The line was worked in this manner more than two hours, when, the

aurora having subsided, the batteries were resumed. While this

remarkable phenomenon was taking place upon the wires between Boston

and Portland, the operator at South Braintree informed me that he was

working the wire between that station and Fall River--a distance of

about forty miles--with the current from the aurora alone. He continued

to do so for some time, the line working comparatively well. Since then

I have visited Fall River, and have the following account from the

intelligent operator in the railroad office at that place. The office

at the station is about half a mile from the regular office in the

village. The battery is kept at the latter place, but the operator at

the station is provided with a switch by which he can throw the battery

off the line and put the wire in connection with the earth at pleasure.

The battery at the other terminus of the line is at Boston; but the

operator at South Braintree is furnished with a similar switch, which

enables him to dispense with its use at pleasure. There are no

intermediate batteries; consequently, if the Fall River operator put

his end of the wire in connection with the earth, and the South

Braintree operator do the same, the line is without battery, and of

course without an electrical current. Such was the state of the line on

the 2d of September last, when for more than an hour they held

communication over the wire with the aid of the celestial batteries

alone.

This seems almost too wonderful for belief, and yet the proof is

incontestable. However, the fact being established that the currents

from the aurora borealis do have a direct effect upon the

telegraph-wires, and that the currents are of both kinds, positive and

negative,--as I have shown in my remarks upon the aurora of 1852, which

sometimes left a dark line upon the prepared paper, and at other times

bleached it,--it is a natural consequence that the wires should work

better without batteries than with them, whenever a current from the

aurora has sufficient intensity to neutralize the current from the

batteries.

I will try to make myself clear upon this point. It makes no

difference, in working the Morse, or any other system of _magnetic_

telegraph, whether we have the positive or the negative pole to the

line; but, whichever way we point, the same direction must be continued

with all additional batteries we put upon the line. Now if we put a

battery upon the line at Boston, of, say, twenty-five cells, and point

the positive pole eastward, and the same number of cells at Portland,

pointing the positive pole westward, the current will be null, that is

to say, each will neutralize the other. Now the aurora, in presenting

its positive pole, we will say, increases the current upon the line

beyond the power of the magnet-keeper-spring to control it, and thus

prevents the line from working, by surfeiting it with the electric

current; until, presently, the wave recedes and is followed by a

negative current which neutralizes the battery current, and prevents

the line from working for want of power. It is plain, therefore, that,

if the batteries be taken off, the positive current of the aurora

cannot increase nor the negative decrease the working state of the line

to the same extent as when the batteries are connected; but that,

whichever pole is presented, the magnetism can be made use of by the

operator for the ordinary duties of the line.

At Springfield, a gentleman who observed the needle of the compass,

during the auroral display of August 28th, noticed that it was

deflected first to the west, and then to the east, while the waves of

the aurora were in motion. The electrotype plates at the office of the

"Republican" at that place were so seriously affected by the aurora,

that they could not be printed from during the continuance of the

phenomenon.

The aurora borealis of August 28th was surpassingly brilliant not only

in the northern portion of this continent, but also as far south as the

equator,--as well as in Cuba, Jamaica, California, and the greater

portion of Europe. The London newspapers of the 29th contain glowing

descriptions of it. A California journal says:--"During the last ten

years the aurora borealis was never seen in California except on very

rare occasions, and then the light was very faint or barely visible;

but on the 28th ult., it appeared in wonderful splendor,--the whole

northern part of the sky being of a bright crimson; and the same

phenomenon, with equal magnificence, was repeated on the night of the

first instant."

In Jamaica the aurora borealis was witnessed for the first time,

perhaps, since the discovery of this island by Columbus. So rare is the

phenomenon in those latitudes, that it was taken for the glare of a

fire, and was associated with the recent riots.

Mr. E.B. Elliot of Boston, in an interesting article upon the recent

aurora, points out the simultaneous occurrence of the auroral display

of February 19th, 1852, with the eruption of Mauna Loa,--the largest

volcano in the world, situated on Hawaii, (one of the Sandwich Island

group,)--on the 20th of February; on which occasion, the side of the

mountain gave way about two-thirds of the distance from the base,

giving passage to a magnificent stream of lava, five hundred feet deep

and seven hundred broad.

Again, on the 17th of December, 1857, between the hours of one and four

in the morning, there occurred an aurora of unwonted magnificence. The

first steamer arriving from Europe after that date brought the

following intelligence, which is taken from one of the journals of the

day:--"An earthquake took place on the night of the 17th, throughout

the whole kingdom of Naples, but its effects were most severe in the

towns of Salerno, Potenza, and Nola. At Salerno, the walls of the

houses were rent from top to bottom. Numerous villages were half

destroyed."

Were these coincidences of extraordinary auroras with extraordinary

commotions in the physical condition of our globe merely accidental? or

are these phenomena due to a common cause? The latter supposition is

not improbable, but the question can be fully settled only by further

observations.

Mr. Meriam, "the sage of Brooklyn," as the daily journals denominate

him, considers the aurora as the result of earthquakes or volcanic

eruptions. He also says:--"The auroral light sometimes is composed of

threads, like the silken warp of a web; these sometimes become broken

and fall to the earth, and possess exquisite softness and a silvery

lustre, and I denominate them the products of the silkery of the skies.

_I once obtained a small piece, which I preserved._"

It is due to Mr. Meriam, as well as to the scientific world, to say,

that he stands alone in his convictions with regard to the aurora, both

in respect of the cause and the effect of the phenomenon.

Having thus illustrated the effects of the aurora, let us now return to

the discussion of its causes.

The intimate and constant connection between the phenomena of the

aurora borealis and terrestrial magnetism led Humboldt to class under

the head of Magnetic Storms all disturbances in the equilibrium of the

earth's magnetic forces. The presence of such storms is indicated by

the oscillations of the magnetized needle, the disturbance of the

currents upon the telegraph-wires, and the appearance of the aurora, of

which these oscillations and disturbances are, as it were, the

forerunners, and which itself puts an end to the storm,--as in electric

storms the phenomenon of lightning announces that, the electrical

equilibrium, temporarily disturbed, is now restored.

The atmosphere is constantly charged with positive

electricity,--electricity furnished by the vapors that rise from the

sea, especially in tropical regions,--and, on the other hand, the earth

is negatively electrized. The recomposition or neutralization of the

two opposite electricities of the atmosphere and of the terrestrial

globe is brought about by means of the moisture with which the lower

strata of the air are more or less charged. But it is especially in the

polar regions, where the eternal ice that reigns there constantly

condenses the aqueous vapors under the form of haze, that this

recomposition must be brought about; the more so, as the positive

vapors are carried thither and accumulated by the tropical current,

which, setting out from the equatorial regions, where it occupies the

most elevated regions of the atmosphere, descends as it advances

towards the higher latitudes, until it comes in contact with the earth

in the neighborhood of the poles. It is there, then, chiefly, that the

equilibrium between the positive electricity of the vapors and the

negative electricity of the earth must be accomplished by means of a

discharge, which, when of sufficient intensity, will be accompanied

with light, if, as is almost always the case near the poles, and

sometimes in the higher parts of the atmosphere, it take place among

those extremely small icy particles which constitute the hazes and the

very elevated clouds.

There can be no doubt that the occurrence of the phenomenon is

materially dependent on the presence in the atmosphere of these

particles of ice, forming a kind of thin haze, which, becoming luminous

by the transmission of electricity, must appear simply as an

illuminated surface of greater or less extent, and more or less cut up.

The phenomenon actually takes place in this manner in the parts of the

atmosphere that are the most distant from the earth. We perceive what

are termed auroral plates of a purple or reddish-violet color, more or

less extended, according as this species of veil, formed by icy

particles, extends to a greater or less distance from the poles. The

tenuity of this veil is such that it admits of our seeing the stars

through the auroral plates. Of its existence, independently of indirect

proofs, we have a direct demonstration in the observation of MM. Bixio

and Baral, who, being raised in a balloon to a great height, found

themselves, on a sudden, although the sky was entirely serene and the

atmosphere cloudless, in the midst of a perfectly transparent veil,

formed by a multitude of little icy needles, so fine that they were

scarcely visible.

If we place the pole of an electro-magnet over the jets of electric

light that are made to converge in extremely rarefied air, we shall see

that the electric light, instead of coming out indifferently from all

points of the upper surface, as had taken place before the

magnetization, comes out from the points of the circumference only of

this surface, so as to form around it a continuous luminous ring. This

ring possesses a movement of rotation around the magnetized cylinder,

sometimes in one direction, sometimes in another, according to the

direction of the discharge and of the magnetization. Finally, some more

brilliant jets seem to come out from this luminous circumference

without being confounded with the rest of the group. Now the magnetic

pole exercises over the luminous haze which we have mentioned as always

present during an aurora precisely the same action which the pole of

the electro-magnet exercises in the experiment just described; and what

takes place on the small scale of the experiment is precisely what

takes place on the large scale of the phenomenon of the aurora

borealis.

The arc of the aurora borealis is a portion of a luminous ring, the

different points of which are sensibly at equal distances from the

earth, and which centres upon the boreal magnetic pole, so as to cut at

right angles all the magnetic meridians that converge towards this

pole. Such a ring, seen by an observer placed at the surface of the

earth, evidently presents to him the known arc of the aurora; and its

_apparent_ summit is always necessarily situated in the magnetic

meridian of the place.

The diameter of the luminous ring is greater in proportion as the

magnetic pole is more distant from the surface of the earth, since this

pole must be situated upon the intersection of the plane of the ring

with the axis of the terrestrial globe; if we could determine

rigorously the position of the aurora borealis, we should then have the

means of knowing exactly that of the pole itself.

Each observer sees the summit of the auroral arc at his magnetic

meridian; it is, therefore, only those who are on the same magnetic

meridian who see the same summit, and who are able by simultaneous

observations to take its height.

If the summit of the arc pass beyond the zenith of the observer, the

latter is surrounded by the matter of the aurora borealis. This matter

is nothing else than aqueous vapors traversed by the discharges, and

which are in general luminous only at a certain height from the ground,

either because the air is there more rarefied, or because they are

themselves congealed, and more capable, consequently, of liberating

their electric light. Then it is, that, from being nearer to the spot

where the phenomenon is taking place, the observer hears the

crepitation, or whizzing, of which we have spoken, especially if he be

in an open country and in a quiet place. But if the arc do not attain

to his zenith, he is situated beyond the region in which the meeting of

the electric currents takes place; he sees only an arc a little more

elevated to the north or the south, according as he is situated in one

hemisphere or the other; and he hears no noise, on account of his too

great distance. The crepitation is the result of the action of a

powerful magnetic pole upon luminous electric jets in its immediate

neighborhood. With regard to the sulphurous odor which some observers

have perceived, it arises, as does that which accompanies the fall of

lightning, from the conversion into ozone of the oxygen of the air, by

the passage of electric discharges.

Gisler says, that on the high mountains of Sweden the traveller is

sometimes suddenly enveloped in a very transparent fog, of a

whitish-gray color inclining a little to green, which rises from the

ground, and is transformed into an aurora borealis. The cirro-cumulus

and the hazes become luminous when they are traversed by sufficiently

energetic discharges of electricity, and when the light of day is no

longer present to overcome their more feeble light. Dr. Usher describes

an aurora borealis seen in the open day, at noon, May 24, 1778.

MM. Cornulier and Verdier are convinced, after carefully studying the

subject, that there are almost always aurorae boreales in the high

polar latitudes, and that their brilliancy alone is variable. This

conviction is in accordance with the very careful observations which

have now been made for four years in the northern hemisphere. It

appears, as the result of these, that the aurora borealis is visible

almost every clear night, but it does not show itself at all the

stations at the same time. From October to March there is scarcely a

night in which it may not be seen; but it is in February that it is

most brilliant. In 1850 it was observed two hundred and sixty-one

nights, and during 1851 two hundred and seven. The proportion of nights

in which the aurora is seen is much greater the nearer we are to the

magnetic pole.

De la Rive, from whose admirable treatise upon Electricity we have

borrowed our general views, and whose theory we have attempted to

illustrate in this paper, concludes that the aurora borealis is a

phenomenon which has its seat in the atmosphere, and consists in the

production of a luminous ring of greater or less diameter, having for

its centre the magnetic pole. Experiment shows, as we have seen, that,

on bringing about in rarefied air the reunion of the two electricities,

near the pole of a powerful artificial magnet, a small luminous ring is

produced, similar to that which constitutes the aurora borealis, and

animated by a similar movement of rotation. The aurora borealis would

be due, consequently, to electric discharges taking place in the polar

regions between the positive electricity of the atmosphere and the

negative electricity of the earth. These electric discharges taking

place constantly, but with intensities varying according to the state

of the atmosphere, the aurora borealis should be a daily phenomenon,

more or less intense, consequently visible at greater or less

distances, but only when the nights are clear,--which is perfectly in

accordance with observation.

The aurora australis presents precisely the same phenomena as the

aurora borealis, and is explained, consequently, in the same manner.

THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.

WHAT HE SAID, WHAT HE HEARD, AND WHAT HE SAW.

A young fellow, born of good stock, in one of the more thoroughly

civilized portions of these United States of America, bred in good

principles, inheriting a social position which makes him at his ease

everywhere, means sufficient to educate him thoroughly without taking

away the stimulus for vigorous exertion, and with a good opening in

some honorable path of labor, is the finest sight our private satellite

has had the opportunity of inspecting on the planet to which she

belongs. In some respects it was better to be a young Greek. If we may

trust the old marbles,--my friend with his arm stretched over my head,

above there, (in plaster of Paris,) or the discobolus, whom one may see

at the principal sculpture gallery of this metropolis,--those Greek

young men were of supreme beauty. Their close curls, their elegantly

set heads, column-like necks, straight noses, short, curled lips, firm

chins, deep chests, light flanks, large muscles, small joints, were

finer than anything we ever see. It may well be questioned whether the

human shape will ever present itself again in a race of such perfect

symmetry. But the life of the youthful Greek was local, not planetary,

like that of the young American. He had a string of legends, in place

of our Gospels. He had no printed books, no newspaper, no steam

caravans, no forks, no soap, none of the thousand cheap conveniences

which have become matters of necessity to our modern civilization.

Above all things, if he aspired to know as well as to enjoy, he found

knowledge not diffused everywhere about him, so that a day's labor

would buy him more wisdom than a year could master, but held in private

hands, hoarded in precious manuscripts, to be sought for only as gold

is sought in narrow fissures and in the bed of brawling streams. Never,

since man came into this atmosphere of oxygen and azote, was there

anything like the condition of the young American of the nineteenth

century. Having in possession or in prospect the best part of half a

world, with all its climates and soils to choose from; equipped with

wings of fire and smoke that fly with him day and night, so that he

counts his journey not in miles, but in degrees, and sees the seasons

change as the wild fowl sees them in his annual flights; with huge

leviathans always ready to take him on their broad backs and push

behind them with their pectoral or caudal fins the waters that seam the

continent or separate the hemispheres; heir of all old civilizations,

founder of that new one which, if all the prophecies of the human heart

are not lies, is to be the noblest, as it is the last; isolated in

space from the races that are governed by dynasties whose divine right

grows out of human wrong, yet knit into the most absolute solidarity

with mankind of all times and places by the one great thought he

inherits as his national birthright; free to form and express his

opinions on almost every subject, and assured that he will soon acquire

the last franchise which men withhold from man,--that of stating the

laws of his spiritual being and the beliefs he accepts without

hindrance except from clearer views of truth,--he seems to want nothing

for a large, wholesome, noble, beneficent life. In fact, the chief

danger is that he will think the whole planet is made for him, and

forget that there are some possibilities left in the _débris_ of the

old-world civilization which deserve a certain respectful consideration

at his hands.

The combing and clipping of this shaggy wild continent are in some

measure done for him by those who have gone before. Society has

subdivided itself enough to have a place for every form of talent.

Thus, if a man show the least sign of ability as a sculptor or a

painter, for instance, he finds the means of education and a demand for

his services. Even a man who knows nothing but science will be provided

for, if he does not think it necessary to hang about his birthplace all

his days,--which is a most un-American weakness. The apron-strings of

an American mother are made of India-rubber. Her boy belongs where he

is wanted; and that young Marylander of ours spoke for all our young

men, when he said that his home was wherever the stars and stripes blew

over his head.

And that leads me to say a few words of this young gentleman, who made

that audacious movement lately which I chronicled in my last

record,--jumping over the seats of I don't know how many boarders to

put himself in the place which the Little Gentleman's absence had left

vacant at the side of Iris. When a young man is found habitually at the

side of any one given young lady,--when he lingers where she stays, and

hastens when she leaves,--when his eyes follow her as she moves, and

rest upon her when she is still,--when he begins to grow a little

timid, he who was so bold, and a little pensive, he who was so gay,

whenever accident finds them alone,--when he thinks very often of the

given young lady, and names her very seldom,----

What do you say about it, my charming young expert in that sweet

science in which, perhaps, a long experience is not the first of

qualifications?

----But we don't know anything about this young man, except that he is

good-looking, and somewhat high-spirited, and strong-limbed, and has a

generous style of nature,--all very promising, but by no means proving

that he is a proper lover for Iris, whose heart we turned inside out

when we opened that sealed book of hers.

Ah, my dear young friend! When your mamma--then, if you will believe

it, a very slight young lady, with very pretty hair and figure--came

and told _her_ mamma that your papa had--had--asked----No, no, no! she

couldn't say it; but her mother--oh, the depth of maternal

sagacity!--guessed it all without another word!--When your mother, I

say, came and told her mother she was _engaged_, and your grandmother

told your grandfather, how much did they know of the intimate nature of

the young gentleman to whom she had pledged her existence? I will not

be so hard as to ask how much your respected mamma knew at that time of

the intimate nature of your respected papa, though, if we should

compare a young girl's _man-as-she-thinks-him_ with a forty-summered

matron's _man-as-she-finds-him_, I have my doubts as to whether the

second would be a fac-simile of the first in most cases.

The idea that in this world each young person is to wait until he or

she finds that precise counterpart who alone of all creation was meant

for him or her, and then fall instantly in love with it, is pretty

enough, only it is not Nature's way. It is not at all essential that

all pairs of human beings should be, as we sometimes say of particular

couples, "born for each other." Sometimes a man or a woman is made a

great deal better and happier in the end for having had to conquer the

faults of the one beloved, and make the fitness not found at first, by

gradual assimilation. There is a class of good women who have no right

to marry perfectly good men, because they have the power of saving

those who would go to ruin but for the guiding providence of a good

wife. I have known many such cases. It is the most momentous question a

woman is ever called upon to decide, whether the faults of the man she

loves are beyond remedy and will drag her down, or whether she is

competent to be his earthly redeemer and lift him to her own level.

A person of _genius_ should marry a person of _character_. Genius does

not herd with genius. The musk-deer and the civet-cat are never found

in company. They don't care for strange scents,--they like plain

animals better than perfumed ones. Nay, if you will have the kindness

to notice, Nature has not gifted my lady musk-deer with the personal

peculiarity by which her lord is so widely known.

Now when genius allies itself with character, the world is very apt to

think character has the best of the bargain. A brilliant woman marries

a plain, manly fellow, with a simple intellectual mechanism; we have

all seen such cases. The world often stares a good deal and wonders.

She should have taken that other, with a far more complex mental

machinery. She might have had a watch with the philosophical

compensation-balance, with the metaphysical index which can split a

second into tenths, with the musical chime which can turn every quarter

of an hour into melody. She has chosen a plain one, that keeps good

time, and that is all.

Let her alone! She knows what she is about. Genius has an infinitely

deeper reverence for character than character can have for genius. To

be sure, genius gets the world's praise, because its work is a tangible

product, to be bought, or had for nothing. It bribes the common voice

to praise it by presents of speeches, poems, statues, pictures, or

whatever it can please with. Character evolves its best products for

home consumption; but, mind you, it takes a deal more to feed a family

for thirty years than to make a holiday feast for our neighbors once or

twice in our lives. You talk of the fire of genius. Many a blessed

woman, who dies unsung and unremembered, has given out more of the real

vital heat that keeps the life in human souls, without a spark flitting

through her humble chimney to tell the world about it, than would set a

dozen theories smoking, or a hundred odes simmering, in the brains of

so many men of genius. It is in _latent caloric_, if I may borrow a

philosophical expression, that many of the noblest hearts give out the

life that warms them. Cornelia's lips grow white, and her pulse hardly

warms her thin fingers,--but she has melted all the ice out of the

hearts of those young Gracchi, and her lost heat is in the blood of her

youthful heroes.

We are always valuing the soul's temperature by the thermometer of

public deed or word. Yet the great sun himself, when he pours his

noonday beams upon some vast hyaline boulder, rent from the eternal

ice-quarries, and floating toward the tropics, never warms it a

fraction above the thirty-two degrees of Fahrenheit that marked the

moment when the first drop trickled down its side.

How we all like the spirting up of a fountain, seemingly against the

law that makes water everywhere slide, roll, leap, tumble headlong, to

get as low as the earth will let it! That is genius. But what is this

transient upward movement, which gives us the glitter and the rainbow,

to that unsleeping, all-present force of gravity, the same yesterday,

to-day, and forever, (if the universe be eternal,)--the great outspread

hand of God himself, forcing all things down into their places, and

keeping them there? Such, in smaller proportion, is the force of

character to the fitful movements of genius, as they are or have been

linked to each other in many a household, where one name was historic,

and the other, let, me say the nobler, unknown, save by some faint

reflected ray, borrowed from its lustrous companion.

Oftentimes, as I have lain swinging on the water, in the swell of the

Chelsea ferry-boats, in that long, sharp-pointed, black cradle in which

I love to let the great mother rock me, I have seen a tall ship glide

by against the tide, as if drawn by some invisible tow-line, with a

hundred strong arms pulling it. Her sails hung unfilled, her streamers

were drooping, she had neither side-wheel nor stern-wheel; still she

moved on, stately, in serene triumph, as if with her own life. But I

knew that on the other side of the ship, hidden beneath the great hulk

that swam so majestically, there was a little toiling steam-tug, with

heart of fire and arms of iron, that was hugging it close and dragging

it bravely on; and I knew, that, if the little steam-tug untwined her

arms and left the tall ship, it would wallow and roll about, and drift

hither and thither, and go off with the refluent tide, no man knows

whither. And so I have known more than one _genius_, high-decked,

full-freighted, wide-sailed, gay-pennoned, that, but for the bare

toiling arms, and brave, warm, beating heart of the faithful little

wife, that nestled close in his shadow, and clung to him, so that no

wind or wave could part them, and dragged him on against all the tide

of circumstance, would soon have gone down the stream and been heard of

no more.--No, I am too much a lover of genius, I sometimes think, and

too often get impatient with dull people, so that, in their weak talk,

where nothing is taken for granted, I look forward to some future

possible state of development, when a gesture passing between a

beatified human soul and an archangel shall signify as much as the

complete history of a planet, from the time when it curdled to the time

when its sun was burned out. And yet, when a strong brain is weighed

with a true heart, it seems to me like balancing a bubble against a

wedge of gold.

----It takes a very _true_ man to be a fitting companion for a woman of

genius, but not a very great one. I am not sure that she will not

embroider her ideal better on a plain ground than on one with a

brilliant pattern already worked in its texture. But as the very

essence of genius is truthfulness, contact with realities, (which are

always ideas behind shows of form or language,) nothing is so

contemptible as falsehood and pretence in its eyes. Now it is not easy

to find a perfectly true woman, and it is very hard to find a perfectly

true man. And a woman of genius, who has the sagacity to choose such a

one as her companion, shows more of the divine gift in so doing than in

her finest talk or her most brilliant work of letters or of art.

I have been a good while coming at a secret, for which I wished to

prepare you before telling it I think there is a kindly feeling growing

up between Iris and our young Marylander. Not that I suppose there is

any distinct understanding between them, but that the affinity which

has drawn him from the remote corner where he sat to the side of the

young girl is quietly bringing their two natures together. Just now she

is all given up to another; but when he no longer calls upon her daily

thoughts and cares, I warn you not to be surprised, if this bud of

friendship open like the evening primrose, with a sound as of a sudden

stolen kiss, and lo! the flower of full-blown love lies unfolded before

you.

And now the days had come for our little friend, whose whims and

weaknesses had interested us, perhaps, as much as his better traits, to

make ready for that long journey which is easier to the cripple than to

the strong man, and on which none enters so willingly as he who has

borne the life-long load of infirmity during his earthly pilgrimage. At

this point, under most circumstances, I would close the doors and draw

the veil of privacy over the chamber where the birth which we call

death, out of life into the unknown world, is working its mystery. But

this friend of ours stood alone in the world, and, as the last act of

his life was mainly in harmony with the rest of its drama, I do not

here feel the force of the objection commonly lying against that

death-bed literature which forms the staple of a certain portion of the

press. Let me explain what I mean, so that my readers may think for

themselves a little, before they accuse me of hasty expressions.

The Roman Catholic Church has certain formulae for its dying children,

to which almost all of them attach the greatest importance. There is

hardly a criminal so abandoned that he is not anxious to receive the

"consolations of religion" in his last hours. Even if he be senseless,

but still living, I think that the form is gone through with, just as

baptism is administered to the unconscious new-born child. Now we do

not quarrel with these forms. We look with reverence and affection upon

all symbols which give peace and comfort to our fellow-creatures. But

the value of the new-born child's passive consent to the ceremony is

null, as testimony to the truth of a doctrine. The automatic closing of

a dying man's lips on the consecrated wafer proves nothing in favor of

the Real Presence, or any other doctrine. And, speaking generally, the

evidence of dying men in favor of any belief is to be received with

great caution.

They commonly tell the truth about their present feelings, no doubt. A

dying man's deposition about anything _he knows_ is good evidence. But

it is of much less consequence what a man thinks and says when he is

changed by pain, weakness, apprehension, than what he thinks when he is

truly and wholly himself. Most murderers die in a very pious frame of

mind, expecting to go to glory at once; yet no man believes he shall

meet a larger average of pirates and cutthroats in the streets of the

New Jerusalem than of honest folks that died in their beds.

Unfortunately, there has been a very great tendency to make capital of

various kinds out of dying men's speeches. The lies that have been put

into their mouths for this purpose are endless. The prime minister,

whose last breath was spent in scolding his nurse, dies with a

magnificent apothegm on his lips,--manufactured by a reporter. Addison

gets up a _tableau_ and utters an admirable sentiment,--or somebody

makes the posthumous dying epigram for him. The incoherent babble of

green fields is translated into the language of stately sentiment. One

would think, all that dying men had to do was to say the prettiest

thing they could,--to make their rhetorical point, and then bow

themselves politely out of the world.

Worse than this is the torturing of dying people to get their evidence

in favor of this or that favorite belief. The camp-followers of

proselyting sects have come in at the close of every life where they

could get in, to strip the languishing soul of its thoughts, and carry

them off as spoils. The Roman Catholic or other priest who insists on

the reception of his formula means kindly, we trust, and very commonly

succeeds in getting the acquiescence of the subject of his spiritual

surgery. But do not let us take the testimony of people who are in the

worst condition to form opinions as evidence of the truth or falsehood

of that which they accept. A lame man's opinion of dancing is not good

for much. A poor fellow who can neither eat nor drink, who is sleepless

and full of pains, whose flesh has wasted from him, whose blood is like

water, who is gasping for breath, is not in a condition to judge fairly

of human life, which in all its main adjustments is intended for men in

a normal, healthy condition. It is a remark I have heard from the wise

Patriarch of the Medical Profession among us, that the moral condition

of patients with disease _above_ the great breathing-muscle, the

diaphragm, is much more hopeful than that of patients with disease

_below_ it, in the digestive organs. Many an honest ignorant man has

given us pathology when he thought he was giving us psychology. With

this preliminary caution I shall proceed to the story of the Little

Gentleman's leaving us.

When the divinity-student found that our fellow-boarder was not likely

to remain long with us, he, being a young man of tender conscience and

kindly nature, was not a little exercised on his behalf. It was

undeniable that on several occasions the Little Gentleman had expressed

himself with a good deal of freedom on a class of subjects which,

according to the divinity-student, he had no right to form an opinion

upon. He therefore considered his future welfare in jeopardy.

The Muggletonian sect have a very odd way of dealing with people. If I,

the Professor, will only give in to the Muggletonian doctrine, there

shall be no question through all that persuasion that I am competent to

judge of that doctrine; nay, I shall be quoted as evidence of its

truth, while I live, and cited, after I am dead, as testimony in its

behalf; but if I utter any ever so slight Anti-Muggletonian sentiment,

then I become _incompetent to form any opinion on the matter_. This,

you cannot fail to observe, is exactly the way the pseudo-sciences go

to work, as explained in my Lecture on Phrenology. Now I hold that he

whose testimony would be accepted in behalf of the Muggletonian

doctrine has a right to be heard against it. Whoso offers me any

article of belief for my signature implies that I am competent to form

an opinion upon it; and if my positive testimony in its favor is of any

value, then my negative testimony against it is also of value.

I thought my young friend's attitude was a little too much like that of

the Muggletonians. I also remarked a singular timidity on his part lest

somebody should "unsettle" somebody's faith,--as if faith did not

require exercise as much as any other living thing, and were not all

the better for a shaking up now and then. I don't mean that it would be

fair to bother Bridget, the wild Irish girl, or Joice Heth, the

centenarian, or any other intellectual non-combatant; but all persons

who proclaim a belief which passes judgment on their neighbors must be

ready to have it "unsettled," that is, questioned at all times and by

anybody,--just as one who sets up bars across a thoroughfare must

expect to have them taken down by every one who wants to pass, if he is

strong enough.

Besides, to think of trying to waterproof the American mind against the

questions that Heaven rains down upon it shows a misapprehension of our

new conditions. If to question everything be unlawful and dangerous, we

had better undeclare our independence at once; for what the Declaration

means is the right to question everything, even the truth of its own

fundamental proposition.

The old-world order of things is an arrangement of locks and canals,

where everything depends on keeping the gates shut, and so holding the

upper waters at their level; but the system under which the young

republican American is born trusts the whole unimpeded tide of life to

the great elemental influences, as the vast rivers of the continent

settle their own level in obedience to the laws that govern the planet

and the spheres that surround it.

The divinity-student was not quite up to the idea of the commonwealth,

as our young friend the Marylander, for instance, understood it. He

could not get rid of that notion of private property in truth, with the

right to fence it in, and put up a sign-board, thus:--

ALL TRESPASSERS ARE WARNED OFF THESE GROUNDS

He took the young Marylander to task for going to the Church of the

Galileans, where he had several times accompanied Iris of late.

I am a Churchman,--the young man said,--by education and habit. I love

my old Church for many reasons, but most of all because I think it has

educated me out of its own forms into the spirit of its highest

teachings. I think I belong to the "Broad Church," if any of you can

tell what that means.

I had the rashness to attempt to answer the question myself.--Some say

the Broad Church means the collective mass of good people of all

denominations. Others say that such a definition is nonsense; that a

church is an organization, and the scattered good folks are no

organization at all. They think that men will eventually come together

on the basis of one or two or more common articles of belief, and form

a great unity. Do they see what this amounts to? It means an equal

division of intellect! It is mental agrarianism! a thing that never was

and never will be, until national and individual idiosyncrasies have

ceased to exist. The man of thirty-nine beliefs holds the man of one

belief a pauper; he is not going to give up thirty-eight of them for

the sake of fraternizing with the other in the temple which bears on

its front, "_Deo erexit Voltaire_." A church is a garden, I have heard

it said, and the illustration was neatly handled. Yes, and there is no

such thing as a _broad_ garden. It must be fenced in, and whatever is

fenced in is narrow. You cannot have arctic and tropical plants growing

together in it, except by the forcing system, which is a mighty narrow

piece of business. You can't make a village or a parish or a family

think alike, yet you suppose that you can make a world pinch its

beliefs or pad them to a single pattern! Why, the very life of an

ecclesiastical organization is a life of _induction_, a state of

perpetually disturbed equilibrium kept up by another charged body in

the neighborhood. If the two bodies touch and share their respective

charges, down goes the index of the electrometer!

Do you know that every man has a religious belief peculiar to himself?

Smith is always a Smithite. He takes in exactly Smith's-worth of

knowledge, Smith's-worth of truth, of beauty, of divinity. And Brown

has from time immemorial been trying to burn him, to excommunicate him,

to anonymous-article him, because he did not take in Brown's-worth of

knowledge, truth, beauty, divinity. He cannot do it, any more than a

pint-pot can hold a quart, or a quart-pot be filled by a pint. Iron is

essentially the same everywhere and always; but the sulphate of iron is

never the same as the carbonate of iron. Truth is invariable; but the

_Smithate_ of truth must always differ from the _Brownate_ of truth.

The wider the intellect, the larger and simpler the expressions in

which its knowledge is embodied. The inferior race, the degraded and

enslaved people, the small-minded individual, live in the details which

to larger minds and more advanced tribes of men reduce themselves to

axioms and laws. As races and individual minds must always differ just

as sulphates and carbonates do, I cannot see ground for expecting the

Broad Church to be founded on any fusion of _intellectual_ beliefs,

which of course implies that those who hold the larger number of

doctrines as essential shall come down to those who hold the smaller

number. These doctrines are to the _negative_ aristocracy what the

quarterings of their coats are to the _positive_ orders of nobility.

The Broad Church, I think, will never be based on anything that

requires the use of _language_. Freemasonry gives an idea of such a

church, and a brother is known and cared for in a strange land where no

word of his can be understood. The apostle of this church may be a deaf

mute carrying a cup of cold water to a thirsting fellow-creature. The

cup of cold water does not require to be translated for a foreigner to

understand it. I am afraid the only Broad Church possible is one that

has its creed in the heart, and not in the head,--that we shall know

its members by their fruits, and not by their words. If you say this

communion of well-doers is no church, I can only answer, that all

_organized_ bodies have their limits of size, and that, when we find a

man a hundred feet high and thirty feet broad across the shoulders, we

will look out for an organization that shall include all Christendom.

Some of us do practically recognize a Broad Church and a Narrow Church,

however. The Narrow Church may be seen in the ship's boats of humanity,

in the long boat, in the jolly boat, in the captain's gig, lying off

the poor old vessel, thanking God that _they_ are safe, and reckoning

how soon the hulk containing the mass of their fellow-creatures will go

down. The Broad Church is on board, working hard at the pumps, and very

slow to believe that the ship will be swallowed up with so many poor

people in it, fastened down under the hatches ever since it floated.

----All this, of course, was nothing but my poor notion about these

matters. I am simply an "outsider," you know; only it doesn't do very

well for a nest of Hingham boxes to talk too much about outsiders and

insiders!

After this talk of ours, I think these two young people went pretty

regularly to the Church of the Galileans. Still they could not keep

away from the sweet harmonies and rhythmic litanies of Saint Polycarp

on the great Church festival-days; so that, between the two, they were

so much together, that the boarders began to make remarks, and our

landlady said to me, one day, that, though it was noon of her business,

them that had eyes couldn't help seein' that there was somethin' goin'

on between them two young people; she thought the young man was a very

likely young man, though jest what his prospecs was was unbeknown to

her; but she thought he must be doin' well, and rather guessed he would

be able to take care of a femily, if he didn't go to takin' a house;

for a gentleman and his wife could board a great deal cheaper than they

could keep house;--but then that girl was nothin' but a child, and

wouldn't think of bein' married this five year. They was good boarders,

both of 'em, paid regular, and was as pooty a couple as she ever laid

eyes on.

--To come back to what I began to speak of before,--the

divinity-student was exercised in his mind about the Little Gentleman,

and, in the kindness of his heart,--for he was a good young man,--and

in the strength of his convictions,--for he took it for granted that he

and his crowd were right, and other folks and their crowd were

wrong,--he determined to bring the Little Gentleman round to his faith

before he died, if he could. So he sent word to the sick man, that he

should be pleased to visit him and have some conversation with him; and

received for answer that he would be welcome.

The divinity-student made him a visit, therefore, and had a somewhat

remarkable conversation with him, which I shall briefly report, without

attempting to justify the positions taken by the Little Gentleman. He

found him weak, but calm. Iris sat silent by his pillow.

After the usual preliminaries, the divinity-student said, in a kind

way, that he was sorry to find him in failing health, that he felt

concerned for his soul, and was anxious to assist him in making

preparations for the great change awaiting him.

I thank you, Sir,--said the Little Gentleman;--permit me to ask you,

what makes you think I am not ready for it, Sir, and that you can do

anything to help me, Sir?

I address you only as a fellow-man,--said the divinity-student,--and

therefore a fellow-sinner.

I am _not_ a man, Sir!--said the Little Gentleman.--I was born into

this world the wreck of a man, and I shall not be judged with a race to

which I do not belong. Look at this!--he said, and held up his withered

arm.--See there!--and he pointed to his misshapen extremities.--Lay

your hand here!--and he laid his own on the region of his misplaced

heart.--I have known nothing of the life of your race. When I first

came to my consciousness, I found myself an object of pity, or a sight

to show. The first strange child I ever remember hid its face and would

not come near me. I was a broken-hearted as well as broken-bodied boy.

I grew into the emotions of ripening youth, and all that I could have

loved shrank from my presence. I became a man in years, and had nothing

in common with manhood but its longings. My life is the dying pang of a

worn-out race, and I shall go alone down into the dust, out of this

world of men and women, without ever knowing the fellowship of the one

or the love of the other. I will not die with a lie rattling in my

throat. If another state of being has anything worse in store for me, I

have had a long apprenticeship to give me strength that I may bear it.

I don't believe it, Sir! I have too much faith for that. God has not

left me wholly without comfort, even here. I love this old place where

I was born;--the heart of the world beats under the three hills of

Boston, Sir! I love this great land, with so many tall men in it, and

so many good, noble women.--His eyes turned to the silent figure by his

pillow.--I have learned to accept meekly what has been allotted to me,

but I cannot honestly say that I think my sin has been greater than my

suffering. I bear the ignorance and the evil-doing of whole generations

in my single person. I never drew a breath of air nor took a step that

was not a punishment for another's fault. I may have had many wrong

thoughts, but I cannot have done many wrong deeds,--for my cage has

been a narrow one, and I have paced it alone. I have looked through the

bars and seen the great world of men busy and happy, but I had no part

in their doings. I have known what it was to dream of the great

passions; but since my mother kissed me before she died, no woman's

lips have pressed my cheek,--nor ever will.

----The young girl's eyes glittered with a sudden film, and almost

without a thought, but with a warm human instinct that rushed up into

her face with her heart's blood, she bent over and kissed him. It was

the sacrament that washed out the memory of long years of bitterness,

and I should hold it an unworthy thought to defend her.

The Little Gentleman repaid her with the only tear any of us ever saw

him shed.

The divinity-student rose from his place, and, turning away from the

sick man, walked to the other side of the room, where he bowed his head

and was still. All the questions he had meant to ask had faded from his

memory. The tests he had prepared by which to judge of his

fellow-creature's fitness for heaven seemed to have lost their virtue.

He could trust the crippled child of sorrow to the Infinite Parent. The

kiss of the fair-haired girl had been like a sign from heaven, that

angels watched over him whom he was presuming but a moment before to

summon before the tribunal of his private judgment.

Shall I pray with you?--he said, after a pause.--A little before he

would have said, Shall I pray _for_ you?--The Christian religion, as

taught by its Founder, is full of _sentiment_. So we must not blame the

divinity-student, if he was overcome by those yearnings of human

sympathy which predominate so much more in the sermons of the Master

than in the writings of his successors, and which have made the parable

of the Prodigal Son the consolation of mankind, as it has been the

stumbling-block of all exclusive doctrines.

Pray!--said the Little Gentleman.

The divinity-student prayed, in low, tender tones, that God would look

on his servant lying helpless at the feet of his mercy; that he would

remember his long years of bondage in the flesh; that he would deal

gently with the bruised reed. Thou hast visited the sins of the fathers

upon this their child. Oh, turn away from him the penalties of his own

transgressions! Thou hast laid upon him, from infancy, the cross which

thy stronger children are called upon to take up; and now that he is

fainting under it, be Thou his stay, and do Thou succor him that is

tempted! Let his manifold infirmities come between him and Thy

judgment; in wrath remember mercy! If his eyes are not opened to all

thy truth, let thy compassion lighten the darkness that rests upon him,

even as it came through the word of thy Son to blind Bartimeus, who sat

by the wayside, begging!

Many more petitions he uttered, but all in the same subdued tone of

tenderness. In the presence of helpless suffering, and in the

fast-darkening shadow of the Destroyer, he forgot all but his Christian

humanity, and cared more about consoling his fellow-man than making a

proselyte of him.

This was the last prayer to which the Little Gentleman ever listened.

Some change was rapidly coming over him during this last hour of which

I have been, speaking. The excitement of pleading his cause before his

self-elected spiritual adviser,--the emotion which overcame him, when

the young girl obeyed the sudden impulse of her feelings and pressed

her lips to his cheek,--the thoughts that mastered him while the

divinity-student poured out his soul for him in prayer, might well

hurry on the inevitable moment. When the divinity-student had uttered

his last petition, commending him to the Father through his Son's

intercession, he turned to look upon him before leaving his chamber.

His face was changed.--There is a language of the human countenance

which we all understand without an interpreter, though the lineaments

belong to the rudest savage that ever stammered in an unknown barbaric

dialect. By the stillness of the sharpened features, by the blankness

of the tearless eyes, by the fixedness of the smileless mouth, by the

deadening tints, by the contracted brow, by the dilating nostril, we

know that the soul is soon to leave its mortal tenement, and is already

closing up its windows and putting out its fires.--Such was the aspect

of the face upon which the divinity-student looked, after the brief

silence which followed his prayer. The change had been rapid, though

not that abrupt one which is liable to happen at any moment in these

cases.--The sick man looked towards him.--Farewell,--he said.--I thank

you. Leave me alone with her.

When the divinity-student had gone, and the Little Gentleman found

himself alone with Iris, he lifted his hand to his neck, and took from

it, suspended by a slender chain, a quaint, antique-looking key,--the

same key I had once seen him holding. He gave this to her, and pointed

to a carved cabinet opposite his bed, one of those that had so

attracted my curious eyes and set me wondering as to what it might

contain.

Open it,--he said,--and light the lamp.--The young girl walked to the

cabinet and unlocked the door. A deep recess appeared, lined with black

velvet, against which stood in white relief an ivory crucifix. A silver

lamp hung over over it. She lighted the lamp and came back to the

bedside. The dying man fixed his eyes upon the figure of the dying

Saviour.--Give me your hand,--he said; and Iris placed her right hand

in his left. So they remained, until presently his eyes lost their

meaning, though they still remained vacantly fixed upon the white

image. Yet he held the young girl's hand firmly, as if it were leading

him through some deep-shadowed valley and it was all he could cling to.

But presently an involuntary muscular contraction stole over him, and

his terrible dying grasp held the poor girl as if she were wedged in an

engine of torture. She pressed her lips together and sat still. The

inexorable hand held her tighter and tighter, until she felt as if her

own slender fingers would be crushed in its gripe. It was one of the

tortures of the Inquisition she was suffering, and she could not stir

from her place. Then, in her great anguish, she, too, cast her eyes

upon that dying figure, and, looking upon its pierced hands and feet

and side and lacerated forehead, she felt that she also must suffer

uncomplaining. In the moment of her sharpest pain she did not forget

the duties of her tender office, but dried the dying man's moist

forehead with her handkerchief, even while the dews of agony were

glistening on her own. How long this lasted she never could tell.

_Time_ and _thirst_ are two things you and I talk about; but the

victims whom holy men and righteous judges used to stretch on their

engines knew better what they meant than you or I!--What is that great

bucket of water for? said the Marchioness de Brinvilliers, before she

was placed on the rack.--_For you to drink_,--said the torturer to the

little woman.--She could not think that it would take such a flood to

quench the fire in her and so keep her alive for her confession. The

torturer knew better than she.

After a time not to be counted in minutes, as the clock

measures,--without any warning, there came a swift change of his

features; his face turned white, as the waters whiten when a sudden

breath passes over their still surface; the muscles instantly relaxed,

and Iris, released at once from her care for the sufferer and from his

unconscious grasp, fell senseless, with a feeble cry,--the only

utterance of her long agony.

Perhaps you sometimes wander in through the iron gates of the Copp's

Hill burial-ground. You love to stroll round among the graves that

crowd each other in the thickly peopled soil of that breezy summit. You

love to lean on the free-stone slab which lies over the bones of the

Mathers,--to read the epitaph of stout John Clark, "despiser of little

men and sorry actions,"--to stand by the stone grave of sturdy Daniel

Malcom and look upon the splintered slab that tells the old rebel's

story,--to kneel by the triple stone that says how the three

Worthylakes, father, mother, and young daughter, died on the same day

and lie buried there; a mystery; the subject of a moving ballad, by the

late BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, as may be seen in his autobiography, which will

explain the secret of the triple gravestone; though the old philosopher

has made a mistake, unless the stone is wrong.

Not very far from that you will find a fair mound, of dimensions fit to

hold a well-grown man. I will not tell you the inscription upon the

stone which stands at its head; for I do not wish you to be _sure_ of

the resting-place of one who could not bear to think that he should be

known as a cripple among the dead, after being pointed at so long among

the living. There is one sign, it is true, by which, if you have been a

sagacious reader of these papers, you will at once know it; but I fear

you read carelessly, and must study them more diligently before you

will detect the hint to which I allude.

The Little Gentleman lies where he longed to He, among the old names

and the old bones of the old Boston people. At the foot of his

resting-place is the river, alive with the wings and antennae of its

colossal water-insects; over opposite are the great war-ships, and the

long guns, which, when they roar, shake the soil in which he lies; and

in the steeple of Christ Church, hard by, are the sweet chimes which

are the Boston boy's _Ranz des Vaches_, whose echoes follow him all the

world over.

_In Pace!_

I told you a good while ago that the Little Gentleman could not do a

better thing than to leave all his money, whatever it might be, to the

young girl who has since that established such a claim upon him. He did

not, however. A considerable bequest to one of our public institutions

keeps his name in grateful remembrance. The telescope through which he

was fond of watching the heavenly bodies, and the movements of which

had been the source of such odd fancies on my part, is now the property

of a Western College. You smile as you think of my taking it for a

fleshless human figure, when I saw its tube pointing to the sky, and

thought it was an arm under the white drapery thrown over it for

protection. So do I smile _now_; I belong to the numerous class who are

prophets after the fact, and hold my nightmares very cheap by daylight.

I have received many letters of inquiry as to the sound _resembling a

woman's voice_, which occasioned me so many perplexities. Some thought

there was no question that he had a second apartment, in which he had

made an asylum for a deranged female relative. Others were of opinion

that he was, as I once suggested, a "Bluebeard" with patriarchal

tendencies, and I have even been censured for introducing so Oriental

an element into my record of boarding-house experience.

Come in and see me, the Professor, some evening when I have nothing

else to do, and ask me to play you _Tartini's Devil's Sonata_ on that

extraordinary instrument in my possession, well known to amateurs as

one of the master-pieces of _Joseph Guarnerius_. The _vox humana_ of

the great Haerlem organ is very lifelike, and the same stop in the

organ of the Cambridge chapel might be mistaken in some of its tones

for a human voice; but I think you never heard anything come so near

the cry of a _prima donna_ as the A string and the E string of this

instrument. A single fact will illustrate the resemblance. I was

executing some _tours de force_ upon it one evening, when the policeman

of our district rang the bell sharply, and asked what was the matter in

the house. He had heard a woman's screams,--he was sure of it. I had to

make the instrument _sing_ before his eyes before he could be satisfied

that he had not heard the cries of a woman. This instrument was

bequeathed to me by the Little Gentleman. Whether it had anything to do

with the sounds I heard coming from his chamber, you can form your own

opinion; I have no other conjecture to offer. It is _not true_ that a

second apartment with a secret entrance was found; and the story of the

veiled lady is the invention of one of the Reporters.

Bridget, the housemaid, always insisted that he died a Catholic. She

had seen the crucifix, and believed that he prayed on his knees before

it. The last circumstance is very probably true; indeed, there was a

spot worn on the carpet just before this cabinet which might be thus

accounted for. Why he, whose whole life was a crucifixion, should not

love to look on that divine image of blameless suffering, I cannot see;

on the contrary, it seems to me the most natural thing in the world

that he should. But there are those who want to make private property

of everything, and can't make up their minds that people who don't

think as they do should claim any interest in that infinite compassion

expressed in the central figure of the Christendom which includes us

all.

The divinity-student expressed a hope before the boarders that he

should meet him in heaven.--The question is, whether he'll meet

_you_,--said the young fellow John, rather smartly. The

divinity-student hadn't thought of _that_.

However, he is a worthy young man, and I trust I have shown him in a

kindly and respectful light. He will get a parish by-and-by; and, as he

is about to marry the sister of an old friend,--the Schoolmistress,

whom some of us remember,--and as all sorts of expensive accidents

happen to young married ministers, he will be under bonds to the amount

of his salary, which means starvation, if they are forfeited, to think

all his days as he thought when he was settled,--unless the majority of

his people change with him or in advance of him. A hard case, to which

nothing could reconcile a man, except that the faithful discharge of

daily duties in his personal relations with his parishioners will make

him useful enough in his way, though as a thinker he may cease to exist

before he has reached middle age.

--Iris went into mourning for the Little Gentleman. Although, as I have

said, he left the bulk of his property, by will, to a public

institution, he added a codicil, by which he disposed of various pieces

of property as tokens of kind remembrance. It was in this way I became

the possessor of the wonderful instrument I have spoken of, which had

been purchased for him out of an Italian convent. The landlady was

comforted with a small legacy. The following extract relates to Iris:

"----in consideration of her manifold acts of kindness, but only in

token of grateful remembrance, and by no means as a reward for services

which cannot be compensated, a certain messuage, with all the land

thereto appertaining, situate in ---- Street, at the North End, so

called, of Boston, aforesaid, the same being the house in which I was

born, but now inhabited by several families, and known as 'the

Rookery.'" Iris had also the crucifix, the portrait, and the

red-jewelled ring. The funeral or death's-head ring was buried with

him.

It was a good while, after the Little Gentleman was gone, before our

boarding-house recovered its wonted cheerfulness. There was a flavor in

his whims and local prejudices that we liked, even while we smiled at

them. It was hard to see the tall chair thrust away among useless

lumber, to dismantle his room, to take down the picture of Leah, the

handsome Witch of Essex, to move away the massive shelves that held the

books he loved, to pack up the tube through which he used to study the

silent stars, looking down at him, like the eyes of dumb creatures,

with a kind of stupid half-consciousness, that did not worry him as did

the eyes of men and women,--and hardest of all to displace that sacred

figure to which his heart had always turned and found refuge, in the

feelings it inspired, from all the perplexities of his busy brain. It

was hard, but it had to be done.

And by-and-by we grew cheerful again, and the breakfast-table wore

something of its old look. The Koh-i-noor, as we named the gentleman

with the _diamond_, left us, however, soon after that "little mill," as

the young fellow John called it, where he came off second best. His

departure was no doubt hastened by a note from the landlady's daughter,

inclosing a lock of purple hair which she "had valued as a pledge of

affection, ere she knew the hollowness of the vows he had breathed,"

speedily followed by another, inclosing the landlady's bill. The next

morning he was missing, as were his limited wardrobe and the trunk that

held it. Three empty bottles of Mrs. Allen's celebrated preparation,

each of them asserting, on its word of honor as a bottle, that its

former contents were "not a dye," were all that was left to us of the

Koh-i-noor.

From this time forward, the landlady's daughter manifested a decided

improvement in her style of carrying herself before the boarders. She

abolished the odious little flat, gummy side-curl. She left off various

articles of "jewelry." She began to help her mother in some of her

household duties. She became a regular attendant on the ministrations

of a very worthy clergyman, having been attracted to his meetin' by

witnessing a marriage ceremony in which he called a man and a woman a

"gentleman" and a "lady,"--a stroke of gentility which quite overcame

her. She even took a part in what she called a _Sabbath_ school, though

it was held on Sunday, and by no means on Saturday, as the name she

intended to utter implied. All this, which was very sincere, as I

believe, on her part, and attended with a great improvement in her

character, ended in her bringing home a young man, with straight, sandy

hair, brushed so as to stand up steeply above his forehead, wearing a

pair of green spectacles, and dressed in black broadcloth. His personal

aspect, and a certain solemnity of countenance, led me to think he must

be a clergyman; and as Master Benjamin Franklin blurted out before

several of us boarders, one day, that "Sis had got a beau," I was

pleased at the prospect of her becoming a minister's wife. On inquiry,

however, I found that the somewhat solemn look which I had noticed was

indeed a professional one, but not clerical. He was a young undertaker,

who had just succeeded to a thriving business. Things, I believe, are

going on well at this time of writing, and I am glad for the landlady's

daughter and her mother. Sextons and undertakers are the cheerfullest

people in the world at home, as comedians and circus-clowns are the

most melancholy in their domestic circle.

As our old boarding-house is still in existence, I do not feel at

liberty to give too minute a statement of the present condition of each

and all of its inmates. I am happy to say, however, that they are all

alive and well, up to this time. That kind old gentleman who sat

opposite to me is growing older, as old men will, but still smiles

benignantly on all the boarders, and has come to be a kind of father to

all of them,--so that on his birthday there is always something like a

family festival. The Poor Relation, even, has warmed into a filial

feeling towards him, and on his last birthday made him a beautiful

present, namely, a very handsomely bound copy of Blair's celebrated

poem, "The Grave."

The young man John is still, as he says, "in fust-rate fettle." I saw

him spar, not long since, at a private exhibition, and do himself great

credit in a set-to with Henry Finnegass, Esq., a professional gentleman

of celebrity. I am pleased to say that he has been promoted to an upper

clerkship, and, in consequence of his rise in office, has taken an

apartment somewhat lower down than number "forty-'leven," as he

facetiously called his attic. Whether there is any truth, or not, in

the story of his attachment to, and favorable reception by, the

daughter of the head of an extensive wholesale grocer's establishment,

I will not venture an opinion; I may say, however, that I have met him

repeatedly in company with a very well-nourished and high-colored young

lady, who, I understand, is the daughter of the house in question.

Some of the boarders were of opinion that Iris did not return the

undisguised attentions of the handsome young Marylander. Instead of

fixing her eyes steadily on him, as she used to look upon the Little

Gentleman, she would turn them away, as if to avoid his own. They often

went to church together, it is true; but nobody, of course, supposes

there is any relation between religious sympathy and those wretched

"sentimental" movements of the human heart upon which it is commonly

agreed that nothing better is based than society, civilization,

friendship, the relation of husband and wife, and of parent and child,

and which many people must think were singularly overrated by the

Teacher of Nazareth, whose whole life, as I said before, was full of

sentiment, loving this or that young man, pardoning this or that

sinner, weeping over the dead, mourning for the doomed city, blessing,

and perhaps kissing, the little children,--so that the Gospels are

still cried over almost as often as the last work of fiction!

But one fine June morning there rumbled up to the door of our

boarding-house a hack containing a lady inside and a trunk on the

outside. It was our friend the lady-patroness of Miss Iris, the same

who had been called by her admiring pastor "The Model of all the

Virtues." Once a week she had written a letter, in a rather formal

hand, but full of good advice, to her young charge. And now she had

come to carry her away, thinking that she had learned all she was

likely to learn under her present course of teaching. The Model,

however, was to stay awhile,--a week, or more,--before they should

leave together.

Iris was obedient, as she was bound to be. She was respectful,

grateful, as a child is with a just, but not tender parent. Yet

something was wrong. She had one of her trances, and became

statue-like, as before, only the day after the Model's arrival. She was

wan and silent, tasted nothing at table, smiled as if by a forced

effort, and often looked vaguely away from those who were looking at

her, her eyes just glazed with the shining moisture of a tear that must

not be allowed to gather and fall. Was it grief at parting from the

place where her strange friendship had grown up with the Little

Gentleman? Yet she seemed to have become reconciled to his loss, and

rather to have a deep feeling of gratitude that she had been permitted

to care for him in his last weary days.

The Sunday after the Model's arrival, that lady had an attack of

headache, and was obliged to shut herself up in a darkened room alone.

Our two young friends took the opportunity to go together to the Church

of the Galileans. They said but little going,--"collecting their

thoughts" for the service, I devoutly hope. My kind good friend the

pastor preached that day one of his sermons that make us all feel like

brothers and sisters, and his text was that affectionate one from John,

"My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in

deed and in truth." When Iris and her friend came out of church, they

were both pale, and walked a space without speaking.

At last the young man said,--You and I are not little children, Iris!

She looked in his face an instant, as if startled, for there was

something strange in the tone of his voice. She smiled faintly, but

spoke never a word.

In deed and in truth, Iris,--What shall a poor girl say or do, when a

strong man falters in his speech before her, and can do nothing better

than hold out his hand to finish his broken sentence?

The poor girl said nothing, but quietly laid her ungloved hand in

his,--the little, soft white hand which had ministered so tenderly and

suffered so patiently.

The blood came back to the young man's cheeks, as he lifted it to his

lips, even as they walked there in the street, touched it gently with

them, and said,--"It is mine!"

Iris did not contradict him.

* * * * *

The seasons pass by so rapidly, that I am startled to think how much

has happened since these events I was describing. Those two young

people would insist on having their own way about their own affairs,

notwithstanding the good lady, so justly called the Model, insisted

that the age of twenty-five years was as early as any discreet young

lady should think of incurring the responsibilities, etc., etc. Long

before Iris had reached that age, she was the wife of a young Maryland

engineer, directing some of the vast constructions of his native

State,--where he was growing rich fast enough to be able to decline

that famous Russian offer which would have made him a kind of nabob in

a few years. Iris does not write verse often, nowadays, but she

sometimes draws. The last sketch of hers I have seen in my Southern

visits was of two children, a boy and girl, the youngest holding a

silver goblet, like the one she held that evening when I--I was so

struck with her statue-like beauty. If in the later summer months you

find the grass marked with footsteps around that grave on Copp's Hill I

told you of, and flowers scattered over it, you may be sure that Iris

is here on her annual visit to the home of her childhood and that

excellent lady whose only fault was, that Nature had written out her

list of virtues on ruled paper, and forgotten to rub out the lines.

One more thing I must mention. Being on the Common, last Sunday, I was

attracted by the cheerful spectacle of a well-dressed and somewhat

youthful papa wheeling a very elegant little carriage containing a

stout baby. A buxom young lady watched them from one of the stone

seats, with an interest which could be nothing less than maternal. I at

once recognized my old friend, the young fellow whom we called John. He

was delighted to see me, introduced me to "Madam," and would have the

lusty infant out of the carriage, and hold him up for me to look at.

Now, then,--he said to the two-year-old,--show the gentleman how you

hit from the shoulder.--Whereupon the little imp pushed his fat fist

straight into my eye, to his father's intense satisfaction.

Fust-rate little chap,--said the papa.--Chip of the old block. Regl'r

little Johnny, you know.

I was so much pleased to find the young fellow settled in life, and

pushing about one of "them little articles" he seemed to want so much,

that I took my "punishment" at the hands of the infant pugilist with

great equanimity.--And how is the old boarding-house?--I asked.

A 1,--he answered.--Painted and papered as good as new. Gabs in all the

rooms up to the sky-parlors. Old woman's layin' up money, they say.

Means to send Ben Franklin to college.--Just then the first bell rang

for church, and my friend, who, I understand, has become a most

exemplary member of society, said he must be off to get ready for

meetin', and told the young one to "shake dada," which he did with his

closed fist, in a somewhat menacing manner. And so the young man John,

as we used to call him, took the pole of the miniature carriage, and

pushed the small pugilist before him homewards, followed, in a somewhat

leisurely way, by his pleasant-looking lady-companion, and I sent a

sigh and a smile after him.

That evening, as soon as it was dark, I could not help going round by

the old boarding-house. The "gahs" was lighted, but the curtains, or,

more properly, the painted shades, were not down. And so I stood there

and looked in along the table where the boarders sat at the evening

meal,--our old breakfast-table, which some of us feel as if we knew so

well. There were new faces at it, but also old and familiar ones.--The

land-lady, in a wonderfully smart cap, looking young, comparatively

speaking, and as if half the wrinkles had been ironed out of her

forehead.--Her daughter, in rather dressy half-mourning, with a vast

brooch of jet, got up, apparently, to match the gentleman next her, who

was in black costume and sandy hair,--the last rising straight from his

forehead, like the marble flame one sometimes sees at the top of a

funeral urn.--The poor relation, not in absolute black, but in a stuff

with specks of white; as much as to say, that, if there were any more

Hirams left to sigh for her, there were pin-holes in the night of her

despair, through which a ray of hope might find its way to--an

adorer.--Master Benjamin Franklin, grown taller of late, was in the act

of splitting his face open with a wedge of pie, so that his features

were seen to disadvantage for the moment.--The good old gentleman was

sitting still and thoughtful. All at once he turned his face toward the

window where I stood, and, just as if he had seen me, smiled his

benignant smile. It was a recollection of some past pleasant moment;

but it fell upon me like the blessing of a father.

I kissed my hand to them all, unseen as I stood in the outer darkness;

and as I turned and went my way, the table and all around it faded into

the realm of twilight shadows and of midnight dreams.

* * * * *

And so my year's record is finished. The Professor has talked less than

his predecessor, but he has heard and seen more. Thanks to all those

friends who from time to time have sent their messages of kindly

recognition and fellow-feeling! Peace to all such as may have been

vexed in spirit by any utterance these pages have repeated! They will,

doubtless, forget for the moment the difference in the hues of truth we

look at through our human prisms, and join in singing (inwardly) this

hymn to the Source of the light we all need to lead us, and the warmth

which alone can make us all brothers.

A Sun-Day Hymn.

Lord of all being! throned afar,

Thy glory flames from sun and star;

Centre and soul of every sphere,

Yet to each loving heart how near!

Sun of our life, thy wakening ray

Sheds on our path the glow of day;

Star of our hope, thy softened light

Cheers the long watches of the night.

Our midnight is thy smile withdrawn;

Our noontide is thy gracious dawn;

Our rainbow arch thy mercy's sign;

All, save the clouds of sin, are thine!

Lord of all life, below, above,

Whose light is truth, whose warmth is love,

Before thy ever-blazing throne

We ask no lustre of our own.

Grant us thy truth to make us free,

And kindling hearts that burn for thee,

Till all thy living altars claim

One holy light, one heavenly flame!

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_The Oxford Museum_. By HENRY W. ACLAND, M. D., Regius Professor of

Medicine, and JOHN RUSKIN, M. A., Honorary Student of Christ Church.

London, 1859.

The last ten years have formed a remarkable period in the history of

the ancient and honored University of Oxford. Guided by wise and

discerning counsels, it has made rapid and substantial advance. The

scope of its studies has been greatly enlarged, the standard of its

requirements raised. Its traditionary adherence to old methods and its

bigoted conservatism have been overcome, and with happy pliancy it has

yielded to the demands of the times and adapted itself to the new

desires and growing needs of men. Its aristocratic prejudices have not

been allowed longer to confine its privileges and its operations to one

class alone of the community,--and in identifying itself with the

system of middle-class education, Oxford has won new claims to

gratitude and to respect, and now exercises a wider and more confirmed

authority over the thought of England than ever before. To us, who take

pride in her ancient fame, who honor her long and memorable services in

the cause of good learning, who cherish the memory of the great and

good men, the masters of modern thought, whom she has nurtured, who

recall the names of our own forefathers who came out from her and from

her sister University with will and power to lay the foundations of our

state, and whom, by her discipline, in the midst of all the refinement

of hooks and the quietness of study, she had prepared to meet and to

overcome the hardships of exile, poverty, and labor, in the cause of

truth and freedom,--to us it may well be matter of rejoicing to witness

the freshness of her spirit and the spring of her perennial youth,--to

see her

"so famous,

So excellent in art, and still so rising."

One of the most marked features of the advance that has lately been

made is the full recognition of the Natural Sciences as forming an

essential part of the scheme of University studies. For centuries there

had been an "intellectual onesidedness" at Oxford. It had chiefly

cultivated classic learning. But it has now undertaken to repair the

deficiency that existed in this respect, and, while still retaining all

its classic studies, it has added to them a full course of training in

the knowledge of Nature. "Our object is," says Dr. Acland, speaking as

one of the professors of the University, "our object is,--first, to

give the learner a general view of the planet on which he lives, of its

constituent parts, and of the relation which it occupies as a world

among worlds; and secondly, to enable him to study, in the most

complete scientific manner, and for any purpose, any detailed portion

which his powers qualify him to grasp."

Such an object brings the University into full sympathy with the

present tendencies of education in our own country. With us, scientific

pursuits and the study of Nature are receiving greater and greater

attention and engrossing a continually larger share of the interest,

the time, and the talent of students. There already exists, and there

is danger of its increase, in many of our best institutions of

learning, and many of our most educated men, an intellectual

onesidedness of a contrary, but not less unfortunate character, to that

which long existed at Oxford. The temper of our people, the wide field

for their energies, the development of the so-called practical traits

of character under the stimulus of our political and social

institutions, the solitary dissociation of America from the history and

the achievements of the Old World, the melancholy absence of monuments

of past greatness and worth,--these and many other circumstances

peculiar to our position all serve to weaken the general interest in

what are called classical studies, and to direct the attention of the

most ambitious and active minds far too exclusively to the pursuits of

science. And when to these circumstances peculiar to ourselves is added

the influence of those general causes which have had the effect of

leading men throughout the civilized world to give of late years more

and more of thought and study to the investigation of Nature and to the

pursuits resulting therefrom, it is not strange that learning,

so-called, should, for the present at least, find itself but poorly off

in America, and that the essential value of learned studies for an even

and fair development of the intellectual faculties should be far too

little regarded. The danger that arises from a too exclusive devotion

to scientific pursuits is pointed out by Dr. Acland in a passage which

deserves thoughtful consideration, coming as it does from a man

distinguished not more for scientific eminence than for his wide and

cultivated intellect.

"The further my observation has extended," he says, "the more satisfied

I am that no _knowledge of things_ will supply the place of the early

study of letters,--_literae humaniores_. I do not doubt the value of

any honest mental labor. Indeed, since the _material_ working of the

Creator has been so far displayed to our gaze, it is both dangerous and

full of impiety to resist its ennobling influence, even on the ground

that His _moral_ work is greater. But notwithstanding this, the study

of language, of history, and of the thoughts of great men which they

exhibit, seems to be almost necessary (as far as learning is necessary

at all) for disciplining the heart, for elevating the soul, and for

preparing the way for the growth in the young of their personal

spiritual life; while, on the other hand, the best corrective to

pedantry in scholarship, and to conceit in mental philosophy, is the

study of the facts and laws exhibited by Natural Science."

Oxford, having thus fully acknowledged the need of enlarging her system

of education, at once set about preparing a home for the Natural

Sciences within her precincts. The building of the Oxford Museum is a

fact characteristic of the large spirit of the University, and of

special interest from the design and nature of its architecture. It is

not merely intended for the holding of collections in the different

departments of physical science, but it contains also lecture- and

work-rooms, and all the accommodations required for in-door study. To

provide the mere shell of such a building, the University granted the

sum of £30,000. The design that was selected from those which were sent

for competition was of the Gothic style,--the work of Messrs. Deane and

Woodward; and this style was chosen because it was believed, that, "in

respect of capacity of adaptation to any given wants, Gothic has no

superior in any known form of Art,"--and that, this being so, "it was,

upon the whole, the best suited to the general architectural character

of Mediaeval Oxford." "The centre of the edifice, which is to contain

the collections, consists of a quadrangle," covered by a glass roof.

The court is surrounded by an open arcade of two stories. "This arcade

furnishes ready means of communication between the several departments

and their collections in the area." "Round the arcade is ranged upon

three sides the main block of the building,"--the fourth side being

left unoccupied by apartments, to afford means for future extension.

Each department of science is provided with ample accommodations,

specially adapted to its peculiar needs. The building, as it stands at

present, is in its largest dimensions about 330 by 170 feet. Its

erection has formed an epoch not only in the history of Oxford, but

also in that of Gothic Art in England.

It is the first considerable building which has for centuries been

erected in England according to the true principles of Gothic Art. It

is a revival of the spirit and freedom of Gothic architecture. It is no

copy, but an original creation of thought, fancy, and imagination. It

has combined beauty with use, elegance with convenience, and ornament

with instruction. It has proved the perfect pliancy of Gothic

architecture to modern needs, and shown its power of entire adaptation

to the requirements of new conditions. In its details no less than in

its general scope it exhibits the recognition by its builders of the

essential characteristics of the best Gothic Art, and shows in the

harmonized variety of its parts the inventive thought and the

independent execution of many minds and hands presided over by a single

will. Gothic architecture in its best development is the expression at

once of law and of liberty. The exactest principles of proportion are

combined in it with the freest play of fancy. Its spaces are divided

mathematically by the rule and the square, its main lines are

determined with absolute precision,--but within these limits of order

the imagination works out its free results, and, because limited by

mathematical laws, reaches the most perfect freedom of beauty.

But the system of Gothic decorations, "which," says Mr. Ruskin, "took

eight hundred years to mature, gathering its power by undivided

inheritance of traditional method," is not an easy thing to revive

under new and difficult conditions. A single example of what has been

attempted in this way in the Oxford Museum must suffice to show the

spirit which pervades its construction. The lower arcade upon the

central court is supported by thirty-three piers and thirty shafts; the

upper arcade by thirty-three piers and ninety-five shafts. "The shafts

have been carefully selected, under the direction of the Professor of

Geology, from quarries which furnish examples of many of the most

important rocks of the British Islands. On the lower arcade are placed,

on the west side, the granitic series; on the east, the metamorphic; on

the north, calcareous rocks, chiefly from Ireland; on the south, the

marbles of England." The capitals and bases are to represent different

groups of plants and animals, illustrating the various geological

epochs, and the natural orders of existence. Thus, the column of

sienite from Charnwood Forest has a capital of the cocoa palm; the red

granite of Ross, in Mull, is crowned with a capital of lilies; the

beautiful marble of Marychurch has an exquisitely sculptured capital of

ferns;--and so through all the range of the arcades, new designs,

studied directly from Nature, and combining art with science, have been

executed by the workmen employed on the building.

To complete the beauty of the court, massive corbels have been thrown

out from the piers, upon which statues of the greatest and most famous

men in science are to be, or are already, placed. These shafts and

capitals and statues have been, in great part, the gift of individuals

interested in the progress and successful completion of such a

building. The Queen presented five of the statues; and her example has

been followed by many of the graduates of the University and lovers of

Art in England.

Mr. Ruskin ends his second letter in the little book before us with

these words: "Although I doubt not that lovelier and juster expressions

of the Gothic principle will be ultimately arrived at by us than any

which are possible in the Oxford Museum, its builders will never lose

their claim to our chief gratitude, as the first guides in a right

direction; and the building itself, the first exponent of recovered

truth, will only be the more venerated, the more it is excelled."

Such is the way in which Oxford, having a Museum to build, sets to

work. She lays down a large and generous plan, and erects a building

worthy of her ancient fame, worthy to increase the love and honor in

which she is held,--a building that adds a new beauty to her old

beauties of hall and chapel, of quadrangle and cloister. She does not

mistake parsimony for economy; she does not neglect to regard the duty

that lies upon her, as the guardian and instructress of youth, to set

before their eyes models of fair proportion, noble structures which

shall exercise at once an influence to refine the taste and the

sentiment and to enlarge the intellect. She acknowledges the claims of

the future as well as of the present, and does not erect that which the

future, however it may advance in constructive power, will regard as

base, mean, or ugly. She recognizes the value to herself, as well as to

her sons, of all those associations which, through the power of her

adorned and munificent architecture, shall bind them to her in ties of

closer tenderness, and of strong, though most delicate feeling. Her

building is to have an aspect that shall correspond to the nobility of

its function,--that shall impress the student, as he walks along the

hard and dry paths of science, with some sense, faint though it be, of

the beauty of that learning which is furnished with so goodly an abode.

The influence of a fine building, complete in all its parts, is one

which cannot be estimated in money, cannot be investigated by any

practical process, but which is nevertheless as strong and precious as

it is secret, as constant as it is unobserved.

It would seem that there could be no country in the world where

buildings of the noblest kind would be more desired than in America,

for there is none in which they are so much needed. But such is not the

case. As men who have lived long in darkness become so accustomed to

the want of light as not to feel its absence, so the absoluteness of

the want of fine buildings in America prevents that want from being

generally felt. Heirs of the intellectual wealth of the past, we have

no inheritance of the great works of its hands. No material heirlooms

have been transmitted to us. We are cut off from any share in the

monuments on which the labor, the affection, and the possessions of

former generations were expended. The precious and enlarging

associations connected with such works, which bind successive

generations of men together with ties of memory and reverence,

stimulating the imagination to new conceptions, and nerving the will to

large efforts, have nothing to cling to here. The land is barren and

naked; and, moreover, no effort is made to relieve the future from the

want which the present feels so keenly. With wealth ample enough for

undertakings of any magnitude,--with intelligence, more boasted than

real, but still sufficient for the conception of improvement, we

exhibit in our civilization neither the taste nor the capacity for any

noble works of Art. The value of beauty is disregarded, and the

cultivation of the sense of beauty is treated as of little worth,

compared with the culture of what are styled the practical faculties.

Our wealth is spent in the erection of extravagant stores and

shops,--in the decoration of oyster-saloons, hotels, and

steamboats,--in the lavish and selfish adornment of drawing-rooms and

chambers. In the whole breadth of the continent there is not a single

building of such beauty as to be an object of national pride, and few

which will have any value in future times, except as historic records

of the poverty of sentiment and the deficiency of character of the men

of this generation.

Our oldest and best endowed University has, like Oxford, lately engaged

in the erection of a Museum, which, though more limited in its general

object, has yet a scope of such large and generous proportion as to

make it a work of even more than national interest. It is undertaken on

such a scale as to fit it not merely for present needs, but for the

increasing wants of later times. The State has contributed to it from

the public treasury, and private citizens have given their

contributions liberally towards its support. The building has been

rapidly carried forward, and the portion undertaken is now near

completion. How does it compare with the Oxford Museum? What provision

has been made that in its outward aspect it shall correspond with the

worth and grandeur of the collections it is to hold and the studies

that are to be carried on within it? What patient thought, what stores

of imagination, what happy adaptations do its walls reveal? These

questions are easily answered. Convenience of internal arrangement has

been sought without regard to external beauty, without consideration of

the claims of Art. The architect has, we must suppose, been obliged to

conform his plans to the most frugal estimates; but we cannot help

thinking, that, generous as the State has been, it would have been more

worthy of her, had no such necessity existed. The building for the

Museum is one which can never excite high admiration, never touch any

chord of poetic sentiment, never arouse in the student within its walls

any feeling save that of mere convenience and utility. Its bare,

shadowless walls, unadorned by carven columns or memorial statues, will

stand incapable of affording support for those associations which

endear every human work of worth, covering it with praise and

remembrance, as the ivy clings to the stone, adding beauty to

beauty,--associations which make men proud of their ancestors and

desirous to equal them in achievement The University at Cambridge, just

entering on the second quarter of its third century, has not a single

building that is beautiful, perhaps we might say none that is not

positively ugly; and we almost despair of a future when our people

shall become enlightened and magnanimous enough to appreciate noble

architecture at its true worth, as the expression of the greatness of

national character, as an enduring record of faith and of truth, and as

an essential instrument in any system of education that professes to be

complete.

1._Forty-Four Years of the Life of a Hunter_; being Reminiscences of

MESHACH BROWNING, a Maryland Hunter; roughly written down by Himself.

Revised and illustrated by E. STABLER. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott &

Co. 1859. pp. x., 400.

2. _Ten Years of Preacher-Life_; Chapters from an Autobiography. By

WILLIAM HENRY MILBURN. New York: Derby & Jackson. 1859. pp. 363.

BENVENUTO CELLINI was right in his _dictum_ about autobiographies; and

so was Dr. Kitchener, in his about hares. First catch your perfectly

sincere and unconscious man. He is even more uncommon than a genius of

the first order. Most men dress themselves for their autobiographies,

as Machiavelli used to do for reading the classics, in their best

clothes; they receive us, as it were, in a parlor chilling and awkward

from its unfamiliarity with man, and keep us carefully away from the

kitchen-chimney-corner, where they would feel at home, and would not

look on a lapse into nature as the unpardonable sin. But what do we

want of a hospitality that makes strangers of us, or of confidences

that keep us at arm's-length? Better the tavern and the newspaper; for

in the one we can grumble, and from the other learn more of our

neighbors than we care to know. John Smith's autobiography is commonly

John Smith's design for an equestrian statue of himself,--very fine,

certainly, and as much like him as like Marcus Aurelius. Saint

Augustine, kneeling to confess, has an eye to the picturesque, and does

it in _pontificalibus_, resolved that Domina Grundy shall think all the

better of him. Rousseau cries, "I will bare my heart to you!" and,

throwing open his waistcoat, makes us the confidants of his dirty

linen. Montaigne, indeed, reports of himself with the impartiality of a

naturalist, and Boswell, in his letters to Temple, shows a maudlin

irretentiveness; but is not old Samuel Pepys, after all, the only man

who spoke to himself of himself with perfect simplicity, frankness, and

unconsciousness?--a creature unique as the dodo,--a solitary specimen,

to show that it was possible for Nature to indulge in so odd a whimsey!

An autobiography is good for nothing, unless the author tell us in it

precisely what he meant not to tell. A man who can say what he thinks

of another to his face is a disagreeable rarity; but one who could look

his own Ego straight in the eye, and pronounce unbiased judgment, were

worthy of Sir Thomas Browne's Museum. Had Cheiron written his

autobiography, the consciousness of his equine crupper would have

ridden him like a nightmare; should a mermaid write hers, she would

sink the fish's tail, nor allow it to be put into the scales, in

weighing her character. The mermaid, in truth, is the emblem of those

who strive to see themselves;--her mirror is too small to reflect

anything more than the _mulier formosa supernè_.

We looked for a great prize in Meshach Browning's account of himself,

and have been disappointed. Not that some very fair grains of wheat may

not be had for the winnowing, but the proportion of chaff is

disheartening. Meshach has been edited, and has not come out of that

fiery furnace unscathed. Mr. Stabler has not let him come before us in

his deerskin hunting-shirt, but has made him presentable by getting him

into a black dress-coat, the uniform of perfect respectability and

tiresomeness. He has corrected Meshach's style for him! He has made him

write that unexceptionable English which neither gods nor men, but only

columns, allow. (The kindness of an anonymous correspondent, however,

enables us to assure him that _lay_, and not _laid_, is the preterite

of _lie_.) One page of Meshach's own writing would have been worth all

his bear-stories put together. Many men may shoot bears, but few can

write like backwoodsmen. We shall expect an edition of "The Rivals"

from Mr. Stabler, with Mrs. Malaprop's epitaphs revised by the "Aids to

Composition." Luckily, Meshach himself will never know the wrong that

has been done him. On the contrary, he probably pleases himself in

finding that he is made to write President's English, and admires the

new leaves and apples not his own. But, in his polishing, American

letters have met as great a loss as American fiction did when the

depositions of the survivors of Bunker's Hill, taken fifty years after

the battle, were burned.

However, he who knows how to read with the ends of his fingers may yet

find good meat in the book. An honest provincialism has escaped Mr.

Stabler's weeding-hoe here and there, and we get a few glimpses, in

spite of him, into log-cabin interiors when the inmates are not in

their Sunday-clothes. We learn how much a sound stomach has to do with

human felicity; that a bride may make her husband happy, though her

whole outfit consist of two cups and saucers, two knives and forks, and

two spoons; that a man may be hospitable in a cabin, twelve by fifteen,

with only the forest for his larder; and that an American needs only an

axe, a rifle, and _nary red_, for his start in life. Meshach Browning

finds in his Paradise very much what our first parents found outside of

theirs. At nineteen he is the husband of pretty Mary McMullen, and

joint-proprietor with the rest of mankind of all-outdoors,--it being an

eccentricity of McMullen _père_ to prefer a back to a front view of his

sons-in-law. Meshach, who is sure of a comfortable fireside wherever

there are trees, moves into the nearest bit of wilderness, builds a

house with the timber felled to make a clearing, plants his acre or

two, and forthwith shoots a bear, whose salted flesh will keep him and

his wife alive till harvest. Thus in 1800 was a family founded, which

fifty years later had increased to one hundred and twenty-two, of whom

sixty-seven, as their progenitor says proudly, were "capable of bearing

arms for the defence of their country,"--though, to be sure, the

Harper's Ferry affair leaves us in some doubt as to the direction in

which they would bear them. The community of which the Brownings, man

and wife, became members at their marriage was a wholly self-subsistent

one. The men wore deerskins procured by their own rifles and dressed

and tailored by themselves,--while the women spun and wove both flax

and wool. Powder and lead seem to have been the only things for which

they were dependent on outsiders. Browning's father was an English

soldier, who, escaping from Braddock's massacre, deserted and settled

in the highlands of Western Maryland,--as a place, we suppose, equally

safe from the provost-martial of the redcoat and the tomahawk of the

red man. It is curious to think of the great contrast between father

and son: the one a British soldier of the day of strictest powder and

pigtail; the other, a man who never wore a hat, except in fine

weather,--and in the house, of course, like the rest of his countrymen.

In this case, we find the very purest American type (for Meshach has

not a single Old-World notion) produced in a single generation. We

ourselves have known a parallel instance in the children of a British

soldier who deserted during the War of 1812; in tone of thought,

accent, dialect, and physique they were unmistakably Yankee. If the

backwoods Americanize men so fast, is it wonderful that two centuries

of the Western Hemisphere should have produced a breed so unlike the

parent Bull? It is time Bull began to reconcile himself to it.

One of the most amusing passages in Meshach's autobiography is that in

which he relates his military experience as captain of a company of

militia. The company appear to have gone into action only once, and

that was on occasion of a muster when they undertook to _lick_ their

commander, with whom, for some reason or other, they were discontented.

As well as we can make out, the result seems to have been, that the

captain licked _them_; though our Caesar's Commentaries are naturally

so confused on this topic, that we almost feel, after reading them, as

if we had been through the fight ourselves.

The book should have been shorter by at least two-thirds,--for one

bear-story is just like another, and Meshach's style of narrative is

one that cannot bear the prosperity of print. However, we find much

that is interesting in the volume, as in all records of real

experience.

Mr. Milburn's account of himself we have also found very entertaining.

In some respects it belongs on the same shelf with Meshach Browning's;

for we think the best chapters in it are those which bring us into

contact with Cartwright and other Methodist ministers, the frontiersmen

and bushfighters of the Church, who do not bandy subtilties with

Mephistopheles, nor consider that the Prince of Darkness is a

gentleman, but go in for a rough-and-tumble fight with Satan and his

imps, as with so many red _Injuns_ undeserving of the rights and

incapable of the amenities of civilized warfare. We confess a thorough

liking for these Leatherstockings of the clergy, true apostolic

successors of the heavy-handed fisherman, Peter. Their rough-and-ready

gospel is just the thing for men who feel as if they could not get

religion, unless from a preacher who can "whip" them as well as thunder

doctrine at their ears.

We prefer those parts of Mr. Milburn's book in which he tells us what

he saw (if we may say it of a blind man) to those in which he

undertakes to tell us what he was. The history of the growth of his

mind is not of vital importance to us, and we should be quite willing

to have "returned unexperienced to our graves," like Grumio's

fellow-servants. We think there is getting to be altogether too much

unreserve in the world. We doubt if any man have the right to take

mankind by the button and tell all about himself, unless, like Dante,

he can symbolize his experience. Even Goethe we only half thank,

especially when he kisses and tells, and prefer Shakspeare's

indifference to the intimacy of the German. Silence about one's self is

the most golden of all, as men commonly discover after babbling. Mr.

Milburn, in one of his chapters, gives an account of his passage

through what he is pleased to call _neology_ and _rationalism_. He

represents himself as having sounded the depths of German metaphysics,

criticism, and aesthetics. But a man who is able to write a sentence in

which Lessing's Works are spoken of as if the reading of them tended to

make men "transcendentalists of the supra-nebulous order" no more

deserves a scourging by angels for his devotion to German literature

than Saint Jerome did for being a Ciceronian. No truly thorough course

of study ever weakened or unsteadied any man's mind, for it is the

surest way to make him think less of himself,--and we cannot help

believing that the disease Mr. Milburn went through was nothing more

nor less than _sentimentalism_, a complaint as common to a certain

period of life as measles. But while we think him mistaken in his

diagnosis, we cannot but commend the good sense and manliness of his

course of treatment.

Bating the egotism unavoidable in a work of the sort, the style of Mr.

Milburn's book is agreeable, and the anecdotes of various kinds with

which it abounds render it very amusing. It is of particular interest

as showing how much a blind man may accomplish both for himself and

others, that the loss of sight may be borne with cheerfulness as well

as resignation, and that the sufferer by such a calamity is sure of

kindness and sympathy from his fellow-men.

_A First Lesson in Natural History_. By ACTAEA. Boston: Little, Brown,

& Co. 1859. pp. 82.

This is an altogether charming little book. Simple, clear, and

methodical, the style leaves nothing to be desired, and suggests no

wish that anything were away. An aunt called upon for more stories--and

no wonder, when she tells them so well--resolves to play the Nereïd,

and takes her little ones in fancy down among the slopes and dells of

Ocean to watch the lovely growths and the strange creatures in which,

through plant and mineral, or what seem such, Life is yearning upward

toward the higher individuality of Volition. She tells us (for we

seemed among her hearers as we read, and drew our stool nearer) all

about the sea-anemones and corals, the coral-reefs, the jelly-fishes,

star-fishes, and sea-urchins,--which last are not to be confounded with

the buoys so frequently to be met with in our harbors. That the stories

have the sanction of Agassiz is warrant of their scientific accuracy,

while the feminine grace with which they are told is a science to be

learned of no professor.

Since the fairies are all dead, it is pleasant to know that Pan can be

brought to life again for children by the study of Nature. Now that the

wonders of the invisible world are closed, the little ones can have no

better set-off than in the beauty and marvel of God's visible creation.

Here also are food for the imagination and material for poetry.

Whatever teaches a child to observe teaches him to think, and

strengthens memory, a faculty which in fitting conjunction is

cumulative genius.

We dislike the science that is sometimes forced down youthful throats

by the Mrs. Squeerses of polite learning, a vile compound of treacle

and brimstone; but there is a vast difference between science as dead

fact and science as living poetry,--the harvest of the child's own

eyes, gathered on seashores and hillsides, in fields and lanes. We like

the aim and tendency of this little book, because it is likely to draw

children away from hooks, and to entice them into that admirably

ventilated schoolroom of out-doors which will give them sound lungs and

stomachs and muscular limbs. It teaches them, too, without their

knowing it; which is the only true way; for they contrive to make their

minds duck's-backs, under the assiduous watering-pot of instruction.

The knowledge it gives them is real, and not merely a thing of terms

and phrases. Moreover, the kind of it is suitable; a great thing; for

we hold a Pascal in a pinafore to be as great an outrage as a learned

pig.

We have found the generality of books written for children of late so

thoroughly bad, as void of invention as they are full of vulgarisms in

thought and language, that it is a downright pleasure to meet with one

so fresh and graceful as this of Aectaea's. We hope she will follow it

with a series, for she has shown herself qualified to do for science

what Hawthorne has done for mythology.

_Poems_. By ASNE WHITNEY. New York: Appleton & Co. 1859.

This modest volume is a collection of Miss Whitney's previously printed

poems, scattered about in forgotten newspapers, with perhaps as many

more, which now appear in print for the first time. The uncommon merit

of some of her early poems, especially "Bertha," "Hymn to the Sea," and

"Lilian," (here most unpoetically called "Facts in Verse,") long ago

awakened a desire in lovers of good poetry to know more of Miss Whitney

and what she had written; and the desire is gratified by the

publication of this book. We can hardly say that the new poems are

better than the old; though some of them, as "The Ceyba and the

Jaguey," "Undine," "Dominique," and "My Window," are marked by the same

quick insight, the same force and dignity of expression, which charm us

in the earlier verses. We still find "Lilian" the best of all, as it is

the longest; there are in it passages of description as clear and vivid

as the landscapes of Church and Turner, and touches of profound and

glowing imagination; and the whole poem, in spite of its obscurity,

affects the mind like a strain of high and mournful music. The Sonnets

are all more or less harsh and unintelligible,--a criticism which

applies to many of the other poems. Miss Whitney evidently despises

foot-notes as utterly as Tennyson, and leaves much unexplained in her

titles and in the poems themselves, which might help us to understand

them, if we knew it. Obscurity of thought and a lack of facility in

versification cause evident defects in her otherwise fine book; on the

other hand, she is never flat and seldom feeble, but writes as one

whose thoughts and feelings move on a high level, sustained by a

familiarity with the strength and beauty, rather than the grace and

tenderness of literature. Few of our countrywomen have written better

poems, and her little book gives finer food for thought and fancy than

many a more bulky volume. Is it ungracious to charge her with

affectation? for this is the clinging curse of modern poetry, and one

may trace it even in the noble idyls of the greatest English poet now

alive. The Brownings overflow with it, and it is the chief

characteristic of scores of the lesser poets of the day. If all who

write verses could learn how sacred language is, how full of beauty is

its austere simplicity, they would cease from their endless tricks of

word-painting and the Florentine mosaics of speech. Miss Whitney

offends less than many in this way, and has shown some of the rarer

gifts of that indefinable being,--a true poet.

_Sword and Gown_. A Novel: by the Author of "Guy Livingstone." Boston:

Ticknor & Fields.

This is rather a brilliant sketch than a carefully wrought and finely

finished romance. The actors are drawn in bold outlines, which it does

not appear to have been the purpose of the author to fill up in the

delicate manner usually deemed necessary for the development of

character in fiction. But they are so vigorously drawn, and the

narration is so full of power, that few readers can resist the

fascination of the story, in spite of the intrusive little digressions

which everywhere appear, and which, jumping at random through passages

of history, religion, art, politics, literature, as a circus-rider

forsakes his steed to dash through the many-colored tissue screens that

are invitingly held out to him, interfere quite seriously with its

progress. It is certainly a book in which the interest is positive, and

from which the attention is seldom allowed to wander; and is, so far, a

success.

But there is also another relation in which it is to be considered.

Without being much of a moralist, one may clearly perceive that its

tone is unhealthy and its sentiment vicious. What it aims at we would

not assume to decide; what it accomplishes is, to secure a sympathy for

a reckless and dare-devil spirit which drives the hero through a

tolerably long career of more than moderate iniquity, and leaves him

impenitent at the end. It will hardly do to say that the object of the

book is only to amuse. Dealing with the subjects it does, it must work

good or evil. Its theme is this: An imperious beauty, whose heart has

been seared in earliest youth, and whose passions are half supposed to

be dead, is brought in contact, at a French watering-place, with a man

whose life has been passed in wildest excesses, whose amatory exploits

have echoed through Europe, and who knows no higher human motive of

action than the prosecution of selfish and sensual enjoyment. His good

qualities are dauntless personal courage, which, however, often sinks

into brutal ferocity, and occasional touches of generous emotion

towards his friends. The young girl's heart-strings are again set in

tune, and made to quiver in harmony with those of the determined

conqueror. Just as her soul is yielded, the intelligence that her lover

has a living wife is imparted to her. Here a resemblance to a striking

incident in "Jane Eyre" may be detected; but mark the difference in the

result:--Jane Eyre, resolute in her righteous convictions, flies from a

struggle which she perhaps feels herself incapable of sustaining; the

present heroine consents to remain near her lover, on his promise of

good behavior! What follows cannot be averted,--who would expect that

it should be? The elopement which is planned, however, is prevented by

the interference of a third party, and the lovers submit to their

destiny of separation. They meet once again, but it is only when the

hero, mortally wounded in a Crimean battle, lies expiring at Scutari.

With the bitter agony of the dying farewell, the scene closes. The

characters remain unchanged to the end. The Sword, though stained in

many places with impurities, still glistens with a lustre that

bewilders and confuses the senses. The Gown--which seems introduced at

all only for the purpose of mockery, its representative being invested

with all contemptible and unmanly attributes--still lies covered with

the reproach that has been cast upon it.

The moral of such a book is not a good one. The author does his best,

by various arts, to make the reader look kindly upon a guilty love, and

to regard with admiration those who are animated by it, notwithstanding

the hero is no better at the end than he was at the opening, and the

heroine is rather worse. And such is his undeniable power, that with

many readers he will be too likely to carry his point.

* * * * *

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