But at about fifteen minutes past nine, an excited party passed up Royal

Exchange Lane, (now Exchange Street,) leading into King Street; and as

they came near the Custom-House, on the corner, one of the number, who

knew of the assault on the apprentice-boy, said, "Here is the soldier

who did it," when they gathered round the sentinel. The barber's boy now

came up and said, "This is the soldier who knocked me down with the

butt-end of his musket." Some now said, "Kill him! knock him down!" The

sentinel moved back up the steps of the Custom-House, and loaded his

gun. Missiles were thrown at him, when he presented his musket, warned

the party to keep off, and called for help. Some one ran to Captain

Preston, the officer of the day, and informed him that the people were

about to assault the sentinel, when he hastened to the main guard, on

the opposite side of the street, about forty rods from the Custom-House,

and sent from here a sergeant, a very young officer, with a file of

seven men, to protect the sentinel. They went over in a kind of trot,

using rough words and actions towards those who went with them, and,

coming near the party round the sentinel, rudely pushed them aside,

pricking some with their bayonets, and formed in a half-circle near the

sentry-box. The sentinel now came down the steps and fell in with the

file, when they were ordered to prime and load. Captain Preston almost

immediately joined his men. The file now numbered nine.

The number of people here at this time is variously estimated from

thirty to a hundred,--"between fifty and sixty" being the most common

statement. Some of them were fresh from the affray at the barracks, and

some of the soldiers had been in the affair at the ropewalks. There was

aggravation on both sides. The crowd were unarmed, or had merely sticks,

which they struck defiantly against each other,--having no definite

object, and doing no greater mischief than, in retaliation of

uncalled-for military roughness, to throw snowballs, hurrah, whistle

through their fingers, use oaths and foul language, call the soldiers

names, hustle them, and dare them to fire. One of the file was struck

with a stick. There were good men trying to prevent a riot, and some

assured the soldiers that they would not be hurt. Among others, Henry

Knox, subsequently General, was present, who saw nothing to justify the

use of fire-arms, and, with others, remonstrated against their

employment; but Captain Preston, as he was talking with Knox, saw his

men pressing the people with their bayonets, when, in great agitation,

he rushed in among them. Then, with or without orders, but certainly

without any legal form or warning, seven of the file, one after another,

discharged their muskets upon the citizens; and the result indicates the

malignity and precision of their aim. Crispus Attucks, an intrepid

mulatto, who was a leader in the affair at Murray's Barracks, was killed

as he stood leaning and resting his breast on a stout "cord-wood stick";

Samuel Gray, one of the rope-makers, was shot as he stood with his hands

in his bosom, and just as he had said, "My lads, they will not fire";

Patrick Carr, on hearing the alarm-bell, had left his house full of

fight, and, as he was crossing the street, was mortally wounded; James

Caldwell, in like manner summoned from his home, was killed as he was

standing in the middle of the street; Samuel Maverick, a lad of

seventeen, ran out of the house to go to a fire, and was shot as he was

crossing the street; six others were wounded. But fifteen or twenty

minutes had elapsed from the time the sergeant went from the main guard

to the time of the firing. The people, on the report of the guns, fell

back, but instinctively and instantly returned for the killed and

wounded, when the infuriated soldiers prepared to fire again, but were

checked by Captain Preston, and were withdrawn across the street to the

main guard. The drums beat; several companies of the Twenty-Ninth

Regiment, under Colonel Carr, promptly appeared in the street, and were

formed in three divisions in front of the main guard, the front division

near the northeast corner of the Town-House, in the kneeling posture for

street-firing. The Fourteenth Regiment was ordered under arms, but

remained at their barracks.

The report now spread that "the troops had risen on the people"; and the

beat of drums, the church-bells, and the cry of fire summoned the

inhabitants from their homes, and they rushed through the streets to the

place of alarm. In a few minutes thousands collected, and the cry was,

"To arms! to arms!" The whole town was in the utmost confusion; while in

King Street there was, what the Patriots had so long predicted, dreaded,

and vainly endeavored to avert, an indignant population and an

exasperated soldiery face to face. The excitement was terrible. The care

of the popular leaders for their cause, since the mob-days of the Stamp

Act, had been like the care of their personal honor: it drew them forth

as the prompt and brave controlling power in every crisis; and they were

among the concourse on this "night of consternation." Joseph Warren,

early on the ground to act the good physician as well as the fearless

patriot, gives the impression produced on himself and his co-laborers as

they saw the first blood flowing that was shed for American liberty.

"Language," he says, "is too feeble to paint the emotions of our souls,

when our streets were stained with the blood of our brethren, when our

ears were wounded by the groans of the dying, and our eyes were

tormented by the sight of the mangled bodies of the dead." "Our hearts

beat to arms; we snatched our weapons, almost resolved by one decisive

stroke to avenge the death of our slaughtered brethren."

Meantime the Lieutenant-Governor, at his residence in North Square,

heard the sound of the church-bell near by, and supposed it was an alarm

of fire. But soon, at nearly ten o'clock, a number of the inhabitants

came running into the house, entreating him to go to King Street

immediately, otherwise, they said, "the town would be all in blood." He

immediately started for the scene of danger. On his way, in the

Market-Place, he found himself amidst a great body of people, some armed

with clubs, others with cutlasses, and all calling for fire-arms. He

made himself known to them, but pleaded in vain for a hearing; and, to

insure his safety, he retreated into a dwelling-house, and thence went

by a private way into King Street, where he found an excited multitude

anxiously awaiting his arrival. He first called for Captain Preston; and

a natural indignation at a high-handed act is expressed in the stern and

searching questions which the civilian put to the soldier, bearing on

the vital point of the subordination of the military to the civil power.

"Are you the commanding officer?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Do you know, Sir, you have no power to fire on any body of people

collected together, except you have a civil magistrate with you to give

orders?"

Captain Preston replied,--

"I was obliged to, to save the sentry."

So great was the confusion that Preston's reply was heard but by few.

The cry was raised, "To the Town-House! to the Town-House!" when

Hutchinson, by the irresistible violence of the crowd, was forced into

the building, and up to the Council-Chamber; and in a few minutes he

appeared on the balcony. Near him were prominent citizens, both

Loyalists and Whigs; below him, on the one side, were his indignant

townsmen, who had conferred on him every honor in their power, and on

the other side, the regiment in its defiant attitude. He could speak

with eloquence and power; throughout this strange and trying scene he

bore himself with dignity and self-possession; and as in the stillness

of night he expressed great concern at the unhappy event, and made

solemn pledges to the people, his manner must have been uncommonly

earnest. "The law," he averred, "should have its course; he would live

and die by the law." He promised to order an inquiry in the morning, and

requested all to retire to their homes. But words now were not

satisfactory to the people; and those near him urged that the course of

justice had always been evaded or obstructed in favor of the soldiery,

and that the people were determined not to disperse until Captain

Preston was arrested. In consequence, Hutchinson ordered an immediate

court of inquiry. The Patriots also entreated the Lieutenant-Governor to

order the troops to their barracks. He replied, that it was not in his

power to give such an order, but he would consult the officers. They now

came on to the balcony,--Dalrymple of the Fourteenth Regiment being

present,--and after an interview with Hutchinson returned to the troops.

The men now rose from their kneeling posture; the order to "shoulder

arms" was heard; and the people were greatly relieved by seeing the

troops move towards their barracks.

The people now began to disperse, but slowly, however. Meanwhile, the

court of inquiry on Captain Preston was in session, and, after an

examination that lasted three hours, he was bound over for trial. Later,

the file of soldiers were also arrested. It was three o'clock in the

morning before the Lieutenant-Governor left the scene of the massacre.

And now all, excepting about a hundred of the people, who formed

themselves into a watch, left the streets. Thus wise action by the crown

officials, the activity of the popular leaders, and the habitual respect

of the people for law, proved successful in preventing further carnage.

"It was Royal George's livery," said Warren, "that proved a shield to

the soldiery, and saved them from destruction." Hence, a contemporary

versifier and participator in these scenes was able to write,--

"No sudden rage the ruffian soldier bore,

Or drenched the pavements with his vital gore;

Deliberate thought did all our souls compose,

Till veiled in gloom the low'ry morning rose."

During the night, the popular leaders sent expresses to the neighboring

towns, bearing intelligence of what had occurred, and summoning people

from their beds to go to the aid of Boston; but as the efforts to

restore quiet were proving successful, the summons was countermanded.

This action accounts for the numbers who, very early in the morning of

the sixth of March, flocked into the town. They could learn details of

the tragedy from the actors in it,--could see the blood, the brains

even, of the slaughtered inhabitants,--could hear the groans of the

wounded,--could view the bodies of the dead. This terrible revelation of

the work of arbitrary power, to a people habitually tender of regard for

human life, naturally shocked the sensibilities of all; and thus the

public temper was again wrought up to a fearful pitch of indignation. It

required the strongest moral influence to restrain the rash, and to

guide in the forms of law a righteous demand for a redress of grievance

and for future security.

The Lieutenant-Governor, during the night, had summoned such members of

the Council as were within reach to meet in the Council-Chamber in the

morning; and on joining them, he found the Selectmen, with most of the

justices of the county, waiting for him, to represent, as he says,

"their opinion of the absolute necessity of the troops being at a

distance, that there might be no intercourse between the inhabitants and

them, in order to prevent a further effusion of blood." Such was the

logic of events which now forced the seventeen months' question of the

removal of the troops on the civil and military authorities with an

imperativeness that could not be resisted.

The question, however, came up now in a new shape. To put it in the

simplest way, and in the very words used on that day,--the people were

so excited by the shedding of blood on the preceding night, that they

were resolved no longer to acquiesce in the decision of the constituted

authorities as to the troops; but, failing in other means, they were

determined to effect their removal by force, let the act be deemed

rebellion or otherwise. Not that any conspiracy existed; not that any

plan had been matured to do this; but circumstances had transferred the

question from the domain of reason to that of physical force; and the

only point with the crown officials, during this whole day's

deliberations, was, whether they would be justified in what appeared to

them lowering the national standard at the demand of a power which they

habitually represented as "the faction," or whether they might venture

to take the responsibility of resisting the demand and of meeting the

consequences. Well might John Adams say, "This was a dangerous and

difficult crisis."

The Selectmen expressed to the Lieutenant-Governor the opinion, that

"the inhabitants would be under no restraint whilst the troops were in

town." "I let them know," Hutchinson says, "that I had no power to

remove the troops." They also informed him that they had been requested

to call a town-meeting, which was the special dread of Hutchinson. As

the settled determination of the people became revealed, the anxiety of

the Lieutenant-Governor naturally deepened as to what the day might

bring forth; and he sent for Colonels Dalrymple and Carr to be present

in Council and act as military advisers. But the discussions here were

interrupted by the entrance of a messenger from another assembly,

bearing the ominous summons for the immediate presence among them of the

Selectmen.

This summons invites attention to the movements of the people, who had

been constantly coming in from the neighboring towns, and had now

gathered in great numbers in and around Faneuil Hall, to use

Hutchinson's words, "in a perfect frenzy." It was, however, the general

disposition, volcanic as were the elements, to act with caution,

deliberation, and in a spirit of unity, and, doubtless, with the

consideration that the eyes of the friends of their cause were upon

them, and the name and fame of Boston were at stake. The hours passed,

and no warrant appeared calling a town-meeting; when, at eleven o'clock,

the town-records say, "the freeholders and other inhabitants" held a

meeting, "occasioned, by the massacre made in King Street by the

soldiery." The town-clerk, William Cooper, acted as the chairman. This

true and intrepid patriot held this office forty-nine years, which

speaks for his fidelity to duty, intelligence, devotion to principle,

and moral worth. "The Selectmen," his clear, round record reads, "not

being present, and the inhabitants being informed that they were in the

Council-Chamber, it was voted that Mr. William Greenleaf be desired to

proceed there and acquaint the Selectmen that the inhabitants desire

and expect their attendance at the Hall." This was virtually a command,

and the Selectmen immediately repaired thither. Thomas Cushing was

chosen the Moderator. He was now the Speaker of the House of

Representatives; and though not of such shining abilities as to cause

him to be looked up to in Boston as a leader, and of the moderate class

of Patriots, yet, by urbanity of manner, a high personal character,

diligent public service, and fidelity to the cause, he won a large

influence. It was next voted that Constable Wallace wait upon the

Reverend Dr. Cooper and acquaint him that the inhabitants desired him to

open the meeting with prayer. This great divine was a brother of the

town-clerk, and the pastor of the Brattle-Street Church. He was devoted

to the Patriot cause, and on the most confidential terms with the

popular leaders; and besides being rich in genius and learning, he had,

says Dr. Eliot, a gift in prayer peculiar and very excellent. He

complied with the request, but no reporter has transmitted the words of

this righteous man, or described this solemn assembly, as fervent prayer

now went up for country.

The meeting next voted to invite any citizen to give information of the

massacre of the preceding evening, "that the same might be minuted by

the town-clerk"; whereupon several persons related details of the

tragedy. One said he heard a soldier, after the firing, say, that "the

Devil might give quarter, he should give none"; another said he heard a

soldier say, that "his officer told him, that, if the soldiers went out

that night, they must go armed and in companies"; another related a

soldier's story of a scheme formed to kill the inhabitants; another

said, he "descried a soldier who struck down the inhabitants." These

homely words are life-like glimpses of the spirit of the hour. No speech

could have been more eloquent, because none could have been better

calculated to deepen the general conviction and minister to the common

emotion. However, so many witnesses were ready to testify, that it was

found to be impracticable to hear all; and a committee was appointed to

receive and digest the evidence.

Samuel Adams addressed this remarkable meeting. He spoke with a pathos

peculiar to himself. His manner, naturally impressive, was rendered more

so by the solemnity of the occasion, and every heart was moved. The

great hour demanded dignity and discretion in unison with firmness, and

they were combined in the action of the meeting. It resolved that the

inhabitants would submit no longer to the insult of military rule. A

committee of fifteen was chosen to wait on the Lieutenant-Governor, and

acquaint him that it was the unanimous opinion of the meeting that the

inhabitants and soldiery could no longer dwell together in safety, and

that nothing could be rationally expected to restore the peace of the

town and prevent additional scenes of blood and carnage but the

immediate removal of the troops; and to say, further, that they most

fervently prayed his Honor that his power and influence might be exerted

in order that this removal might be instantly effected. This committee

well represented the intelligence, the patriotism, the varied interests,

and whatever there was of true greatness in Boston. The meeting now

dissolved; when the Selectmen issued a warrant for a regular

town-meeting to convene at the same place, at three o'clock in the

afternoon.

It was about noon when the Lieutenant-Governor received the committee of

the town at the Council-Chamber, the Council being in session. I have

found no details of what was said by the committee at this interview, in

urging a compliance with the demand. Hutchinson said he was not prepared

to reply, but would give an answer in writing, when the committee

withdrew into another room; and he gives glimpses of what then occurred.

"I told the Council," he says, "that a removal of the troops was not

with me; and I desired them to consider what answer I could give to

this application of the town, whilst Colonel Dalrymple, who had the

command, was present." Some of the members, who were among the truest

Patriots, urged a compliance, when the Lieutenant-Governor declared that

"he would upon no consideration whatever give orders for their removal."

The result reached this morning was an advice for the removal of one

regiment, in which the commanding officer concurred. As Hutchinson rose

from this sitting, he declared that "he meant to receive no further

application on the subject."

Things wore a gloomy aspect during the interval between the session of

the Council and the time of the afternoon meeting; for the natural

effect of the unbending tone of the crown officials was to give firmness

to the determined spirit of the people. There were consultations between

members of the Council, the popular leaders, and the commanding

officers; and now the very men who were branded as incendiaries, enemies

of Great Britain, and traitors, were again seen quietly endeavoring to

prevent a catastrophe. Hutchinson, in his History, says it was intimated

to members of the Council, that, though the commanding officer should

receive no authoritative order to remove all the troops, yet the

expression of a desire by the Lieutenant-Governor and Council that it

should be done would cause him to do it; and on this basis Hutchinson

was prevailed upon to meet the Council in the afternoon. This was a

great point gained for the popular cause.

At three o'clock, Faneuil Hall was filled to overflowing with the

excited population assembled in legal town-meeting. Thomas Cushing was

again chosen the Moderator; but the place would hold only about thirteen

hundred, and the record reads, "The Hall not being spacious enough to

receive the inhabitants who attended, it was voted to adjourn to Dr.

Sewall's meeting-house,"--the Old South. The most convenient way for the

people would be to pass into King Street, up by the Council-Chamber, and

along what is now Washington Street, to the church. As they went, no

mention is made of mottoes or banners or flags, of cheers or of jeers.

Thomas dishing said his countrymen "were like the old British commoners,

grave and sad men"; and it was said in the Council to Hutchinson, "That

multitude are not such as pulled down your house"; but they are "men of

the best characters," "men of estates and men of religion," "men who

pray over what they do." With similar men, men who feared God and were

devoted to public liberty, Cromwell won at Marston Moor; and so striking

was the analogy, that at this hour it virtually forced itself on the

well-read Hutchinson: for men of this stamp had once made a revolution

in Boston, and as he looked out on this scene, perhaps scanned the

concourse who passed from Faneuil Hall to the Old South, and read in

their faces the sign of resolute hearts, he judged "their spirit to be

as high as was the spirit of their ancestors when they imprisoned

Andros, while they were four times as numerous." As the burden of

official responsibility pressed heavily on him, he realized that he had

to deal with an element far more potent than "the faction" which

officials had long represented as composing the Patriot band, and that

much depended on dealing with it wisely. This was not a dependent and

starved host wildly urging the terrible demand of "Bread or blood"; nor

was it fanaticism in a season of social discontent claiming

impossibilities at the hand of power: the craving was moral and

intellectual: it was an intelligent public opinion, a people with

well-grounded and settled convictions, making a just demand on arbitrary

power. Was such public opinion about to be scorned as though it were but

a faction, and by officials who bore high the party-standard? And were

men of such resoluteness of character and purpose about to be involved

in a work of carnage? or would the wielders of British authority avoid

the extremity by concession? Boston, indeed America, had seen no hour of

intenser interest, of deeper solemnity, of more instant peril, or of

truer moral sublimity; and as this assembly deliberated with the sounds

of the fife and drum in their ears, and with the soldiery in their

sight, questions like these must have been on every lip,--and they are

of the civil-war questions that cause an involuntary shudder in every

home.

The Old South was not large enough to hold the people, and they stood in

the street and near the Town-House awaiting the report of the committee

of fifteen, chosen in the morning. The Lieutenant-Governor was now at

the Council-Chamber, where, in addition to Colonels Dalrymple and Carr,

there had been summoned Captain Caldwell of the Rose frigate; and

Hutchinson would, he says, have summoned other crown officers, but he

knew the Council would not consent to it. He took care to repeat to the

committee, he says, the declaration which he had made in the morning to

the Selectmen, the Justices, and the Council,--that "the ordering of the

troops did not lie with him." As the committee, with Samuel Adams at the

head, appeared on the Town-House steps, the people were in motion, and

the word passed, "Make way for the committee!" Adams uncovered his head,

and, as he went towards the church, he bowed alternately to those on

each side of the lane that was formed, and repeated the words, "Both

regiments or none." The answer of the Lieutenant-Governor to the morning

demand for a total removal of the troops was read to the meeting in the

church. It was to the effect, that he had conferred with the commanders

of the two regiments, who received orders from the General in New York,

and it was not in his power to countermand these orders; but the Council

desired their removal, and Colonel Dalrymple had signified that because

of the part which the Twenty-Ninth Regiment had taken in the differences

it should be placed without delay in the barracks at the Castle, and

also that the main guard should be removed; while the Fourteenth

Regiment should be so disposed and laid under such restraint that all

occasion for future differences might be prevented. And now resounded

through the excited assembly, from a thousand tongues, the words, "Both

regiments or none!"

A short debate occurred, when the answer was voted to be unsatisfactory.

Then another committee was chosen. It was resolved that John Hancock,

Samuel Adams, William Molineaux, William Phillips, Joseph Warren, Joshua

Henshaw, and Samuel Pemberton be a committee to inform the

Lieutenant-Governor that it was the unanimous opinion of the people that

the reply was by no means satisfactory, and that nothing less would

satisfy them than a total and immediate removal of the troops. This

committee was one worthy of a great occasion. Hancock, Henshaw, and

Pemberton, besides being individually of large and just influence from

their ability, patriotism, worth, and wealth, were members of the Board

of Selectmen, and therefore represented the municipality; Phillips, who

had served on this Board, was a type of the upright and liberal

merchant; Molineaux was one of the most determined and zealous of the

Patriots, and a stirring business-man; Warren, ardent and bold, of

rising fame as a leader, personified the generous devotion and noble

enthusiasm of the young men; Adams, though not the first-named on the

committee, played so prominent a part in its doings, that he appears as

its chairman. He was so widely and favorably known now that he was

addressed as "the Father of America." Of middling stature, plain in

dress, quiet in manner, unpretending in deportment, he exhibited nothing

extraordinary in common affairs; but on great occasions, when his deeper

nature was called into action, he rose, without the smallest

affectation, into an upright dignity of figure and bearing,--with a

harmony of voice and a power of speech which made a strong impression,

the more lasting from the purity and nervous eloquence of his style and

the logical consistency of his argument. Such were the men selected to

speak and act for Boston in this hour of deep passion and of high

resolve.

The committee, about four o'clock, repaired to the Council-Chamber. It

was a room respectable in size and not without ornament and historic

memorials. On its walls were representatives of the two elements now in

conflict,--of the Absolutism that was passing away, in full-length

portraits of Charles II. and James II. robed in the royal ermine, and of

a Republicanism which had grown robust and self-reliant, in the heads of

Belcher and Bradstreet and Endicott and Winthrop. Around a long table

were seated the Lieutenant-Governor and the members of the Council with

the military officers,--the scrupulous and sumptuous costumes of

civilians in authority, gold and silver lace, scarlet cloaks, and large

wigs, mingled with the brilliant uniforms of the British army and navy.

Into such imposing presence was now ushered the plainly attired

committee of the town.

At this time the Lieutenant-Governor, a portion of the Council, the

military officers, and, among other officials now in the Town-House,

though not in the Council, the Secretary of the Province, were sternly

resolved to refuse compliance with the demand of the people. On the vote

of the meeting being presented to the Lieutenant-Governor, Adams

remarked at length on the illegality of quartering troops on the

inhabitants in time of peace and without the consent of the legislature,

urged that the public service did not require them, adverted with

sensibility and warmth to the late tragedy, painted the misery in which

the town would be involved, if the troops were suffered to remain, and

urged the necessity of an immediate compliance with the vote of the

people. The Lieutenant-Governor, in a brief reply, defended both the

legality and the necessity of the troops, and renewed his old assertion

that they were not subject to his authority. Adams again rose, and

attention was riveted on him as he paused and gave a searching look at

the Lieutenant-Governor. There was in his countenance and attitude a

silent eloquence that words could not express; his manner showed that

the energies of his soul were roused; and, in a tone not loud, but deep

and earnest, he again addressed himself to Hutchinson, "It is well

known," he said, "that, acting as Governor of the Province, you are, by

its Charter, the Commander-in-Chief of the military forces within it,

and, as such, the troops now in the capital are subject to your orders.

If you, or Colonel Dalrymple under you, have the power to remove one

regiment, you have the power to remove both; and nothing short of their

total removal will satisfy the people or preserve the peace of the

Province. A multitude, highly incensed, now wait the result of this

application. The voice of ten thousand freemen demands that both

regiments be forthwith removed. Their voice must be respected,--their

demand obeyed. Fail, then, at your peril, to comply with this

requisition. On you alone rests the responsibility of the decision; and

if the just expectations of the people are disappointed, you must be

answerable to God and your country for the fatal consequences that must

ensue. The committee have discharged their duty, and it is for you to

discharge yours. They wait your final determination." As Adams, while

speaking, intently eyed Hutchinson, he says, "I observed his knees to

tremble; I saw his face grow pale; and I enjoyed the sight."

A spell of silence followed this appeal. Then there was low

conversation, to a whisper, between the Lieutenant-Governor and Colonel

Dalrymple, who, in the spirit of the unbending soldier, was for

resisting this demand, as he had been for summary proceedings in the

case of the meetings. "It is impossible for me," he had said this

afternoon, "to go any further lengths in this matter. The information

given of the intended rebellion is sufficient reason against the removal

of His Majesty's troops." But he now said in a loud tone, "I am ready to

obey your orders," which threw the responsibility on Hutchinson. All the

members of the committee urged the demand. "Every one of them,"

Hutchinson says, "deliberately gave his opinion at large, and generally

gave this reason to support it,--that the people would most certainly

drive out the troops, and that the inhabitants of the other towns would

join in it; and several of the gentlemen, declared that they did not

judge from the general temper of the people only, but they knew it to be

the determination, not of a mob, but of the generality of the principal

inhabitants; and they added, that all the blood would be charged to me

alone, for refusing to follow their unanimous advice, in desiring that

the quarters of a single regiment might be changed, in order to put an

end to the animosities between the troops and the inhabitants, seeing

Colonel Dalrymple would consent to it." After the committee withdrew,

the debates of the Council were long and earnest; and, as they went on,

Hutchinson asked, "What protection would there be for the Commissioners,

if both regiments were ordered to the Castle?" Several said, "They would

be safe, and always had been safe." "As safe," said Gray, "without the

troops as with them." And Irving said, "They never had been in danger,

and he would pawn his life that they should receive no injury." "Unless

the troops were removed," it was said, "before evening there would be

ten thousand men on the Common." "The people in general," Tyler said,

"were resolved to have the troops removed, without which they would not

be satisfied; that, failing of other means, they were determined to

effect their removal by force, let the act be deemed rebellion or

otherwise." As the Council deliberated, the people were impatient, and

the members were repeatedly called out to give information as to the

result, This at length was unanimity. This body resolved, that, to

preserve the peace, it was absolutely necessary that the troops should

be removed; and they advised the Lieutenant-Governor to communicate that

conclusion to Colonel Dalrymple, and to request that he would order his

whole command to Castle William.

The remark of Dalrymple, as well as the decision of the Council, became

known to the people, and the word passed round, "that Colonel Dalrymple

had yielded, and that the Lieutenant-Governor only held out." This

circumstance was communicated to Hutchinson, and he says, "It now lay

upon me to choose that side which had the fewest and least difficulties;

and I weighed and compared them as well as the time I had for them would

permit. I knew it was most regular for me to leave this matter entire to

the commanding officer. I was sensible the troops were designed to be,

upon occasion, employed under the direction of the civil magistrate, and

that at the Castle they would be too remote, in most cases, to answer

that purpose. But then I considered they never had been used for that

purpose, and there was no probability they ever would be, because no

civil magistrate could be found under whose directions they might act;

and they could be considered only as having a tendency to keep the

inhabitants in some degree of awe, and even this was every day

lessening; and the affronts the troops received were such that there was

no avoiding quarrels and slaughter." Still he hesitated substantially to

retract his word; for now a request from him, he knew, was equivalent to

an order; and before he determined, he consulted three officers of the

crown, who, though not present in the Council, were in the building, and

the Secretary, Oliver. All agreed that he ought to comply with the

advice of the Council. He then formally recommended Colonel Dalrymple to

remove all the troops, who gave his word of honor that he would commence

preparations in the morning for a removal, and that there should be no

unnecessary delay in quartering both regiments at the Castle.

It was dark when the committee bore back to the meeting the great report

of their success. It was received with expressions of the highest

satisfaction. What a burden was lifted from the hearts of the Patriots!

They did not, however, regard their work as quite done. They voted that

a strong watch was necessary through the night, when the committee who

had waited on the Lieutenant-Governor tendered their services to make a

part of the watch, and the whole matter was placed in their hands as "a

committee of safety." They were authorized to accept the service of such

inhabitants as they might deem proper. The meeting, then dissolved. A

few days after, the two regiments were removed to the Castle.

The withdrawal of the troops caused great surprise in England, and long

deliberations by the Ministry. "It is put out of all doubt," Governor

Bernard wrote Hutchinson, "that the attacking the soldiers was

preconcerted in order to oblige them to fire, and then make it necessary

to quit the town, in consequence of their doing what they were forced to

do. It is considered by thinking men wholly as a manoeuvre to support

the cause of non-importation." The Opposition termed it an indignity put

upon Great Britain, and called upon the Ministry to resent it upon a

system, or to resign their offices. Lord Barrington, who approved of the

soldiers' retiring to the Castle, said, that, "where there was no

magistracy there should be no soldiers; and if they intended to have

soldiers sent there again, they should provide for a magistracy, which

could not be done but by appointing a royal Council, instead of the

present democratical one." The Government were perplexed; but the

expectation was general, that General Gage, without waiting for orders

from the Government, would send a reinforcement to Boston, and order the

whole of the troops into the town. "Every one," Governor Bernard wrote,

"without exception, says it must be immediately done. Those in

opposition are as loud as any. Lord Shelburne told a gentleman, who

reported it to me, that it was now high time for Great Britain to act

with spirit." The Governor advised Hutchinson, that, should it turn out

that he had been successful in preventing Captain Preston from being

murdered by the mob, "Government might be reconciled to the removal of

the troops." There was much outside clamor, and those who indulged in it

could not reconcile to themselves "six hundred regular troops giving way

to two or three thousand common people, who, they say, would not have

dared to attack them, if they had stood their ground"; and this class

regarded the affair "as a successful bully." Colonel Barré, in the House

of Commons, disposed of the question in a few words: "The officers

agreed in sending the soldiers to Castle William; what Minister will

dare to send them back to Boston?"

These events stirred the public mind in the Colonies profoundly. The

Spirit evinced by the people of Boston in the whole transaction raised

the town still higher in the estimation of the Patriots; annual

commemorative orations kept alive the tragic scene; and thus the

introduction of the troops, the question involved in their removal, and

the massacre and triumph of the people, contributed powerfully to bring

about that change in affections and principles which finally resulted in

American Independence.

* * * * *

WET-WEATHER WORK.

BY A FARMER.

IV.

We are fairly on English ground now; of course, it is wet weather. The

phenomena of the British climate have not changed much since the time

when the rains "let fall their horrible pleasure" upon the head of the

poor, drenched outcast, Lear. Thunder and lightning, however, which

belonged to that particular war of the elements, are rare in England.

The rain is quiet, fine, insinuating, constant as a lover,--not wasting

its resources in sudden, explosive outbreaks.

During a foot-tramp of some four hundred miles, which I once had the

pleasure of making upon English soil, and which led me from the mouth of

the Thames to its sources, and thence through Derbyshire, the West

Riding of Yorkshire, and all of the Lake counties, I do not think that

the violence of the rain kept me housed for more than five days out of

forty. Not to say that the balance showed sunshine and a bonny sky; on

the contrary, a soft, lubricating mist is the normal condition of the

British atmosphere; and a neutral tint of gray sky, when no wet is

falling, is almost sure to call out from the country-landlord, if

communicative, an explosive and authoritative, "Fine morning, this,

Sir!"

The really fine, sunny days--days you believed in rashly, upon the sunny

evidence of such blithe poets as Herrick--are so rare, that, after a

month of British travel, you can count them on your fingers. On such a

one, by a piece of good fortune, I saw all the parterres of Hampton

Court,--its great vine, its labyrinthine walks, its stately alleys, its

ruddy range of brick, its clipped lindens, its rotund and low-necked

beauties of Sir Peter Lely, and the red geraniums flaming on the

window-sills of once royal apartments, where the pensioned dowagers now

dream away their lives. On another such day, Twickenham, and all its

delights of trees, bowers, and villas, were flashing in the sun as

brightly as ever in the best days of Horace Walpole or of Pope. And on

yet another, after weary tramp, I toiled up to the inn-door of "The

Bear," at Woodstock; and after a cut or two into a ripe haunch of

Oxfordshire mutton, with certain "tiny kickshaws," I saw, for the first

time, under the light of a glorious sunset, that exquisite velvety

stretch of the park of Woodstock, dimpled with water, dotted with

forest--clumps, where companies of sleek fallow-deer were grazing by the

hundred, where pheasants whirred away down the aisles of wood, where

memories of Fair Rosamond and of Rochester and of Alice Lee

lingered,--and all brought to a ringing close by Southey's ballad of

"Blenheim," as the shadow of the gaunt Marlborough column slanted across

the path.

There are other notable places, however, which seem--so dependent are we

on first impressions--to be always bathed in a rain-cloud. It is quite

impossible, for instance, for me to think of London Bridge save as a

great reeking thoroughfare, slimy with thin mud, with piles of umbrellas

crowding over it, like an army of turtles, and its balustrade steaming

with wet. The charming little Dulwich Gallery, with its Bonningtons and

Murillos, I remember as situated somewhere (for I could never find it

again of my own head) at a very rainy distance from London, under the

spout of an interminable waterfall. The guide-books talk of a pretty

neighborhood, and of a thousand rural charms thereabout; I remember only

one or two draggled policemen in oil-skin capes, and with heads slanted

to the wind, and my cabby, in a four-caped coat, shaking himself like a

water-dog, in the area. Exeter, Gloucester, and Glasgow are three great

wet cities in my memory,--a damp cathedral in each, with a damp-coated

usher to each, who shows damp tombs, and whose talk is dampening to the

last degree. I suppose they have sunshine in these places, and in the

light of the sun I am sure that marvellous gray tower of Gloucester must

make a rare show; but all the reports in the world will not avail to dry

up the image of those wet days of visit.

Considering how very much the fair days are overbalanced by the dirty,

thick, dropping, misty weather of England, I think we take a too sunny

aspect of her history: it has not been under the full-faced smiles of

heaven that her battles, revolutions, executions, and pageants have held

their august procession; the rain has wet many a May-day and many a

harvesting, whose traditional color (through tender English verses) is

gaudy with yellow sunshine. The revellers of the "Midsummer Night's

Dream" would find a wet turf eight days out of ten to disport upon. We

think of Bacon without an umbrella, and of Cromwell without a

mackintosh; yet I suspect both of them carried these, or their

equivalents, pretty constantly. Raleigh, indeed, threw his velvet cloak

into the mud for the Virgin Queen to tread upon,--from which we infer a

recent shower; but it is not often that an historical incident is so

suggestive of the true state of the atmosphere.

History, however, does not mind the rain: agriculture must. More

especially in any view of British agriculture, whether old or new, and

in any estimate of its theories or progress, due consideration must be

had for the generous dampness of the British atmosphere. To this cause

is to be attributed primarily that wonderful velvety turf which is so

unmatchable elsewhere; to the same cause, and to the accompanying even

temperature, is to be credited very much of the success of the

turnip-culture, which has within a century revolutionized the

agriculture of Kugland; yet again, the magical effects of a thorough

system of drainage are nowhere so demonstrable as in a soil constantly

wetted, and giving a steady flow, however small, to the discharging

tile. Measured by inches, the rain-fall is greater in most parts of

America than in Great Britain; but this fall is so capricious with us,

often so sudden and violent, that there must be inevitably a large

surface-discharge, even though the tile, three feet below, is in working

order. The true theory of skilful drainage is, not to carry away the

quick flush of a shower, but to relieve a soil too heavily saturated by

opening new outflows, setting new currents astir of both air and

moisture, and thus giving new life and an enlarged capacity to lands

that were dead with a stagnant over-soak.

Bearing in mind, then, the conditions of the British climate, which are

so much in keeping with the "wet weather" of these studies, let us go

back again to old Markham's day, and amble along--armed with our

umbrellas--through the current of the seventeenth century.

James I., that conceited old pedant, whose "Counterblast to Tobacco" has

worked the poorest of results, seems to have had a nice taste for

fruits; and Sir Henry Wotton, his ambassador at Venice, writing from

that city in 1622, says,--"I have sent the choicest melon-seeds of all

kinds, which His Majesty doth expect, as I had order both from ray Lord

Holderness and from Mr. Secretary Calvert." Sir Henry sent also with the

seeds very particular directions for the culture of the plants, obtained

probably from some head-gardener of a Priuli or a Morosini, whose melons

had the full beat of Italian sunshine upon the south slopes of the

Vicentine mountains. The same ambassador sends at that date to Lord

Holderness "a double-flowering yellow rose, of no ordinary nature";[3]

and it would be counted of no ordinary nature now, if what he avers be

true, that "it flowreth every month from May till almost Christmas."

King James took special interest in the establishment of his garden at

the Theobald Palace in Hertfordshire: there were clipped hedges, neat

array of linden avenues, fountains, and a Mount of Venus within a

labyrinth; twelve miles of wall encircled the park, and the soldiers of

Cromwell found fine foraging-ground in it, when they entered upon the

premises a few years later. The schoolmaster-king formed also a guild of

gardeners in the city of London, at whose hands certificates of capacity

for garden-work were demanded, and these to be given only after proper

examination of the applicants. Lord Bacon possessed a beautiful garden,

if we may trust his own hints to that effect, and the added praises of

Wotton. Cashiobury, Holland House, and Greenwich gardens were all noted

in this time; and the experiments and successes of the proprietor of

Bednall-Greene garden I have already alluded to. But the

country-gentleman, who lived upon his land and directed the cultivation

of his property, was but a very savage type of the Bedford or

Oxfordshire landholders of our day. It involved a muddy drag over bad

roads, after a heavy Flemish mare, to bring either one's self or one's

crops to market.

Sir Thomas Overbury, who draws such a tender picture of a "Milke-Mayde,"

is severe, and, I dare say, truthful, upon the country-gentleman. "His

conversation," says he, "amongst his tenants is desperate: but amongst

his equals full of doubt. His travel is seldome farther than the next

market towne, and his inquisition is about the price of corne: when he

travelleth, he will goe ten mile out of the way to a cousins house of

his to save charges; and rewards servants by taking them by the hand

when hee departs. Nothing under a _sub-poena_ can draw him to

_London_: and when he is there, he sticks fast upon every object, casts

his eyes away upon gazing, and becomes the prey of every cut-purse. When

he comes home, those wonders serve him for his holy-day talke. If he goe

to court, it is in yellow stockings: and if it be in winter, in a slight

tafety cloake, and pumps and pantofles."

The portrait of the smaller farmer, who, in this time, tilled his own

ground, is even more severely sketched by Bishop Earle. "A plain country

fellow is one that manures his ground well, but lets himself lye fallow

and unfilled. He has reason enough to do his business, and not enough to

be idle or melancholy.... His hand guides the plough, and the plough his

thoughts, and his ditch and land-mark is the very mound of his

meditations. He expostulates with his oxen very understandingly, and

speaks _gee_, and _ree_, better than English. His mind is not much

distracted with objects, but if a good fat cow come in his way, he

stands dumb and astonished, and though his haste be never so great, wilt

fix here half an hours contemplation. His habitation is some poor

thatched roof, distinguished from his barn by the loop-holes that let

out smoak, which the rain had long since washed through, but for the

double ceiling of bacon on the inside, which has hung there from his

grand-sires time, and is yet to make rashers for posterity. He

apprehends Gods blessings only in a good year, or a fat pasture, and

never praises him but on _good ground_."

Such were the men who were to be reached by the agricultural literature

of the day! Yet, notwithstanding this unpromising audience, scarcely a

year passed but some talker was found who felt himself competent to

expound the whole art and mystery of husbandry.

Adam Speed, Gent., (from which title we may presume that he was no

Puritan,) published a little book in the year 1626, which he wittily

called "Adam out of Eden." In this he undertakes to show how Adam, under

the embarrassing circumstance of being shut out of Paradise, may

increase the product of a farm from two hundred pounds to two thousand

pounds a year by the rearing of rabbits on furze and broom! It is all

mathematically computed; there is nothing to disappoint in the figures;

but I suspect there might be in the rabbits.

Gentleman Speed speaks of turnips, clover, and potatoes; he advises the

boiling of "butchers' blood" for poultry, and mixing the "pudding" with

bran and other condiments, which will "feed the beasts very fat."

The author of "Adam out of Eden" also indulges himself in verse, which

is certainly not up to the measure of "Paradise Lost." This is its

taste:--

"Each soyl hath no liking of every grain,

Nor barley nor wheat is for every vein;

Yet know I no country so barren of soyl

But some kind of come may be gotten with toyl.

Though husband at home be to count the cost what,

Yet thus huswife within is as needful as that:

What helpeth in store to have never so much,

Half lost by ill-usage, ill huswifes, and such?"

The papers of Bacon upon subjects connected with rural life are so

familiar that I need not recur to them. His particular suggestions,

however sound in themselves, (and they generally are sound,) did by no

means measure the extent of his contribution to the growth of good

husbandry. But the more thorough methods of investigation which he

instituted and encouraged gave a new and healthier direction to

inquiries connected not only with agriculture, but with every

experimental art.

Thus, Gabriel Platte, publishing his "Observations and Improvements in

Husbandry," about the year 1638, thinks it necessary to sustain and

illustrate them with a record of "twenty experiments."

Sir Richard Weston, too, a sensible up-country knight, has travelled

through Flanders about the same time, and has seen such success

attending upon the turnip and the clover culture there, that he urges

the same upon his fellow-landholders, in a "Discourse of Husbandrie."

The book was published under the name of Hartlib,--the same Master

Samuel Hartlib to whom Milton addressed his tractate "Of Education," and

of whom the great poet speaks as "a person sent hither [to England] by

some good Providence from a far country, to be the occasion and

incitement of great good to this island."

This mention makes us curious to know something more of Master Samuel

Hartlib. I find that he was the son of a Polish merchant, of Lithuania,

was himself engaged for a time in commercial transactions, and came to

England about the year 1640. He wrote several theological tracts, edited

sundry agricultural works, including, among others, those of Sir Richard

Weston, and published his own observations upon the shortcomings of

British husbandry. He also proposed a grandiose scheme for an

agricultural college, in order to teach youths "the theorick and

practick parts of this most ancient, noble, and honestly gainfull art,

trade, or mystery." The work published under his name entitled "The

Legacy," besides notices of the Brabant husbandry, embraces epistles

from various farmers, who may be supposed to represent the progressive

agriculture of England. Among these letters I note one upon "Snaggreet,"

(shelly earth from river-beds); another upon "Seaweeds"; a third upon

"Sea-sand"; and a fourth upon "Woollen-rags."

Hartlib was in good odor during the days of the Commonwealth; for he

lived long enough to see that bitter tragedy of the executed king before

Whitehall Palace, and to hold over to the early years of the

Restoration. But he was not in favor with the people about Charles II.;

the small pension that Cromwell had bestowed fell into sad arrearages;

and the story is, that he died miserably poor.

It is noticeable that Hartlib, and a great many sensible old gentlemen

of his date, spoke of the art of husbandry as a mystery. And so it is; a

mystery then, and a mystery now. Nothing tries my patience more than to

meet one of those billet-headed farmers who--whether in print or in

talk--pretend to have solved the mystery and mastered it.

Take my own crop of corn yonder upon the flat, which I have watched

since the day when it first shot up its little dainty spears of green,

until now it spindles has been faithfully ploughed and fed and tilled;

but how gross appliances all these, to the fine fibrous feeders that

have been searching, day by day, every cranny of the soil,--to the broad

leaflets that, week by week, have stolen out from their green sheaths to

wanton with the wind and caress the dews! Is there any quick-witted

farmer who shall tell us with anything like definiteness what the

phosphates have contributed to all this, and how much the nitrogenous

manures, and to what degree the deposits of _humus_? He may establish

the conditions of a sure crop, thirty, forty, or sixty bushels to the

acre, (seasons favoring); but how short a reach is this toward

determining the final capacity of either soil or plant! How often the

most petted experiments laugh us in the face! The great miracle of the

vital laboratory in the plant remains to mock us. We test it; we humor

it; we fondly believe that we have detected its secret: but the mystery

stays.

A bumpkin may rear a crop that shall keep him from starvation; but to

develop the _utmost_ capacity of a given soil by fertilizing appliances,

or by those of tillage, is the work, I suspect, of a wiser man than

belongs to our day. And when I find one who fancies he has resolved all

the conditions which contribute to this miracle of God's, and can

control and fructify at his will, I have less respect for his head than

for a good one--of Savoy cabbage. The great problem of Adam's curse is

not worked out so easily. The sweating is not over yet.

If we are confronted with mystery, it is not blank, hopeless, fathomless

mystery. Our plummet-lines are only too short; but they are growing

longer. It is a lively mystery, that piques and tempts and rewards

endeavor. It unfolds with an appetizing delay. Every year a new secret

is laid bare, which, in the flush of triumph, seems a crowning

development; whereas it presently appears that we have only opened a new

door upon some further labyrinth.

Throughout the seventeenth century, the progress in husbandry, without

being at any one period very brilliant, was decided and constant. If

there was anything like a relapse, and neglect of good culture, it was

most marked shortly after the Restoration. The country-gentlemen, who

had entertained a wholesome horror of Cromwell and his troopers, had,

during the Commonwealth, devoted themselves to a quiet life upon their

estates, repairing the damages which the Civil War had wrought in their

fortunes and in their lands. The high price of farm-products stimulated

their efforts, and their country-isolation permitted a harmless show of

the chivalrous contempt they entertained for the _novi homines_ of the

Commonwealth. With the return of Charles they abandoned their estates

once more to the bailiffs, and made a rush for the town and for their

share of the "leeks and onions."

But the earnest men were at work. Sainfoin and turnips were growing

every year into credit. The potato was becoming a crop of value; and in

the year 1664 a certain John Foster devoted a treatise to it, entitled,

"England's Happiness increased, or a Sure Remedy against all Succeeding

Dear Years, by a Plantation of Roots called Potatoes."

For a long time the crop had been known, and Sir Thomas Overbury had

made it the vehicle of one of his sharp witticisms against people who

were forever boasting of their ancestry,--their best part being below

ground. But Foster anticipates the full value of what had before been

counted a novelty and a curiosity. He advises how custards, paste,

puddings, and even bread, may be made from the flour of potatoes.

John Worlidge (1669) gives a full system of husbandry, advising green

fallows, and even recommending and describing a drill for the putting in

of seed, and for distributing with it a fine fertilizer.

Evelyn, also, about this time, gave a dignity to rural pursuits by his

"Sylva" and "Terra," both these treatises having been recited before the

Royal Society. The "Terra" is something muddy,[4] and is by no means

exhaustive; but the "Sylva" for more than a century was the British

planter's hand-book, being a judicious, sensible, and eloquent treatise

upon a subject as wide and as beautiful as its title. Even Walter

Scott,--himself a capital woodsman,--when he tells (in "Kenilworth") of

the approach of Tressilian and his Doctor companion to the neighborhood

of Say's Court, cannot forego his tribute to the worthy and cultivated

author who once lived there, and who in his "Sylva" gave a manual to

every British planter, and in his life an exemplar to every British

gentleman.

Evelyn was educated at Oxford, travelled widely upon the Continent, was

a firm adherent of the royal party, and at one time a member of Prince

Rupert's famous troop. He married the daughter of the British ambassador

in Paris, through whom he came into possession of Say's Court, which he

made a gem of beauty. But in his later years he had the annoyance of

seeing his fine parterres and shrubbery trampled down by that Northern

boor, Peter the Great, who made his residence there while studying the

mysteries of ship-building at Deptford, and who had as little reverence

for a parterre of flowers as for any other of the tenderer graces of

life.

The British monarchs have always been more regardful of those interests

which were the object of Evelyn's tender devotion. I have already

alluded to the horticultural fancies of James I. His son Charles was an

extreme lover of flowers, as well as of a great many luxuries which

hedged him against all Puritan sympathy. "Who knows not," says Milton,

in his reply to the [Greek: EIKÔN BASIAIKÊ], "the licentious remissness

of his Sunday's theatre, accompanied with that reverend statute for

dominical jigs and May-poles, published in his own name," etc.?

But the poor king was fated to have little enjoyment of either jigs or

May-poles; harsher work belonged to his reign; and all his

garden-delights came to be limited finally to a little pot of flowers

upon his prison-window. And I can easily believe that the elegant,

wrong-headed, courteous gentleman tended these poor flowers daintily to

the very last, and snuffed their fragrance with a Christian gratitude.

Charles was an appreciative lover of poetry, too, as well as of Nature.

I wonder if it ever happened to him, in his prison-hours at Carisbrooke,

to come upon Milton's "L'Allegro," (first printed in the very year of

the Battle of Naseby,) and to read,--

"In thy right hand lead with thee

The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty;

And if I give thee honor due,

Mirth, admit me of thy crew

To live with her, and live with thee,

In unreprovèd pleasures free;

To hear the lark begin his flight,

And, singing, startle the dull night,

From his watch-tower in the skies,

Till the dappled dawn doth rise;

Then to come, in spite of sorrow,

And at my window bid good-morrow,

Through the sweetbrier, or the vine,

Or the twisted eglantine."

How it must have smitten the King's heart to remember that the tender

poet, whose rhythm none could appreciate better than he, was also the

sturdy Puritan pamphleteer whose blows had thwacked so terribly upon the

last props that held up his tottering throne!

Cromwell, as we have seen, gave Master Hartlib a pension; but whether on

the score of his theological tracts, or his design for an agricultural

college, would be hard to say. I suspect that the hop was the

Protector's favorite among flowering plants, and that his admiration of

trees was measured by their capacity for timber. Yet that rare masculine

energy, which he and his men carried with them in their tread all over

England, was a very wakeful stimulus to productive agriculture.

Charles II. loved tulips, and befriended Evelyn. In his long residence

at Paris he had grown into a great fondness for the French gardens. He

afterward sent for Le Notre--who had laid out Versailles at an expense

of twenty millions of dollars--to superintend the planting of Greenwich

and St. James. Fortunately, no strict imitation of Versailles was

entered upon. The splendors of Chatsworth Garden grew in this time out

of the exaggerated taste, and must have delighted the French heart of

Charles. Other artists have had the handling of this great domain since

the days of Le Notre. A crazy wilderness of rock-work, amid which the

artificial waters commit freak upon freak, has been strewed athwart the

lawn; a stately conservatory has risen, under which the Duke may drive,

if he choose, in coach and four, amid palm-trees, and the

monster-vegetation of the Eastern archipelago; the little glass temple

is in the gardens, under which the Victoria lily was first coaxed into

British bloom; a model village has sprung up at the Park gates, in which

each cottage is a gem, and seems transplanted from the last book on

rural ornamentation. But the sight of the village oppresses one with a

strange incongruity; the charm of realism is wanting; it needs a

population out of one of Watteau's pictures,--clean and deft as the

painted figures; flesh and blood are too gross, too prone to muddy

shoes, and to--sneeze. The rock-work, also, is incongruous; it belongs

on no such wavy roll of park-land; you see it a thousand times grander,

a half-hour's drive away, toward Matlock. And the stiff parterres,

terraces, and alleys of Le Notre are equally out of place in such a

scene. If, indeed, as at Versailles, they bounded and engrossed the

view, so that natural surfaces should have no claim upon your eye,--if

they were the mere setting to a monster palace, whose colonnades and

balusters of marble edged away into colonnades and balusters of

box-wood, and these into a limitless extent of long green lines, which

are only lost to the eye where a distant fountain dashes its spray of

golden dust into the air,--as at Versailles,--there would be keeping.

But the Devonshire palace has quite other setting. Blue Derbyshire hills

are behind it; a grand, billowy slope of the comeliest park-land in

England rolls down from its terrace-foot to where the Derwent, under

hoary oaks, washes its thousand acres of meadow-vale, with a flow as

charming and limpid as one of Virgil's eclogues. It is such a setting

that carries the great quadrangle of Chatsworth Palace and its flanking

artificialities of rock and garden, like a black patch upon the face of

a fine woman of Charles's court.

This brings us upon our line of march again. Charles II. loved stiff

gardens; James II. loved stiff gardens; and William, with his

Low-Country tastes, out-stiffened both, with his

"topiary box a-row."

Lord Bacon has commended the formal style to public admiration by his

advocacy and example. The lesson was repeated at Cashiobury by the most

noble the Earl of Essex (of whom Evelyn writes,--"My Lord is not

illiterate beyond the rate of most noblemen of his age"). So also that

famous garden of Moor-Park in Hertfordshire, laid out by the witty

Duchess of Bedford, to whom Dr. Donne addresses some of his piquant

letters, was a model of old-fashioned and stately graces. Sir William

Temple praises it beyond reason in his "Garden of Epicurus," and

cautions readers against undertaking any of those irregularities of

garden-figures which the Chinese so much affect. He admires only

stateliness and primness. "Among us," he says, "the Beauty of Building

and Planting is placed chiefly in some certain Proportions, Symmetries,

or Uniformities; our Walks and our Trees ranged so as to answer one

another, and at exact Distances."

From all these it is clear what was the garden-drift of the century.

Even Waller, the poet,--whose moneys, if he were like most poets, could

not be thrown away idly,--spent a large sum in levelling the hills

about his rural home at Beaconsfields. (We shall find a different poet

and treatment by-and-by in Shenstone.)

Only Milton, speaking from the very arcana of the Puritan rigidities,

breaks in upon these geometric formalities with the rounded graces of

the garden which he planted in Eden. There

"the crisped brooks,

Rolling on orient pearl and sands of gold

With mazy error under pendent shades,

Ran nectar, visiting each plant, and fed

Flowers worthy of Paradise, which not nice Art

In beds and curious knots, but Nature boon

Poured forth profuse on hill and dale and plain."

Going far behind all conventionalities, he credited to Paradise--the

ideal of man's happiest estate--variety, irregularity, profusion,

luxuriance; and to the fallen estate, precision, formality, and an

inexorable Art, which, in place of concealing, glorified itself. In the

next century, when Milton comes to be illustrated by Addison and the

rest, we shall find gardens of a different style from those of Waller

and of Hampton Court.

And now from some look-out point near to the close of the seventeenth

century, when John Evelyn, in his age, is repairing the damages that

Peter the Great has wrought in his pretty Deptford home, let us take a

bird's-eye glance at rural England.

It is raining; and the clumsy Bedford coach, drawn by stout Flemish

mares,--for thorough-breds are as yet unknown,--is covered with a

sail-cloth to keep the wet away from the six "insides." The grass,

wherever the land is stocked with grass, is as velvety as now. The wheat

in the near county of Herts is fair, and will turn twenty bushels to the

acre; here and there an enterprising landholder has a small field of

dibbled grain, which will yield a third more. John Worlidge's drill is

not in request, and is only talked of by a few wiseacres who prophesy

its ultimate adoption. The fat bullocks of Bedford will not dress more

than seven hundred a head; and the cows, if killed, would not overrun

five hundred weight. There are occasional fields of sainfoin and of

turnips; but these latter are small, and no ridging or hurdling is yet

practised. From time to time appears a patch of barren moorland, which

has been planted with forest-trees, in accordance with the suggestions

of Mr. Evelyn, and under the wet sky the trees are thriving. Wide

reaches of fen, measured by hundreds of miles, (which now bear great

crops of barley,) are saturated with moisture, and tenanted only by

ghost-like companies of cranes.

The gardens attached to noble houses, under the care of some pupil of

Wise, or of Parkinson, have their espaliers,--their plums, their

pears,[5] and their grapes. These last are rare, however, (Parkinson

says sour, too,) and bear a great price in the London market. One or two

horticulturists of extraordinary enterprise have built greenhouses,

warmed, Evelyn says, "in a most ingenious way, by passing a brick flue

underneath the beds."

The lesser country-gentlemen, who have no establishments in town, rarely

venture up, for fear of the footpads on the heath, and the insolence of

the black-guard Cockneys. Their wives are staid dames, learned at the

brew-tub and in the buttery,--but not speaking French, nor wearing hoops

or patches. A great many of the older exotic plants have become

domesticated; and the goodwife has a flaming parterre at her door,--but

not valued one half so much as her bed of marjoram and thyme. She may

read King James's Bible, or, if a Non-Conformist, Baxter's "Saint's

Rest"; while the husband regales himself with a thumb-worn copy of "Sir

Fopling Flutter," or, if he live well into the closing years of the

century, with De Foe's "True-born Englishman."

Poetic feeling was more lacking in the country-life than in the

illustrative literature of the century. To say nothing of Milton's

brilliant little poems, "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso," which flash all

over with the dews, there are the charming "Characters" of Sir Thomas

Overbury, and the graceful discourse of Sir William Temple. The poet

Drummond wrought a music out of the woods and waters which lingers

alluringly even now around the delightful cliffs and valleys of

Hawthornden. John Dryden, though a thorough cit, and a man who would

have preferred his arm-chair at Will's Coffee-House to Chatsworth and

the fee of all its lands, has yet touched most tenderly the "daisies

white" and the spring, in his "Flower and the Leaf."

But we skip a score of the poets, and bring our wet day to a close with

the naming of two honored pastorals. The first, in sober prose, is

nothing more nor less than Walton's "Angler." Its homeliness, its calm,

sweet pictures of fields and brooks, its dainty perfume of flowers, its

delicate shadowing-forth of the Christian sentiment which lived by old

English firesides, its simple, artless songs, (not always of the highest

style, but of a hearty naturalness that is infinitely better,)--these

make the "Angler" a book that stands among the thumb-worn. There is good

marrowy English in it; I know very few fine writers of our times who

could make a better book on such a subject to-day,--with all the added

information, and all the practice of the newspaper-columns. What Walton

wants to say he says. You can make no mistake about his meaning; all is

as lucid as the water of a spring. He does not play upon your wonderment

with tropes. There is no chicane of the pen; he has some pleasant

matters to tell of, and he tells of them--straight.

Another great charm about Walton is his childlike truthfulness. I think

he is almost the only earnest trout-fisher I ever knew (unless Sir

Humphrey Davy be excepted) whose report could be relied upon for the

weight of a trout. I have many excellent friends--capital

fishermen--whose word is good upon most concerns of life, but in this

one thing they cannot be confided in. I excuse it; I take off twenty per

cent. from their estimates without either hesitation, anger, or

reluctance.

I do not think I should have trusted in such a matter Charles Cotton,

although he was agricultural as well as piscatory,--having published a

"Planter's Manual." I think he could, and did, draw a long bow. I

suspect innocent milkmaids were not in the habit of singing Kit

Marlowe's songs to the worshipful Mr. Cotton.

One pastoral remains to mention, published at the very opening of the

year 1600, and spending its fine forest-aroma thenceforward all down the

century. I mean Shakspeare's play of "As You Like It."

From beginning to end the grand old forest of Arden is astir overhead;

from beginning to end the brooks brawl in your ear; from beginning to

end you smell the bruised ferns and the delicate-scented wood-flowers.

It is Theocritus again, with the civilization of the added centuries

contributing its spangles of reason, philosophy, and grace. Who among

all the short-kirtled damsels of all the eclogues will match us this

fair, lithe, witty, capricious, mirthful, buxom Rosalind? Nowhere in

books have we met with her like,--but only at some long-gone picnic in

the woods, where we worshipped "blushing sixteen" in dainty boots and

white muslin. There, too, we met a match for sighing Orlando,--mirrored

in the water; there, too, some diluted Jaques may have "moralized" the

excursion for next day's "Courier," and some lout of a Touchstone (there

are always such in picnics) passed the ices, made poor puns, and won

more than his share of the smiles.

Walton is English all over; but "As You Like It" is as broad as the sky,

or love, or folly, or hope.

* * * * *

THE FRENCH STRUGGLE FOR NAVAL AND COLONIAL POWER.

In comparison with our national misfortunes all beside seems trifling.

Else nothing would so fasten our attention as the French invasion and

conquest of Mexico. A dependency of France established at our door! The

most restless, ambitious, and warlike nation in Europe our neighbor! Who

shall tell what results, momentous and lasting, may follow in the train

of such events?

What is the explanation of this conquest? Is it the freak of an

ambitious despot? Or is it only a stroke in the line of a settled

policy? one fact, which we see, amid a great number of facts which we do

not see?

This particular enterprise comes close to us. It affronts our pride and

tramples upon our political traditions. It establishes, what we did not

wish to see on this Western Continent, another foreign jurisdiction. But

for more than twenty-five years France has been engaged in a series of

like enterprises. In places not so near to us, by the same arbitrary

methods, she has already achieved conquests as important. With

soft-footed ambition, she has planted her flag and reared her

strongholds on spots full of natural advantages. But the aim is the same

everywhere: the reëstablishment of her lost colonial and naval power.

And the hope of France is, that in the race for mercantile and naval

greatness she may yet challenge and vanquish the Sovereign of the Seas.

* * * * *

The peace of 1815 left France with her naval and colonial power broken

apparently beyond hope. Even in the thirteen years preceding that peace

England had taken or destroyed not less than six hundred of her

war-ships. In the Mediterranean, on the Atlantic, amid the islands of

the West Indies, in the far-off golden East, wherever contending, fleet

against fleet, or ship with ship, everywhere she had been vanquished and

driven from the sea. That boundless colonial empire, of which Dupleix in

the East dreamed, and for whose establishment in the West Montcalm

fought and died, had shrunk to a few fishing-ports off the Gulf of St.

Lawrence, a few sugar-islands in the West Indies, and some unarmed

factories dotting the coasts of Africa and the shores of Hindostan, and

existing by British grace and permission. To so low an estate had fallen

that towering ambition which thought to exercise uncontrolled dominion

over this continent, to rule with more than regal sway the rich islands

and peninsulas of Asia, and to dictate peace to fallen England from the

guns of her armadas. After five wars waged with no craven spirit in less

than three-quarters of a century, after she had exhausted every resource

and more than once banded against her island foe every naval power in

Europe, she was forced to succumb to British perseverance and to the

gallantry of British sailors. The peace, which came not a moment too

soon, found her with a navy literally annihilated, and with little

remaining of her colonial empire but the memory. When we compare this

hopeless failure with the mercantile activity and naval force of Modern

France,--when we call up, in imagination, her new colonies, the germs

almost of empires,--we cannot admire too much the courage and energy

which have called into existence such magnificent resources. To what are

we to attribute this stupendous change? What have been the methods of

this growth? By what steps has this grand progress from weakness to

strength been achieved?

* * * * *

In such a work of restoration, France had everything to create,--ships,

armaments, machinery, and sailors even, to replace those who had fallen

in the front of battle. To produce capacity of production was her first

work,--to establish new ports or replenish old ones, to build docks, to

rear workshops, to gather materials. This is what she has been doing.

Silently and steadily she has been laying the foundations of maritime

greatness. Her ports, in everything which contributes to naval

efficiency,--in size, in mechanical appliances, in concentration upon

one spot of all the trades and all the resources necessary for the

construction and repair of war-ships,--excel all other naval depots in

the world.

This is no exaggeration. There is the port of Cherbourg. Originally it

was little more than an open bay, hollowed by the waters of the English

Channel in the French coast, with a rocky shore exposed to every

northern blast. But it was situated just where France needed a harbor,

midway on her northern coast, facing England. Across this open bay, as a

chord subtends its arc, a gigantic sea-wall has been stretched. Built in

deep water more than a mile from the head of the bay, it extends almost

from shore to shore. It is nearly three miles long. It is scarcely less

than nine hundred feet wide at its base. Rising from the bed of the sea

sixty-six feet, it is firm enough to bear up fortresses strong as human

engineering can rear. This is the famous _digue_ of Cherbourg. Its

construction has been a seventy years' battle with the elements. Many

times the waves have destroyed the work of years. Once a furious tempest

swept away the whole superstructure, with its forts, armaments,

barracks, and even garrison. But failure has only awakened fresh energy,

and it stands now complete and rooted in the sea like a reef. At each

end of the _digue_, between it and the main land, are broad

ship-channels, affording a free passage at all tides to the largest

ships. Thus science has called into existence a safe harbor, protected

from the assaults of the sea by its granite barrier,--protected none the

less from man's assaults by the concentric fire of more than six hundred

guns.

This is but the exterior of Cherbourg. In the bosom of the rocky cliffs

of its western shore three basins or docks have been hewn with gigantic

toil. The first, finished in 1813, is 950 feet long, 768 feet wide, and

55 feet deep, and will hold securely fifteen ships of the line. The

second, of somewhat smaller dimensions, was completed in 1829, and will

float a dozen ships. The third, far larger than either, was opened with

great ceremony in 1858: it is 1365 feet long, 650 feet wide, and 60 feet

deep, and will contain eighteen or twenty ships of the largest size. On

the sides of these basins are twelve building-slips and seven docks. And

radiating from them, and in close contiguity, are arsenals, storehouses,

timber-yards, ropewalks, sail-lofts, bakeries, and machine-shops capable

of turning out marine engines, anchors, cables, and indeed every piece

of iron-work which enters into the construction of a ship. It is no vain

boast that an army of a hundred thousand men can be embarked any fine

morning at Cherbourg, and that the fleet necessary for its transport can

be built and armed and equipped and protected to the hour of its

departure in this fortified haven.

Yet Cherbourg is but one of five ports equally efficient, equally

protected, and equally furnished with the products of mechanic and

nautical invention. Brest, L'Orient, and Rochefort, on the west, have

far greater natural and scarcely less acquired advantages; while the old

port of Toulon on the Mediterranean, old only in name, has been so

enlarged and strengthened, that it can supply for the southern waters

all and more than Cherbourg does for the northern. One fact will show to

what an extent this power of naval production has been carried. In these

five ports are some eighty building-slips or houses, and twenty-five

docks, and, connected with them, all the materials, all the trades, all

the labor-saving machines, all the mechanical forces, which the

nineteenth century knows. If she wished, France could build at the same

time forty ships of the line and forty frigates, while twenty-five more

were undergoing repairs. The result of all this activity is, that, in

extent, in completeness, in concentration of forces upon the right spot,

the naval ports and dockyards of France are absolutely unequalled. And

the work goes on. To-day twenty-two thousand men are employed upon naval

works. Within six months a wet dock has been completed at Toulon, and

another at L'Orient, while at Brest great ranges of workshops are

hastening to completion; and it is whispered that at Cherbourg another

basin is, like its predecessors, to be chiselled out of the solid rock.

* * * * *

Do we ask now what France has gained, in fleets and armaments, from this

immense work of preparation? Everything. Not to dwell upon

sailing-ships, which the progress of invention has made of inferior

worth, she has a steam-navy second to that of no power in Europe. Her

present ruler has fully appreciated the importance of that new element

in naval warfare, steam,--an element all the more important to France,

that it tends to lower the value of mere seamanship, in which she has

always been deficient, and to increase the value of scientific knowledge

and training, in which she has ever been with the foremost. For ten

years her energy has been tasked to produce steamships of the greatest

power and of the finest models. Since 1852 her ships of the line have

increased from two to forty, and her frigates from twenty-one to

forty-six. A fleet has thus been created which is numerically equal to

that of England, and which, so far as these things depend upon the

stanchness of the ships and the weight of the armaments, is perhaps in

force and efficiency superior.

If we turn our attention to iron-clad ships, we shall see best displayed

the sagacity, energy, and secretiveness of Louis Napoleon. In the

Crimean War, three floating batteries covered with iron slabs, and each

mounting eighteen fifty-pounders, silenced the Russian fort at Kinburn.

This was a lesson it would seem that any one might learn. Louis Napoleon

did not fail to learn it. If a ship can be made invulnerable, or nearly

so, in every part, then of what avail is that strategy which secures

choice of position, and which, of old, almost decided the battle? Will

not he come off victor who can produce guns from which the heaviest shot

may be hurled at the highest velocity, and gunners who shall launch them

on their errand of destruction with the greatest accuracy? The French

emperor has fairly overreached his island rivals. While they were

experimenting, he laid the keels of two iron-clads of six thousand tons

burden. In 1859 he ordered the construction of twenty steel-clad

frigates and fifty gunboats. Lord Clarence Paget declared in debate last

March, that, while England had, finished or constructing, only sixteen

iron-clad frigates, France had thirty-one. And even this takes no

account of floating-batteries and gunboats, wholly or in part protected,

and of which, if we are to trust her papers, France has an almost

fabulous number.

* * * * *

But who shall man this fleet? Where are the skilful mariners to make

efficient these tremendous elements of naval power? It was Lord Nelson,

I think, who exclaimed, when he saw the stanch ships of Spain, "Thank

God, Spaniards cannot build men!" The recent changes in naval

construction, decreasing perhaps the relative worth of mere seamanship,

may have made the exclamation less pertinent than of old. But, after

all, on the rude and stormy ocean, proverbially fickle and uncertain,

nothing can take the place of sailors,--of brave and skilful men,

trained by long struggle with wind and wave, calm in danger, apt in

emergencies, finding the narrow path of safety where common eyes see

only peril and ruin. France understands tins. She knows how many of her

past humiliations can be traced directly to defective seamanship. But

where to seek the remedy? How to find or make sailors fit to contend

with those who were almost born and bred on the restless surge? By what

methods, with a slender commercial marine and a people reluctant to

encounter the hardships and dangers of sea-life, to fill up the scanty

roll of her able seamen? That is the problem France had to solve; and

she has done everything to solve it,--but remove impossibilities.

The first counsel of wisdom was to make the number of her sailors

greater. France has, at the most liberal estimate, only one hundred and

fifty thousand men at all conversant with the sea; while England has,

including boatmen, fishermen, coasters, and sailors of long voyages, the

enormous number of eight hundred thousand. Remove this disproportion and

you settle the whole question. Unfortunately, this is a matter in which

government can do but little, while national tastes and habits do

everything. No despotism can make a commercial marine where no

commercial spirit is. And no voice, charm it ever so wisely, can draw

the peasant of France from his vine-clad hills and plains. The French

rulers have done what they could. They have fostered, with a steady and

liberal hand, the fisheries. Every spring, twenty thousand men have set

sail to that best nursery of seamanship,--the Banks of Newfoundland.

These men are paid a bounty by Government, and, in return, are subjected

to a naval discipline, and, upon an emergency, are liable at a moment's

notice to enter into the naval service. To quicken mercantile

enterprise, by which alone mariners can be called into existence,

enormous subsidies have been paid to the great lines of steamers to

Brazil and the East. And the yearning for colonies, which in our day has

led to almost simultaneous attempts to found settlements in both

hemispheres and in all waters, has no doubt for a leading cause the

desire to build up a mercantile marine, and with it a numerous body of

expert seamen. If these efforts have not accomplished all that their

projectors could wish, it is not because their plans lacked sagacity,

but because it is hard to put the genius of the sea into the breasts of

men who are essentially landsmen.

To increase the number of French sailors would unquestionably be the

best possible method of adding to French naval power. But suppose that

this cannot be done. Supposes that there is in the heart of the French

people an invincible attachment to the soil, which makes them deaf to

every siren of the sea. What is the next counsel of wisdom? This, is it

not? To make what sailors you have efficient and available for naval

emergencies. In this respect the French authorities have achieved an

entire success. Every sailor, nay, every man whose employment savors at

all of maritime life, though he be only a boatman plying the river, or a

laborer in harbor or dock, is enrolled in what is called the marine

inscription,--thenceforward in all times of need to be called into

active service. This puts the whole seafaring population at the disposal

of Government. Nor is this all. Regular drafts are made upon the seamen;

and it is computed that in every period of nine years all the sailors of

France serve in their turn in the navy. They are trained in all that

belongs to naval duty: in the use of ships' guns, in the sailing of

great ships, and in the evolutions of fleets. No matter how sudden the

call, or from what direction the sailors are taken, no French fleet

leaves or can leave port with a crew of green hands.

The training which is given to sailors actually in service is an equally

important matter. The French Admiralty keeps no drones in its employ;

certainly it does not promote them to places of trust. Honors are won,

not bought. Every step up, from midshipman to admiral, must be the

result of honorable service, and actual proficiency both in the theory

and practice of a sailor's profession. The modern French naval officer

is master of his business, fit to compete with the best skill of the

best maritime races. Then the sailors themselves are trained. Even in

time of peace, twenty-five thousand are kept in service. Gathered on

board great experimental fleets, officers and men alike are schooled in

all branches of nautical duty. In port or out of it, they are not idle.

Every day a prescribed routine of exercise is rigidly enforced. Great

have been the results. The French sailor of 1863 is not a reproduction

of the sailor of 1800. In alertness, in knowledge, in silent obedience,

he is a great improvement upon his predecessor. Actual experiment shows

that a French crew will weigh anchor, spread and furl sail, replace

spars or running-ringing, lower or raise topmasts, or perform any other

duty pertaining to a ship, with as much celerity as the crew of any

other nation. And no confusion, no babbling of many voices, such as the

British writers of the last generations delighted to describe, mars the

beauty of the evolutions. One mind directs, and one voice alone breaks

the stillness. Since the Crimean War, the English speak with respect of

French seamanship; and though they do not believe that it is equal to

their own, they do not scruple to allow that a naval battle would be

disputed now with a fierceness hitherto unknown.

All that sagacity and experience would prompt has been attempted. All

that training and discipline can do has already been accomplished. Yet

there is one source of weakness for which there can be no remedy. France

has no naval reserves. And if she war with England, she will need them.

To put her marine on a war-basis would require all her available seamen.

To fill the gaps of war, she has not, and she cannot have, until a truly

commercial spirit grows up in the hearts of her people, the multitudes

of reserved men, more familiar with the sea than the land, such as swarm

in English ports. Yet, with every deduction, her capacity of naval

production, her strong fleets, and her trained seamen make her a naval

power whose might no one can estimate, and whose assault any nation may

well shun by all means except the sacrifice of honor and rights.

* * * * *

If now we turn from the naval progress of France to her recent colonial

enterprises, we shall find fresh evidence that she has resumed that

contest which came to so disastrous a close fifty years ago. The old

dream of colonial empire has come back again. This was inevitable. A

great nation like France cannot always drink the cup of humiliation.

With an ambition no less high and arrogant than that which pervades the

British mind, she would plant far and wide French ideas and

civilization. While England has colonies scattered in every part of the

habitable globe, while Holland has almost monopolized the rich islands

of the Eastern Archipelago, and while even Spain has Manila in the East

and Cuba in the West, it could hardly be expected that France, the equal

of either, and in some respects the superior of all, should rest content

with a virtual exclusion from everything but her narrow

home-possessions.

And then, however disguised, there is in the heart of France an intense

naval rivalry of England. Though the stern logic of events has been

against her more than once, she does not accept the verdict. She means

to revise it with a strong hand. But she must have a navy, and a navy

cannot exhibit its highest vigor, unless it have a just foundation in an

energetic, wide-ranging commerce. And such a commerce cannot exist

except it have its depots and its agencies, its outlets and its markets,

everywhere. Above all, we are to seek the source of this new colonial

ambition in the character and purposes of that singular man who controls

the destinies of France. Not even his enemies would now question his

ability. The power he wields in Europe, the impression he has stamped

upon its policy, the skill with which he has made even his foes minister

to his greatness, all bear witness to it. But no one can study him in

the light of the past and not see that his is no ordinary ambition. To

be the ruler of one kingdom does not fill out its measure. To be the

arbiter of the fortunes of states, the genius who shall change the

current of affairs and shape the destiny of the future,--to exercise a

power in every part of the globe, and to have a name familiar in every

land and beneath every sun,--this is his ambition. No wonder that under

such a ruler France has embarked in a career of colonial aggrandizement

whose limit no one can foresee. The same hand which curbed the despot of

the North, and made the fair vision of Italian unity a solid reality,

may well think to place a puppet king on the throne of the Aztecs, or to

carve rich provinces out of Farther India.

* * * * *

France made her first practical essay in colonization by her conquest of

Algiers. A Dey once said to an English consul, "The Algerines are a

company of rogues, and I am their captain." The definition cannot be

improved. That such a power should have been permitted to exist and

ravage is one of the anomalies of modern history. Yet within the memory

of living men this hoard of pirates flaunted its barbarism in the face

of the civilization of the nineteenth century. But in 1830 the Dey

filled the cup of wrath to the brim. He inflicted upon the French

consul, in full levee, the gross insult of a blow in the face. The

expedition sent to revenge the insult showed upon what a hollow

foundation this savage power rested. The army landed without opposition.

In five days it swept before it in hopeless rout the wreck of the

Algerine forces. In three weeks it breached and captured the corsair's

strongholds. The history of the French occupation of Algeria is a tale

of unceasing martial exploits, by which France has extended her empire

six hundred miles along the shores of the Mediterranean, and inland

fifty miles,--two hundred miles, according, we had almost said, to the

position of the last Arab or Kabyle raid and insurrection.

Whatever else Algeria may or may not have done for France, it certainly

has furnished a field whereon to train soldiers. Here seventy-five

thousand men, day and night, have watched and fought a wily foe. Here

all the great soldiers of the Empire, Arnand, Pelissier, Canrobert,

Bosquet, have won their first laurels. Here, amid the exigencies of wild

desert and mountain campaigning, has grown up that marvellous body of

soldiers, the Zouaves: "picked men, short of stature, broad-shouldered,

deep-chested, bull-necked," agile as goats, tolerant of thirst and

hunger, outmarching, outfighting, and outenduring the Desert Arab; men

who have never turned their backs upon a foe. Subtract from the army of

Louis Napoleon the heroes of Algeria, and you leave behind a body out of

which the fiery soul has fled.

The commercial results are not quite so satisfactory. The exports,

indeed, have risen to fifteen millions of dollars, and the imports to

twenty-five millions more; while some two hundred thousand Europeans

have made their home in the Colony, and a few hundred square miles have

been subjected to European culture. But as the yearly cost of the

occupation is fifteen million of dollars, the net profit cannot be

great. Algeria, however, is the safety-valve of France, giving active

employment to the idle, the discontented, and the revolutionary; and the

Government, on that account, may consider that the money is well

expended.

One consequence of the occupation of Algeria has generally been

overlooked,--its naval result. Hitherto France had absolutely no good

port in the Mediterranean (if we except those of Corsica) but Toulon and

Marseilles. It was absolutely less at home in its own sea than England.

The new conquest gave it a strip of coast on the southern border of the

sea, but no port. The harbor of Algiers, with the exception of a little

haven artificially protected and capable of holding insecurely a dozen

vessels, was much like that of Cherbourg, an open bay, facing northward.

The storms sweep it with such fury that not less than twenty vessels

have been driven ashore in one gale. But the French genius seems to

delight in such struggles for empire with the waves. Almost with the

taking of the citadel the engineer began his work. Two jetties, as they

are called, were pushed out from the land into deep water,--one from

the mole on the north, half a mile long, and the other from Point

Bab-Azoum on the south, a third of a mile long. In 1850 these were so

far complete as to inclose a safe harbor of two hundred acres. But not

content, the French have already planned, and possibly are now finished,

still other works, by which the perilous roadstead outside this harbor

shall be transformed into a secure anchorage of sixteen hundred acres.

Past events warrant us in believing that these improvements will be

pursued with no slack hand, until astonished Europe finds another

Cherbourg, a safe harbor, ample means of repair, and frowning guns to

repel all invaders. Imprudent Young France, indeed, whispers now that

Algiers makes the Mediterranean a French lake. But that is a little

premature. While Gibraltar and Malta hold safely their harbors, and

England's naval power is unbroken, no nation can truly make this boast.

* * * * *

The next enterprise of France was hardly so creditable to her as the

Algerine conquest. Midway in the Pacific is the island of Tahita or

Otaheite,--as fair a gem as the sun ever looked down upon. The soft and

balmy air,--the undulating surface, rising to mountains and sinking into

deep valleys, luxuriant with tropical verdure,--the distant girdle of

coral reefs, which holds the island set in a circlet of tranquil blue

waters,--the gentle and indolent temper of the natives,--have all

conspired to throw an air of romance around the very name Otaheite. The

Christian world is bound to it by another tie. For thither came

Protestant missionaries, drawn by the reports of the tractable

disposition of the islanders, and labored with such success that in 1817

the king and all his subjects espoused Christianity.

Into this island Eden discord came in the guise of a Roman catechist,

who was sent thither for the express purpose of proselyting. As if aware

of the nature of his ungracious task, he disguised his real character.

But he was detected, and, together with a companion who had joined him,

was dismissed from the island by Queen Pomare, who dreaded the sectarian

strife his presence would awaken. This was her whole offence. Four years

later, in 1838, when the whole transaction might well have been

forgotten, Captain De Petit Thouars appeared in the French frigate

Venus, and demanded and obtained satisfaction in the sum of two thousand

piastres Spanish, and freedom for Catholic worship. In two subsequent

visits, though no new offence had been given, he increased the severity

of his demands, first putting the island under a protectorate, and

finally, in 1843, taking full possession of it as a French colony. The

helpless Queen appealed to Louis Philippe, who returned the island, but

reaffirmed the protectorate.

This same French protectorate is a rare piece of ponderous irony. The

French governor collects all export and import duties, writes all

state-papers, assembles and dismisses the island legislature according

to his good pleasure, doles out to the Queen a yearly allowance of a

thousand pounds, puts her in duress in her own house, if her conduct

displeases him, and will not allow her to see strangers, except by his

permission. Few will believe that zeal for the honor of the Catholic

Church prompted Louis Philippe to inflict so disproportioned a

punishment. That the island is the best victualling-station in the South

Pacific is a far greater sin, and one for which there could be in

covetous eyes no adequate punishment, except that seizure which is so

modestly termed a protectorate.

* * * * *

Pass now from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean. There is the little rocky

island of St. Paul, situated in the same latitude as Cape Town and

Melbourne; and, planted with singular accuracy equidistant from the two,

it is the only place of shelter in the long route between them. Its

harbor, if harbor it may be called, is the most secure, the most

secluded, and the most romantic, perhaps, in the whole world. St. Paul

is of volcanic origin. It is, indeed, little more than an extinct

crater with a narrow rim of land around it to separate it from the sea.

Through this rim the waters of the great Indian Ocean have cut a

channel. The crater has thus become a beautiful salt lake, a mile in

diameter, clear, deep, almost circular, and from whose border, on every

side, rise the old volcanic walls draped in verdure. The strait

connecting it with the sea is but three hundred feet wide, and at high

tide ten feet deep,--thus affording an easy passage for small vessels

into this most delightful seclusion; and no doubt the strait might be so

deepened as to float the largest ships. St. Paul is not at present much

frequented. But in a sea which is every year becoming more populous with

the commerce of every nation, who shall tell what such a central station

may become? Its title was somewhat uncertain. England thought she held

it as a dependency of Mauritius. But in 1847 the governor of Bourbon,

with a happy audacity, took possession of it, as an outpost of his own

island, and planted a little French colony of fishermen. We have not

heard that the assumption has been disputed.

* * * * *

No doubt, most of our readers may have observed in the daily prints

occasional allusions to the French War in Cochin China. Probably few

have understood the full meaning of the facts so quietly chronicled.

Perhaps none have dreamed that they were reading the first notices of a

new Eastern conquest, which, in extent and importance, may yet be second

only to that which has already been achieved by the British in

Hindostan. Yet so it is. The Cambodia is the largest river in Southern

Asia, and, together with the smaller and parallel river of Saigon,

drains a tract of not less than five hundred thousand square miles. The

region for which the French have been contending includes the provinces

which cluster around the mouths of these two rivers, and command them.

No position could be happier. For while on the one hand it controls the

outlet of a river stretching up into a rich and fertile country eighteen

hundred miles, on the other it projects into the Chinese Sea at a point

nearly midway between Singapore and Hong Kong, and so secures to its

possessor a just influence in that commercial highway. The ostensible

cause of the war in this region was the murder of a French missionary.

If this was ever the real cause, it long since gave way to a settled

purpose of conquest.

In the latter part of the year 1862 the Emperor of Cochin China was

forced to cede to France the coveted provinces. Already new

fortifications have arisen at Saigon, and dock-yards and coal-depots

been established, and all steps taken for a permanent occupation of the

territory. The following advertisement appeared in the London "Times"

for January 23, 1863,--"Contract for transportation from Glasgow to

Saigon of a floating iron dock in pieces. Notice to ship-owners. The

administration of the Imperial Navy of France have at Glasgow a floating

iron dock in pieces, which they require to be transported from that port

to Saigon, Cochin China. The said dock, with machinery, pumps, anchors,

and instruments necessary to its working, will weigh from two thousand

to twenty-five hundred tons. Ship-owners disposed to undertake the

transport are requested to forward their tenders to the Minister of

Marine and Colonies previous to the fifth of February next." Now, if we

consider that the news of the cession of these provinces did not reach

France until the close of the year 1862, that this advertisement is

dated January 23, 1863, and that a dock of the magnitude described could

hardly be constructed short of many months, we shall be satisfied, that,

long before any definite articles of peace had been proposed, the

Emperor had settled in his own mind just what region he would annex to

his dominions.

* * * * *

We shall not need much argument to convince us that the subjugation of

Mexico does not, either in character or methods, differ much from other

acts of the French ruler. Nevertheless, the details are curious and

instructive. It must be allowed that Mexico had given the Allies causes

of offence. She left unpaid large sums due from her to foreign

bond-holders. The subjects of the allied powers, temporarily resident in

Mexico, were robbed by forced loans, and sometimes imprisoned, and even

murdered. To redress these grievances, an expedition was fitted out by

the combined powers of England, France, and Spain. The objects of the

expedition were, first, to obtain satisfaction for past wrongs, and,

second, some security against their recurrence in the future. It was

expressly agreed by all parties, that the Mexicans should be left

entirely free to choose for themselves their own form of government.

Later events would seem to prove that England and Spain were sincere in

their professions.

Everything went on smoothly until the capture of Vera Cruz. Then the

French Emperor unfolded secret plans which were not contained in the

original programme. They were these: To take advantage of the weakness

of the United States to establish in Mexico a European influence; to

take possession of its capital city; and thence to impose upon the

Mexican people a government more agreeable than the present to the

Allies. England and Spain retired from the expedition with scarcely

concealed disgust, declaring, in almost so many words, that they did not

come into Mexico to rob another people of their rights, but to gain

redress and protection for their own subjects. Louis Napoleon does not

even seek to conceal his intentions from us. "We propose," he says, "to

restore to the Latin race on the other side of the Atlantic all its

strength and prestige. We have an interest, indeed, in the Republic of

the United States being powerful and prosperous; but not that she should

take possession of the whole Gulf of Mexico, thence to command the

Antilles as well as South America, and to be the only dispenser of the

products of the New World." This is plain enough. What will be the final

form of settlement we do not even conjecture. It is probable that the

Emperor does not himself know. With our fortunes so unsettled, and with

so many European jealousies to conciliate, even his astute genius may

well be puzzled as to the wisest policy. But it is of no consequence

what particular government France may impose upon the conquered

State,--monarchical, vice-regal, or republican,--Maximilian, a

Bonaparte, or some one of the seditious Mexican chiefs. In either case,

if the French plan succeeds, the broad country which Cortés won and

Spain lost, will be virtually a dependency of France.

* * * * *

Even while we write, France has embarked in yet other schemes of

colonial aggrandizement. She has just purchased the port of Oboch on the

eastern coast of Africa, near the entrance of the Red Sea. The place is

not laid down upon the maps; nor is its naval and commercial importance

known; but its proximity to Aden suggests that it may be intended as a

checkmate to that English stronghold. In the great island of Madagascar

she is founding mercantile establishments whose exact character have not

as yet been divulged; but experience teaches us that these enterprises

are likely to be pursued with promptness and vigor.

Thus France is displaying in colonial affairs an aggressive activity

which was scarcely to have been expected. To what extent she may perfect

her plans no one can prophesy. That she will be able to girdle the earth

with her possessions, and rear strongholds in every sea, is not

probable. England has chosen almost at her leisure what spots of

commercial advantage or military strength she will occupy; and the whole

world hardly affords the material for another colonial system as wide

and comprehensive.

* * * * *

There is one consideration which ought not to be overlooked. It is this:

the relations which Louis Napoleon has succeeded in maintaining between

himself and that power which had the most interest in defeating his

schemes, and the most ability to do it. Under the Bourbons, the whole

policy of France was based upon a principle of settled and unchangeable

enmity to England. As a result, war always broke out while French

preparations were incomplete; and the concentrated English navy swept

from the sea almost every vestige of an opposing force. The present

French emperor has adopted an altogether different course. He has sought

the friendship of England. He has multiplied occasions of mutual action.

He has sedulously avoided occasions of offence. Kinglake, in his

"Crimean War," intimates that Louis Napoleon desired this alliance with

England and her noble Queen to cover up the terrible wrongs by which he

had obtained his authority. It is more likely far that he sought it in

order that under its shadow he might build himself up to resistless

power: just as an oak planted beneath the shade of other trees grows to

strength and majesty only to cut down its benefactors.

This proposal for alliance was unquestionably received by the English

people at first with feelings akin to disgust. The memory of the bad

faith by which power had been won, of the wrongs and exile of the

greatest statesmen and soldiers of France, and of the red carnage of the

Boulevards, was too recent to make such a friendship attractive. Though

acceptance of it might be good policy, yet it could not be yielded

without profound reluctance. But soon this early sentiment gave way to

something like pride. It was so satisfactory to think that the allied

powers were wellnigh irresistible; that they had only to speak and it

must be done; that they could dictate terms to the world; that they

could scourge back even the Russian despot, seeking to pour down his

hordes from the icy North to more genial climes. It is hardly

surprising, then, that men came to congratulate themselves upon so

favorable an alliance, and concluded to overlook the defect in his title

in consideration of the solid benefits which the occupant of the French

throne conferred.

But this feeling could not last. When the people of England saw how

inevitably Louis Napoleon reaped from every conflict some selfish

advantage, how the Crimean War gave him all the prestige, and the

Italian War the coveted province of Nice, they began to doubt his fair

professions. And this jealousy is fast deepening into fear. The English

people have an instinct of approaching danger. Any one can see that the

"_entente cordiale_" is not quite what it once was. When a British Lord

of Admiralty can rise in his place in Parliament, and, after alluding to

the powerful and increasing naval force of France, add,--"I say that any

Ministry who did not act upon that statement, and did not at once set

about putting the country in the position she ought to occupy in respect

to her navy, would deserve to be sent to the Tower or penitentiary,"--we

may be sure that England has as much jealousy as trust, and perhaps

quite as much alarm as either.

But we have only to look at her acts to know what England is thinking.

For six years she has been engaged in an unceasing war with

France,--not, indeed, with swords and bayonets, but as really with her

workshops and dockyards. She has tasked these to their uttermost to

maintain and increase her naval superiority. And this is not the only

evidence we have of her true feeling. The building of new fortifications

for her ports, and the enlargement and strengthening of the old

defences, all tell the same story of profound distrust. "Plymouth has

been made secure. The mouth of the Thames is thought to be impregnable."

That is the way English papers write. Around Portsmouth and Gosport she

has thrown an immense girdle of forts. We may think what we will of

Cherbourg, England views it in the light of a perpetual menace. To the

proud challenge she has sent back a sturdy defiance. Right opposite to

it, on her nearest shore, she has reared a "Gibraltar of the Channel."

If you take your map, you will perceive, facing Cherbourg, and

projecting from the southern coast of England, the little island of

Portland, which at low tide becomes a peninsula, and is connected with

the main land by Chesil Bank, a low ridge of shingle ten miles long. On

the extreme north of this island, looking down into Weymouth Bay, is a

little cluster of rocky hills, rising sharply to a considerable height,

and occupying, perhaps, a space of sixty acres. This is where the

fortress, or Veme, as it is called, is built. On the northern side, the

cliff lifts itself up from the waters of the bay almost in a

perpendicular line, and is absolutely inaccessible. On all other sides

the Veme has been isolated by a tremendous chasm, which makes the dry

ditch of the fort. This chasm has been blasted into the solid rock, and

is nowhere less than a hundred feet wide and eighty feet deep. At the

angles of the fortress it widens to two hundred feet, and sinks beneath

the batteries in a sheer perpendicular of one hundred and thirty feet.

Two bastions jut from the main work into it, protecting it from approach

by a terrible cross-fire. All the appointments are upon the same scale.

The magazines, the storehouses, the water-tanks, are built to furnish

supplies for a siege, not of months, but of years. On every side the

rocky surface of the hills has been shaved down below the level of its

guns; so that there is not a spot seaward or landward that may not be

swept by its tremendous batteries. Such is this remarkable stronghold

which is rising to completion opposite Cherbourg. Yet it is but one of

several strong forts which are to protect the single harbor of Weymouth

Bay. Was this Titanic work reared in the spirit of trust? Does it speak

of England's hope of abiding friendship with France? No; it tells us

that beneath seeming amity a deadly struggle is going on,--that every

dock hollowed, every ship launched, every colony seized, and every

fortress reared, is but another step in a silent, but real, contest for

supremacy.

When this hidden fire shall burst forth into a devouring flame, when

this seeming alliance shall change into open enmity and bitter war, no

one can prophesy. But no doubt sooner or later. For between nations, as

well as in the bosom of communities, there are irrepressible conflicts,

which no alliances, no compacts, and no motives of wisdom or interest

can forever hold in check. And when it shall burst forth, no one can

foretell what its end shall be. That dread uncertainty, more than all

these things else, keeps the peace. We can but think that the naval

preëminence of England has grown out of the real character of her people

and of their pursuits,--and that the same causes which, in the long,

perilous conflicts of the past, have enabled her to secure the

sovereignty of the seas, will strengthen her to maintain that

sovereignty in all the conflicts which in the future may await her. But,

whatever may be the result, to whomsoever defeat may come, nothing can

obliterate from the pages of history the record of the sagacity,

perseverance, and courage with which the French people and their ruler

have striven to overcome a maritime inferiority, whose origin, perhaps,

is in the structure of their society and in the nature of their race.

* * * * *

SOMETHING LEFT UNDONE.

Labor with what zeal we will,

Something still remains undone,

Something, uncompleted still,

Waits the rising of the sun.

By the bedside, on the stair,

At the threshold, near the gates,

With its menace or its prayer,

Like a mendicant it waits:

Waits, and will not go away,--

Waits, and will not be gainsaid.

By the cares of yesterday

Each to-day is heavier made,

Till at length it is, or seems,

Greater than our strength can bear,--

As the burden of our dreams,

Pressing on us everywhere;

And we stand from day to day

Like the dwarfs of times gone by,

Who, as Northern legends say,

On their shoulders held the sky.

* * * * *

THE GREAT INSTRUMENT.

Early in the month of November the mysterious curtain which has hidden

the work long in progress at the Boston Music Hall will be lifted, and

the public will throng to look upon and listen to the GREAT ORGAN.

It is the most interesting event in the musical history of the New

World. The masterpiece of Europe's master-builder is to uncover its

veiled front and give voice to its long-brooding harmonies. The most

precious work of Art that ever floated from one continent to the other

is to be formally displayed before a great assembly. The occasion is one

of well-earned rejoicing, almost of loud triumph; for it is the crowning

festival which rewards an untold sum of devoted and conscientious labor,

carried on, without any immediate recompense, through a long series of

years, to its now perfect consummation. The whole community will share

in the deep satisfaction with which the public-spirited citizens who

have encouraged this noble undertaking, and the enterprising; and

untiring lover of science and art who has conducted it from the first,

may look upon their completed task.