri still remains in the form of original papers, and is

not yet embodied in text-books. They are quite as interesting, as

curious, and as diversified as those of the Jurassic epoch, which are,

however, much more extensively known, on account of the large

collections of these animals belonging to the British Museum. It will be

more easy to understand the structural relations of the latter, and

their true position in the Animal Kingdom, when those which preceded

them are better understood. One of the most remarkable and numerous of

these Triassic Reptiles seems to have been an animal resembling, in the

form of the head, and in the two articulating surfaces at the juncture

of the head with the backbone, the Frogs and Salamanders, though its

teeth are like those of a Crocodile. As yet nothing has been found of

these animals except the head,--neither the backbone nor the limbs; so

that little is known of their general structure.

[Illustration: Fig. 1. An Ichthyosaurus.]

The Ichthyosauri (Figure 1) must have been very large, seven or eight

feet being the ordinary length, while specimens measuring from twenty to

thirty feet are not uncommon. The large head is pointed, like that of

the Porpoise; the jaws contain a number of conical teeth, of reptilian

form and character; the eyeball was very large, as may be seen by the

socket, and it was supported by pieces of bone, such as we find now only

in the eyes of birds of prey and in the bony fishes. The ribs begin at

the neck and continue to the tail, and there is no distinction between

head and neck, as in most Reptiles, but a continuous outline, as in

Fishes. They had four limbs, not divided into fingers, but forming mere

paddles. Yet fingers seem to be hinted at in these paddles, though not

developed, for the bones are in parallel rows, as if to mark what might

be such a division. The back-bones are short, but very high, and the

surfaces of articulation are hollow, conical cavities, as in Fishes,

instead of ball-and-socket joints, as in Reptiles. The ribs are more

complicated than in Vertebrates generally: they consist of several

pieces, and the breast-bone is formed of a number of bones, making

together quite an intricate bony net-work. There is only one living

animal, the Crocodile, characterized by this peculiar structure of the

breast-bone. The Ichthyosaurus is, indeed, one of the most remarkable of

the synthetic types: by the shape of its head one would associate it

with the Porpoises, while by its paddles and its long tail it reminds

one of the whole group of Cetaceans to which the Porpoises belong; by

its crocodilian teeth, its ribs, and its breast-bone, it seems allied to

Reptiles; and by its uniform neck, not distinguished from the body, and

the structure of the backbone, it recalls the Fishes.

[Illustration: Fig. 2. A Plesiosaurus.]

Another most curious member of this group is the Plesiosaurus, odd

Saurian (Figure 2). By its disproportionately long and flexible neck,

and its small, flat head, it unquestionably foreshadows the Serpents,

while by the structure of the backbone, the limbs, and the tail, it is

closely allied with the Ichthyosaurus. Its flappers are, however, more

slender, less clumsy, and were, no doubt, adapted to more rapid motion

than the fins of the Ichthyosaurus, while its tail is shorter in

proportion to the whole length of the animal. It seems probable, from

its general structure, that the Ichthyosaurus moved like a Fish, chiefly

by the flapping of the tail, aided by the fins, while in the

Plesiosaurus the tail must have been much less efficient as a locomotive

organ, and the long, snake-like, flexible neck no doubt rendered the

whole body more agile and rapid in its movements. In comparing the two,

it may be said, that, as a whole, the Ichthyosaurus, though belonging by

its structure to the class of Reptiles, has a closer external

resemblance to the Fishes, while the Plesiosaurus is more decidedly

reptilian in character. If there exists any animal in our waters, not

yet known to naturalists, answering to the descriptions of the

"Sea-Serpent," it must be closely allied to the Plesiosaurus. The

occurrence in the fresh waters of North America of a Fish, the

Lepidosteus, which is closely allied to the fossil Fishes found with the

Plesiosaurus in the Jurassic beds, renders such a supposition probable.

[Illustration: Fig. 3. A Pterodactylus.]

Of all these strange old forms, so singularly uniting features of Fishes

and Reptiles, none has given rise to more discussion than the

Pterodactylus, (Figure 3,) another of the Saurian tribe, associated,

however, with Birds by some naturalists, on account of its large

wing-like appendages. From the extraordinary length of its anterior

limbs, they have generally been described as wings, and the animal is

usually represented as a flying Reptile. But if we consider its whole

structure, this does not seem probable, and I believe it to have been an

essentially aquatic animal, moving after the fashion of the Sea-Turtle.

Its so-called wings resemble in structure the front paddles of the

Sea-Turtles far more than the wings of a Bird; differing from them,

indeed, only by the extraordinary length of the inner toe, while the

outer ones are comparatively much shorter. But, notwithstanding this

difference, the hand of the Pterodactylus is constructed like that of an

aquatic swimming marine Reptile; and I believe, that, if we represent it

with its long neck stretched upon the water, its large head furnished

with powerful, well-armed jaws, ready to dive after the innumerable

smaller animals living in the same ocean, we shall have a more natural

picture of its habits than if we consider it as a flying animal, which

it is generally supposed to have been. It has not the powerful

breast-bone, with the large projecting keel along the middle line, such

as exists in all the flying animals. Its breast-bone, on the contrary,

is thin and flat, like that of the present Sea-Turtle; and if it moved

through the water by the help of its long flappers, as the Sea-Turtle

does now, it could well dispense with that powerful construction of the

breast-bone so essential to all animals which fly through the air.

Again, the powerful teeth, long and conical, placed at considerable

intervals in the jaw, constitute a feature common to all predaceous

aquatic animals, and would seem to have been utterly useless in a flying

animal at that time, since there were no aërial beings of any size to

prey upon. The Dragon-Flies found in the same deposits with the

Pterodactylus were certainly not a game requiring so powerful a battery

of attack.

The Fishes of the Jurassic sea were exceedingly numerous, but were all

of the Ganoid and Selachian tribes. It would weary the reader, were I to

introduce here any detailed description of them, but they were as

numerous and varied as those living in our present waters. There was the

Hybodus, with the marked furrows on the spines and the strong hooks

along their margin,--the huge Chimera, with its long whip, its curved

bone over the back, and its parrot-like bill,--the Lepidotus, with its

large square scales, its large head, its numerous rows of teeth, one

within another, forming a powerful grinding apparatus,--the Microdon,

with its round, flat body, its jaw paved with small grinding teeth,--the

swift Aspidorhynchus, with its long, slender body and massive tail,

enabling it to strike the water powerfully and dart forward with great

rapidity. There were also a host of small Fishes, comparing with those

above mentioned as our Perch, Herring, Smelts, etc., compare with our

larger Fishes; but, whatever their size or form, all the Fishes of those

days had the same hard scales fitting to each other by hooks, instead of

the thin membranous scales overlapping each other at the edge, like the

common Fishes of more modern times. The smaller Fishes, no doubt,

afforded food to the larger ones, and to the aquatic Reptiles. Indeed,

in parts of the intestines of the Ichthyosauri, and in their petrified

excrements, have been found the scales and teeth of these smaller Fishes

perfectly preserved. It is amazing that we can learn so much of the

habits of life of these past creatures, and know even what was the food

of animals existing countless ages before man was created.

There are traces of Mammalia in the Jurassic deposits, but they were of

those inferior kinds known now as Marsupials, and no complete specimens

have yet been found.

The Articulates were largely represented in this epoch. There were

already in the vegetation a number of Gymnosperms, affording more

favorable nourishment for Insects than the forests of earlier times; and

we accordingly find that class in larger numbers than ever before,

though still meagre in comparison with its present representation.

Crustacea were numerous,--those of the Shrimp and Lobster kinds

prevailing, though in some of the Lobsters we have the first advance

towards the highest class of Crustacea in the expansion of the

transverse diameter now so characteristic of the Crabs. Among Mollusks

we have a host of gigantic Ammonites; and the naked Cephalopods, which

were in later times to become the prominent representatives of that

class, already begin to make their appearance. Among Radiates, some of

the higher kinds of Echinoderms, the Ophiurans and Echinolds, take the

place of the Crinoids, and the Acalephian Corals give way to the Astræan

and Meandrina-like types, resembling the Reef-Builders of the present

time.

* * * * *

I have spoken especially of the inhabitants of the Jurassic sea lying

between England and France, because it was there that were first found

the remains of some of the most remarkable and largest Jurassic animals.

But wherever these deposits have been investigated, the remains

contained in them reveal the same organic character, though, of course,

we find the land Reptiles only where there happen to have been marshes,

the aquatic Saurians wherever large estuaries or bays gave them an

opportunity of coming in near shore, so that their bones were preserved

in the accumulations of mud or clay constantly collecting in such

localities,--the Crustacea, Shells, or Sea-Urchins on the old

sea-beaches, the Corals in the neighborhood of coral reefs, and so on.

In short, the distribution of animals then as now was in accordance with

their nature and habits, and we shall seek vainly for them in the

localities where they did not belong.

But when I say that the character of the Jurassic animals is the same, I

mean, that, wherever a Jurassic sea-shore occurs, be it in France,

Germany, England, or elsewhere throughout the world, the Shells,

Crustacea, or other animals found upon it have a special character, and

are not to be confounded by any one thoroughly acquainted with these

fossils with the Shells or Crustacea of any preceding or subsequent

time,--that, where a Jurassic marsh exists, the land Reptiles inhabiting

it are Jurassic, and neither Triassic nor Cretaceous,--that a Jurassic

coral reef is built of Corals belonging as distinctly to the Jurassic

creation as the Corals on the Florida reefs belong to the present

creation,--that, where some Jurassic bay or inlet is disclosed to us

with the Fishes anciently inhabiting it, they are as characteristic of

their time as are the Fishes of Massachusetts Bay now.

And not only so, but, while this unity of creation prevails throughout

the entire epoch as a whole, there is the same variety of geographical

distribution, the same circumscription of faunæ within distinct

zoölogical provinces, as at the present time. The Fishes of

Massachusetts Bay are not the same as those of Chesapeake Bay, nor those

of Chesapeake Bay the same as those of Pamlico Sound, nor those of

Pamlico Sound the same as those of the Florida coast. This division of

the surface of the earth into given areas within which certain

combinations of animals and plants are confined is not peculiar to the

present creation, but has prevailed in all times, though with

ever-increasing diversity, as the surface of the earth itself assumed a

greater variety of climatic conditions. D'Orbigny and others were

mistaken in assuming that faunal differences have been introduced only

in the last geological epochs. Besides these adjoining zoölogical faunæ,

each epoch is divided, as we have seen, into a number of periods,

occupying successive levels one above another, and differing

specifically from each other in time as zoölogical provinces differ from

each other in space. In short, every epoch is to be looked upon from two

points of view: as a unit, complete in itself, having one character

throughout, and as a stage in the progressive history of the world,

forming part of an organic whole.

* * * * *

As the Jurassic epoch was ushered in by the upheaval of the Jura, so its

close was marked by the upheaval of that system of mountains called the

Côte d'Or. With this latter upheaval began the Cretaceous epoch, which

we will examine with special reference to its subdivision into periods,

since the periods in this epoch have been clearly distinguished, and

investigated with especial care. I have alluded in the preceding article

to the immediate contact of the Jurassic and Cretaceous epochs in

Switzerland, affording peculiar facilities for the direct comparison of

their organic remains. But the Cretaceous deposits are well known, not

only in this inland sea of ancient Switzerland, but in a number of

European basins, in France, in the Pyrenees, on the Mediterranean

shores, and also in Syria, Egypt, India, and Southern Africa, as well as

on our own continent. In all these localities, the Cretaceous remains,

like those of the Jurassic epoch, have one organic character, distinct

and unique. This fact is especially significant, because the contact of

their respective deposits is in many localities so immediate and

continuous that it affords an admirable test for the development-theory.

If this is the true mode of origin of animals, those of the later

Jurassic beds must be the progenitors of those of the earlier Cretaceous

deposits. Let us see now how far this agrees with our knowledge of the

physiological laws of development.

Take first the class of Fishes. We have seen that in the Jurassic

periods there were none of our common Fishes, none corresponding to our

Herring, Pickerel, Mackerel, and the like,--no Fishes, in short, with

thin membranous scales, but that the class was represented exclusively

by those with hard, flint-like scales. In the Cretaceous epoch, however,

we come suddenly upon a horde of Fishes corresponding to our smaller

common Fishes of the Pickerel and Herring tribes, but principally of the

kinds found now in tropical waters; there are none like our Cods,

Haddocks, etc., such as are found at present in the colder seas. The

Fishes of the Jurassic epoch corresponding to our Sharks and Skates and

Gar-Pikes still exist, but in much smaller proportion, while these more

modern kinds are very numerous. Indeed, a classification of the

Cretaceous Fishes would correspond very nearly to one founded on those

now living. Shall we, then, suppose that the large reptilian Fishes of

the Jurassic time began suddenly to lay numerous broods of these

smaller, more modern, scaly Fishes? And shall we account for the

diminution of the previous forms by supposing that in order to give a

fair chance to the new kinds they brought them forth in large numbers,

while they reproduced their own kind less abundantly? According to very

careful estimates, if we accept this view, the progeny of the Jurassic

Fishes must have borne a proportion of about ninety per cent, of

entirely new types to some ten per cent, of those resembling the

parents. One would like a fact or two on which to rest so very

extraordinary a reversal of all known physiological laws of

reproduction, but, unhappily, there is not one.

Still more unaccountable, upon any theory of development according to

ordinary laws of reproduction, are those unique, isolated types limited

to a single epoch, or sometimes even to a single period. There are some

very remarkable instances of this in the Cretaceous deposits. To make my

statement clearer, I will say a word of the sequence of these deposits

and their division into periods.

These Cretaceous beds were at first divided only into three sets, called

the Neocomian, or lower deposits, the Green-Sands, or middle deposits,

and the Chalk, or upper deposits. The Neocomian, the lower division, was

afterwards subdivided into three sets of beds, called the Lower, Middle,

and Upper Neocomian by some geologists, the Valengian, Neocomian, and

Urgonian by others. These three periods are not only traced in immediate

succession, one above another, in the transverse cut before described,

across the mountain of Chaumont, near Neufchatel, but they are also

traced almost on one level along the plain at the foot of the Jura. It

is evident that by some disturbance of the surface the eastern end of

the range was raised slightly, lifting the lower or Valengian deposits

out of the water, so that they remain uncovered, and the next set of

deposits, the Neocomian, is accumulated along their base, while these in

their turn are slightly raised, and the Urgonian beds are accumulated

against them a little lower down. They follow each other from east to

west in a narrower area, just as the Azoic, Silurian, and Devonian

deposits follow each other from north to south in the northern part of

the United States. The Cretaceous deposits have been intimately studied

in various localities by different geologists, and are now subdivided

into at least ten, or it may be fifteen or sixteen distinct periods, as

they stand at present. This is, however, but the beginning of the work;

and the recent investigations of the French geologist, Coquand, indicate

that several of these periods at least are susceptible of further

subdivision. I present here a table enumerating the periods of the

Cretaceous epoch best known at present, in their sequence, because I

want to show how sharply and in how arbitrary a manner, if I may so

express it, new forms are introduced. The names are simply derived from

the localities, or from some circumstances connected with the locality

where each period has been studied.

_Table of Periods in the Cretaceous Epoch._

Maestrichtian } Chalk.

Senonian }

Turonian } Chalk Marl.

Cenomanian }

Albian }

Aptian } Green Sands.

Rhodanian }

Urgonian }

Neocomian } Wealden.

Valengian }

One of the most peculiar and distinct of those unique types alluded to

above is that of the Rudistes, a singular Bivalve, in which the lower

valve is very deep and conical, while the upper valve sets into to it as

into a cup. The subjoined woodcut represents such a Bivalve. These

Rudistes are found suddenly in the Urgonian deposits; there are none in

the two preceding sets of beds; they disappear in the three following

periods, and reappear again in great numbers in the Cenomanian,

Turonian, and Senonian periods, and disappear again in the succeeding

one. These can hardly be missed from any negligence or oversight in the

examination of these deposits, for they are by no means rare. They are

found always in great numbers, occupying crowded beds, like Oysters in

the present time. So numerous are they, where they occur at all, that

the deposits containing them are called by many naturalists the first,

second, third, and fourth _bank_ of Rudistes. Which of the ordinary

Bivalves, then, gave rise to this very remarkable form in the class,

allowed it to die out, and revived it again at various intervals? This

is by no means the only instance of the same kind. There are a number of

types making their appearance suddenly, lasting during one period or

during a succession of periods, and then disappearing forever, while

others, like the Rudistes, come in, vanish, and reappear at a later

time.

[Illustration: Rudistes.]

I am well aware that the advocates of the development-theory do not

state their views as I have here presented them. On the contrary, they

protest against any idea of sudden, violent, abrupt changes, and

maintain that by slow and imperceptible modifications during immense

periods of time these new types have been introduced without involving

any infringement of the ordinary processes of development; and they

account for the entire absence of corroborative facts in the past

history of animals by what they call the "imperfection of the geological

record." Now, while I admit that our knowledge of geology is still very

incomplete, I assert that just where the direct sequence of geological

deposits is needed for this evidence, we have it. The Jurassic beds,

without a single modern scaly Fish, are in immediate contact with the

Cretaceous beds, in which the Fishes of that kind are proportionately

almost as numerous as they are now; and between these two sets of

deposits there is not a trace of any transition or intermediate form to

unite the reptilian Fishes of the Jurassic with the common Fishes of the

Cretaceous times. Again, the Cretaceous beds in which the crowded banks

of Rudistes, so singular and unique in form, first make their

appearance, follow immediately upon those in which all the Bivalves are

of an entirely different character. In short, the deposits of this year

along any sea-coast or at the mouth of any of our rivers do not follow

more directly upon those of last year than do these successive sets of

beds of past ages follow upon each other. In making these statements, I

do not forget the immense length of the geological periods; on the

contrary, I fully accede to it, and believe that it is more likely to

have been underrated than overstated. But let it be increased a

thousand-fold, the fact remains, that these new types occur commonly at

the dividing line where one period joins the next, just on the margin of

both.

For years I have collected daily among some of these deposits, and I

know the Sea-Urchins, Corals, Fishes, Crustacea, and Shells of those old

shores as well as I know those of Nahant Beach, and there is nothing

more striking to a naturalist than the sudden, abrupt changes of species

in passing from one to another. In the second set of Cretaceous beds,

the Neocomian, there is found a little Terebratula (a small Bivalve

Shell) in immense quantities: they may actually be collected by the

bushel. Pass to the Urgonian beds, resting directly upon the Neocomian,

and there is not one to be found, and an entirely new species comes in.

There is a peculiar Spatangus (Sea-Urchin) found throughout the whole

series of beds in which this Terebratula occurs. At the same moment that

you miss the Shell, the Sea-Urchin disappears also, and another takes

its place. Now, admitting for a moment that the later can have grown out

of the earlier forms, I maintain, that, if this be so, the change is

immediate, sudden, without any gradual transitions, and is, therefore,

wholly inconsistent with all our known physiological laws, as well as

with the transmutation-theory.

There is a very singular group of Ammonites in the Cretaceous epoch,

which, were it not for the suddenness of its appearance, might seem

rather to favor the development-theory, from its great variety of

closely allied forms. We have traced the Chambered Shells from the

straight, simple ones of the earliest epochs up to the intricate and

closely coiled forms of the Jurassic epoch. In the so-called Portland

stone, belonging to the upper set of Jurassic beds, there is only one

type of Ammonite; but in the Cretaceous beds, immediately above it,

there set in a number of different genera and distinct species,

including the most fantastic and seemingly abnormal forms. It is as if

the close coil by which these shells had been characterized during the

Middle Age had been suddenly broken up and decomposed into an endless

variety of outlines. Some of these new types still retain the coil, but

the whorls are much less compact than before, as in the Crioceras; in

others, the direction of the coil is so changed as to make a spiral, as

in the Turrilites; or the shell starts with a coil, then proceeds in a

straight line, and changes to a curve again at the other extremity, as

in the Ancyloceras, or in the Scaphites, in which the first coil is

somewhat closer than in the Ancyloceras; or the tendency to a coil is

reduced to a single curve, so as to give the shell the outline of a

horn, as in the Toxoceras; or the coil is entirely lost, and the shell

reduced to its primitive straight form, as in the Baculites, which,

except for their undulating partitions, might be mistaken for the

Orthoceratites of the Silurian and Devonian epochs. I have presented

here but a few species of these extraordinary Cretaceous Ammonites, and,

strange to say, with this breaking-up of the type into a number of

fantastic and often contorted shapes, it disappears. It is singular that

forms so unusual and so contrary to the previous regularity of this

group should accompany its last stage of existence, and seem to shadow

forth by their strange contortions the final dissolution of their type.

When I look upon a collection of these old shells, I can never divest

myself of an impression that the contortions of a death-struggle have

been made the pattern of living types, and with that the whole group has

ended.

[Illustration: Crioceras.]

[Illustration: Turrilites.]

[Illustration: Ancyloceras.]

[Illustration: Scaphites.]

[Illustration: Toxoceras.]

[Illustration: Baculites.]

Now shall we infer that the compact, closely coiled Ammonites of the

Jurassic deposits, while continuing their own kind, brought forth a

variety of other kinds, and so distributed these new organic elements as

to produce a large number of distinct genera and species? I confess that

these ideas are so contrary to all I have learned from Nature in the

course of a long life that I should be forced to renounce completely the

results of my studies in Embryology and Palæontology before I could

adopt these new views of the origin of species. And while the

distinguished originator of this theory is entitled to our highest

respect for his scientific researches, yet it should not be forgotten

that the most conclusive evidence brought forward by him and his

adherents is of a negative character, drawn from a science in which they

do not pretend to have made personal investigations, that of Geology,

while the proofs they offer us from their own departments of science,

those of Zoölogy and Botany, are derived from observations, still very

incomplete, upon domesticated animals and cultivated plants, which can

never be made a test of the origin of wild species.[11]

[Footnote 11: The advocates of the development-theory allude to the

metamorphosis of animals and plants as supporting their view of a change

of one species into another. They compare the passage of a common leaf

into the calyx or crown-leaves in plants, or that of a larva into a

perfect insect, to the passage of one species into another. The only

objection to this argument seems to be, that, whereas Nature daily

presents us myriads of examples of the one set of phenomena, showing it

to be a norm, not a single instance of the other has ever been known to

occur either in the animal or in the vegetable kingdom.]

In my next article I shall show the relation between the Cretaceous and

Tertiary epochs, and see whether there is any reason to believe that the

gigantic Mammalia of more modern times were derived from the Reptiles of

the Secondary age.

* * * * *

THE WHITE-THROATED SPARROW.

Hark! 't is our Northern Nightingale that sings

In far-off, leafy cloisters, dark and cool,

Flinging his flute-notes bounding from the skies!

Thou wild musician of the mountain-streams,

Most tuneful minstrel of the forest-choirs,

Bird of all grace and harmony of soul,

Unseen, we hail thee for thy blissful voice!

Up in yon tremulous mist where morning wakes

Illimitable shadows from their dark abodes,

Or in this woodland glade tumultuous grown

With all the murmurous language of the trees,

No blither presence fills the vocal space.

The wandering rivulets dancing through the grass,

The gambols, low or loud, of insect-life,

The cheerful call of cattle in the vales,

Sweet natural sounds of the contented hours,--

All seem less jubilant when thy song begins.

Deep in the shade we lie and listen long;

For human converse well may pause, and man

Learn from such notes fresh hints of praise,

That upward swelling from thy grateful tribe

Circles the hills with melodies of joy.

* * * * *

THE FLEUR-DE-LIS IN FLORIDA.

[In the July number of this magazine is a sketch of the attempt

of the Huguenots, under the auspices of Coligny, to found a

colony at Port Royal. Two years later, an attempt was made to

establish a Protestant community on the banks of the River St.

John's, in Florida. The following paper embodies the substance

of the letters and narratives of the actors in this striking

episode of American history.]

CHAPTER I.

On the 25th of June, 1564, a French squadron anchored a second time off

the mouth of the River of May. There were three vessels, the smallest of

sixty tons, the largest of one hundred and twenty, all crowded with men.

René de Laudonnière held command. He was of a noble race of Poitou,

attached to the House of Châtillon, of which Coligny was the head;

pious, we are told, and an excellent marine officer. An engraving,

purporting to be his likeness, shows us a slender figure, leaning

against the mast, booted to the thigh, with slouched hat and plume,

slashed doublet, and short cloak. His thin oval face, with curled

moustache and close-trimmed beard, wears a thoughtful and somewhat

pensive look, as if already shadowed by the destiny that awaited him.

The intervening year since Ribaut's voyage had been a dark and deadly

year for France. From the peaceful solitude of the River of May, that

voyager returned to a land reeking with slaughter. But the carnival of

bigotry and hate had found a respite. The Peace of Amboise had been

signed. The fierce monk choked down his venom; the soldier sheathed his

sword; the assassin, his dagger; rival chiefs grasped hands, and masked

their rancor under hollow smiles. The king and the queen-mother,

helpless amid the storm of factions which threatened their destruction,

smiled now on Condé, now on Guise,--gave ear to the Cardinal of

Lorraine, or listened in secret to the emissaries of Theodore Beza.

Coligny was again strong at Court. He used his opportunity, and

solicited with success the means of renewing his enterprise of

colonization. With pains and zeal, men were mustered for the work. In

name, at least, they were all Huguenots; yet again, as before, the

staple of the projected colony was unsound: soldiers, paid out of the

royal treasury, hired artisans and tradesmen, joined with a swarm of

volunteers from the young Huguenot noblesse, whose restless swords had

rusted in their scabbards since the peace. The foundation-stone was left

out. There were no tillers of the soil. Such, indeed, were rare among

the Huguenots; for the dull peasants who guided the plough clung with

blind tenacity to the ancient faith. Adventurous gentlemen, reckless

soldiers, discontented tradesmen, all keen for novelty and heated with

dreams of wealth,--these were they who would build for their country and

their religion an empire beyond the sea.

With a few officers and twelve soldiers, Laudonnière landed where Ribaut

had landed before him; and as their boat neared the shore, they saw an

Indian chief who ran to meet them, whooping and clamoring welcome from

afar. It was Satouriona, the savage potentate who ruled some thirty

villages around the lower St. John's and northward along the coast. With

him came two stalwart sons, and behind trooped a host of tribesmen

arrayed in smoke-tanned deerskins stained with wild devices in gaudy

colors. They crowded around the voyagers with beaming visages and yelps

of gratulation. The royal Satouriona could not contain the exuberance of

his joy, since in the person of the French commander he recognized the

brother of the Sun, descended from the skies to aid him against his

great rival, Outina.

Hard by stood the column of stone, graven with the fleur-de-lis,

planted here on the former voyage. The Indians had crowned the mystic

emblem with evergreens, and placed offerings of maize on the ground

before it; for with an affectionate and reverent wonder they had ever

remembered the steel-clad strangers whom, two summers before, John

Ribaut had led to their shores.

Five miles up the St. John's, or River of May, there stands, on the

southern bank, a hill some forty feet high, boldly thrusting itself into

the broad and lazy waters. It is now called St. John's Bluff. Thither

the Frenchmen repaired, pushed through the dense semi-tropical forest,

and climbed the steep acclivity. Thence they surveyed their Canaan.

Beneath them moved the unruffled river, gliding around the reed-grown

shores of marshy islands, the haunt of alligators, and betwixt the

bordering expanse of wide, wet meadows, studded with island-like clumps

of pine and palmetto, and bounded by the sunny verge of distant forests.

Far on their right, seen by glimpses between the shaggy cedar-boughs,

the glistening sea lay stretched along the horizon. Before, in hazy

distance, the softened green of the woodlands was veined with the mazes

of the countless interlacing streams that drain the watery region behind

St. Mary's and Fernandina. To the left, the St. John's flowed gleaming

betwixt verdant shores beyond whose portals lay the El Dorado of their

dreams. "Briefly," writes Laudonnière, "the place is so pleasant that

those which are melancholicke would be inforced to change their humour."

A fresh surprise awaited them. The allotted span of mortal life was

quadrupled in that benign climate. Laudonnière's lieutenant, Ottigny,

ranging the neighboring forest with a party of soldiers, met a troop of

Indians who invited him to their dwellings. Mounted on the back of a

stout savage, who plunged with him through the deep marshes, and guided

him by devious pathways through the tangled thickets, he arrived at

length, and beheld a wondrous spectacle. In the lodge sat a venerable

chief, who assured him that he was the father of five successive

generations, and that he had lived two hundred and fifty years.

Opposite, sat a still more ancient veteran, the father of the first,

shrunken to a mere anatomy, and "seeming to be rather a dead carkeis

than a living body." "Also," pursues the history, "his age was so great

that the good man had lost his sight, and could not speak one onely word

but with exceeding great paine." Despite his dismal condition, the

visitor was told that he might expect to live in the course of Nature

thirty or forty years more. As the two patriarchs sat face to face, half

hidden with their streaming white hair, Ottigny and his credulous

soldiers looked from one to the other, lost in wonder and admiration.

Man and Nature alike seemed to mark the borders of the River of May as

the site of the new colony; for here, around the Indian towns, the

harvests of maize, beans, and pumpkins promised abundant food, while the

river opened a ready way to the mines of gold and silver and the stores

of barbaric wealth which glittered before the dreaming vision of the

colonists. Yet, the better to content himself and his men, Laudonnière

weighed anchor, and sailed for a time along the neighboring coasts.

Returning, confirmed in his first impression, he set forth with a party

of officers and soldiers to explore the borders of the chosen stream.

The day was hot. The sun beat fiercely on the woollen caps and heavy

doublets of the men, till at length they gained the shade of one of

those deep forests of pine where the dead and sultry air is thick with

resinous odors, and the earth, carpeted with fallen leaves, gives no

sound beneath the foot. Yet, in the stillness, deer leaped up on all

sides as they moved along. Then they emerged into sunlight. A broad

meadow, a running brook, a lofty wall of encircling forests. The men

called it the Vale of Laudonnière. The afternoon was spent, and the sun

was near its setting, when they reached the bank of the river. They

strewed the ground with boughs and leaves, and, stretched on that

sylvan couch, slept the sleep of travel-worn and weary men.

At daybreak they were roused by sound of trumpet. Men and officers

joined their voices in a psalm, then betook themselves to their task.

Their task was the building of a fort, and this was the chosen spot. It

was a tract of dry ground on the brink of the river, immediately above

St. John's Bluff. On the right was the bluff; on the left, a marsh; in

front, the river; behind, the forest.

Boats came up the stream with laborers, tents, provision, cannon, and

tools. The engineers marked out the work in the form of a triangle; and,

from the noble volunteer to the meanest artisan, all lent a hand to

complete it. On the river side the defences were a palisade of timber.

On the two other sides were a ditch, and a rampart of fascines, earth,

and sods. At each angle was a bastion, in one of which was the magazine.

Within was a spacious parade, and around it various buildings for

lodging and storage. A large house with covered galleries was built on

the side towards the river for Laudonnière and his officers. In honor of

Charles IX the fort was named Fort Caroline.

Meanwhile, Satouriona, "lord of all that country," as the narratives

style him, was seized with misgivings, learning these mighty

preparations. The work was but begun, and all was din and confusion

around the incipient fort, when the startled Frenchmen saw the

neighboring height of St. John's swarming with naked warriors. The

prudent Laudonnière set his men in array, and for a season pick and

spade were dropped for arquebuse and pike. The savage potentate

descended to the camp. The artist Le Moyne, who saw him, drew his

likeness from memory,--a tall, athletic figure, tattooed in token of his

rank, plumed with feathers, hung with strings of beads, and girdled with

tinkling pieces of metal which hung from the belt, his only garment. He

came in regal state, a crowd of warriors around him, and, in advance, a

troop of young Indians armed with spears. Twenty musicians followed,

blowing a hideous discord through pipes of reeds. Arrived, he seated

himself on the ground "like a monkey," as Le Moyne has it in the grave

Latin of his "Brevis Narratio." A council followed, in which broken

words were aided by signs and pantomime. A treaty of alliance was made,

and Laudonnière had the folly to promise the chief that he would lend

him aid against his enemies. Satouriona, well pleased, ordered his

Indians to aid the French at their work. They obeyed with alacrity, and

in two days the buildings of the fort were all thatched after the native

fashion with leaves of the palmetto.

A word touching these savages. In the peninsula of Florida were several

distinct Indian confederacies, with three of which the French were

brought into contact. The first was that of Satouriona. The next was the

potent confederacy of the Thimagoa, under a chief called Outina, whose

forty villages were scattered among the lakes and forests around the

upper waters of this remarkable river. The third was that of "King

Potanou," whose domain lay among the pine-barrens, cypress-swamps, and

fertile hummocks, westward and northwestward of the St. John's. The

three communities were at deadly enmity. Their social state was more

advanced than that of the wandering hunter-tribes of the North. They

were an agricultural people. Around all their villages were fields of

maize, beans, and pumpkins. The harvest, due chiefly to the labor of the

women, was gathered into a public granary, and on this they lived during

three-fourths of the year, dispersing in winter to hunt among the

forests.

Their villages were clusters of huts thatched with palmetto. In the

midst was the dwelling of the chief, much larger than the rest, and

sometimes raised on an artificial mound. They were inclosed with

palisades, and, strange to say, some of them were approached by wide

avenues, artificially graded, and several hundred yards in length.

Remains of them may still be seen, as may also the mounds in which the

Floridians, like the Hurons and various other tribes, collected at

stated intervals the bones of their dead.

The most prominent feature of their religion was sun-worship, and, like

other wild American tribes, they abounded in "medicine-men," who

combined the functions of priest, physician, and necromancer.

Social distinctions were sharply defined among them. Their chiefs, whose

office was hereditary, sometimes exercised a power almost absolute. Each

village had its chief, subordinate to the grand chief of the nation. In

the language of the French narratives, they were all kings or lords,

vassals of the great monarch Satouriona, Outina, or Potanou. All these

tribes are now extinct, and it is difficult to ascertain with precision

their tribal affinities. There can be no doubt that they were the

authors of the mounds and other remains at present found in various

parts of Florida.

Their fort nearly finished, and their league made with Satouriona, the

gold-hunting Huguenots were eager to spy out the secrets of the

interior. To this end the lieutenant, Ottigny, went up the river in a

sail-boat. With him were a few soldiers and two Indians, the latter

going forth, says Laudonnière, as if bound to a wedding, keen for a

fight with the hated Thimagoa, and exulting in the havoc to be wrought

among them by the magic weapons of their white allies. They were doomed

to grievous disappointment.

The Sieur d'Ottigny spread his sail, and calmly glided up the dark

waters of the St. John's. A scene fraught with strange interest to the

naturalist and the lover of Nature. Here, two centuries later, the

Bartrams, father and son, guided their skiff and kindled their nightly

bivouac-fire; and here, too, roamed Audubon, with his sketch-book and

his gun. Each alike has left the record of his wanderings, fresh as the

woods and waters that inspired it. Slight, then, was the change since

Ottigny, first of white men, steered his bark along the still breast of

the virgin river. Before him, like a lake, the redundant waters spread

far and wide; and along the low shores, or jutting points, or the

waveless margin of deep and sheltered coves, towered wild, majestic

forms of vegetable beauty. Here rose the magnolia, high above

surrounding woods; but the gorgeous bloom had fallen, that a few weeks

earlier studded the verdant dome with silver. From the edge of the

bordering swamp the cypress reared its vast buttressed column and leafy

canopy. From the rugged arms of oak and pine streamed the gray drapery

of the long Spanish moss, swayed mournfully in the faintest breeze. Here

were the tropical plumage of the palm, the dark green masses of the

live-oak, the glistening verdure of wild orange-groves; and from out the

shadowy thickets hung the wreaths of the jessamine and the scarlet

trumpets of the bignonia.

Nor less did the fruitful river teem with varied forms of animal life.

From the caverns of leafy shade came the gleam and flicker of

many-colored plumage. The cormorant, the pelican, the heron, floated on

the water, or stalked along its pebbly brink. Among the sedges, the

alligator, foul from his native mud, outstretched his hideous length,

or, sluggish and sullen, drifted past the boat, his grim head level with

the surface, and each scale, each folding of his horny hide, distinctly

visible, as, with the slow movement of distended paws, he balanced

himself in the water. When, at sunset, they drew up their boat on the

strand, and built their camp-fire under the arches of the woods, the

shores resounded with the roaring of these colossal lizards; all night

the forest rang with the whooping of the owls; and in the morning the

sultry mists that wrapped the river were vocal, far and near, with the

clamor of wild turkeys.

Among such scenes, for twenty leagues, the adventurous sail moved on.

Far to the right, beyond the silent waste of pines, lay the realm of

the mighty Potanou. The Thimagoa towns were still above them on the

river, when they saw three canoes of this people at no great distance in

front. Forthwith the two Indians in the boat were fevered with

excitement. With glittering eyes they snatched pike and sword, and

prepared for fight; but the sage Ottigny, bearing slowly down on the

strangers, gave them time to run their craft ashore and escape to the

woods. Then, landing, he approached the canoes, placed in them a few

trinkets, and withdrew to a distance. The fugitives took heart, and,

step by step, returned. An amicable intercourse was opened, with

assurances of friendship on the part of the French, a procedure viewed

by Satouriona's Indians with unspeakable disgust and ire.

The ice thus broken, Ottigny returned to Fort Caroline; and a fortnight

later, an officer named Vasseur sailed up the river to pursue the

adventure: for the French, thinking that the nation of the Thimagoa lay

betwixt them and the gold-mines, would by no means quarrel with them,

and Laudonnière repented him already of his rash pledge to Satouriona.

As Vasseur moved on, two Indians hailed him from the shore, inviting him

to their dwellings. He accepted their guidance, and presently saw before

him the cornfields and palisades of an Indian town. Led through the

wondering crowd to the lodge of the chief, Mollua, Vasseur and his

followers were seated in the place of honor and plentifully regaled with

fish and bread. The repast over, Mollua began his discourse. He told

them that he was one of the forty vassal chiefs of the great Outina,

lord of all the Thimagoa, whose warriors wore armor of gold and silver

plate. He told them, too, of Potanou, his enemy, a mighty and redoubted

prince; and of the two kings of the distant Appalachian Mountains, rich

beyond utterance in gems and gold. While thus, with earnest pantomime

and broken words, the chief discoursed with his guests, Vasseur, intent

and eager, strove to follow his meaning; and no sooner did he hear of

these Appalachian treasures than he promised to join Outina in war

against the two potentates of the mountains. Hereupon the sagacious

Mollua, well pleased, promised that each of Outina's vassal chiefs

should requite their French allies with a heap of gold and silver two

feet high. Thus, while Laudonnière stood pledged to Satouriona, Vasseur

made alliance with his mortal enemy.

Returning, he was met, near the fort, by one of Satouriona's chiefs, who

questioned him touching his dealings with the Thimagoa. Vasseur replied,

that he had set upon and routed them with incredible slaughter. But as

the chief, seeming as yet unsatisfied, continued his inquiries, the

sergeant, Francis la Caille, drew his sword, and, like Falstaff before

him, re-enacted his deeds of valor, pursuing and thrusting at the

imaginary Thimagoa as they fled before his fury. Whereat the chief, at

length convinced, led the party to his lodge, and entertained them with

a certain savory decoction with which the Indians were wont to regale

those whom they delighted to honor.

Elate at the promise of a French alliance, Satouriona had summoned his

vassal chiefs to war. From the St. Mary's and the Satilla and the

distant Altamaha, from every quarter of his woodland realm, they had

mustered at his call. By the margin of the St. John's, the forest was

alive with their bivouacs. Ten chiefs were here, and some five hundred

men. And now, when all was ready, Satouriona reminded Laudonnière of his

promise, and claimed its fulfilment; but the latter gave evasive answers

and a virtual refusal. Stifling his rage, the chief prepared to go

without him.

Near the bank of the river, a fire was kindled, and two large vessels of

water placed beside it. Here Satouriona took his stand. His chiefs

crouched on the grass around him, and the savage visages of his five

hundred warriors filled the outer circle, their long hair garnished with

feathers, or covered with the heads and skins of wolves, panthers,

bears, or eagles. Satouriona, looking towards the country of his enemy,

distorted his features to a wild expression of rage and hate; then

muttered to himself; then howled an invocation to his god, the sun; then

besprinkled the assembly with water from one of the vessels, and,

turning the other upon the fire, suddenly quenched it. "So," he cried,

"may the blood of our enemies be poured out, and their lives

extinguished!" and the concourse gave forth an explosion of responsive

yells, till the shores resounded with the wolfish din.

The rites over, they set forth, and in a few days returned exulting with

thirteen prisoners and a number of scalps. The latter were hung on a

pole before the royal lodge, and when night came, it brought with it a

pandemonium of dancing and whooping, drumming and feasting.

A notable scheme entered the brain of Laudonnière. Resolved, cost what

it might, to make a friend of Outina, he conceived it a stroke of policy

to send back to him two of the prisoners. In the morning he sent a

soldier to Satouriona to demand them. The astonished chief gave a flat

refusal, adding that he owed the French no favors, for they had

shamefully broken faith with him. On this, Laudonnière, at the head of

twenty soldiers, proceeded to the Indian town, placed a guard at the

opening of the great lodge, entered with his arquebusiers, and seated

himself without ceremony in the highest place. Here, to show his

displeasure, he remained in silence for a half-hour. At length he spoke,

renewing his demand. For some moments Satouriona made no reply, then

coldly observed that the sight of so many armed men had frightened the

prisoners away. Laudonnière grew peremptory, when the chiefs son,

Athore, went out, and presently returned with the two Indians, whom the

French led back to Fort Caroline.

Satouriona dissembled, professed good-will, and sent presents to the

fort; but the outrage rankled in his savage breast, and he never forgave

it.

Captain Vasseur, with Arlac, the ensign, a sergeant, and ten soldiers,

embarked to bear the ill-gotten gift to Outina. Arrived, they were

showered with thanks by that grateful potentate, who, hastening to avail

himself of his new alliance, invited them to join in a raid against his

neighbor, Potanou. To this end, Arlac and five soldiers remained, while

Vasseur with the rest descended to Fort Caroline.

The warriors were mustered, the dances were danced, and the songs were

sung. Then the wild cohort took up its march. The wilderness through

which they passed holds its distinctive features to this day,--the shady

desert of the pine-barrens, where many a wanderer has miserably died,

with haggard eye seeking in vain for clue or guidance in the pitiless,

inexorable monotony. Yet the waste has its oases, the "hummocks," where

the live-oaks are hung with long festoons of grape-vines,--where the air

is sweet with woodland odors, and vocal with the song of birds. Then the

deep cypress-swamp, where dark trunks rise like the columns of some vast

sepulchre. Above, the impervious canopy of leaves; beneath, a black and

root-encumbered slough. Perpetual moisture trickles down the clammy

bark, while trunk and limb, distorted with strange shapes of vegetable

disease, wear in the gloom a semblance grotesque and startling. Lifeless

forms lean propped in wild disorder against the living, and from every

rugged stem and lank limb outstretched hangs the dark drapery of the

Spanish moss. The swamp is veiled in mourning. No breath, no voice. A

deathly stillness, till the plunge of the alligator, lashing the waters

of the black lagoon, resounds with hollow echo through the tomb-like

solitude.

Next, the broad sunlight and the wide savanna. Wading breast-deep in

grass, they view the wavy sea of verdure, with headland and cape and

far-reaching promontory, with distant coasts, hazy and dim, havens and

shadowed coves, islands of the magnolia and the palm, high, impending

shores of the mulberry and the elm, the ash, hickory, and maple. Here

the rich _gordonia_, never out of bloom, sends down its thirsty roots to

drink at the stealing brook. Here the _halesia_ hangs out its silvery

bells, the purple clusters of the _wistaria_ droop from the supporting

bough, and the coral blossoms of the _erythryna_ glow in the shade

beneath. From tufted masses of sword-like leaves shoot up the tall

spires of the _yucca_, heavy with pendent flowers, of pallid hue, like

the moon, and from the grass gleams the blue eye of the starry _ixia_.

Through forest, swamp, savanna, the valiant Frenchmen held their way. At

first, Outina's Indians kept always in advance; but when they reached

the hostile district, the modest warriors fell to the rear, resigning

the post of honor to their French allies.

An open country; a rude cultivation; the tall palisades of an Indian

town. Their approach was seen, and the warriors of Potanou, nowise

daunted, came swarming forth to meet them. But the sight of the bearded

strangers, the flash and report of the fire-arms, the fall of their

foremost chief, shot through the brain with the bullet of Arlac, filled

them with consternation, and they fled headlong within their defences.

The men of Thimagoa ran screeching in pursuit. Pell-mell, all entered

the town together. Slaughter; pillage; flame. The work was done, and the

band returned triumphant.