CHAPTER I.

Produced by Cornell University, Joshua Hutchinson, Josephine

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[Transcriber's note: Footnotes moved to end of text]

THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. XIV.--AUGUST, 1864.--NO. LXXXII.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by TICKNOR AND

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

Massachusetts.

* * * * *

CHARLES READE.

Some one lately took occasion, in passing, to class Charles Reade with

the clever writers of the day, sandwiching him between Anthony Trollope

and Wilkie Collins,--for no other reason, apparently, than that he

never, with Chinese accuracy, gives us gossiping drivel that reduces

life to the dregs of the commonplace, or snarls us in any inextricable

tangle of plots.

Charles Reade is not a clever writer merely, but a great one,--how

great, only a careful _résumé_ of his productions can tell us. We know

too well that no one can take the place of him who has just left us, and

who touched so truly the chords of every passion; but out of the ranks

some one must step now to the leadership so deserted,--for Dickens

reigns in another region,--and whether or not it shall be Charles Reade

depends solely upon his own election: no one else is so competent, and

nothing but wilfulness or vanity need prevent him,--the wilfulness of

persisting in certain errors, or the vanity of assuming that he has no

farther to go. He needs to learn the calmness of a less variable

temperature and a truer equilibrium, less positive sharpness and more

philosophy; he will be a thorough master, when the subject glows in his

forge and he himself remains unheated.

He is about the only writer we have who gives us anything of himself.

Quite unconsciously, every sentence he writes is saturated with his own

identity; he is, then, a man of courage, and--the postulate assumed that

we are not speaking of fools--courage in such case springs only from two

sources, carelessness of opinion and possession of power. Now no one, of

course, can be entirely indifferent to the audience he strives to

please; and it would seem, then, that that daring which is the first

element of success arises here from innate capacity. Unconsciously, as

we have said, is it that our author is self-betrayed, for he is by

nature so peculiarly a _raconteur_ that he forgets himself entirely in

seizing the prominent points of his story; and it is to this that his

chief fault is attributable,--the want of elaboration,--a fault,

however, which he has greatly overcome in his later books, where,

leaving sketchy outlines, he has given us one or two complete and

perfect pictures. His style, too, owes some slight debt to this fact;

it has been saved thereby from offensive mannerism, and yet given traits

of its own insusceptible of imitation,--for by mannerism we mean

affectations of language, not absurdities of type.

There is a racy _verve_ and vigor in Charles Reade's style, which, after

the current inanities, is as inspiriting as a fine breeze on the upland;

it tingles with vitality; he seems to bring to his work a superb

physical strength, which he employs impartially in the statement of a

trifle or the storming of a city; and if on this page he handles a ship

in a sea-fight with the skill and force of a Viking, on the other he

picks up a pin cleaner of the adjacent dust than weaker fingers would do

it. There is no trace of the stale, flat, and unprofitable here; the

books are fairly alive, and that gesture tells their author best with

which a great actress once portrayed to us the poet Browning, rolling

her hands rapidly over one another, while she threw them up in the air,

as if she would describe a bubbling, boiling fountain.

Charles Reade is the prose for Browning. The temperament of the two in

their works is almost identical, having first allowed for the delicate

femineity proper to every poet; and the richness that Browning lavishes

till it strikes the world no more than the lavish gold of the sun, the

lavish blue of the sky, Reade, taking warning, hoards, and lets out only

by glimpses. Yet such glimpses! for beauty and brilliancy and strength,

when they do occur, unrivalled. Yet never does he desert his narrative

for them one moment; on the contrary, we might complain that he almost

ignores the effect of Nature on various moods and minds: in a volume of

six hundred pages, the sole bit of so-called fine writing is the

following, justified by the prominence of its subject in the incidents,

and showing in spite of itself a certain masculine contempt for the

finicalities of language:--

"The leaves were many shades deeper and richer than any other tree could

show for a hundred miles round,--a deep green, fiery, yet soft; and then

their multitude,--the staircases of foliage, as you looked up the tree,

and could scarce catch a glimpse of the sky,--an inverted abyss of

color, a mound, a dome, of flake-emeralds that quivered in the golden

air.

"And now the sun sets,--the green leaves are black,--the moon

rises,--her cold light shoots across one-half that giant stem.

"How solemn and calm stands the great round tower of living wood, half

ebony, half silver, with its mighty cloud above of flake-jet leaves

tinged with frosty fire at one edge!"

This oak was in Brittany,--the very one, perhaps, before which,

"So hollow, huge, and old,

It looked a tower of ruined mason-work,

At Merlin's feet the wileful Vivien lay."

Indeed, Brittany seems a kind of fairy-land to many writers. Tennyson,

Spenser, Matthew Arnold, Reade, all locate some one of their choicest

scenes there. The reason is not, perhaps, very remote. We prate about

the Anglo-Saxon blood; yet, in reality, there is very little of it to

prate about, especially in the educated classes. When the British were

driven from their island, they took refuge in Wales and Brittany. When

William the Norman conquered that island again, his force was chiefly

composed of the descendants of those very Britons; for so feeble was the

genuine Norse element that it had been long since absorbed, and in the

language of the Norman--used until a late day upon certain records in

England--there is not one single word of Scandinavian origin. Thus it

was neither French nor Norman nor Scandinavian invading the white

cliffs, but the exiled Briton reconquering his native land; and, to make

the fact still stronger, the army of Richmond, Henry VII., was entirely

recruited in Brittany. Perhaps, then, the reason that Brittany is to

many a region of romance and delight is a feeling akin to the pleasure

we take in visiting some ancestral domain from whose soil our fathers

once drew their being.

The Breton novel of Mr. Reade, "White Lies," although somewhat crude,

otherwise ranks with his best. The action is uninterrupted and swift,

the characters sharply defined, if legendary, the dialogue always

sparkling, the plot cleanly executed, the whole full of humor and

seasoned with wit. So well has it caught the spirit of the scene that it

reads like a translation, and, lest we should mistake the _locale_,

everybody in the book lies abominably from beginning to end.

"'A lie is a lump of sin and a piece of folly,' cries Jacintha.

"Edouard notes it down, and then says, in allusion to a previous

remark of hers,--

"'I did not think you were five-and-twenty, though.'

"'I am, then,--don't you believe me?'

"'Why not? Indeed, how could I disbelieve you after your lecture?'

"'It is well,' said Jacintha, with dignity.

"She was twenty-seven by the parish-books."

There is a good deal of picturesque beauty in this volume, and at the

opening of its affairs there occurs a paragraph which we appropriate,

not merely for its merit, nor because it is the only "interior" that we

can recall in all his novels, but because also it contains a

characteristically fearless measuring of swords with a great champion:--

"A spacious saloon panelled: dead, but snowy white picked out

sparingly with gold. Festoons of fruit and flowers finely carved

in wood on some of the panels. These also not smothered with

gilding, but as it were gold speckled here and there like tongues

of flame winding among insoluble snows.... Midway from the candle

to the distant door its twilight deepened, and all became

shapeless and sombre. The prospect ended half-way, sharp and

black, as in those out-o'-door closets imagined and painted by Mr.

Turner, whose Nature (Mr. Turner's) comes to a full stop as soon

as Mr. Turner sees no further occasion for her, instead of melting

by fine expanse and exquisite gradation into genuine distance, as

Nature does in Claude and in Nature. To reverse the picture:

standing at the door, you looked across forty feet of black, and

the little corner seemed on fire, and the fair heads about the

candle shone like the heads of St. Cecilias and Madonnas in an

antique stained-glass window. At last Laure [Laure Aglaë Rose de

Beaurepaire,--would a rose by any other name smell as sweet?]

observed the door open, and another candle glowed upon Jacintha's

comely peasant-face in the doorway; she dived into the shadow, and

emerged into light again close to the table, with napkins on her

arm."

The book abounds, as indeed all its companions do, in quaint passages,

comical turns of a word, shrewd sayings,--of which a handful:--

'"Now you know,' said Dard, 'if I am to do this little job to-day,

I must start.'

"'Who keeps you?' was the reply.

"Thus these two loved."

Dard, by the way, being an entirely new addition to the novelists'

_corps dramatique_, and almost a Shakspearian character.

"It was her feelings, her confidence, the little love wanted,--not

her secret: that lay bare already to the shrewd young minx,--I beg

her pardon,--lynx."

Another involves a curious philosophy, summed up in the following

formula:--

"She does not love him quite enough.

"He loves her a little too much. Cure,--marriage."

But there are one or two scenes in this tale of "White Lies" perfectly

matchless for fire and spirit; and to support the assertion, the reader

must allow a citation. And he will pardon the first for the sake of the

others, since Josephine is the betrothed of Camille Dujardin.

"When he uttered these terrible words, each of which was a blow

with a bludgeon to the Baroness, the old lady, whose courage was

not equal to her spirit, shrank over the side of her arm-chair,

and cried piteously,--'He threatens me! he threatens me! I am

frightened!'--and put up her trembling hands, so suggestive was

the notary's eloquence of physical violence. Then his brutality

received an unexpected check. Imagine that a sparrow-hawk had

seized a trembling pigeon, and that a royal falcon swooped, and

with one lightning-like stroke of body and wing buffeted him away,

and there he was on his back, gaping and glaring and grasping at

nothing with his claws. So swift and irresistible, but far more

terrible and majestic, Josephine de Beaurepaire came from her

chair with one gesture of her body between her mother and the

notary, who was advancing on her with arms folded in a brutal

menacing way,--not the Josephine we have seen her, the calm,

languid beauty, but the Demoiselle de Beaurepaire,--her great

heart on fire, her blood up,--not her own only, but all the blood

of all the De Beaurepaires,--pale as ashes with wrath, her purple

eyes flaring, and her whole panther-like body ready either to

spring or strike.

"'Slave! you dare to insult her, and before me! _Arrière,

misérable!_ or I soil my hand with your face!'

"And her hand was up with the word, up, up,--higher it seemed than

ever a hand was lifted before. And if he had hesitated one moment,

I believe it would have come down; and if it had, he would have

gone to her feet before it: not under its weight,--the lightning

is not heavy,--but under the soul that would have struck with it.

But there was no need: the towering threat and the flaming eye and

the swift rush buffeted the caitiff away: he recoiled three steps,

and nearly fell down. She followed him as he went, strong in that

moment as Hercules, beautiful and terrible as Michael driving

Satan. He dared not, or rather he could not, stand before her: he

writhed and cowered and recoiled down the room while she marched

upon him. Then the driven serpent hissed as it wriggled away.

"'For all this, she too shall be turned out of Beaurepaire,--not

like me, but forever! I swear it, _parolé de Perrin!_'

"'She shall never be turned out! I swear it, _foi de De

Beaurepaire!_'

"'You, too, daughter of Sa--'

"'_Tais toi, et sors à l'instant même! Lâche!_'

"The old lady moaning and trembling and all but fainting in her

chair; the young noble like destroying angel, hand in air, and

great eye scorching and withering; and the caitiff wriggling out

at the door, wincing with body and head, his knees knocking, his

heart panting, yet raging, his teeth gnashing, his cheek livid,

his eye gleaming with the fire of hell."

Too much of this sort of thing becomes meretricious; a man is never the

master of his subject, when he suffers himself to be carried away by it.

And though a fault of haste is pardonable, when lost in fine execution,

we must acknowledge that there is certainly something very "Frenchy" in

this scene,--a remark, though, which can hardly be considered as

derogatory, when we remember that altogether the most readable fiction

of the day is French itself. Our author is evidently a great admirer of

Victor Hugo, though he is no such careful artist in language: he seldom

closes with such tremendous subjects as that adventurous writer

attempts; but he has all the sharp antithesis, the pungent epigram of

the other, and in his freest flight, though he peppers us as prodigally

with colons, he never becomes absurd, which the other is constantly on

the edge of being.

The next scene which we adduce is that where the battered figure of a

pale, grisly man walks into the garrison-town of Bayonne, after a

three-years' absence, explained only to his disgrace, mutely overcomes

the guard, and rings the bell of the Governor's house.

"The servant left him in the hall, and went up-stairs to tell his

master. At the name, the Governor reflected, then frowned, then

bade his servant reach him down a certain book. He inspected it.

"'I thought so: any one with him?'

"'No, Monsieur the Governor.'

"'Load my pistols: put them on the table: put that book back: show

him in: and then order a guard to the door.'

"The Governor was a stern veteran, with a powerful brow, a shaggy

eyebrow, and a piercing eye. He never rose, but leaned his chin on

his hand, and his elbow on a table that stood between them, and

eyed the new-comer very fixedly and strangely.

"'We did not expect to see you on this side of the Pyrenees.'

"'Nor I myself, Governor.'

"'What do you come to me for?'

"'A welcome, a suit of regimentals, and money to take me to

Paris.'

"'And suppose, instead of that, I turn out a corporal's guard, and

bid them shoot you in the court-yard?'

"'It would be the drollest thing you ever did, all things

considered,' said the other, coolly; but he looked a little

surprised.

"The Governor went for the book he had lately consulted, found the

page, handed it to the rusty officer, and watched him keenly: the

blood rushed all over his face, and his lip trembled; but his eye

dwelt stern, yet sorrowful, on the Governor.

"'I have read your book: now read mine.'

"He drew off his coat, and showed his wrists and arms, blue and

waled.

"'Can you read that, Monsieur?'

"'No.'

"'All the better for you! Spanish fetters, General.'

"He showed a white scar on his shoulder.

"'Can you read that, Sir?'

"'Humph?'

"'This is what I cut out of it,'--and he handed the Governor a

little round stone, as big and almost as regular as a musket-ball.

"'Humph! that could hardly have been fired from a French musket.'

"'Can you read this?'--and he showed him a long cicatrix on his

other arm.

"'Knife, I think?' said the Governor.

"'You are right, Monsieur: Spanish knife!--Can you read

this?'--and opening his bosom, he showed a raw and bloody wound on

his breast.

"'Oh, the Devil!' cried the General.

"The wounded man put his coat on again, and stood erect and

haughty and silent.

"The General eyed him, and saw his great spirit shining through

this man. The more he looked, the less could the scarecrow veil

the hero from his practised eye.

"'There has been some mistake, or else I dote--and can't tell a

soldier from a'--

"'Don't say the word, old man, or your heart will bleed!'

"'Humph! I must go into this matter at once. Be seated, Captain,

if you please, and tell me what have you been doing all these

years?'

"'Suffering!'

"'What, all the time?'

"'Without intermission.'

"'But what? suffering what?'

"'Cold, hunger, darkness, wounds, solitude, sickness, despair,

prison,--all that man can suffer.'

"'Impossible! a man would be dead at that rate before this.'

"'I should have died a dozen times, but for one thing.'

"'Ay! what was that?'

"'I had promised to live.'

"There was a pause. Then the old man said, calmly,--

"'To the facts, young man: I listen.'"

And high time, be it said; since it begins to read very much like

one of Artemas Ward's burlesques. The upshot of which listening

was, that the man left for Paris directly in the demanded

regimentals, and wrapt about with the Governor's furred cloak to

boot; that he would not delay in the metropolis one moment, even

to put on the epaulets they gave him, but saved them for his

sweetheart to make him a colonel with, and, though weary and torn

with pain, galloped away to the Chateau de Beaurepaire, to find

that sweetheart another man's wife.

"He turned his back quickly on her. 'To the army!' he cried,

hoarsely. He drew himself haughtily up in marching-attitude. He

took three strides, erect and fiery and bold. At the fourth the

great heart snapped, and the worn body it had held up so long

rolled like a dead log upon the ground, with a tremendous fall."

Which scene must be followed by its pendant, taking place during the

siege of a Prussian town, when, from the enemy's bastion, Long Tom, out

of range of Dujardin's battery, was throwing red-hot shot, sending half

a hundred-weight of iron up into the clouds, and plunging it down into

the French lines a mile off.

"'Volunteers to go out of the trenches!' cried Sergeant La Croix,

in a stentorian voice, standing erect as a poker, and swelling

with importance.

"There were fifty offers in less than as many seconds.

"'Only twelve allowed to go,' said the Sergeant; 'and I am one,'

added he, adroitly inserting himself.

"A gun was taken down, placed on a carriage, and posted near

Death's Alley, but out of the line of fire.

"The Colonel himself superintended the loading of this gun; and to

the surprise of his men had the shot weighed first, and then

weighed out the powder himself.

"He then waited quietly a long time, till the bastion pitched one

of its periodical shots into Death's Alley; but no sooner had the

shot struck, and sent the sand flying past the two lanes of

curious noses, than Colonel Dujardin jumped upon the gun and waved

his cocked hat. At this preconcerted signal, his battery opened

fire on the bastion, and the battery to his right hand opened on

the wall that fronted them; and the Colonel gave the word to run

the gun out of the trenches. They ran it out into the cloud of

smoke their own guns were belching forth, unseen by the enemy; but

they had no sooner twisted it into the line of Long Tom than the

smoke was gone, and there they were, a fair mark.

"'Back into the trenches, all but one!' roared Dujardin.

"And in they ran like rabbits.

"'Quick! the elevation.'

"Colonel Dujardin and La Croix raised the muzzle to the

mark,--hoo! hoo! hoo! ping! ping! ping' came the bullets about

their ears.

"'Away with you!' cried the Colonel, taking the linstock from him.

"Then Colonel Dujardin, fifteen yards from the trenches, in full

blazing uniform, showed two armies what one intrepid soldier can

do. He kneeled down and adjusted his gun, just as he would have

done in a practising-ground. He had a pot-shot to take, and a

pot-shot he would take. He ignored three hundred muskets that were

levelled at him. He looked along his gun, adjusted it and

readjusted to a hair's-breadth. The enemy's bullets pattered over

it; still he adjusted and readjusted. His men were groaning and

tearing their hair inside at his danger.

"At last it was levelled to his mind, and then his movements were

as quick as they had hitherto been slow. In a moment he stood

erect in the half-fencing attitude of a gunner, and his linstock

at the touch-hole: a huge tongue of flame, a volume of smoke, a

roar, and the iron thunderbolt was on its way, and the Colonel

walked haughtily, but rapidly, back to the trenches: for in all

this no bravado. He was there to make a shot,--not to throw a

chance of life away, watching the effect.

"Ten thousand eyes did that for him.

"Both French and Prussians risked their own lives, craning out to

see what a colonel in full uniform was doing under fire from a

whole line of forts, and what would be his fate: but when he fired

the gun, their curiosity left the man and followed the iron

thunderbolt.

"For two seconds all was uncertain: the ball was travelling.

"Tom gave a rear like a wild horse, his protruding muzzle went up

sky-high, then was seen no more, and a ring of old iron and a

clatter of fragments were heard on the top of the bastion. Long

Tom was dismounted. Oh, the roar of laughter and triumph from one

end to another of the trenches, and the clapping of forty thousand

hands, that went on for full five minutes! then the Prussians,

either through a burst of generous praise for an act so chivalrous

and so brilliant, or because they would not be crowed over,

clapped their ten thousand hands as loudly, and thundering

heart-thrilling salvo of applause answered salvo on both sides

that terrible arena."

If all this was melodramatic, it should be remembered that the time was

melodramatic itself; it is, however, saved from such accusation by the

truthfulness of the handling; and the homeliness of a portion of it

recalls the ballad of "Up at the villa, down in the city," with its

speeches of drum and fife. Nevertheless, here are combined the true

elements of modern sensational writing: there are the broad canvas, the

vivid colors, the abrupt contrast, all the dramatic and startling

effects that weekly fiction affords, the supernatural heroine, the more

than mortal hero. What, then, rescues it? It would be hard to reply.

Perhaps the reckless, rollicking wit: we cannot censure one who makes us

laugh with him. Perhaps nothing but the writer's exuberant and

superabundant vitality, which through such warp shoots a golden woof

till it is filled and interwoven with the true glance and gleam of

genius. The difference between these pages and that of the previously

mentioned style is the same as exists between any coarse scene-curtain

and some glorious painting, be it Church, with his tropical lushness, or

Gifford, with his shaking, shining mists,--

"mist

Like a vaporous amethyst,

Or an air-dissolved star

Mingling light and fragrance far

As the curved horizon's bound,"--

some canvas that seems to palpitate and live and tremble with the

breathing being confided to it by the painter. Indeed, Charles Reade has

a great deal of this pictorial power. A single sentence will sometimes

give not only the sketch, but all its tints. Take, for instance, the

paragraph in which, speaking of the Newhaven fish-wives, he says, "It is

a race of women that the Northern sun peachifies instead of

rosewoodizing"; and it is as good as that picture of the "Two

Grandmothers," where the rosy woman with her rosy troop is confronted by

the tawny sunburnt gypsy and her swarthy group of dancing-girl and

tambourine-tosser.

When "Peg Woffington" first fell upon us, a dozen years ago or so,

Humdrum opened his eyes: it was like setting one's teeth in a juicy pear

fresh from the warm sunshine. Then came "Christie Johnstone," a perfect

pearl of its kind, in which we recognize an important contribution to

one class of romance. If ever the literature of the fishing-coast shall

be compiled, it will be found to be scanty, but superlative; let us

suggest that it shall open with Lucy Larcom's "Poor Lone Hannah," the

most touching and tearful of the songs of New-England life,--followed by

Christie Johnstone's night at sea among the blue-lights and the nets

with their silver and lightning mixed, where the fishers struggle with

that immense sheet varnished in red-hot silver,--and at the end let not

the "Pilot's Pretty Daughter" of William Allingham's be forgotten:--

"Were it my lot--there peeped a wish--

To hand a pilot's oar and sail,

Or haul the dripping moonlit mesh

Spangled with herring-scale:

By dying stars how sweet 'twould be,

And dawn-blow freshening the sea,

With weary, cheery pull to shore

To gain my cottage-home once more,

And meet, before I reached the door,

My pretty pilot's daughter!"

But it is a fine fashion of this noble world never to acknowledge itself

too well pleased. Men are ashamed of satisfaction. So soon as they have

exhausted the honey, they condemn the comb; it will do to wax an old

wife's thread;--they forget that the cells whose sides break the usual

uniformity contain the royal embryos. Humdrum read these little novels

through and through, laughed and cried over them in secret, then pulled

a long face, stepped forth and denounced--the typography. Now we admit

that the page presents a fairer appearance with single punctuations,

unblurred by Italics, and its smooth surface unbroken by strings of

capitals;--but let us ask these criticasters for what purpose types were

cast at all. To assist the author in the expression of his ideas, and to

elucidate subtile shades of meaning? or to prove his let and hindrance,

and to wrap his expression in mystery? Whether or no, it is patent that

Charles Reade makes an exclamation--and an interrogation-point together

say as much as many novelists can dibble over a whole page.

Nevertheless, in his latest work these eccentricities are greatly

modified; yet who would forego in the sea-fight that almost inaudible,

breathless whisper of "Our ammunition is nearly done"? or again the

moment when Skinner pokes Mr. Hardie lightly in the side and says,

"But--I've--got--THE RECEIPT"? And could anything express the state of

young Reginald's mind so ineffably as the primer type of his letter to

Lucy?

A much less venial fault than any typographical trifle is a tendency

belonging to this author to repeat both incident and colloquy. This of

course is merely the result of negligence,--and negligence no one likes

to forgive; only Shakspeare can afford to be careless of his fame, and

the rags that his commentators make of him are a warning to all pettier

people. We have seen the manuscript of a man already immortal, so

interlined, erased, and corrected as to be undecipherable by any but

himself and the printer who has been for twenty years condemned to such

hard labor; surely others can condescend to the same pains;--yet we

doubt if Mr. Reade so much as looks his over a second time.

Many persons have a trick of writing their names, not on the fly-leaf of

the books they possess, but on the hundredth or the fiftieth page.

Perhaps it is according to some such brand of the warehouse that we find

in "Very Hard Cash," or in "White Lies," indifferently, such brief

dialogues as this:--

"'No.'

"'Are you sure?'

"'Positive.'"

Then, Reade's characters are perpetually doing the same thing. Josephine

and Margaret both seize their throats not to cry out; Josephine and

Margaret both kiss their babies alike,--a very pretty description of the

act, though:--

"The young mother sprang silently upon her child,--you would have

thought she was going to kill it,--her head reared itself again

and again, like a crested snake's, and again and again, and again

and again plunged down upon the child, and she kissed his little

body from head to foot with soft violence, and murmured through

her starting tears."

But not content with that, Margaret must reënact it. Then Gerard and

Alfred, returning from long absences, both find their only sister dead;

and the plot of three of the novels turns on the fact of long and

inexplicable absences on the part of the heroes. The Baroness de

Beaurepaire, who is flavored with what her maker calls the "congealed

essence of grandmamma," shares her horror of the jargon-vocabulary

equally with Mrs. Dodd, (the captain's wife, who "reared her children in

a suburban villa with the manners which adorn a palace,--when they

happen to be there"). There is a singular habit in the several works of

putting up marble inscriptions for folks before actual demise requires

it,--Hardie showing Lucy Fountain hers, Camille erecting one to Raynal.

All his heroines, as soon as they are crossed in love, invariably lose

their tempers, and invariably by the same process; all, without

exception, have violet eyes and velvet lips, (and sometimes the heroes

also have the latter!) and all of them should wear key-holes at their

ear-rings. Indeed, here is our quarrel with Mr. Reade. The conception of

an artless woman is impossible with him. Plenty of beautiful ideals he

creates, but with the actual woman he is almost unacquainted: Lucy

Fountain, of all his feminine characters, is the only one whose

counterpart we have ever met; Julia, the most perfect type of his fancy,

impetuous, sparkling, and sweet, has this to say for herself, on

occasion of a boat-race:--"'We have won at last,' cried Julia, all on

fire, '_and fairly; only think of that_!'" Through every sentence that

he jots down runs a vein of gentle satire on the sex. Every specimen

that he has drawn from it possesses feline characteristics: if provoked,

they scratch; if happy, they purr; when they move, it is with the bodies

of panthers; when they caress their children, it is like snakes; and in

every single one of his books the women listen, behind the door, behind

the hedge, behind the boat.

"'He would make an intolerable woman,' says the Baroness. 'A fine

life, if one had a parcel of women about one, blurting out their

real minds every moment, and never smoothing matters!'

"'Mamma, what a horrid picture!' cries Laure."

When upon this subject our author leaves innuendo, and fairly shows his

colors, he writes in this wise:--

"For nothing is so hard to her sex as a long, steady struggle. In

matters physical, this is the thing the muscles of the fair cannot

stand. In matters intellectual and moral, the long strain it is

that beats them dead. Do not look for a Bacona, a Newtona, a

Handella, a Victoria Huga. Some American ladies tell us education

has stopped the growth of these. No, Mesdames! These are not in

Nature. They can bubble letters in ten minutes that you could no

more deliver to order in ten days than a river can play like a

fountain. They can sparkle gems of stories; they can flash little

diamonds of poems. The entire sex has never produced one opera,

nor one epic that mankind could tolerate a minute: and why?--these

come by long, high-strung labor. But, weak as they are in the long

run of everything but the affections, (and there giants,) they are

all overpowering while the gallop lasts. Fragilla shall dance any

two of you flat on the floor before four o'clock, and then dance

on till peep of day. You trundle off to your business as usual,

and could dance again the next night, and so on through countless

ages. She who danced you into nothing is in bed, a human jelly

crowned with headache."

Certainly, the concluding sentence shows that the writer is unacquainted

with the Fifth-Avenue Fragilla. And, moreover, we were unaware that she

had ever entered herself as competitor with Dr. Windship in the lifting

of three-thousand-pound weights. But this is poor stuff for a man of

talent to busy himself with,--as if the Creator intended rivalry between

beings complementary to each other, and of too diverse physical

organization to allow the idea. Yet a fair friend of ours would meet him

on his own ungallant ground. If Mr. Reade will trouble himself, says Una

and the Lion, to turn over a work of Frances Power Cobbe's on Intuitive

Morals, he will see that the first two impossibilities in his catalogue

are lessened so far as to allow hope; as for Handella, there is reason

to believe in her advent,--many women have written faultless tunes,--all

that is wanted is mathematical harmony,--and Mary Somerville, Maria

Mitchell, and the sister of the Herschels forbid despair on that point;

and God forbid the Victoria Huga! the male of the species is more than

enough. We must look upon any wide departure from the prevailing pattern

either as a monstrosity or as a development of the great plan;

therefore, if one of these women is a monstrosity, Laplace and Aristotle

are to be considered equally so. And then, also, Mr. Reade, masculine as

he is, finds eclipse in the shade of either Mrs. Lewes, (Marion Evans,)

or Charlotte Brontè, or Madame Dudevant. As for men, they are themselves

just emerging from barbarism; a race rises only with its women, as all

history shows. The whole sex has produced no operas? they are modern

things; when men have advanced a little, when our audience is ready, we

shall write operas. Epics? how many has the entire opposite sex

produced? well, four: terrible disparity, when we count by billions!

These are not in Nature? Whose assertion for that? till he can prove it,

the word of "some American ladies" is as good as the word of Mr. Charles

Reade. For myself, continued the outraged Una, I know a beautiful woman

who left lovers, society, pleasures,--absorbed in her moulding and

modelling, day by day and year by year, with no positive result except

in her own convictions and consciousness,--who spent the long summer

hours alone in the little building with her white ideas, and who, winter

night after night, rose to cross street and garden and snowy fields to

tend the fire and wet the clay, and who, on more than one morning

finding the weary labor of months wasted where the frozen substance had

peeled from the framework and lay in fragments on the floor, without a

murmur began the patient work again. That was during the trial;

afterwards attainment. Was there no long strain and steady struggle

there?

Una's enthusiasm infects us; and very _apropos_ to all this do we hear

Mr. Reade's Jacintha remark,--

"We are good creatures, but we don't trouble our heads with

justice; it is a word you shall never hear a woman use, unless she

happens to be doing some monstrous injustice at the very moment."

And with the best-natured contempt in the world, Dr. Sampson exclaims,--

"What! go t' a wumman for the truth, when I can go t' infallible

inference?"

Even Lucy Fountain saw many young ladies healed of many young

enthusiasms by a wedding-ring,--but a wittier woman has said it better,

Una declares, in asserting that a married woman's name is her epitaph.

If, however, Mr. Reade's opinion of womankind is at any time

justifiable, we must bring Una to witness that it is so in the following

instance:--

"Realize the situation, and the strange incongruity between the

senses and the mind in these poor fellows! The day had ripened its

beauty; beneath a purple heaven shone, sparkled, and laughed a

blue sea, in whose waves the tropical sun seemed to have fused his

beams; and beneath that fair, sinless, peaceful sky, wafted by a

balmy breeze over those smiling, transparent, golden waves, a

bloodthirsty pirate bore down on them with a crew of human tigers;

and a lady babble babble babble babble babble babbled in their

quivering ears!"

We have heard numberless inquiries as to Mr. Reade's private life, with

which, whether they have the right or not, the public will concern

itself. So at home is he on every subject that each appears to be his

specialty. One asserts that he follows Galen: witness his mania on

medicine. Certainly not, another replies; are not his principles

erroneous, and second-hand at that? Does he not dredge the science with

ridicule? No practitioner would gravely assert the feasibility of

transfusion, an operation never yet performed with success, since the

red globules of his own blood seem to be as proper to each individual as

his identity, and allow no admixture from alien veins; in surgery he has

but one foe,--phlebotomy; in pharmacy, but one friend,--chloroform; he

asserts of Dr. Sampson, (Dr. Dickson, the writer of "Fallacies of the

Faculty"?) that "he was strong, but not strong enough to make the

populace suspend an opinion; yet it might be done: by chloroforming

them." (Which leads one parenthetically to remark that it is great pity,

then, that, in the prevalent headlong precipitancy of public judgment,

anæsthetics have not been more generally employed on this side of the

water of late.) Certainly he is no physician, they say. But, on the

other hand, a conjecture that he has been before the mast is as

plausible a one as that ever Herman Melville was; there is the true

sailor's-roll about him; nobody less skilful than the captain of a

three-decker could have run the Agra through such a gantlet of

broadsides and hurricanes; the manoeuvring of the ship, when her

master puts her before the wind that he may rake one schooner's deck and

hurl the majestic monster bodily upon the other, is unequalled by

anything in nautical literature, and approached by nothing in verity,

except it may be Admiral Dupont's waltz of fire around the two forts of

Hilton Head. Another, who laughs at both of these amateur statements,

has a Grub-Street one; but, except to a favored few, to everybody in

this country he is only an impersonal existence. In this general dearth

of useful information, there are, however, one or two biographical

sketches afloat,--possibly hints of those waiting their chance in the

pigeon-holes of the Thunderer,--of which we are tempted to give the

reader a sample, brought to us by Una in substantiation of her

hostilities.

The subject of the present notice was picked up at sea, a child, and,

under the provisions of maritime law concerning flotsam, jetsam, and

lagan, was appropriated by the crew. He then followed their fortunes

for several years, with various adventures, among which is the one

wherein he is said to have accompanied Arthur Gordon Pym (disguised in

the published account of that voyage under the name and appearance of

one Peters) upon his fearful South-Sea sail towards that vapory cataract

at the world's end which was seen "rolling silently into the sea from

some immense and far-distant rampart of the heaven," from the horrors of

which he escaped in the same miraculous manner that Mr. Pym did. He must

still have been young at the time, as this occurred in 1838. Unable to

find any credence to these extraordinary statements upon his return, he

found an asylum from the unbelieving world, where, in order not to

become a permanent resident, and being capable of impartial judgment

thereon, he employed himself in a profound study of finance. Emerging

from this seclusion, lest he should defraud his natural element

entirely, he plunged into the hot water of the revolutions then ravaging

Europe. Receiving wounds, he was laid up in hospital; and being of an

active turn of mind and debarred from other pursuits, he fell (like Dr.

Marie Zakrzewski) to studying the cards renewed every day above the

patients' beds with the disease written thereon, its symptoms, and its

treatment; in this manner he acquired quite a knowledge of medicine. He

was, however, mercifully prevented from practising by the fact, that,

upon repeating his story to an acquaintance, he met, as before, with

such total disbelief, that, most fortunately for many readers, he

determined at once to devote the remainder of his days to fiction.

How much faith such a narrative deserves we leave others to decide. It,

however, has the virtue, as Una declares again, of plausibly explaining

Mr. Reade's entire misapprehension of the feminine portion of

humanity,--since, during the whole course of such a career, it would

have been impossible that he should have made intimate acquaintance with

a single specimen of the sex. It is true that in "Christie Johnstone" he

speaks of the musical performances of certain female relatives of his

own; but of course that is to be taken only as a part of the fiction.

One thing, however, is evident,--that, if this sketch is not true, the

converse of it must be, and where the reader has paid his money he may

take his choice.

Mr. Reade's latest novel, "Very Hard Cash," is a continuation of a

previous one, "Love me Little, Love me Long." A great charm of

Thackeray's books was, that in every fresh one we heard a little news of

the dear old friends of former ones; and "Very Hard Cash" has all the

advantage of prepossession in its favor. Its forerunner was a startling

thing to the circulating-library, for the hero was an entirely new

character, dashing among the elegancies of the habitual hero like a

shaggy dog in a drawing-room; and though the author admires him to the

core of his heart, he never once hesitates to put him in ridiculous

plight, and sets at last this diamond-in-the-rough in his purest and

most polished gold. It is a delightful book, with one scene in it, the

memorable night at sea, worth scores of customary novels, and, apart

from the noble and beautiful delineation of David Dodd, would be

invaluable for nothing else but its faultless portraiture of that

millinery devotee, Mrs. Bazalgette.

From two such natures as David and his wife nothing less noble should

spring; and therefore, through necessity, their daughter Julia, the

heroine of "Very Hard Cash," is that ideal of vehemence and sweetness

which we find her, not by any choice or fancy of the writer, but on

account of fate, natural deduction, and _a priori_ logic. She is,

however, for all that, to some extent a creation; one may imagine her,

long for her, look for her,--one will not immediately find her. Youth

never was painted so well as here; both Julia and Alfred are aureoled in

its beauty; they are not reasonable mortals with the accumulated

perfections of three-score and ten, but young creatures just brimmed, as

young creatures are, with the blissfulness of being. Nobody ever

appreciated youth as this writer does, nobody has so entered into it;

he never fails, to be sure, to make you laugh at it a little, but all

the time he confesses a kind of loving worship of that buoyant time when

the effervescence of the animal spirits fills the brain with its happy

fumes, of that fearless, confident period that

"Is not, like Atlas, curled

Stooping 'neath the gray old world,

But which takes it, lithe and bland,

Easily in its small hand."

We have often wondered that no one ever before grappled with the

material of this last volume. The easy ability of one person to

incarcerate another in a mad-house is as often abused in America as in

England, and circumstances in this drama which might strike a casual

reader as preposterous we can match with kindred and more hopeless cases

within our own knowledge. Perhaps one of the ablest portions of the

treatment which this book affords the theme is in the singular

collocation of characters,--the hero being wrongfully imprisoned as

insane, the heroine's father really made so by medical malpractice, the

hero's sister dying of injuries received from another maniac, his uncle

being imbecile, and his father and one of his physicians becoming

monomaniac. Nicer shades than these allow could not be drawn, and the

subject stands in bold relief as a monument of dauntless courage and

enthusiasm.

No one can hesitate to declare this novel, as it is the latest, to be

also the finest of all that Charles Reade has given us. In saying this

we do not forget the "Cloister and Hearth," which, however tender and

touching and true to its century, is rather a rambling narrative than an

elucidated plot. "Very Hard Cash" is wrought out with the finest finish,

yet nowhere overdone; it so abounds in scenes of dramatic climax that we

fancy the stage has lost immensely by the romance-reader's gain; yet

there is never a single situation thrown away, every word tends in the

main direction, and after that the prolific mind of the writer overflows

in _marginalia_. There are one or two striking improbabilities, which

Mr. Reade himself excuses by asserting that the commonplace is neither

dramatic nor evangelical,--and therefore we confess, that, so long as

Reginald Bazalgette had a ship, Captain Dodd was as likely to turn up on

that as on any other, the purser as likely to make his communication at

that moment as later, and the fly as likely to resuscitate the patient

as the surgeon. But the characterization in this book is wonderful;

every name becomes an acquaintance, from Mrs. Beresford, dividing Ajax's

emotion and declining to be drowned in the dark, with her servant

Ramgolam and his matchless Orientalisms, up to the loftier models, one

of whom he endows with this exquisite bit of description:--

"A head overflowed by ripples of dark-brown hair sat with heroic

grace upon his solid white throat, like some glossy falcon

new-lighted on a Parian column."

We must, however, object to Fullalove, who is quite unworthy of the

author, though perhaps complacently regarded by him as a success, being

merely the traditional Yankee compound of patents and conjectures, a

little smarter than usual, as of course a passage through Mr. Reade's

pen must make him;--he never touched his brain. Vespasian, also, is not

so good as he might be, although one enjoys his contempt for the

pirate's crew of Papuans, Sooloos, and Portuguese, as a "mixellaneous

bilin' of darkies," and finds something inimitable in his injured

dignity over the anomalous _sobriquet_ afforded him, whose changes he

rings through analogy and anatomy till he declares himself to be only a

"darned anemone." The real charm of the book, however, lies in the

beautiful relation which it pictures between mother and children, and in

the nature of the daughter herself, so exuberant, so dancing, yet the

foam subsiding into such a luminous body of clearness, which so lights

up the page with its loveliness, that, seeing how an artless woman is

foreign to Mr. Reade's ideas, we are forced to believe that Nature was

too strong for him and he wrote against the grain. Nevertheless, there

is enough of his own prejudice retained for piquancy,--and since the

poor things must be insignificantly wicked, see how charming they can

be! There are many scenes between these covers that would well bear

repetition, were they not too fresh in the reader's mind to require it;

we will content ourselves with a single one, which contains the only

pretentious writing of the whole novel, done at a touch, with a light,

loose pen, but showing beyond compare the soul of the poet through the

flesh of the novelist.

"At six twenty-five, the grand orb set calm and red, and the sea

was gorgeous with miles and miles of great ruby dimples: it was

the first glowing smile of southern latitude. The night stole on

so soft, so clear, so balmy, all were loath to close their eyes on

it; the passengers lingered long on deck, watching the Great Bear

dip, and the Southern Cross rise, and overhead a whole heaven of

glorious stars most of us have never seen and never shall see in

this world. No belching smoke obscured, no plunging paddles

deepened; all was musical; the soft air sighing among the sails;

the phosphorescent water bubbling from the ship's bows; the

murmurs from little knots of men on deck subdued by the great

calm: home seemed near, all danger far; Peace ruled the sea, the

sky, the heart: the ship, making a track of white fire on the

deep, glided gently, yet swiftly, homeward, urged by snowy sails

piled up like alabaster towers against a violet sky, out of which

looked a thousand eyes of holy, tranquil fire. So melted the sweet

night away.

"Now carmine streaks tinged the eastern sky at the water's edge,

and that water blushed; now the streaks turned orange, and the

waves below them sparkled. Thence splashes of living gold flew and

settled on the ship's white sails, the deck, and the faces; and,

with no more prologue, being so near the line, up came

majestically a huge, fiery, golden sun, and set the sea flaming

liquid topaz.

"Instant the lookout at the foretop-gallant-mast-head hailed the

deck below.

"'Strange sail! Right ahead!'

* * * * *

"Ah! the stranger's deck swarms black with men!

"His sham ports fell as if by magic, his guns grinned through the

gaps like black teeth; his huge foresail rose and filled, and out

he came in chase.

"The breeze was a kiss from Heaven, the sky a vaulted sapphire,

the sea a million dimples of liquid, lucid gold."

In conclusion, we must pronounce Mr. Reade's merit, in our judgment, to

belong not so much to what he has already done as to what, if life be

allowed him, he is yet to do. All his previous works read like

'studies,' in the light of his last. For "Very Hard Cash" is the

beginning of a new era; it shows the careful hand of the artist doing

justice to the conceptions of genius, in the prime of his vigor, with

all his powers well in hand. The forms of literature change with the

necessities of the age,--to some future generation what illustration the

dramatists were to the Elizabethan day the knot of superior novelists

will be to this, and among them all Charles Reade is destined to no

subordinate rank.

* * * * *

HOW ROME IS GOVERNED.

There are a thousand descriptions of Rome, its antiquities, galleries,

ceremonies, and manners, but hardly any, that I remember, of the

organization of the Papal Government,--that wonderful power which long

played the chief part in the social and political revolutions of Europe,

which, even in its decay, preserves so much of its original grandeur,

and still clings to its traditions with a tenacity of conviction that

commands our respect, although the remembrance of the evil that it has

done compels us, as men and as Christians, to rejoice at the prospect of

its fall.

This omission on the part of so many thoughtful travellers is by no

means an unnatural one. We go to Rome in order to see and to feel,

rather than to study and to think. The past crowds upon us overladen

with history and poetry; and the present is so full of new forms of life

that it is only when we come to sit down at a distance and gather up our

recollections that we ask ourselves how all the instruments of that

gorgeous pageantry are put together and moved. The Pope has palaces and

villas. The cardinals live in splendid apartments, and ride in massive

coaches of purple and gilt, drawn by horses richly caparisoned, and

attended by servants in livery. Bishops and prelates and monks and

priests and friars fill long processions on public occasions, and move

about in their daily life with the air and bearing of men who belong to

a sphere that common men have no concern in.

There is a church or a chapel for every day in the year, and some emblem

of external recognition for every saint in the calendar. There are

lenten days, when the rich eat fresh tunny from the Adriatic or eels

from Comacchio, and the poor whatever they can get; and holidays, when

the shops are shut and the churches and theatres open, and everybody

amuses himself as well as his tastes and his means allow. Nowhere are

processions so splendid, festivals so magnificent, the whole body of the

population accustomed, either as actors or as spectators, to such daily

displays of opulence and grandeur.

How is all this done? How do all these men live? What do they do for

themselves and for one another? What is the object of this

multiplication of insignia and titles? What is the meaning of the red

stockings and the purple stockings, and the red and the purple hat-band,

and the various decorations of the horses, and the infinite varieties of

cut and color and device in dress and equipage, which you begin to

distinguish only when you become accustomed to objects so unlike

anything you have ever seen before? For every one of them has a meaning,

and tells the instructed eye the hopes and aspirations and half the

history of the bearer as plainly as a tablet or an inscription.

Without attempting, on the present occasion, to answer all of these

questions in detail, I shall endeavor to give such an outline of the

organization of the Roman Government as shall cover the most important

of them.

The head of this vast body, the Pope, is better known than any of the

inferior members; for, as spiritual head of the Church and absolute

sovereign of her temporal dominions, his peculiar position has always

made him the object of peculiar attention. Officially, he was for

centuries the acknowledged chief of Christendom, jealous of his

prerogatives, bold in his assumptions, often feared where he was not

reverenced, and often courted and flattered where he inspired neither

reverence nor fear. Individually, his education and habits, the books he

reads and the company he keeps, have seldom led him to study the causes

of national prosperity, and still more seldom taught him to sympathize

with the feelings or respect the rights of mankind.

From his childhood, the purest source of sympathies and affections is

closed for him rigorously and hopelessly. He grows up as a stranger at

the family-hearth; for, as he sits there, he is taught that he can never

have a family-hearth of his own. He begins life by renouncing its

dearest privileges, and training all his faculties for a relentless war

upon himself,--for repressing natural impulses, not guiding them,

extirpating his passions, not subduing them, and aiming at an

insensibility that can be attained only by the sacrifice of every human

instinct, rather than that serene tranquillity of spirit in which every

passion is recognized as a power for good as well as for evil, and all

are subjected alike to the guidance of a discriminating and

conscientious self-control.

He is in a false position from his first step in life, and strays

farther and farther from the true course to the very end of it. His

hopes and aspirations are all directed to one object, trained to flow in

a dark and narrow channel, on which the sunbeams never play, and which

the pure breath of Nature never visits. His brothers and sisters have a

thousand things to talk about and think about which he has no part in.

If he joins in their games, it is still as the _abbatino_: the formal

small-clothes and narrow neckband and three-cornered hat that contrast

so strongly with their gay dresses are ever present to remind him and

them that they have different paths to travel, and have already entered

upon them. It is a dreary process that education of his, and one that

makes your heart ache to look upon. A rosy-cheeked, bright-eyed boy,

with boyish blood in his veins, running through them quick and warm, and

every now and then making them tingle with some boyish longing that will

out, although he is a priest in miniature and a Pope in prospective. I

never could look at it without thinking of the gardener, in the fulness

of his topiary pride, cutting trees and shrubs into towers and walls,

and every shape but that which Nature designed them for. Clip, clip, go

the long, scythe-like shears, and with every clip down comes a branch

with its thousand songs unsung, or a shoot with its half-blown promise

of spring. Cut away earnestly, patiently. You have your faith to help

you; and though your eyes are of the strongest and keenest, you have

never been taught to use them. Cut away till your arms ache and your

head swims with the strain of measuring angles and inches and pyramids

and obelisks; Nature is working at the root while you are warring on the

branches. True, the birds will not build where your shears have passed;

and the winds will wail where they would have piped it merrily, if the

young boughs had been there to dance to their breathings. But the roots

are tough and the trunks are strong, and the sap wells surely up from

those mysterious sources where, in darkness and silence, Nature works

her wondrous transformations,--proving, through each waxing and waning

year, by bud and leaf and branch, that, thwart and mutilate and deny her

as you may, she is the same kind mother still.

As life advances, the dividing lines grow sharper and more defined. He

has got his Latin, and, in getting it, read Virgil and Horace and

Cicero, as his brothers did. But henceforth St. Augustine becomes his

Cicero; and he already begins to suspect that the best service his Homer

and Thucydides and Demosthenes have rendered him has been by enabling

him to understand St. Chrysostom. What is Herodotus to the Lives of the

Saints, or Livy to Baronius? Why should he waste his time on human

nature in Tacitus, or follow, with Guicciardini, the tortuous paths of

princes, when he can find lessons more to his taste, and wisdom more to

his purpose, in Mabillon and Pallavicini? His daily conversation is

about the interests and concerns of his order, and, as he enters upon

its duties, about the questions which those duties raise, and the

rewards which their fulfilment promises or brings. It was a great day

for him and for his friends, when he first ascended the altar in cope

and stole; but mass soon becomes a daily exercise, and, like all things

done daily, sinks into routine. A still more anxious day was it, when he

first took his seat in the confessional to absolve and to condemn, to

interpret and to enjoin, to listen to secrets which are like the lifting

of the veil from one of the darkest mysteries of life, and feel the

breath that bore them through the punctures of the thin partition fall

on his cheek with a warmth that made his veins glow and his own breath

come fast and thick.

I once heard a confession of murder from the murderer's lips, as we sat

alone, side by side, on the same sofa. It was of a Sunday morning,

bright, beautiful, and still, one of those days in which earth looks so

pure and lovely that you can hardly believe sin could ever have found a

home thereon. He was a Sicilian, a gentleman by birth and fortune; and

when he first came into the room, apologizing for the intrusion, and

regretting that he was taking up my time with the business of a

stranger, I thought that I had never seen a more intelligent face or

felt more immediately at home with an utter stranger. He began his story

in a low, musical voice,--Italian loses none of its softness in the

mouth of a Sicilian,--and I had followed him through a midnight ride

over a wild and solitary road before I began to suspect how it was to

end. Then came the details: a sudden meeting,--angry words, heating to

madness blood already too hot,--a shot,--a body writhing on the ground

in its own blood. His voice hardly changed, though the tones, perhaps,

were somewhat deeper; but his cheek flushed and his eye kindled, and I

felt such a sickening shudder come over me as I had never felt before.

He was dressed in white, too,--spotless white, as it seemed to me, when

he first came into the room; I had even admired the neatness of his

trousers and waistcoat: but as I looked and listened, big drops of blood

seemed to come out upon them,--a drop for every word, slowly exuding

from some mysterious source, till he was bathed all over in it from head

to foot. A day or two afterwards, I met him upon the Pincian, in the

midst of walkers and riders and all the gay throng of a crowded

promenade at its most crowded hour. But the blood was on him still, and,

under the locks that clustered darkly over his forehead, the

ineffaceable mark of Cain.

But even the story of murder may become familiar. Human nature at the

confessional is the dark side of human nature, and it is as hard for the

moral eye to preserve a healthy tone in the midst of this moral darkness

as for the physical eye to preserve its clearness and strength in the

constant presence of physical darkness. Curious questions come up there,

undoubtedly, of a deep, strange interest, and often, too, of a deep and

strange fascination. But it is not Nature's generous impulses, its

tender yearnings, its noble aspirations, that the stricken conscience

pours into the confessor's ear. The strugglings and writhings of the

soul, the convulsive efforts to cast off an insupportable burden, to

escape from an insufferable anguish, to find rest for itself in its

weariness, peace for its warring passions, an answer and a solution to

its doubts,--these are the events of the confessional. And its fruits

are the folios of Molina and Vasquez and Filutius and Lessius and

Escobar, wherein sin and temptation are weighed in scales so delicate

that the tenderest conscience can hardly hesitate to indulge itself now

and then in the flowery little by-paths that run so pleasantly close to

the straight and narrow way. It was not in the confessional that

Filangieri and Gioja and Romagnosi studied, that Adam Smith sought the

secret of national prosperity, or that Sismondi found that perennial

fountain of generous sympathies, which, through his fifty years of

incessant labor, welled up with such a quickening and invigorating

vitality from the profound investigations of the historian and the

patient statistics of the economist.

Not all, however, who wear the priest's dress are confessors and

priests. There is a body of reserves always in waiting upon the vast

army of regular ecclesiastics: men ready to push forward into the

ranks, but who stop short at the _prima tonsura_ till they have

ascertained how much their chances will be bettered by taking the final

and irrevocable step. Yet, although they now and then bring somewhat

more of worldly leaven into their intellectual and moral training, they

well know that there is but one road to the red hat and the tiara, and

that they who give themselves up to this ambition must give themselves

up to it with undivided hearts. Thus the models which they set before

themselves, the ideals after which they strive, are all taken from

successful aspirants to the honors of the Church. And the interests of

that great body, as a body independent of laymen, and which can preserve

its immunities only by preserving its independence, and its independence

only by a rigid exclusion of foreign elements,[A] become as dear to them

as if they already enjoyed all its privileges and had assumed all its

obligations.

If any one wishes to know what sort of statesmen such an education

makes, let him go thoughtfully over the twenty legations, prolegations,

delegations, and governments into which the twelve thousand nine hundred

and twenty square miles of the Pontifical States were still divided only

four years ago, and see how the two million nine hundred and eighty

thousand subjects of the Pope lived and throve under the care of

cardinals and prelates. Subtle negotiators, skilled in the crooks and

tangles of a wily and selfish policy, they have always been,--for they

have studied well the selfish elements of the human heart; patient, too,

and persevering and keen-eyed, as they must needs be who walk in

tortuous ways,--but cold, contracted, and arrogant, mistaking artifice

for statesmanship, unwilling to learn from the lessons of the past, and

unable to comprehend the changes that are going on around them, or to

see that every forward step of the human race is the result of causes

which man has sometimes been permitted to modify, but which he can never

hope to control.

It is from men thus educated that the Pope and his counsellors are

chosen.

As far as theoretical origin goes, the Pope is the most democratic of

sovereigns; for there is nothing to prevent his being taken from any

rank or order of the faithful. The sons of peasants and mechanics have

sat upon the Papal throne, and the thunderbolts of the Vatican have been

launched by hands familiar with the pruning-knife and the plough. But in

practice these bounds were effectually narrowed, when the college of

cardinals tacitly restricted the choice to the members of their own

body,--and still more effectually, when, by the same silent usurpation,

they resolved that Adrian of Utrecht should be the last of foreign

pontiffs. For three hundred and forty years none but Italians have been

called to the chair of St. Peter's, thus, by an inevitable result of the

unnatural alliance of temporal with spiritual sovereignty, confining the

birthright of Christendom to the nation which all Christendom delighted

to humiliate and oppress.

Theoretically, also, the election of the Pope is made by the special

intervention of the Holy Ghost, although the doings of most conclaves

fill many pages of very unholy history. Intrigues begin the moment the

Pope's health is known to be failing, and grow thicker and more

intricate with each unfavorable bulletin. There are few among the

cardinals who do not feel that they have at least a chance of election;

and not one, perhaps, but enters the conclave prepared to make the most

of his individual pretensions. Some even, like Consalvi at the conclave

of Leo XII., set their hearts so strongly upon it that they have been

supposed to have died of the disappointment. Great services are not

always the best recommendation; for it is difficult to serve the public

well without making some private enemies. Little griefs, long forgotten

by the offender, but carefully treasured up in the more tenacious memory

of the offended, have more than once proved insurmountable obstacles in

the path to the throne. Each, too, of the great Catholic powers has a

right to exclude one among the candidates, if the exclusion be announced

before the votes are all given in: a privilege which, as it narrows the

circle of the eligible and increases individual chances, seldom fails to

be faithfully exercised. Indeed, up to the last moment, no one can tell

who may and who may not be chosen. The most prominent candidates are

often the first to be set aside; and the election, like all elections,

from that of a President of the United States to that of a

village-constable, is oftener decided by a combination of personal

ambitions and interests than by those pure and elevated motives which

look so attractive in the programme.

The death of the Pope is announced by the tolling of the great bell of

the Capitol, and with all convenient haste the nine days' funeral

begins. Everybody that has been at Rome will remember the beautiful

little chapel on the right hand as you enter St. Peter's; for in the

niche above the altar is the group of the Virgin with the dead Christ on

her knees, one of the few works which the volcanic genius of Michel

Angelo could bring itself to finish in marble. In this chapel, directly

in front of this marvellous group, the body of the dead Pope, embalmed

and clad in Pontifical robes, is laid on a sumptuous bier, amid a blaze

of tapers, with sentinels from the Swiss guard at his feet, leaning on

their long halberds, and officers of the household in official costume,

and all that imposing mixture of sacred and profane which Rome knows so

well how to use upon all great occasions. And here, day after day, the

faithful still crowd to take the last look of their "Holy Father," and

kiss the cross on his slipper, and repeat a prayer for his soul. And

hundreds among them, especially the very young and the very old, go a

few yards farther on to the bronze statue of St. Peter, once the bronze

statue of Jupiter, and with equal faith imprint a fervent kiss on the

well-worn toe, and repeat a prayer for themselves.

On the opposite side, over the doorway that leads to the dome, is a

large sarcophagus of white marble, looking down, if marble can be

supposed to look, upon the monument of the last of the Stuarts: dead

Pope and dead King almost face to face; crown and tiara mouldering

within a few paces of each other; for in that sarcophagus Pope after

Pope has silently taken his place, till summoned by the death of his

successor to go down to the darker slumbers of the vaults below. And at

the close of the ninth day of the funeral, when the crowd is gone, and

the doors are closed, and the evening shadows begin to fall upon chapel

and altar, and the votive tapers twinkle like dim stars through the

gathering gloom, the sarcophagus is opened, the coffin taken out and

examined and then carried down to the vault, the newly dead is raised to

his temporary resting-place, and amid a silence seldom broken by

lamentation the apostolic notary writes by flickering torchlight that

once more the successor of the throne has become the successor of the

grave.

Then begins the conclave. Each cardinal comes in state with his two

_conclavistas_, or conclave-companions, usually prelates, and always

chosen with a view to the services they may be able to render in the

approaching struggle; the mass of the Holy Spirit is solemnly said, if

not always devoutly listened to; the ambassadors of the Catholic powers

utter their official exhortations to harmony and a single eye to the

good of the Church; and when they withdraw, the mason of the conclave

steps gravely forth, trowel in hand, to build up a solid wall of brick

and mortar betwixt the electors and that world which still looks forward

with curious interest, although with diminished faith, to the result of

the election.

The conclave, as the name indicates, is a room, and when the

constitution of the customary circular letters announcing his election,

the new Pope, John XXI., better known, if known at all, by his

"Thesaurus Pauperum" than by his administration of the Holy See, issued

a Bull confirming the suspension of the obnoxious constitution, as

containing things "obscure, impracticable, and opposed to the

acceleration of the election." The next conclave lasted six months and

eight days.

Still the conclave is a kind of imprisonment, which nothing but that

love of power which reconciles man to so many things he hates, and those

hopes that never die in hearts that have once cherished them, could

induce seventy men accustomed to lives of luxury and indulgence to

submit to. The usual place of holding it is the Quirinal, a cooler and

healthier palace than the Vatican; and, in a spirit very different from

that of the Gregorian constitution, everything is done to make it as

comfortable as is consistent with narrow space and walled-up doors. Each

cardinal has four small rooms for himself and his two companions, and

the number and quality of the dishes at his dinner and supper depend

upon his own habits and the skill of his cook. The approaches are

guarded by the senators and _conservatori_, patriarchs and bishops, and

at meal-times, a judge of the _Rota_ is stationed at the dumb-waiter to

examine the dishes as they are brought up, and make sure that the

intrigues within get no help from the intrigues without. Daily mass

forms, of course, a part of the daily routine, and is followed by the

morning vote.

The voting usually begins with the _scrutinio_, or, as we should term

it, the ballot. Each cardinal writes his own name and that of his

candidate on a ticket. Then, with many ceremonies and genuflections, not

very edifying to profane eyes, if profane eyes were permitted to see

them, but each of which has its mystical interpretation, he ascends to

the altar and lays his ticket on the communion-plate, whence it is

transferred to the chalice,--communion-plate and communion-cup playing a

part in the ceremony which has made more than one good Catholic groan

deeply in spirit. The votes are then counted, care being taken that they

correspond in number to the number of cardinals present, and if any

candidate is found to have two-thirds of the votes cast, the election is

complete. If, however, the legal two-thirds are not reached, any voter

may change his vote by saying that he accedes to the votes thrown in

favor of any other candidate. This mode of election is called

_accession_, and has often been found successful where the prominence of

any candidate was sufficient to make it evident that two or three votes

would secure a choice.

_Inspiration_ is another mode of election, not so common as the ballot,

but which, whenever any candidate has succeeded in forming a strong

party, is not without its advantages. Several cardinals call out

together the name of their candidate, and if many of them agree in

calling the same name, the rest are seldom willing to hold out in open

opposition to a choice which after all may be made without them: the

successful candidate always being expected to remember those who

favored, and seldom known to forget those who opposed his election.

A fourth and last mode, never resorted to except in desperate straits,

and when the contest seems interminable, is by _delegation_: the power

of choice being delegated by the cardinals to one or more of their

number, and all solemnly pledging themselves to abide by the decision.

It was thus that Gregory X. was chosen by a delegation of six,--and that

John XXII. became Pope after two years of regular voting had failed to

procure a successor to the Prince of the Apostles. It has been said,

however, that John, who, partly by his talents and partly by fraud, had

raised himself from the lowest walks of life, had no sooner secured a

pledge of concurrence than he announced his own name as that of the

candidate of his choice. Surprised, but not edified, the cardinals made

no opposition to his elevation, for Christendom and folio crammed with

projects and reports: bishops and missionaries transport him in a moment

from England to China, from Egypt to Peru. If you could look into those

piles of papers which are awaiting his signature, you would find

petitions and remonstrances, death-warrants and pardons, political

processes and criminal processes, schemes for a new bishopric or a new

canonization, plans for a cathedral in New York or a convent in Syria,

for a new prison in the Patrimony or a new tax in the Marches,

architecture and law, finance and theology, sacred and profane all

jumbled together: and what wonder they should keep jumbled, from the

beginning to the end, from his coronation to his funeral, leaving him,

even with the best intentions and the most untiring industry, a helpless

prey to intrigues and cabals and all the artifices and deceptions which

beset a throne? Gioja and Romagnosi are under the ban, and he has no

wish to ask them for the clue to the labyrinth he is wandering in, even

if he had the time. He has no time to read the newspapers. His knowledge

of them is derived from abstracts prepared for him by a clerk in the

Governor's office,--containing, therefore, what the minister allows to

be put there, and nothing more; while their living pictures, those

columns of advertisements which bring before you day by day the wants

and hopes and pursuits of so many of your fellow-creatures, carrying

you, as it were, into hundreds of families, and laying open to your

scrutiny hundreds of human hearts, the different lights in which men and

things appear to the organs of different parties, and the proof which,

in the midst of their contradictions, they all concur in giving that

there is a spirit abroad which cannot be lulled to sleep, are lessons

all lost for him, and which, perhaps, would be equally lost, even if he

had the leisure and the knowledge to study them.

He dines alone,--for in the city, in the dearth of publicans and

sinners, no one can sit at table with the Vicar of Christ; and thus

dinner-hour, the open-hearted hour, puts him almost more absolutely in

the hands of his immediate attendants than any hour of the twenty-four.

If he walks, it is in the garden or library; if he rides, it is

surrounded by guards and followed by his household train. He took his

last walk in the streets when he was a prelate, and thenceforth knows no

more of the city than he can see through his carriage-windows; and now

even that imperfect view is more than half cut off by the officers of

the guard, who ride their great black horses close to the carriage-door.

But enough of the Pope, and much more than I had intended when I first

took up my pen. That, even when he has studied them most, the temporal

interests of his people must suffer in his hands, has been proved by the

sufferings of millions through centuries of oppression and misrule. And

must it not always be so, when the interests of husbands and fathers are

intrusted to men cut off by education and profession from the domestic

sympathies wherein these interests have birth, and that domestic hearth

which is at once the source and the emblem and the purifier of the

State?

The electors and advisers of the Pope form the College of Cardinals,

seventy in number, when full: six bishops, fifty priests, and fourteen

deacons; once merely the parish priests of Rome, then princes of the

Church and electors of its visible head. In this body, formerly so

important and on which so much still depends, all Catholic Europe has

its representatives, although it is mainly composed of native Italians.

Many of them are men of exemplary piety, many of them eminent for talent

and learning, but some, too, mere worldlings, raised by intrigue or

favor or the necessities of birth to a position too exalted for weak

heads, and too much beset with temptation for corrupt hearts.

The path that leads to the sacred college is neither a straight nor a

narrow one. There are no prescribed qualifications of age or of rank.

Leo X. was cardinal at thirteen; and although no such premature

appointment to the gravest duties has been made since, or will ever,

probably, be made again, yet there is always a salutary sprinkling of

youth in this eminent body, if priests and prelates can ever be said to

be truly young. And although families of a certain rank are sure of the

speedy promotion of any child whom they may see fit to dedicate to the

Church, yet the representative of untainted blood has often found

himself side by side with the son of a peasant or of an artisan. The

cardinal is not necessarily even a priest. Adrian V. died without

ordination; and Leo X. held the keys of St. Peter four days with

unconsecrated hands. He may even have been married, but must be single

again when he puts on the red hat.

The appointment is made by the Pope, and, although announced to the

whole body assembled in consistory, requires no confirmation to make it

valid. Certain offices lead to it, and are known as cardinalate offices.

Every prelate looks forward to it with hope, and every priest with

longing; and besides the priests and prelates, the regular orders also,

the monks and friars, claim a representation in the college. But

whatever the pretensions or expectations of individuals may be, the

decision rests with the Pope, whose good-will, adroitly managed, has

often let fall the coveted honor upon men who had little else to

recommend them. It was certainly honorable to this reverend body in our

own day that they numbered Mai and Mezzofante among their brethren; but

in Rome the story ran that neither the palimpsestic labors of the one

nor the fifty languages of the other would have won him the well-earned

promotion, if the Pope's favorite servant had not set his heart upon

making his children's tutor assistant-librarian of the Vatican.

Although nominally the council of the Pope, the consistory or official

assembly of the cardinals has few of the characteristics of a

deliberative body. The Pope addresses them from his throne; but the

substance of his address is already known to most of them beforehand,

and his opinion upon the subject, as well as theirs, made up before they

come together. They have no constituents to enlighten, nothing to hope

and nothing to fear from public opinion. They are all so near the

topmost round that each of them is justified in feeling as if he already

had his hand upon it; but to whichever of them that envied preëminence

may be destined, it is neither the favor nor the gratitude of the people

that can raise him to it. What they already hold they are sure of; and

it is only to the good-will of their colleagues that they are to look

for more.

But it is in those public meetings that the Roman court puts on all its

splendor. The very hall has a grave and imposing air about it that

inspires serious thoughts in serious minds, and checks, for a moment,

the frivolous vivacity of lighter ones. You cannot look at the walls

without feeling a solemn sadness steal over you, as you think of the

thousands of your fellow-creatures who have gazed on them with the same

freshness and fulness of life with which you now gaze on them, since

Raphael and Michel Angelo first clothed them with their own immortal

conceptions, three hundred years ago. It was in an assembly like this,

and perhaps in this very room, that the condemnation of Luther was

pronounced, that Henry was proclaimed "Defender of the Faith," and that

Cardinal Pole rejoiced with his brethren of the purple over the

approaching return of England to the bosom of the Church. And as you are

musing on these things, and centuries seem to pass before you like the

figures of a dream, the room gradually fills, the cardinals come in and

take their places, each clad in the simple majesty of the purple, and

last of all comes the Pope himself, the steel sabres of his guard

ringing on the marble floor with a clang that breaks the harmonious

silence most discordantly. Then in a moment all is hushed again. The

cardinals go one by one to pay their homage to their spiritual father,

kneeling and kissing the cross on his mantle, he blessing them all, as

duteous children, in return. If you are an American and a Catholic, you

look on devoutly, feeling, perhaps, at moments, although you take good

care not to say so, that, although highly edifying, it is a little dull;

if an American and a Protestant, you think of the morning prayer in

Congress, and members with newspapers or half-read letters in their

hands, a very busy one now and then forgetting that he is standing with

his hat on, and all of them in a hurry to have it over and enter upon

the business of the day,--or of a reception-night, perhaps, at the White

House, with the President shaking hands as fast as they can be held out,

and trying hard to smile each new-comer into the belief that the

"present incumbent" is the very best man he can vote for at the next

election.

But hush! the Pope is speaking,--not always as orators speak, it is

true, but gravely, at least, and with that indefinable air of dignity

which the habit of command seldom fails to impart. The language is

sonorous, and if you have had the good sense to unlearn your barbarous

application of English sounds--cunningly devised by Nature herself to

keep damp fogs and cold winds out of the mouth--to Italian vowels, which

the same judicious mother framed with equal cunning to let soft and

odoriferous airs into it, you will probably understand what he says, for

his speech is generally in Latin, and very good Latin too.[B]

But still you grow tired, and, like the actors in the splendid pageant,

are heartily glad when it is all over,--well pleased to have seen it,

but, unless a sight-seer by nature, equally pleased to feel that you

will never be compelled by your duty to your guide-book and _cicerone_

to see it again.

There are three kinds of consistory,--the private, the public, and the

semi-public. The most interesting are those in which ambassadors are

received, for the ambassador's speech gives some variety to the routine.

But in substance they are all equally splendid, equally formal, and--now

that the world no longer looks to the Vatican for its creeds--all

equally insignificant and dull.

Thus it is not as a deliberative body that the cardinals take part in

the government. Their collective functions are for the most part purely

formal, and the great wheel turns steadily on its axle without any

direct help from them. But as sole electors of the sovereign, whom they

are not only to choose, but to choose from among themselves, and as the

body from which the highest functionaries of the State are drawn, their

individual influence is always very considerable, often whatever they

have the tact and skill to make it.

Another body which shares with the "Sacred College" the privilege of

furnishing the instruments of government is the Prelacy,--a term which

must be taken in its restricted sense, of men, whether laymen or

ecclesiastics, destined by profession to various offices of dignity and

trust in the civil and ecclesiastical administration, some of which lead

directly to the cardinalate, and all of them to personal privileges and

a competent income. Their education is often less exclusive than that of

the priests, for many of them have belonged to the world before they

gave themselves up to the Church, and profane studies have employed some

of the time which might otherwise have been devoted to Bellarmino and

his brethren. In dress they are distinguished by the color of their

stockings and hat-band. When they walk out, a liveried servant follows

them a few paces in the rear; and while the cardinals, from

"Illustrious" have become "Eminent," these aspirants to the purple are

always addressed as "Monsignore," or "My Lord."

The first set of wheels in this complicated machine is composed of the

twenty-three Congregations, a kind of executive and deliberative

committees, consisting of cardinals and prelates, and first used by

Sixtus V., as a speedier and more effective method of eliciting the

opinions of his counsellors and bringing their administrative talents

into play than the deliberations in full consistory which had obtained

till his time. Sixteen of them are ecclesiastical, the remaining seven

civil, although the number may at any time be restricted or enlarged

according to the wants and the views of the reigning Pontiff. They have

their stated meetings, their regular offices and officers; and while

theoretically under the immediate direction of the sovereign, they

actually relieve him from many of the details and not a few of the

direct responsibilities of sovereignty.

The first of these Congregations bears a name which sounds harshly in

Protestant ears, although but a shadow of that fearful power which once

carried terror to every fireside, and made even princes tremble and turn

pale on their thrones. The Holy Office still retains the form and

authority conferred upon it by Paul III., if not the spirit breathed

into it by the grasping Innocent and fiery Dominic. Its dark walls,

which so long shrouded darkest deeds, stand close to St. Peter's, under

the very eye of the Pope, as he looks from his bedroom-window,--within

ear-shot of the thousands whom curiosity or devotion brings yearly to

the church or to the palace, little heeding, as they gaze on the dome of

Michel Angelo or climb the stairway of Bernini, that almost beneath the

pavement they tread on are dungeons and chains and victims.

But the Inquisition, you say, is no longer the Inquisition of three

hundred years ago. Bunyan tells us that Christian, on his pilgrimage to

the Celestial City, saw, among other memorable sights, a cave hard by

the way-side, wherein sat an old man, grinning at pilgrims as they

passed by, and biting his nails because he could not get at them. And

now let me tell you a story of the Inquisition which I know to be true.

Some twenty-five years ago there lived in Rome a physician well known

for his professional skill, and still better for his good companionship

and ready wit. He was, in fact, a pleasant companion, fond of a good

story, fonder still of his dog and gun, fondest of all of talking about

poetry and reciting verses, which he could do by the hour,--sometimes

repeating whole pages from Dante or Petrarch or Tasso or his favorite of

all, Alfieri,--and sometimes extemporizing sonnets, or _terzine_, or

odes, with that wonderful facility which Nature has given to the Italian

_improvvisatore_ and denied to the rest of mankind. It has often been

remarked that the study of medicine goes hand in hand with a certain

boldness of speculation not altogether in harmony with the lessons of

the priest. No one who has lived in Italy long enough to get at the true

character of the people can have failed to observe this in Italian

physicians; and our doctor, like many of his brethren, was suspected of

carrying his speculations into forbidden fields. Still, his practice was

large, and went on increasing. Laymen, if they must needs be sick, were

glad to have him at their bedsides; and there were even men with purple

on their shoulders who had strong faith in his skill, if they had strong

doubts of his orthodoxy. Externally he conformed to the requirements of

the Church: heard mass of Sundays, and went once a year to the

confessional; for this much is a police regulation, a tax upon

conscience which every Roman is bound to pay. But he was too much behind

the scenes to do it with a good will, and saw professionally too much of

the daily life of the clergy, looked too freely and too closely at some

of their "pleasant vices," to feel much reverence either for them or for

their teachings.

Suddenly his chair, for he was professor in the medical college, was

taken from him: a warning, thought his friends, that unfriendly eyes

were upon him; and so, also, thought some of his patients, and called in

a new physician. Still his general practice continued large; and

although he found a little more time for his wife,--for a father to sit

in, in darkness and silence, and recall the sunny faces and sweet

prattle of his children. But he felt that unseen eyes might be watching

him even there, and that a sigh, though breathed never so softly, might

reach the ears of some who would rejoice in it and come all the more

confidently to the work they had resolved to do upon him. So, setting

down his lamp, he made two or three turns across the room, and then,

drawing out his watch, as if to assure himself that it was bedtime,

deliberately undressed and went to bed.

And to sleep?

You will not call him coward, if with closed eyes he lay wakeful upon

his pillow, thinking over the last hour with a heart that beat quick,

though it faltered not, listening vainly for some sound to break the

unearthly silence, and longing for daylight, if, indeed, the light of

day was permitted to visit that lonely cell. It came at last, the

daylight,--though not as it was wont to come to him in his own dear

home, with a fresh morning breath and a fresher song of birds, waking

familiar voices and greeted with endearing accents. How would it be in

that home this morning? How had it been there through the slow hours of

that feverish night? How was it to be thenceforth with those precious

ones, and with him too, whom they all looked to for guidance and

counsel?

He got up and dressed himself a little more carefully than usual,

resolved that there should be no outside telltales of the thoughts that

were struggling within. He had hardly finished dressing when the door

opened. Neither footsteps in the corridor nor the turning of the key had

he heard, but there stood a familiar of the Inquisition, friar in dress,

and with the stony face of a man accustomed to live by lamp-light and

talk in whispers. He brought the prisoner's breakfast,--coffee and

bread. "You have been listening," thought M----; "but I will be even

with you." And to make a fair start, he refused to touch either the

bread or the coffee until the familiar had tasted both.

The morning passed slowly, though he helped it along as well as he could

by repeating verses and writing a sonnet on the wall with his pencil.

Dinner came: a good meal, more substantial than dungeon-air could give

an appetite for; but he ate it. Supper followed,--brought by the same

silent familiar who had served breakfast and dinner, and who still came

with the same noiseless step, set the dishes upon the table, tasted the

food as the Doctor bade him, and then went silently away.

Five days passed, slowly, monotonously, wearily. Five nights of

unwelcome dreams and sleep that brought no rest. The close air and

narrow bounds began to tell upon his appetite and strength. He had soon

gone over his poets. Fortunately, they were well chosen and would bear

repeating. The fountain in his own mind, too, was still full, and he

found great relief in declaiming extempore verses in a loud voice, and

writing out those that pleased him best. But could he hold out? for it

was evidently intended to wear him down by anxiety and solitude, and

when they had broken his spirits bring him to an examination.

At last a new face appeared: not cold like that of the familiar, nor

wreathed in smiles like that of a successful enemy, but wearing a decent

expression of gravity tempered by compassion. And "How do you do,

Doctor?" asked the visitor in a soothing voice, trained like his face to

tell lies at his bidding.

"Well, Father, perfectly well."

"I am very glad to hear it. I was afraid your appetite might have

suffered from the sudden change in your mode of life."

"Not in the least. I have a sound stomach, and can digest anything you

send me."

"And how do you contrive to pass your time? For so active a man, the

change is very great."

"Oh, that is easy enough. I am very fond of poetry, and have such a good

memory that I know volumes of it by heart. There is nothing pleasanter

than repeating verses that you like,--except, perhaps, making verses

yourself."

"Do you ever compose?"

"I? It has always been my favorite pastime. Would you like to hear some

of my verses?"

The sympathizing father was, of course, too happy; and M---- recited, in

his most effective manner, a sonnet, not very complimentary to

eavesdroppers and spies. A shadow passed over the monk's face; but he

was too well trained to let out his feelings prematurely; and resuming

the conversation as if nothing had occurred to disturb his equanimity,

he told M---- in his softest tone that he hoped there had been nothing

in his treatment to complain of. M---- sprang to his feet.

"Oh, this, by Heaven, is too much, even from you! Nothing to complain

of! To tear the father of a family from the arms of his wife and

children, a physician from patients who are looking to him for life and

health,--and nothing to complain of!"

It was just the question he wanted; and partly from design, and partly

from irrepressible indignation, he poured out a torrent of invective and

reproach which soon sent his visitor away, perfectly convinced that the

spirit they had undertaken to break had not yet begun to bend.

Five more weary days, and then began the examination,--cautious, minute,

perplexing: questions framed to entangle; charges advanced, not for

discussion, but for conviction; a review of the whole course and tenor

of his past life; his stories and verses; his jests among friends;

sayings that he had forgotten; things that he had done years before,

mixed up with things that he had never done; all adroitly commingled,

and so skilfully arranged, that, while each seemed comparatively

unimportant in itself, each had its place prepared for it with malignant

craft and wondrous subtlety; and all taken together forming a network of

harmonious evidence from which there seemed no possibility of escape.

Familiar as he was with the history of the Holy Office, and aware as he

had always been that his steps, like those of every man upon whom

suspicion had ever fallen, were dogged by spies, he had never supposed

that his daily life had been tracked with such persistence, and so

carefully treasured up against him.

He saw his danger, and saw, too, that the course he had resolved upon in

the first hour of his arrest was the only course that could save him.

Denial would be useless. They expected it and were well prepared for it.

But it remained to be seen whether they were equally well prepared for

frank confession and adroit interpretation. To every question with

regard to acts or words he answered, "Yes, I did so,--I said

so,--but"--and then, by putting an unexpected interpretation upon it, he

either stripped it of its offensive bearing, or reduced it to an idle

jest of which nothing worse could be said than that it was indiscreet.

The fathers were puzzled. For denial they had proofs. Prevarication they

were familiar with, and never so happy as when they saw a poor,

perplexed, bewildered victim vainly struggling in the toils, driven

triumphantly from subterfuge to subterfuge, and at last, with nerveless

arms and faltering tongue, dropping hopeless upon his chair, as the

conviction forced itself upon him that he was there, not for trial, but

for condemnation.

But a bold, self-possessed, self-reliant man, looking them in the face

with an eye as keen and scrutinizing as their own, answering every

question promptly in a firm voice, and, just as the blow seemed ready to

fall, parrying it by a movement so skilful as to compel his adversary to

change his ground and gird himself up for a new attack,--this was

something which, with all their experience, they had not counted upon,

and knew not how to meet. Day after day he was brought to the bar. Hour

after hour they laboriously plied question upon question. On their side

was the written record,--nothing omitted, nothing forgotten; the words

of yesterday close by the words of ten years ago; each accusation

propping the others; and every explanation and answer written minutely

down, to be brought out unexpectedly, and compared with each new one as

it came. On his, a ready wit, perfect self-control, a thorough knowledge

of the character of those whom he was dealing with, a remarkable command

of language, and a courage that nothing could shake.

It was an exhausting process, and the Inquisitors, like the royal patron

of their institution, well knew that time was a powerful ally. Still

they resolved to call in a new one to their aid. M---- was known to be

very fond of his family; and long experience had taught the reverend

fathers that even the manliest heart may be shaken by a sudden awakening

of tender emotions. The examinations were discontinued. For three days

M---- was left to the solitude of his cell,--a solitude deeper and more

unnerving from contrast with the mental tension of the last fortnight.

Then, at the usual hour of examination, the door opened. The usual

attendants were in waiting. "Now for a new trial of wits," thought he,

as he rose to follow them. Then it occurred to him that it might be for

sentence that he was summoned; and while he was weighing the

probabilities, and calling up his strength for the occasion, he reached

the door, the attendants threw it open, and he found himself in the

presence, not of his judges, but of his wife and children. Pale,

bewildered, looking timidly towards him, through eyes dim with tears,

there they stood, utterly at a loss what to say or what to do.

He felt his heart bound. But he saw the snare, and, repressing his

emotions by a powerful effort, held out his hand instead of opening his

arms, and bidding them, cheer up and give themselves no uneasiness about

him, and above all not to let their enemies fancy that either he or they

would be cast down by anything that they could do, he calmly turned to

the guards, and told them, that, if that stale trick was all they had

brought him there for, they had better take him back to his cell.

Meanwhile his friends were not idle: and he had friends, as I have

already hinted, even in the sacred college. With a cardinal on your

side, you may do many things in Rome which it would hardly answer to

venture upon without him; for who can tell but that that Cardinal may

one day be Pope? The precise nature of the accusation lodged against him

M---- never knew; but he had gathered enough from the interrogatories to

feel that he had got lightly off, when he found himself condemned to say

his prayers and read books of devotion three months in a convent, with

the privilege of walking in the garden and talking theology with the

elder brethren.

And thus the old man whom Bunyan's English Pilgrim saw in the cave by

the way-side two hundred years ago still sits there, biting his nails

and grinning, not altogether impotently, at Roman Pilgrims, to this very

day.

The Congregation of the Holy Office is composed of thirteen cardinals,

one of whom is secretary, and an assessor, a commissary, counsellors,

and several officers taken from the prelates and regular orders. The

Pope himself is Prefect. The counsellors meet on Mondays in the Palace

of the Inquisition; the whole body on Wednesdays in the Convent of the

Minerva,--where St. Dominic still smiles upon his faithful

followers,--and Thursdays before the Pope. The examination of their

records and the opening of their prisons, during the brief existence of

the "Roman Republic" of 1849, showed that these meetings were not always

mere matters of form.

The Congregation of the Index was founded by Pius V., in order to

relieve the Holy Office of that part of its duties which relates to

written and printed thought: censorship of the press would be the proper

term, if censorship, even in its most rigid form, did not fall short of

the attributes and functions of this odious tribunal. It is composed of

cardinals and ecclesiastics, many of them distinguished by their

learning, some, doubtless, by their piety,--but all leagued together,

and solemnly pledged to sleepless warfare against every form of

intellectual freedom. Without their approbation no manuscript can be

seat to the press, no new editions issued, no thought promulgated. Even

the stone-carver is not permitted to use his chisel until they have

decided how far love or pride may go in commemoration of the dead. They

mutilate, with equal sovereignty of will, the printed pages of a classic

and the manuscript of an unknown scribbler,--sit in judgment upon Botta

and Laplace, as their predecessors sat in judgment upon Guicciardini and

Galileo,--and, in the fervor of their undiscriminating zeal, condemn

Robertson and Gibbon, Reid and Hume, the skeptic Bolingbroke and the

pious Addison, to the same fiery purgation. That Italian literature was

not crushed by them long ago is, perhaps, the strongest proof of the

irrepressible vigor and marvellous vitality of the Italian mind. Not to

be on the "Index" would call a blush to the cheek of the most

unambitious of authors,--would carry a presumption of worthlessness with

it from which even the penny-a-liner would shrink with dismay,--and to

the poet and historian would sound like a sentence of perpetual

exclusion from all those cherished hopes which irradiate with heavenly

light the steep and thorny paths of intellectual renown.

Next to these in importance is the Congregation of the "Propaganda," or

of that celebrated institution for the propagation of the Roman Catholic

religion which, since the reign of Gregory XV., has governed, as from a

common centre, the immense network of missions that Christian Rome has

spread over the lands she hopes to conquer, as Pagan Rome spread her

network of military roads over the lands which she had already reduced

to subjection. Cardinals, with a cardinal for prefect and a prelate for

secretary, compose this congregation, which holds regular meetings twice

a month, and, not unfrequently, extraordinary meetings in the presence

of the Pope. In these the important questions of the missionary world

are discussed, reports examined, new missions proposed, new missionaries

appointed, new bishoprics founded "among the heathen," and all these

complicated interests taken into impartial consideration.

For here, at least, there is little room for heart-burnings and

jealousies. It is of equal importance to all that the conquests of the

Church should be extended to the utmost limits of the earth, the heathen

converted, and heretics won back to the fold. While John Eliot was

translating the Bible into a language which no one has been left to

read, and his Puritan brethren were hanging and shooting the Indians

whom they had neither the patience to win by their teaching nor the

charity to enlighten by their example, Indians from the true Indies were

preparing themselves in the halls of the Propaganda to carry the healing

promises of the gospel to the fathers and mothers who had watched over

their heathen infancy. In the record of the great things that Rome has

done, there is nothing greater than the foundation of the

Propaganda,--no conception so worthy of a steadfast faith, or more in

harmony with the spirit of the Saviour of mankind. To borrow the

helpless child, and restore him a helpful man,--to enlist the sympathies

of birth, and secure for themselves the eloquence of natural

affection,--to overleap the barriers of race and elude the sensitiveness

of national pride by putting the doctrines they sought to diffuse into

mouths which, untainted by repulsive accents, could enforce new truths

by well-known images and familiar illustrations,--was like laying anew

the foundations of the Capitol, and consecrating that spirit of worldly

wisdom wherein ancient Rome was never found wanting by that spirit of

Christian philanthropy which modern Rome has always claimed as her

peculiar distinction.

But alas that a twenty-minutes' walk should take us from the Piazza di

Spagna to the Via di Sant' Uffizio!

The other ecclesiastical functions of government are performed in a

similar way: one congregation superintending the churches of Rome and

its district, under the title of _Visita Apostolica_; one, the

ceremonies of the Church; one, ecclesiastical immunities; one, sacred

rites; one, indulgences and relies. Questions relative to bishops,

bishoprics, and the regular orders are intrusted to four congregations,

under different and appropriate names. St. Peter's has a special

congregation for itself, and not the least dignified and important of

them; for, besides eight cardinals and four prelates, it commands the

official services of the Auditor of the Apostolic Chamber, the

Treasurer, a judge of the _Rota_, a comptroller, an attorney-general, a

secretary, and several counsellors-at-law. Not St. Peter's only, but all

the churches of Rome, come in for a share of their attention; and what

is more important, they form a court of probate, with exclusive

jurisdiction over all wills containing charitable bequests, or bequests

to heretics and strangers, fugitives, exiles, or the dead. Even a doubt

as to the probability of being able to execute the bequest according to

the wishes of the testator, or an apparent contradiction in the devises

themselves, brings the will within the jurisdiction of this tribunal;

and should the legatee, after full experience of the law's delay,

succeed in obtaining a favorable decree, the income of his legacy, from

the death of the testator to the publication of the decision, is

sequestrated to the treasury of the church of St. Peter's. Few

congregations are more assiduous in the performance of their duties.

A criminal court of appeals, with the appellation of _Sacra

Consulta_,--how this _sacred_ meets you at every turn!--a council called

_Buon Governo_, for the superintendence of municipal

administration,--one for roads, fountains, and water-courses, called the

General Prefecture of Waters and Roads,--a Council of "Economy," a

Council of Studies, a Council for the Examination of Accounts, in which

four laymen sit side by side with four prelates, under the presidency of

a cardinal, and the Congregation of the Census for the apportionment of

taxes on real estate in the country, form the seven civil congregations

by which the Pope is assisted in his labors, and the cardinals and

prelates brought in to a share of the administration. Add to these

sixteen tribunals, or courts, civil and ecclesiastical, two Secretaries

of State, a Secretary of Briefs and one of Memorials, a _Camerlengo_, a

Treasurer, and a Governor of Rome, and you have an outline of the Roman

Government under Gregory XVI.

The Secretaries of State are always cardinals; the _Camerlengo_, who is

the official head of government during the vacancies of the Holy See, a

cardinal; the Treasurer and Governor of Rome, prelates, who, on leaving

office, become cardinals by right. The only part of this complex

machinery which was intrusted to laymen was the Tribunal of the Capitol

and the Tribunal of Commerce: the latter an institution of Pius VII.,

and directly connected with the Chamber of Commerce, from whose fifteen

members two of its three judges are chosen, while the third is furnished

by the bar; the former, the feeble representative of all that is left of

the municipal government of Rome.

Rome has sixty noble families who enjoy the title of Conscript. From

these are chosen, every three months, three _Conservatori_ and a Prior

of the Wards, who form a committee for the superintendence of the walls

and public monuments, and for the administration of the income of the

Capitoline Chamber. If we look at them in connection with the ancient

government of Rome, we shall find them employed in functions not unlike

those of the _Ædiles_. From the same point of view, the Senator may be

said to resemble the City Prefect; although, when you see him on public

days, standing like a statue on the steps of the Pontifical throne,

above the prelates, but a little lower than the cardinals, you can think

neither of prefect nor of senate, nor of anything that recalls the days

when Romans acknowledged no superior but the fellow-citizens whom they

themselves had chosen as representatives of their sovereign will.

It requires no very profound examination of this system to see that it

is purely and rigidly ecclesiastical. The ecclesiastical leaven

penetrates it in every part. Wherever you go, either for business or for

amusement, you find some representative of the Church. Whichever way you

turn, you see keen eyes peering upon you from under a three-cornered hat

or a cowl. And even when the path seems for a while to be leading you

back to the world, through rows of shops, under the windows of bankers,

within sight of sails and steam, or within sound of humming wheels,

there are still shrines and oratories numberless by the way, and a

church or a convent at the end.

Elective sovereign by origin, the moment the Pope ascends the throne, he

becomes absolute. Authority and honors proceed from him as from their

legitimate source. Money bears his image and superscription. Monuments

are inscribed with his name. Laws and decrees are promulgated as

voluntary emanations of his sovereign will. As head of the Church, all

spiritual interests are under his protection. As chief of the State, all

temporal interests are subject to his control. He reigns, not merely

like other sovereigns, by the "grace of God," but by a peculiar

privilege and inherent right, as Vicar of Christ. Resistance to his will

is not simply rebellion, but the deeper and deadlier sin of sacrilege.

His interpretation relieves the mind from the agony of doubt; his

blessing frees the conscience from the burden of sin. And how, if

earnest-minded and sincere, can he fail to look upon the interests of

the State as subordinate to the interests of the Church, and interpret

his duties and obligations as the legatee of Constantine by his feelings

and convictions as the successor of St. Peter?

In the practical exercise of this authority be feels the want of other

eyes to help him see and other hands to help him do. He cannot read all

that is to be read, or write all that is to be written, or even hear and

say all that is to be heard and said. However great his love of detail,

there are details which he cannot reach. However comprehensive his

glance, or unwearied his industry, there are objects that lie beyond the

compass of his vision, and labor to be performed which no industry can

bring within the human allotment of twenty-four hours.

Therefore, reserving to himself the final decision, he distributes the

various functions of government among his official counsellors and those

from whom new counsellors are to be chosen. He spreads an elaborate

network over all the interests and functions of the State, holding the

line in his own hand, and drawing or relaxing it at his own pleasure. He

is still the lawgiver and the judge, dictating according to his own

judgment, and deciding according to his own conviction. Of his laws

there is no revision; from his sentence there is no appeal. The duties

of the subject are defined by the rights of the sovereign; and of those

rights he is the sole and absolute judge.

Hence a consciousness of power ever present and supreme, extending to

all that has been left him of the common relations of life,--to the hour

of business and the hour of repose, to the hall of audience and the

garden-walk, and giving equally its deceptive coloring to the thoughts

that stir him when borne on the shoulders of men through a prostrate

crowd, and those that flit dimly through his brain as he lays a weary

head upon a solitary pillow. And hence, too, he becomes for himself, as

well as for others, an object of constant contemplation,--valuing things

as they contribute to his pleasure, and men as they subject themselves

to his will,--not always cruel in heart, even when his acts are cruel,

nor unfeeling when he inflicts unmerited suffering and needless pain,

but seeming both cruel and unfeeling, because education and habit have

dried up within him that fount of human sympathies which Nature has set

in the heart of man at his birth, that he might ever bear something

about him to remind him of a mother's tenderness and a father's pride.

If that be the best government wherein all the moral and intellectual

faculties of the governed receive their fullest development, and the

responsibility of the sovereign is made so immediate that he can neither

lose sight of it nor escape from its obligations, that surely must be

the worst in which one man thinks and judges for all, and, by an

unnatural union of spiritual and temporal attributes, is raised above

all human responsibility,--a theocracy, with man to interpret the will

of God, and to enforce his own interpretations.

* * * * *

CONCORD.

MAY 23, 1864.

How beautiful it was, that one bright day

In the long week of rain!

Though all its splendor could not chase away

The omnipresent pain.

The lovely town was white with apple-blooms,

And the great elms o'erhead

Dark shadows wove on their aërial looms,

Shot through with golden thread.

Across the meadows, by the gray old manse,

The historic river flowed:--

I was as one who wanders in a trance,

Unconscious of his road.

The faces of familiar friends seemed strange;

Their voices I could hear,

And yet the words they uttered seemed to change

Their meaning to the ear.

For the one face I looked for was not there,

The one low voice was mute;

Only an unseen presence filled the air,

And baffled my pursuit.

Now I look back, and meadow, manse, and stream

Dimly my thought defines;

I only see--a dream within a dream--

The hill-top hearsed with pines.

I only hear above his place of rest

Their tender undertone,

The infinite longings of a troubled breast,

The voice so like his own.

There in seclusion and remote from men

The wizard hand lies cold,

Which at its topmost speed let fall the pen,

And left the tale half told.

Ah, who shall lift that wand of magic power,

And the lost clue regain?

The unfinished window in Aladdin's tower

Unfinished must remain!

* * * * *

WHAT WILL BECOME OF THEM?

A STORY IN TWO PARTS.

PART I

"Please, Ma'am, I want to come in out of the rain," said the dripping

figure at the door.

"And who are you, Sir?" demanded the lady, astonished; for the bell had

been rung familiarly, and, thinking her son had come home, she had

hastened to let him in, but had met instead (at the front-door of her

fine house!) this wretch.

"I'm Fessenden's fool, please, Ma'am," replied the son--not of this

happy mother, thank Heaven! not of this proud, elegant lady, oh,

no!--but of some no less human-hearted mother, I suppose, who had

likewise loved her boy, perhaps all the more fondly for his

infirmity,--who had hugged him to her bosom so many, many times, with

wild and sorrowful love,--and who, be sure, would not have kept him

standing there, ragged and shivering, in the rain.

"Fessenden's fool!" cries the lady. "What's your name?"

"Please, Ma'am, that's my name." Meekly spoken, with an earnest, staring

face. "Do you want me?"

"No; we don't want a boy with such a name as that!"

And the lady scowls, and shakes her head, and half closes the forbidding

door,--not thinking of that other mother's heart,--never dreaming that

such a gaunt and pallid wight ever had a mother at all. For the idea

that those long, lean hands, reaching far out of the short and split

coat-sleeves, had been a baby's pure, soft hands once, and had pressed

the white maternal breasts, and had played with the kisses of the fond

maternal lips,--it was scarcely conceivable; and a delicate-minded

matron, like Mrs. Gingerford, may well be excused for not entertaining

any such distressing fancy.

"Wal! I'll go!" And the youth turned away.

She could not shut the door. There was something in the unresentful, sad

face, pale cheeks, and large eyes, that fascinated her; something about

the tattered clothes, thin, wet locks of flaxen hair, and ravelled straw

hat-brim, fantastic and pitiful. And as he walked wearily away, and she

saw the night closing in black and dark, and felt the cold dash of the

rain blown against her own cheek, she concluded to take pity on him. For

she was by no means a hard-hearted woman; and though her house was

altogether too good for poor folks, and she really didn't know what she

should do with him, it seemed too bad to send him away shelterless, that

stormy November night. Besides, her husband was a rising

politician,--the public-spirited Judge Gingerford, you know,--the

eloquent philanthropist and reformer;--and to have it said that his door

had been shut against a perishing stranger might hurt him. So, as I

remarked, she concluded to take pity on the boy, and, after duly

weighing the matter, to call him back. And she called,--though, as I

suspect, not very loud. Moreover, the wind was whistling through the

leafless shrubbery, and his rags were fluttering, and his hat was

flapping about his ears, and the rain was pelting him; and just then the

Judge's respectable dog put his head out of the warm, dry kennel, and

barked; so that he did not hear,--the lady believed.

He had heard very well, nevertheless. Why didn't he go back, then?

Maybe, because he was a fool. More likely, because he was, after all,

human. Within that husk of rags, under all that dull incumbrance of

imperfect physical organs that cramped and stifled it, there dwelt a

soul; and the soul of man knows its own worth, and is proud. The

coarsest, most degraded drudge still harbors in his wretched house of

clay a divine guest. There is that in the convict and slave which stirs

yet at an insult. And even in this lank, half-witted lad, the despised

and outcast of years, there abode a sense of inalienable dignity,--an

immanent instinct that he, too, was a creature of God, and worthy

therefore to be treated with a certain tenderness and respect, and not

to be roughly repulsed. This was as strong in him as in you. His wisdom

was little, but his will was firm. And though the house was cheerful and

large, and had room and comforts enough and to spare, rather than enter

it, after he had been flatly told he was not wanted, he would lie down

in the cold, wet fields and die.

"Certainly, he will find shelter somewhere," thought the Judge's lady,

discharging her conscience of the responsibility. "But I am sorry he

didn't hear."

Was she very sorry?

She went back into her cozy, fire-lighted sewing-room, and thought no

more of the beggar-boy. And the watchdog, having barked his well-bred,

formal bark, without undue heat,--like a dog that knew the world, and

had acquired the tone of society,--stood a minute, important,

contemplating the drizzle from the door of his kennel, out of which he

had not deigned to step, then stretched himself once more on his straw,

gave a sigh of repose, and curled himself up, with his nose to the air,

in an attitude of canine enjoyment, in which it was to be hoped no

inconsiderate vagabond would again disturb him.

As for Fessenden's--How shall we name him? Somehow, it goes against the

grain to call any person a fool. Though we may forget the Scriptural

warning, still charity remembers that he is our brother. Suppose,

therefore, we stop at the possessive case, and call him simply

Fessenden's?

As for Fessenden's, then, he was less fortunate than the Judge's

mastiff. He had no dry straw, not even a kennel to crouch in. And the

fields were uninviting; and to die was not so pleasant. The veriest

wretch alive feels a yearning for life, and few are so foolish as not to

prefer a dry skin to a wet one. Even Fessenden's knew enough to go in

when it rained,--if he only could. So, with the dismallest prospect

before him, he kept on, in the wind and rain of that bitter November

night.

And now the wind was rising to a tempest; and the rain was turning to

sleet; and November was fast becoming December. For this was the last

day of the month,--the close of the last day of autumn, as we divide the

seasons: autumn was flying in battle before the fierce onset of winter.

It was the close of the week also, being Saturday.

Saturday night! what a sentiment of thankfulness and repose is in the

word! Comfort is in it; and peace exhales from it like an aroma. Your

work is ended; it is the hour of rest; the sense of duty done sweetens

reflection, and weariness subsides into soothing content. Once more the

heart grows tenderly appreciative of the commonest blessings. That you

have a roof to shelter you, and a pillow for your head, and love and

light and supper, and something in store for Sunday,--that the raving

rain is excluded, and the wolfish wind howls in vain,--that those

dearest to you are gathered about your hearth, and all is well,--it is

enough; the full soul asks no wore.

But this particular Saturday evening brought no such suffusion of bliss

to Fessenden's,--if, indeed, any ever did. He saw, through the

streaming, misty air, the happy homes in the village lighted up one by

one as it grew dark. He had glimpses, through warm windows, of white

supper-tables. The storm made sufficient seclusion; there was no need to

draw the curtains. Servants were bringing in the tea-things. Children

were playing about the floors,--laughing, beautiful children. Behold

them, shivering beggar-boy! Lean by the iron rail, wait patiently in the

rain, and look in upon them; it is worth your while. How frolicsome and

light-hearted they seem! They are never cold, and seldom very hungry,

and the world is dry to them, and comfortable. And they all have

beds,--delicious beds. Mothers' hands tuck them in; mothers' lips teach

them to say their little prayers, and kiss them good-night. Foolish

fellow! why didn't you be one of those fortunate children, well fed,

rosy, and bright, instead of a starved and stupid tatterdemalion? A

question which shapes itself vaguely in his dull, aching soul, as he

stands trembling in the sleet, with only a few transparent squares of

glass dividing him and his misery from them and their joy.

Mighty question! it is vast and dark as the night to him. He cannot

answer it; can you?

Vast and dark and pitiless is the night. But the morning will surely

come; and after all the wrongs and tumults of life will rise the dawn of

the Day of God. And then every question of fate, though it fill the

universe for you now, shall dissolve in the brightness like a vapor, and

vanish like a little cloud.

Meanwhile a servant comes out and drives Fessenden's away from the

fence. He recommenced his wanderings,--up one street and down another,

in search of a place to lay his head. The inferior dwellings he passed

by. But when he arrived at a particularly fine one, there he rang. Was

it not natural for him to infer that the largest houses had amplest

accommodations, and that the rich could best afford to be bounteous? If

in all these spacious mansions there was no little nook for him, if out

of their luxuries not a blanket or crust could be spared, what could he

hope from the poor? You see, he was not altogether witless, if he was

a--Fessenden's. Another proof: At whatever house he applied, he never

committed the vulgarity of a _détour_ to the back-entrance, but advanced

straight, with bold and confident port, to the front-door. The reason of

which was equally simple and clear: Front-doors were the most convenient

and inviting; and what were they made for, if not to go in at?

But he grew weary of ringing and of being repulsed. It was dismal

standing still, however, and quite as comfortless sitting down. He was

so cold! So, to keep his blood in motion, he keeps his limbs in

motion,--till, lo! here he is again at the house where the happy

children were! They have ceased their play. Two young girls are at the

window, gazing out into the darkness, as if expecting some one. Not you,

miserable! You needn't stop and make signs for them to admit you. There!

don't you see you have frightened them? You are not a fitting spectacle

for such sweet-eyed darlings. They do well to drop the shade, to shut

out the darkness, and the dim, gesticulating phantom. Flit on! 'Tis

their father they are looking for, coming home to them with gifts from

the city.

But he does not flit. When, presently, they lift a corner of the shade

to peep out, they see him still standing there, spectral in the gloom.

He is waiting for them to open the door! He thinks they have quitted the

window for that purpose! Ah! here comes the father, and they are glad.

He comes hurrying from the cars under his umbrella, which is braced

against the gale and shuts out from his eyes the sight of the

unsheltered wretch. And he is hastily entering his door, which is opened

to him by the eager children, when they scream alarm; and looking over

his shoulder, he perceives, following at his heels, the fright. He is

one of your full-blooded, solid men; but he is startled.

"What do you want?" he cries, and lifts the threatening umbrella.

"I'm hungry," says the intruder, with a ghastly glare, still advancing.

He stands taller in his tattered shoes than the solid gentleman in his

boots; and those long, lean, claw-like hands act as if anxious to clutch

something. Papa thinks it is his throat.

"By heavens! and do you mean to"--And he prepares to charge umbrella.

"You may!" answers the wretch, with perfect sincerity, presenting his

ragged bosom to the blow.

The lord of the castle lowers his weapon. The children huddle behind

him, hushing their screams.

"Go in, Minnie! In, all of you! Tell Stephen to come here,--quick!"

The children scamper. And the florid, prosperous parent and the gaunt

and famishing pauper are alone, confronting each other by the light of

the shining hall-lamp.

"I'm cold," says the latter,--"and wet," with an aguish shiver.

"I should think so!" cries the gentleman, recovering from his alarm, and

getting his breath again, as he hears Stephen's step behind him. "Stand

back, can't you?" (indignantly). "Don't you see you are dripping on the

carpet?"

"I'm so tired!"

"Well! you needn't rub yourself against the door, if you are! Don't you

see you are smearing it? What are you roaming about in this way for,

intruding into people's houses?"

"Please, Sir, I don't know," is the soft, sad answer; and Fessenden's is

meekly taking himself away.

"It's too bad, though!" says the man, relenting. "What can we do with

this fellow, Stephen?"

"Send him around to Judge Gingerford's,--I should say that's about the

best thing to do with him," says the witty Stephen.

The man knew well what would please. His master's face lighted up. He

rubbed his hands, and regarded the vagabond with a humorous twinkle,

with malice in it.

"Would you, Stephen? By George, I've a good notion to! Take the

umbrella, and go and show him the way."

Stephen did not like that.

"I was only joking, Sir," he said.

"A good joke, too! Here, you fellow! go with my man. He'll take you to a

house where you'll find friends. Excellent folks! damned

philanthropical! red-hot abolitionists! If you only had nigger-blood,

now, they'd treat you like a prince. I don't know but I'd advise you to

tell 'em you're about a quarter nigger,--they'll think ten times as much

of you!"

It was sufficiently evident that the gentleman did not love his neighbor

the Judge. There was in his tone bitter personal and political hatred.

With his own hands he spread again the soaked umbrella, and, giving it

to the reluctant Stephen, turned him away with the vagabond. Then he

shut the door, and went in. By the fire he pulled off his wet boots, and

put on the warm slippers, which the children brought him with innocent

strife to see which should be foremost. And he gave to each kisses and

toys; for he was a kind father. And sitting down to supper, with their

beaming faces around him, he thought of the beggar-boy only in

connection with the jocular spite he had indulged against his neighbor.

Meanwhile the disgusted Stephen, walking alone under the umbrella,

drove Fessenden's before him through the storm. They turned a corner.

Stephen stopped.

"There, that's the house, where the lights are. Good bye! Luck to you!"

And Stephen and umbrella disappeared in the darkness.

Fessenden's kept on, wearily, wearily! He reached the house. And lo! it

was the same, at the door of which the lady had told him that he, with

his name, was not wanted. Tiger slept in his kennel, and dreamed of

barking at beggars. The Judge, snugly ensconced in his study, listened

to the report of his speech before the Timberville Benevolent

Association. His son read it aloud, in the columns of the "Timberville

Gazette." Gingerford smiled and nodded; for he thought it sounded well.

And Mrs. Gingerford was pleased and proud. And the heart of Gingerford

Junior swelled with the fervor of the eloquence, and with exultation in

his father's talents and distinction, as he read. The sleet rattled a

pleasant accompaniment against the window-shutters; and the organ-pipes

of the wind sounded a solemn symphony. This last night of November was

genial and bright to those worthy people, in their little family-circle.

And the future was full of promise. And the rhetoric of the orator

settled the duty of man to man so satisfactorily, and painted the

pleasures of benevolence in such colors, that all their bosoms glowed.

"It is gratifying to think," said Mrs. Gingerford, wiping her eyes at

the pathetic close, "how much good the printing of that address in the

'Gazette' must accomplish. It will reach many so who hadn't the

good-fortune to hear it at the rooms."

Certainly, Madam. The "Gazette" is taken, and perhaps read this very

evening, in every one of the houses at which the pauper has applied in

vain for shelter, since you frowned him from your door. Those exalted

sentiments, breathed in musical periods, are no doubt a rich legacy to

the society of Timberville, and to the world. It was wise to print them;

they will "reach many so." But will they reach this outcast beggar-boy,

and benefit him? Alas, it is fast growing too late for that!

Utter fatigue and discouragement have overtaken him. The former notion

of dying in the fields recurs to him now; and wretched indeed must he

be, since even that desperate thought has a sort of comfort in it. But

he is too weary to seek out some suitably retired spot to take cold

leave of life in. On every side is darkness; on every side, wild storm.

Why endeavor to drag farther his benumbed limbs? As well stretch himself

here, upon this wet wintry sod, as anywhere. He has the presumption to

do it,--never considering how deeply he may injure a fine gentleman's

feelings by dying at his door.

Tiger does not bark him away, but only dreams of barking, in his cozy

kennel. Close by are the windows of the mansion, glowing with light.

There beat the philanthropic hearts; there smiles the pale, pensive

lady; there beams the aspiring face of her son; and there sits the

Judge, with his feet on the rug, pleasantly contemplating the good his

speech will do, and thinking quite as much, perhaps, of the fame it will

bring him,--happily unconscious alike of his neighbor's malicious jest,

and of the real victim of that jest, lying out there in the tempest and

freezing rain.

So November goes out; and winter, boisterous and triumphant, comes in.

* * * * *

Sunday morning: cold and clear. The December sun shines upon the glassy

turf, and upon trees all clad in armor of glittering ice. And the trees

creak and rattle in the north wind; and the icy splinters fall tinkling

to the ground.

The splendor of the morning gilds the Judge's estate. Everything about

the mansion smiles and sparkles. Were last night's horrors a dream?

There was danger, we remember, that the foolish youth might do a very

inconsiderate and shocking thing, and perhaps ruin the Judge. What if he

had really deposited his mortal remains at the gate of that worthy

man,--to be found there, ghastly and stiff, a revolting spectacle, this

bright morning? What a commentary on Gingerford philanthropy! For of

course some one would at once have stepped forward to testify to having

seen him driven from the door, which he came back to lay his bones near.

And Stephen would have been on hand to remember directing such a person,

inquiring his way a second time to the Judge's house. And here he is

dead,--to the secret delight of the Judge's enemies, and to the

indignation of all Timberville. At anybody else's door it wouldn't have

seemed so bad. But at Gingerford's! a philanthropist by profession!

author of that beautiful speech you cried over! You will never forgive

him those tears. The greatest crime a man can be guilty of in the eyes

of his constituents is to have been over-praised by them. Woe to him,

when they find out their error! and woe now to the Judge! The fact that

a dozen other influential citizens had also refused shelter to the

vagabond will not help the matter. Those very men will probably be the

first to cry, "Hypocrite! inhuman! a judgment upon him!"--for it is

always the person of doubtful virtue who is most eager to assume the

appearance of severe integrity; and we often flatter ourselves that our

private faults are atoned for, when we have loudly denounced them in

others.

Fortunately, the flower of the Judge's reputation is saved from so

terrible a blight. There is no corpse at his gate; and our speculations

are idle.

This is what had occurred. Not long after the lad had lain down, a

dream-like spell came over him. His pain was gone. He forgot that he was

cold. He was not hungry any more. A sweet sense of rest was diffused

through his tired limbs. And smiling and soothed he lay, while the storm

beat upon him. Was this death? For we know that in this merciful shape

death sometimes comes to the sufferer.

Fessenden's afterwards said that he had "one of his fits." He was

subject to such. When men reviled and denied him, then came the

angels,--or he imagined they came. They walked by his side, and talked

with him; and often, all a summer's afternoon, he could be heard

conversing in the fields, as with familiar friends, when only himself

was visible, and his voice alone was heard in the silence. This was, in

fact, one of those idiosyncrasies which had earned him his shameful

name.

In the trance of that night, lying cold upon the ground, he beheld his

ghostly visitors. They came and stood around him, a shining company, and

looked upon him with countenances of fair women and good men. Their

apparel was not unlike that of mortals. And he heard them questioning

among themselves how they should help him. And one of them, as it

seemed, brought human assistance; though the boy, who could see plenty

of ghosts, could not, for some reason, see the only actually visible and

substantial person then on the spot besides himself. He felt, however,

sensibly enough, the concussion of a stout pair of mortal legs that

presently went stumbling over him in the dark. The shock roused him. The

whole shadowy company vanished instantly; and in their place he saw, by

the glimmer from the Judge's windows, a dark sprawling figure getting up

out of the mud and water.

"Don't be scared, it's me," said Fessenden's; for he guessed the fellow

was frightened.

"Excuse me, Sir! I really didn't know it was you, Sir!" said the man,

with agitated politeness. "And who might you be, Sir? if I may be so

bold as to inquire." And regaining his balance, his umbrella, and his

self-possession, he drew near, and squatted cautiously before the

prostrate beggar, who, had his eyesight been half as keen for the living

as it was for the dead, would have discovered that the face bending over

him was black.

"Never mind me," said Fessenden's. "Did it hurt ye?"

"Well, Sir,--no, Sir,--only my knee went pretty seriously into something

wet. And I believe I've turned my umbrella wrong side out. I say, Sir,

what was you doing, lying here, Sir? You don't think of remaining here

all night, I trust, Sir?"

"I've nowhere else to go," said the boy, trying to rise.

The black man helped him up.

"But this never'll do, you know! such an inclement night as this

is!--you'd die before morning, sure! Just wait till I can get my

umbrella into shape,--my gracious! how the wind pulls it! Now, then,

suppose you come along with me."

"Please, Sir, I can't walk"; for the lad's limbs had stiffened, in spite

of his angels.

"Is that so, Sir? Let me see; about how much do you weigh, Sir? Not much

above a hundred, do you? It isn't impossible but I may take you on my

back. Suppose you try it."

"Oh, I can't!" groaned the boy.

"Excuse me for contradicting you, but I think you can, Sir. I shouldn't

like to do it myself, in the daytime; but in the night so, who cares?

Nobody'll laugh at us, even if we don't succeed. Really, I wish you

wasn't quite so wet, Sir; for these here is my Sunday clothes. But never

mind a little water; we'll find a fire to get dry again. There you are,

my friend! A little higher. Put your hands over across my breast.

Couldn't manage to hold, the umbrella over us, could you? So fashion.

Now steady, while I rise with you."

And the stalwart young negro, hooking his arms well under the legs of

his rider, got up stoopingly, gave a toss and a jolt to get him into the

right position, and walked off with him. Away they go, tramp, tramp, in

the storm and darkness. Thank Heaven, the Judge's fame is safe! If the

pauper dies, it will not be at his door. Little he knows, there in his

elegant study, what an inestimable service this black Samaritan is

rendering him. And it was just; for, after all the Judge had done for

the negro, (who, I suppose, was equally unconscious of any substantial

benefit received,) it was time that the negro should do something for

him in return.

Tramp! tramp! a famous beggar's ride! It was a picturesque scene, with

food for laughter and tears in it, had we only been there with a

lantern. Fessenden's, fantastic, astride of the African, staring forward

into the darkness from under his ragged hat-brim, endeavoring to hold

the wreck of an umbrella over them,--the wind flapping and whirling it.

Tramp! tramp! past all those noble mansions, to the negro-hut beyond the

village. And, oh, to think of it! the rich citizens, the enlightened and

white-skinned Levites, having left him out, one of their own race, to

perish in the storm, this despised black man is found, alone of all the

world, to show mercy unto him!

"How do you get on, Sir?" says the stout young Ethiop. "Would you ride

easier, if I should trot? or would you prefer a canter? Tell 'em to

bring on their two-forty nags now, if they want a race."

Talking in this strain, to keep up his rider's spirits, he brought him,

not without sweat and toil, to the hut. A kick on the door with the

beggar's foot, which he used for the purpose, caused it to be opened by

a woolly-headed urchin; and in he staggered.

Little woolly-head clapped his hands and screamed.

"Oh, crackie, pappy! here comes Bill with the Devil on his back!"

Sensation in the hut. There was an old negro woman in the corner, on one

side of the stove, knitting; and a very old negro man in the opposite

corner, napping; and a middle-aged man, with spectacles on his ebony

nose, reading slowly aloud from an ancient grease-covered book opened

before him on the old pine table; and a middle-aged woman patching a

jacket; and a girl washing dishes, which another girl was wiping:

representatives of four generations: and they all quitted their

occupations at once, to see what sort of a devil Bill had brought home.

"Why, William! who have you got there, William?" said he of the

spectacles, with mild wonder,--removing those clerkly aids of vision,

and laying them across the book.

"A chair!" panted Bill. "Now ease him down, if you

please,--careful,--and I'll--recite the circumstances,"--puffing, but

polite to the last.

Helpless and gasping, Fessenden's was unfastened, and slipped down the

African's back upon a seat placed to receive him. He still clung to the

umbrella, which he endeavored to keep spread over him, while he stared

around with stupid amazement at the dim room and the array of black

faces.

And now the excited urchin began to caper and sing:--

"'Went down to river, couldn't get across;

Jumped upon a nigger's back, thought it was a hoss!'

"Oh, crackie, Bill!"

"Father," said William, with wounded dignity,--for he was something of a

gentleman in his way,--"I wish you'd discipline that child, or else give

me permission to chuck him."

"Joseph!" said the father, with a stern shake of his big black head at

the boy, "here's a stranger in the house! Walk straight, Joseph!"

Which solemn injunction Joseph obeyed in a highly offensive manner, by

strutting off in imitation of William's dandified air.

By this time the aged negro in the corner had become fully roused to the

consciousness of a guest in the house. He came forward with slow,

shuffling step. He was almost blind. He was exceedingly deaf. He was

withered and wrinkled in the last degree. His countenance was of the

color of rust-eaten bronze. He was more than a hundred years old,--the

father of the old woman, the grandfather of the middle-aged man, and the

great-grandfather of William, Joseph, and the girls. He was muffled in

rags, and wore a little cap on his head. This he removed with his left

hand, exposing a little battered tea-kettle of a bald pate, as with

smiling politeness he reached out the other trembling hand to shake that

of the stranger.

"Welcome, Sah! Sarvant, Sah!"

He bowed and smiled again, and the hospitable duty was performed; after

which he put on his cap and shuffled back into his corner, greatly

marvelled at by the gazing beggar-boy.

The girls and their mother now bestirred themselves to get their guest

something to eat. The tin tea-pot was set on the stove, and hash was

warmed up in the spider. In the mean time William somewhat ruefully took

off his wet Sunday coat, and hung it to dry by the stove, interpolating

affectionate regrets for the soiled garment with the narration of his

adventure.

"It was the merest chance my coming that way," he explained; "for I had

got started up the other street, when something says to me, 'Go by

Gingerford's! go by Judge Gingerford's!' so I altered my course, and the

result was, just as I got against the Judge's gate I was precipitated

over this here person."

"I know what made ye!" spoke up the boy, with an earnest stare.

"What, Sir,--if you please?"

"The angels!"

"The--the what, Sir?"

"The angels! I seen 'em!" says Fessenden's.

This astounding announcement was followed by a strange hush. Bill forgot

to smooth out the creases of his coat, and looked suspiciously at the

youth whom it had served as a saddle. He wondered if he had really been

ridden by the Devil.

The old woman now interfered. She was at least seventy years of age. The

hair of her head was like mixed carded wool. Her coarse, cleanly gown

was composed of many-colored, curious patches. The atmosphere of

thorough grandmotherly goodness surrounded her. In the twilight sky of

her dusky face twinkled shrewdness and good-humor; and her voice was

full of authority and kindness.

"Stan' back here now, you troubles!" pushing the children aside.

"Didn't none on ye never see nobody afore? This 'ere chile has got to be

took keer on, and that mighty soon! Gi' me the comf'table off'm the bed,

mammy."

"Mammy" was the mother of the children. The "comf'table" was brought,

and she and her husband helped the old negress wrap Fessenden's up in

it, from head to foot, wet clothes and all.

"Now your big warm gret-cut, pappy!"

"Pappy" was her own son; and the "gret-cut" was his old, gray, patched

and double-patched surtout, which now came down from its peg, and spread

its broad flaps, like brooding wings, over the half-drowned human

chicken.

"Now put in the wood, boys! Pour some of that 'ere hot tea down his

throat. Bless him, we'll sweat the cold out of him! we'll give him a

steaming!"

She held with her own hand the cracked tea-cup to the lad's lips, and

made him drink. Then she pulled up the comforter about his face, till

nothing of him was visible but his nose and a curl or two of saturated

tow. Then she had him moved up close to the glowing stove, like a huge

chrysalis to be hatched by the heat.

The dozing centenarian now roused again, and, perceiving the little nose

in the big bundle on the other side of the chimney, was once more

reminded of the sacred duties of hospitality. So he got upon his

trembling old legs again, pulled off his cap, and bowed and smiled as

before, with exquisite politeness, across the stove. "Sarvant, Sah!

Welcome, Sah!". And he sat down, and dozed again.

Fessenden's was not in a position to return the courteous salute. The

old woman had by this time got his feet packed into the stove-oven, and

he was beginning to smoke.

"Oh, Bill! just look a' Joe!" cried one of the girls.

Bill left smoothing his broadcloth, and, turning up the whites of his

eyes, uttered a despairing groan. "Oh, that child! that child! that

child!"--his voice running up into a wild falsetto howl.

The child thus passionately alluded to had possessed himself of Bill's

genteel silk hat, which had been tenderly put away to dry. It had been

sadly soaked by the rain, and bruised by the flopping umbrella which

Fessenden's had unhappily attempted to hold over it. And now Joe had

knocked in the crown, whilst geting it down from its peg with the broom.

He had thought to improve its appearance by stroking the nap the wrong

way with his sleeve. Lastly, putting it on his head, he had crushed the

sides together, to prevent its coming quite down over his eyes and ears

and resting on his shoulders. And there he was, with the broken umbrella

spread, hitting the top of the hat with it at every step, as he strutted

around the room in emulation of his brother's elegant style.

"My name's Mr. Bill Williams, Asquare!" simpered the little satirist.

"Some folks call me Gentleman Bill, 'cause I'm so smart and

good-looking, Sar!"

Gentleman Bill picked up the jack with which he had pulled off his wet

boots, and waited for a good chance to launch it at Joe's head. But Joe

kept behind his grandmother, and proceeded with his mimicry.

"Nobody knows I'm smart and good-looking 'cept me, and that's the why I

tell on't Sar; that's the reason I excite the stircumsances, Sar!"--He

remembered Bill's saying he would "recite the circumstances," and this

was as near as he could come to the precise words.--"I'm a gentleman

tailor; that's my perfession, Sar. Work over to the North Village, Sar.

Come home Sat'day nights to stop over Sunday with the folks, and show my

good clo'es. How d' 'e do, Sar? Perty well, thank ye, Sar." And Joe,

putting down the umbrella, in order to lift the ingulfing hat from his

little round, black, curly head with both hands, made a most extravagant

bow to the chrysalis.

"Old granny!" hoarsely whispered Bill, "you just stand out of the way

once, while I propel this boot-jack!"

"Old granny don't stan' out o' the way oncet, for you to frow no

boot-jack in this house! S'pose I want to see that chile's head stove

in? Which is mos' consequence, I'd like to know, your hat, or his head?

Hats enough in the world. But that 'ere head is an oncommon head, and,

bless the boy, if he should lose that, I do'no' where he'd git another

like it! Come, no more fuss now! I got to make some gruel for this 'ere

poor, wet, starvin' critter. That hash a'n't the thing for him,

mammy,--you'd ought to know! He wants somefin' light and comfortin',

that'll warm his in'ards, and make him sweat, bless him!--Joey! Joey!

give up that 'ere hat now!"

"Take it, then! Mean old thing,--I don't want it!"

Joe extended it on the point of the umbrella; but just as Bill was

reaching to receive it, he gave it a little toss, which sent it into the

chip-basket.

"Might know I'd had on your hat!" and the little rogue scratched his

head furiously.

"I shall certainly massacre that child some fine morning!" muttered

Bill, ruefully extricating the insulted article from the basket. "Oh, my

gracious! only look at that, now, Creshy!" to his sister. "That's an

interesting object--isn't it?--for a gentleman to think of putting on to

his head Sunday morning!"

"Oh, Bill!" cried Creshy, "jest look a' Joe agin!"

Whilst he was sorrowfully restoring his hat to its pristine shape, he

had been robbed of his coat. The thief had run with it behind the bed,

where he had succeeded in getting into it. The collar enveloped his

ears. The skirts dragged upon the floor. He had buttoned it, to make it

fit better, but there was still room in it for two or three boys. He had

got on his father's spectacles and Fessenden's straw hat. He looked like

a frightful little old misshapen dwarf. And now, rolling up the sleeves

to find his hands, and wrinkling the coat outrageously at every

movement, he advanced from his retreat, and began to dance a

pigeon-wing, amid the convulsive laughter of the girls.

"Oh, my soul! my soul!" cried Bill, his voice inclining again to the

falsetto. "Was there ever such an imp of Satan! Was there ever"--

Here he made a lunge at the offender. Joe attempted to escape, but,

getting his feet entangled in the superabundant coat-skirts, fell,

screaming as if he were about to be killed.

"Good enough for you!" said his mother. "I wish you would get hurt!"

"What you wish that for?" cried the old grandmother, rushing to the

rescue, brandishing a long iron spoon with which she had been stirring

the gruel. "Can't nobody never have no fun in this house? Bless us! what

'ud we do, if 't wa'n't for Joey, to make us laugh and keep our sperits

up? Jest you stan' back now, Bill!--'d ruther you'd strike me 'n see ye

hit that 'ere boy oncet!"

"He must let my things be, then," said Bill, who couldn't see much sport

in the disrespectful use made of his wearing apparel.--"Here, you!

surrender my property!"

"Laws! you be quiet! You'll git yer cut agin. Only jest look at him now,

he's so blessed cunning!"

For Joe, reassured by his grandmother, had stopped screaming, and gone

to tailoring. He sat cross-legged on one of the unlucky coat-skirts, and

pulled the other up on his lap, for his work. Then he got an imaginary

thread, and, putting his fingers together, screwed up his mouth, and

looked over the spectacles, sharpening his sight,--

"Like an old tailor to his needle's eye."

Then he began to stitch, to the infinite disgust of Bill, who was

sensitive touching his vocation.

"I do declare, father! how you can smile, seeing that child carrying on

in this shape, is beyond my comprehension!"

"Joseph!" said Mr. Williams, good-naturedly, "I guess that'll do for

to-night. Come, I want my spectacles."

He had sat down to his book again. He was a slow, thoughtful, easy,

cheerful man, whom suffering and much humiliation had rendered very

mild and patient, if not quite broken-spirited. His voice was indulgent

and gentle, with that mellow richness of tone peculiar to the negro.

After he had spoken, the laughter subsided; and Joe, impressed by the

quiet paternal authority, quickly devised means to obey without

appearing to do so. For it is not so much obedience, as the

manifestation of obedience, that is repugnant to human nature,--not in

children only, but in grown folks as well.

Joe disguised his compliance in this way. He got up, took off the

beggar's hat, put the spectacles into it, holding his hand on a rip in

the crown to keep them from falling through, and passed it around,

walking solemnly in his brother's abused coat.

"I'm Deacon Todd," said he, "taking up a collection to buy Gentleman

Bill a new cut: gunter make a missionary of him!"

He passed the hat to the women and the girls, all of whom pretended to

put in something.

"I ha'n't got nothin'!" said Fessenden's, when it came to him; "I'm real

sorry I but I'll give my hat!"--earnest as could be.

When the hat came to Mr. Williams, he quietly put in his hand and took

out his glasses.

"Here, I've got something for you; I desire to contribute," said

Gentleman Bill.

But Joe was shy of his brother.

"Oh, we don't let the missionary give anything!" he said. "Here's the

hat what you're gunter wear;--give it to him, Cresh!"

Bill disdained the beggar's, contribution; but, in his anxiety to seize

Joe, he suffered his sister to slip up behind him and clap the wet,

ragged straw wreck on his head.

"Oh, Bill! Oh, Bill!" screamed the girls with merriment, in which mother

and grandmother joined, while even their father indulged in a silent,

inward laugh.

"Good!" said Fessenden's; "he may have it!"

Bill, watching his opportunity, made a dash at the pretending Deacon

Todd. That nimble and quick-witted dwarf escaped as fast as his awkward

attire would permit. The bed seemed to be the only place of refuge, and

he dodged under it.

"Come out!" shouted Bill, furious.

"Come in and git me!" screamed Joe, defiant.

Bill, if not too large, was far too dignified for such an enterprise. So

he got the broom, and began to stir Joe with the handle,--not observing,

in his wrath, that, the more he worried Joe, the more he was damaging

his own precious broadcloth.

"I'm the lion to the show!" cried Joe, rolling and tumbling under the

bed to avoid the broom. "The keeper's a punchin' on me, to make me

roar!"

And the lion roared.

"He's a gunter come into the cage by-'m-by, and put his head into my

mouth. Then I'm a gunter swaller him! Ki! hoo! hoo! oo!"

He roared in earnest this time. Bill, grown desperate, had knocked his

shins. As long as he hit him only on the head, the king of beasts didn't

care; but he couldn't stand an attack on the more sensitive part.

"Jest look here, now!" exclaimed the old negress, with unusual spirit;

"gi' me that broom!"

She wrenched it from Bill's hand.

"Perty notion, you can't come home a minute without pesterin' that boy's

life out of him!"

You see, color makes no difference with grandmothers. Black or white,

they are universally unjust, when they come to decide the quarrels of

their favorites.

"Great lubberly fellow like you, 'busin' that poor babby all the time!

Come, Joey! come to granny, poor chile!"

It was a sorry-looking lion that issued whimpering from the cage,

limping, and rubbing his eyes. His borrowed hide--namely, Bill's

coat--had been twisted into marvellous shapes in the scuffle; and,

being wet, it was almost white with the dust and lint that adhered to

it. Bill threw up his arms in despair; while Joe threw his, great

sleeves and all, around granny's neck, and found comfort on her

sympathizing bosom.

"Silence, now," said Mr. Williams, "so's we can go on with the reading."

Order was restored. Bill hung up his coat, and sat down. Joe nestled in

the old woman's lap. And now the storm was heard beating against the

house.

"Say!" spoke up Fessenden's, "can I stop here over night?"

"You don't suppose," said Mr. Williams, "we'd turn you out in such

weather as this, do you?"

"Wal!" said Fessenden's, "nobody else would keep me."

"Don't you be troubled! While we 've a ruf over our heads, no stranger

don't git turned away from it that wants shelter, and will put up with

our 'commodations. We can keep you to-night, and probably to-morrow

night, if you like to stay; but after that I can't promise. Mebby we

sha'n't have a ruf for our own heads then. But we'll trust the Lord,"

said Mr. Williams, with a deep, serious smile,--while Mrs. Williams

sighed.

"How is it about that matter?" Gentleman Bill inquired.

"The house is to be tore down Monday, I suppose," replied his father,

mildly.

"My gracious!" exclaimed Bill; "Mr. Frisbie a'n't really going to carry

that threat into execution?"

"That's what he says, William. He has got a prejudice ag'inst color, you

know. Since he lost the election, through the opposition of the

abolitionists, as he thinks, he's been very much excited on the

subject," added Mr. Williams, in his subdued way.

"Excited!" echoed his wife, bitterly.

She was a much-suffering woman, inclined to melancholy; but there was a

latent fire in her when she seemed most despondent, and she roused up

now and spoke with passionate, flashing eyes:--

"Sence he got beat, town-meetin' day, he don't 'pear to take no comfort,

'thout 't is hatin' Judge Gingerford and spitin' niggers, as he calls

us. He sent his hired man over agin this mornin', to say, if we wa'n't

out of the house by Monday, 't would be pulled down on to our heads.

Call that Christian, when he knows we can't git another house, there 's

sich a s'picion agin people o' color?"

"'T wa'n't alluz so; 't wa'n't so in my day," said the old woman,

pausing, as she was administering the gruel to Fessenden's with a spoon.

"Here's gran'pa, he was a slave, and I was born a slave, in this here

very State, as long ago as when they used to have slaves here, as I've

told ye time and agin; though I don't clearly remember it, for I scacely

ever knowed what bondage was, bless the Lord! But we allus foun'

somebody to be kind to us, and got along,--for it did seem as though God

kind o' looked arter us, and took keer on us, same as He did o' white

folks. We've been carried through, somehow or 'nother; and I can't help

thinkin' as how we shall be yit, spite o' Mr. Frisbie. S'pose God'll

forgit us 'cause His grand church-folks do? S'pose all they can say'll

pedijice Him?"

Having advanced this unanswerable question, she turned once more to her

patient, who put up his head, and opened his mouth wide, to receive the

great spoon.

"Lucky for them that can trust the Lord!" said Mrs. Williams, over her

patching. "But if I was a man, I'm 'fraid I should put my trust in a

good knife, and stan' by the ol' house when they come to pull it down!

The fust man laid hands on 't 'ud git hurt, I'm dreffle 'fraid! Prayin'

won't save it, you see!"

"Mr. Frisbie owns the house," observed Gentleman Bill, "and I wouldn't

resort to violent measures to prevent him; though 't isn't possible for

me to believe he'll be so unhuman as to demolish it before you find

another."

"I'm inclined to think he will," answered Mr. Williams, calmly. "He's a

rather determined man, William. But God won't quite forget us, I'm

sartin sure. And we won't worry about the house till the time comes,

anyhow. Le' 's see what the Good Book says to comfort us," he added,

with a hopeful smile.

Unfortunately, the "Timberville Gazette" had not reached this benighted

family; and not having the Judge's Address to read, Mr. Williams read

the Sermon on the Mount.

Fessenden's listened with the rest. And alight, not of the

understanding, but of the spirit, shone upon him. His intellect was too

feeble, I think, to draw any very keen comparison between those houses

where the "Timberville Gazette" was taken and read that evening and this

lowly abode,--between the rich there, who had shut their proud,

prosperous doors against him, and these poor servants of the Lord, who

had taken him in and comforted him, though the hour was nigh when they,

too, were to be driven forth shelterless in the wintry storms. The deep

and affecting suggestiveness of that wide contrast his mind was, no

doubt, too weak thoroughly to appreciate. Yet something his heart felt,

and something his soul perceived; his pale and vacant face was

illumined; and at the close of the reading he rose up. The coarse

wrappings of his body fell away; and the muffling ignorance, the

swaddling dulness, wherein that divine infant, the bright immortal

spirit, was confined, seemed also to fall off. He lifted up his hands,

spreading them as if dispensing blessings; and his countenance had a

vague, smiling wonder in it, almost beautiful, and his voice, when he

spoke, thrilled the ear.

"Praise the Lord! praise the Lord! for He will provide!

"Be comforted! for ye are the children of the Lord!

"Be glad! be glad! for the Angel of the Lord is here!

"Don't you see him? don't you see him? There! there!" he cried,

pointing, with an earnestness and radiance of look which filled all who

saw him with astonishment. They turned to gaze, as if really expecting

to behold the vision; then fixed their eyes again on the stranger.

"You'll be taken care of, the Angel says. Even they that hate you shall

do you good. The mercy you have shown, Christ will show to you."

Having uttered these sentences at intervals, in a loud voice, the

speaker gave a start, turned as if bewildered, and sat down again.

Not a word was spoken. A hush of awe suspended the breath of the

listeners. Then a smile of fervent emotion lighted up like daybreak the

negro's dark visage, and his joy broke forth in song. The others joined

him, filling the house with the jubilee of their wild and mellow voices.

"A poor wayfaring man of grief

Hath often crossed me on my way,

And sued so humbly for relief

That I could never answer nay."

And so the fair fame of Gingerford, as we said before, was saved from

blight. The beggar-boy awakes this Sunday morning, not in the blaze of

Eternity, but in that dim nook of the domain of Time, Nigger Williams's

hut. He made his couch, not on the freezing ground, but in a bunk of the

low-roofed garret. His steaming clothes had been taken off, a dry shirt

had been given him, and he had Joe for a bedfellow.

"Hug him tight, Joey dear!" said the old woman, as she carried away the

candle. "Snug up close, and keep him warm!"

"I will!" cried Joe, as affectionate as he was roguish; and Fessenden's

never slept better than he did that night, with the tempest singing his

lullaby, and the arms of the loving negro boy about him.

In the morning he found his clothes ready to put on. They had been

carefully dried; and the old woman had got up early and taken a few

needful stitches in them.

"It's Sunday, granny," Creshy reminded her, to see what she would say.

"A'n't no use lett'n' sich holes as these 'ere go, if 't is Sunday!"

replied the old woman. "Hope I never sh'll ketch you a doin' nuffin'

wus! A'n't we told to help our neighbor's sheep out o' the ditch on the

Lord's day? An' which is mos' consequence, I'd like to know, the

neighbor's sheep, or the neighbor hisself?"

"But his clothes a'n't him," said Creshy.

"S'pose I do'no' that? But what's a sheep for, if 't a'n't for its wool

to make the clo'es? Then, to look arter the sheep that makes the clo'es,

and not look arter the clo'es arter they're made, that's a mis'ble

notion!"

"But you can mend the clothes any day."

"Could I mend 'em yis'day, when I didn't have 'em to mend? or las'

night, when they was wringin' wet? Le' me alone, now, with your

nonsense!"

"But you can mend them to-morrow," said the mischievous girl, delighted

to puzzle her grandmother.

"And let that poor lorn chile go in rags over Sunday, freezin' cold

weather like this? Guess I a'n't so onfeelin,'--an' you a'n't nuther,

for all you like to tease your ole granny so! Bless the chile, seems to

me he's jest gwine to bring us good luck. I feel as though the Angel of

the Lord did ra'ly come into the house with him las' night! Wish I had

somefin' ra'l good for him for his breakfas' now! He'll be dreffle

hungry, that's sartin. Make a rousin' good big Johnny-cake, mammy; and,

Creshy, you stop botherin', and slice up them 'ere taters for fryin'."

Soon the odor of the cooking stole up into the garret. Fessenden's

snuffed it with delighted senses. The feeling of his garments dry and

whole pleased him mightily. He heard the call to breakfast; and laughing

and rubbing his eyes, he followed Joe down the dark, uncertain footing

of the stairs.

The family was already huddled about the table. But room was reserved

for their guest, and at his appearance the old patriarch rose smilingly

from his seat, pulled off his cap, which it seemed he always wore, and

shook hands with him, with the usual hospitable greeting.

"Sarvant, Sah! Welcome, Sah!"

Fessenden's was given a seat by his side. And the old woman piled his

plate with good things. And he ate, and was filled. For he was by no

means dainty, and had not, simple soul! the least prejudice against

color.

And he was happy. The friendly black faces around him,--the cheerful,

sympathetic, rich-toned voices,--the motherly kindness of the old

woman,--the exquisite smiling politeness of the old man, who got up and

shook hands with him, on an average, every half-hour,--the

Bible-reading,--the singing,--the praying,--the elegance and

condescension of Gentleman Bill,--the pleasant looks and words of the

laughing-eyed girls,--and the irrepressible merriment of Joe, made that

a golden Sabbath in the lad's life.

Alas that it should come to this! Associate with black folks! how

shocking! What if he was a--Fessenden's? wasn't he white? Where were

those finer tastes and instincts which make you and me shrink from

persons of color? Pity they had not been properly developed in him! Pity

he should stoop so low as to eat and sleep with niggers, and feel

grateful! He rolls and tumbles in mad frolic with Joe on the

garret-floor, and plays horse with him. He suffers his hair to be combed

by the girls, and actually experiences pleasure at the touch of their

gentle hands, and feels a vague wondering joy when they praise his

smooth flaxen locks. In a word, he is so weak as to wish that good Mr.

Williams was his father, and this delightful hut his home!

And so he spends his Sunday. The family does not attend public worship.

They used to, when the old meeting-house was standing, and the old

minister was alive. But they do not feel at ease in the new edifice, and

the smart young preacher is too smart for them altogether. His rhetoric

is like the cold carving and frescos,--very fine, very admirable, no

doubt; but it has no warmth in it for them; it is foreign to their

common daily lives; it comes not near the hopes and fears and sufferings

of their humble hearts. Here religion, which too long suffered

abasement, is exalted. It is highly respectable. It shows culture; it

has the tone of society. It is worth while coming hither of a Sunday

morning, if only to hear the organ and see the fashions. Yet it can

hardly be expected that such creatures as the Williamses should

appreciate the privilege of hearing and beholding from the inclosure

which has been properly set off for their class,--the colored people's

pew.

But Fessendon's might have done better, one would say, than to stay at

home with them. Why didn't he go to church, and be somebody? _He_ would

not have been put into the niggers' pew. As for his clothes, which might

have been objected to by worldly people, who would have thought of them,

or of anything else but his immortal soul, in the house of God? Of

course, there were no respecters of persons there,--none to say to a

rich Frisbie, or an eloquent Gingerford, "Sit thou, here, in a good

place," and to a ragged Fessenden's, "Stand thou there."

But perhaps the less said on the subject the better. Pass over that

golden Sunday in the lad's life. Alas, when will he ever have such

another? For here it is Monday morning, and the house is to be torn

down.

There seems to be no mistake about it. Mr. Frisbie has come over early,

driven in his light open carriage by his man Stephen, to see that the

niggers are out. And yonder come the workmen, to commence the work of

demolition.

But the niggers are not out; not an article of furniture has been

removed.

"You see, Sir,"--Mr. Williams calmly represents the case to his

landlord, as he sits in his carriage,--"it has been impossible. We shall

certainly go, just as soon as we can get another house anywhere in

town"--

"I don't want you to get another house in town," interrupts the

full-blooded, red-faced Frisbie. "We have had enough of you. You have

had fair warning. Now out with your traps, and off with you!"

"I trust, at least, Sir, you will give us another week"--

"Not an hour!"

"One day," remonstrates the mild negro; "I don't think you will refuse

us that."

"Not a minute!" exclaims the firm Frisbie. "I've borne with you long

enough. Fact is, we have got tired of niggers in this town. I bought the

house with you in it, or you never would have got in. Now it is coming

down. Call out your folks, and save your stuff, if you're going

to.--Good morning, Adsly," to the master carpenter. "Go to work with

your fellows. Guess they'll be glad to get out by the time you've ripped

the roof off."

Mr. Williams retires, disheartened, his visage surcharged with trouble.

For this wretched dwelling was his home, and dear to him. It was the

centre of his world. Around it all the humble hopes and pleasures of the

man had clustered for years. When weary with the long day's heavy toil,

here he had found rest. To this spot his spirit, sorrow-laden, had ever

turned with gratitude and yearning. And here he had found shelter, here

he had found love and comfort, the lonely, despised man. Even care and

grief had contributed to strengthen the hold of his heart upon this

soil. Here had died the only child he had ever lost; and in the old

burying-ground, over the hill yonder, it was buried. Under this mean

roof he had laid his sorrows before the Lord, he had wrestled with the

Lord in prayer, and his burdens had been taken from him, and light and

gladness had been poured upon his soul. Oh, ye proud! do you think that

happiness dwells only in high places, or that these lowly homes are not

dear to the poor?

But now this sole haven of the negro and his family was to be destroyed.

Cruel cold blew the December wind, that wintry morning. And the gusts of

the landlord's temper were equally pitiless.

* * * * *

HEAD-QUARTERS OF BEER-DRINKING.

Besides the four elements known to us as such, namely, air, fire, earth,

and water, there is a liquid substance not entirely unknown in our

country, which, in the kingdom of Bavaria, is sometimes called the fifth

element, under the specific name of beer. It is true, that, where this

extra element is in such repute, some of the others suffer depreciation,

and especially is this true of water, though this latter is still

occasionally used both as a beverage and in purifying processes; and

there is, too, a tradition, which these inland people have little

opportunity of verifying, that it has sometimes been exclusively used

for purposes of navigation, and they are aware, that, if at any time

they should decide to emigrate to America, they might have occasion to

test on a large scale both its utility and its perils for this purpose.

The centre of gravity of this fifth element seems to be in the city of

Munich, the capital of the kingdom. People in this country who have

heard much of lager-beer, and seen a little of its use as introduced

into our land from Germany, may, perhaps, suppose that it is equally

distributed over all that extensive region known by this name. This is,

however, an error. Just as our atmosphere becomes ever less dense

according to its distance from the earth's centre of gravity, so this

fifth element, as one retires farther from the city of Munich.

It would be an interesting inquiry for the medical man, who seeks to

enlarge his knowledge of the _vis medicatrix Naturæ_, for the

philanthropist, who would stimulate or increase the means of human

happiness, and remove or diminish those of human misery, and even for

the statistician, alike indifferent to both: _Why do particular articles

of diet and beverage concentrate their use so much in particular

climates, lands, and localities?_ Within certain limits the question is

easy. The inhabitant of the tropics lives on the bread-fruit, the

plantain, the orange, the fig, and the date. They grow around him, drop

as it were into his mouth, and are just what he needs to allay his

hunger and support his nature. The Greenlanders and the Esquimaux of

Labrador eat the flesh of bears, reindeer, and seals, and even drink

their fat by the quart. Fruits, if they were to be had, would not meet

their wants, and Providence has ordered accordingly. He of the tropics,

in addition to the external heat, needs but the mild and gentle fire

generated by the combustion of his native fruits, to keep his life-fluid

in action; while he of the frigid zones must be kept in life and motion

by rousing fires of seal's fat. Temperate latitudes produce most fruits,

and all the cereals and animals used for food; but Nature nowhere gives

us these in the shape of plum-puddings and pastries, or of beer and

alcoholic drinks. The combinations and commutations must be

manufactured. But does an impulse in man, like the instinct of the bee,

lead him to make just what he needs in his particular climate? Does the

Bavarian take to beer as the bee to honey? Does instinct or appetite in

general shape itself to climate and other outward circumstances? This is

but partly true. As Nature has distributed noxious vegetable and animal

substances through land and sea, which must be avoided, so man may not

pitch or pour indiscriminately into his stomach whatever substance may

be cooked or liquid distilled and offered to him, and we are thrown back

upon the direct test of their innocent or noxious properties, with full

responsibility of action; but still I have a profound conviction that

all such general production of the chief articles of food and drink has

its origin in some deeply felt necessity of human nature in their

particular localities;--the people may be on the wrong track in their

attempts to provide for such necessities, but that these are felt and

are the stimulus to the production is beyond doubt.

Allowing for the changes wrought by time and cultivation, we can still

perceive the truth of what Tacitus wrote of Germany almost two thousand

years ago:--"The land, though somewhat varied in aspect, is in the main

deformed with dismal forests and foul marshes. The part next to Gaul is

wetter, and that next to Pannonia and Noricum higher and more windy. It

is sufficiently productive, but not adapted to fruit-trees." The whole

country lies in a high latitude,--Munich, though in the southern part,

being forty-eight degrees North. No large city on the continent lies at

such an elevation,--about eighteen hundred feet above the level of the

Adriatic. In the midst of a vast plain, it is exposed to all winds. Its

site and the surrounding country are a great gravel-bed, hundreds of

feet thick, a deposit from the Alps, spurs of which are within thirty

miles on the south, subjecting the whole region to sudden changes of

weather ranging in a few hours through many degrees of Fahrenheit. The

air is raw and chilly, and although many parts of Germany have since the

days of Tacitus developed an adaptation to the vine and other fruits,

none flourish in the neighborhood of Munich. The whole country suffers

from deficiency of nourishing and stimulating food. They may not

themselves know it, but this is true of the peasants who are best to do

in the world. Of the peasantry of Upper Bavaria, some have meat five

times in the year, on their chief holidays,--namely, Shrove Tuesday,

Easter, Whitsuntide, Church-Consecration, and Christmas; some have it on

but two of these days, and some only at Christmas. The exceptions may be

many, and the large cities are quite exceptional, but the change is of

late introduction. When people must labor upon such a diet, they feel

the lack of something; but the Bavarians have been too long in this case

to think of crying, like Israel of old in the wilderness, after having

left the abundance of Egypt, "Who shall give us flesh to eat?"--they

attempt rather to allay the gnawings at their stomachs by potations of

beer, and the appetite grows by what it feeds on.

It is plausibly maintained that the climate of this particular locality

creates an actual necessity for the use of this beverage. Often, during

the earlier part of my residence there, I was besought by friends, with

manifestation of deepest concern, to use beer instead of water, with the

remark that the climate made this a necessary measure of security

against the prevalent typhus and typhoid fevers: a conviction which

seems to be deeply seated in the minds of the people.

Aside from all this, there is an almost total want of the pleasant

beverages used in our families. Tea is as good as unknown in Old

Bavaria, its use being confined to those who have been in England, or

have learned it of the English, and not one woman in twenty thousand can

prepare it. Let the word _tea_ be erased from our vocabulary, and from

our minds all the cheerful associations which it awakens, and there

passes from our hearts none can tell how much of that which we most

fondly cherish there,--the family of both sexes, and occasionally some

neighbors and friends, seated around the table,--the gently stimulating

narcotic diffusing a charm over the whole social being, and

communicating itself to the vocal machinery. Fanatical reformers have

proclaimed its injurious effects; and it may have such; but they are a

thousand times compensated by its value as a bond of union to the

elements of the domestic circle. The tea-table has been the butt of many

a jest and sarcasm, as a fountain of gossip and slander. This may be

true; but the security it furnishes against the dissipation of the

elements of the social circle outweighs thousands of such trifles, and

we half suspect that this objection was originated, and is mischievously

propagated, by those who are already developing a love for other

beverages. If Cowper, with the "sofa" assigned as his subject, could

sing so beautifully of all things social and domestic, what might he

not have done with the tea-table--the rallying-point of social life to

so many who never had a sofa--for his theme?

From the general use of coffee in the cities and large towns of Germany,

we have inferred its general use by the peasantry; but even this is

quite limited, in Upper Bavaria at least; it is found only where the

influence of city-life has penetrated. Sometimes a peasant woman has a

little hid in her chest, from which she stealthily prepares and drinks a

cup when her husband is away; but it is little used. This article was

brought into Western Europe in the seventeenth century, and found beer

in possession of Germany. The monks are said to have preached against

the use of coffee, as anticipating, by the dense black smoke which arose

from burning it, the "fumes of hell." It came from Turkey, and at that

day the Turk was still the hereditary dread of all the peoples on the

middle and upper Danube. He was next thing to the Devil; and what came

direct from the former could be but recent from the latter.

Their beloved beer could not be traced so directly to an origin in the

nether world. The German tribes, as far back as history or tradition

reports them, seem to have loved this quieting beverage. Traces of their

coming together as now for banqueting purposes, under the shade of

Germany's primeval forests, are still found in history and historical

traditions. There is one fact which Americans, so accustomed to rapid

transformations of society by migration, immigration, and intermixture

of races, can scarcely comprehend, even when they know it as a fact: it

is the persistency with which national traits adhere to a people in an

old country, through generations and decades of generations and of

centuries, withstanding the shock of revolution both in government and

religion. Tacitus says of these people:--"At meals, they sit every man

upon a seat by himself and at a separate table. Arising, they proceed

armed to their business; and they go armed also to their banquets. _It

is no reproach to them to continue day and night drinking. Their drink

is fermented from barley or wheat into a certain resemblance of wine_.

Their food is simple,--wild fruits, fresh game, or coagulated milk. They

satisfy hunger without formality and without delicacies. _In regard to

thirst they do not exercise this moderation_. Indulge their appetites by

giving them all they desire, and you may conquer them by their vices not

less easily than by arms."

Viewing, then, these people of Upper Bavaria, and of Munich in

particular, in their cold, raw air,--in their supposed exposure to

typhus and typhoid fevers,--deficiency of good food,--the want of the

domestic circle as cemented in our country over other beverages,--the

national abstemiousness in regard to food, and the addictedness to beer

for thousands of years past,--and we have a somewhat rational

explanation of the springing-up and development into such monstrous

proportions of the manufacture and consumption of this article. Of the

many it may be said,--

"They drink their simple beverage with a gust,

And feast upon an onion and a crust."

Bavaria, not including the Rhenish Palatinate, uses over six million

bushels of barley, and upwards of seven million pounds of hops,

annually, in its breweries, making over eight million eimers, that is,

about five million barrels of beer. But nearly half the kingdom is

wine-growing, and uses comparatively little beer; so that this is mainly

consumed in the other half, that is, by about three millions of people.

At an average price of three and a half cents per quart, there is

consumed in the kingdom fifty million florins, or over twenty million

dollars, annually, in this beverage. Both manufacture and consumption

have their head-quarters in Munich. The quantity manufactured in this

city alone in 1856-7 was nine hundred and fifty thousand eimers, or

about five hundred and seventy thousand barrels, being nearly five

barrels a head for the whole population, men, women, and children.

Allowing for the amount exported, or sent out of the city, there remains

something like four barrels to each person. This is one quart, or four

of our common table-glasses, per day. But some drink none, others

little; a man is scarcely reckoned with real beer-drinkers until he

drinks six masses,--twenty-four of our common tumblers; ten masses are

not uncommon; twenty to thirty masses--eighty to one hundred and twenty

of our dinner-glasses--are drunk by some, and on a wager even much more.

The sick man whose physician prescribed for him a quart of herb-tea as

the only thing that would save him, and who replied that he was gone,

then, for he held but a _pint_, was no Bavarian; for the most modest

Bavarian girl would not feel alarmed in regard to her capacity, if

ordered to drink a gallon,--certainly not, if the liquid were beer.

The aggregate labor performed in this branch of popular industry is thus

seen at a glance. But how is this done, and by whom? What is the noise

or noiselessness with which such torrents of this foaming liquid rush

daily through the channels of human bodies made originally too small to

admit half the quantity? What are the final results upon body, mind, and

heart of the present and future of the race? Does government encourage,

stimulate, control, and turn to account this national appetite? These

questions invite, and will well repay, a few moments' attention.

I once heard a college student announce as the text of his oration

Lindley Murray's well-known definition of the verb,--a word which

signifies "to be, to do, or to suffer"; and he followed up his

announcement by a most beautiful and conclusive argument to show that

this definition describes with equal accuracy three classes of men into

which the whole world may be divided: a class who have no purpose in

life but simply "to be"; an active class, whose mission is "to do," to

which they bend all their energies; and a passive class, who merely

"suffer" themselves to be employed as the tools of the men of action.

Whether he would have modified his statement, had he known something of

Bavarian beer-drinkers, I do not know; for, although these belong,

doubtless, in general, to the class of men which he designated as having

no purpose but simply "to be," yet they certainly have a decided

preference as to the means of their being, which must be beer; they have

activity enough to get where this can be obtained, and to handle the

needed quantity; and the man who holds and bears about fifteen or twenty

quarts a day must have no small share of the grace of passive endurance.

There is a class of the nobility too poor to treat themselves with the

diversions of court-life, and with notions of noble birth which forbid

them to engage in business, especially as they would thereby forfeit

their rank. They fund their small means, so as to yield them a stated

income; and in spending this and their time, they fall into a round

which brings them three or four times a day to some place where beer is

to be found, and with it a billiard-table and a reading-room. This class

does not, perhaps, embrace a very large number of the nobility, but it

is largely reinforced from others, whose small means are similarly

invested, and whose whole time is on their hands for disposal. The class

of men engaged in business, and pursuing it somewhat actively, give less

attention to beer during the day. They take a couple of glasses--four of

our common tumblers--at dinner, and perhaps send out a servant

occasionally during the day to replenish a pitcher for the

counter,--not, however, to treat customers, as used to be done in our

country; but as beer had been all day secondary to business, the latter

is dropped for the evening, and the undivided attention bestowed upon

the national beverage. A large portion of the poor, and many who cannot

be called poor, have not the means for this indulgence; and yet men and

women are seldom seen at their work without a mug of beer standing near

them. Ladies have the same provision in their families, as also

students, and all who occupy rented rooms in connection with the

families of the city; from ten to one o'clock servant-girls, with

pitchers in their hands and immense bunches of keys hanging to their

apron-strings, are seen running to and from the neighboring beer-houses

thick as butterflies floating in a summer sun, and seem far more as if

on business requiring haste. No room is sought for renting without an

inquiry as to the quality of the beer of the neighborhood; and the

landlady feels that her chances for a tenant are exceedingly slim, if

she cannot furnish a satisfactory recommendation in this respect.

Scarcely a house in the city is thirty steps from where the article can

be had. The places fitted up with seats and tables for drinking

accommodate from twenty to five hundred persons, and even one thousand

or more in summer, when a garden is generally prepared with seats for

the purpose. At these larger places, music is often provided, and ladies

are frequently found lending the charm and solace of their presence, and

sometimes a good deal more, to the other sex, in this self-denying work,

in which the men have generally been the great burden-bearers. But the

greatest crowds of real beer-drinkers go to another class of

houses,--that is, the breweries themselves, where rooms are always

fitted up for drinking. Of these the Court Brewery is perhaps in highest

repute, and is at least a great curiosity. I visited it three or four

times during a six years' residence in the city, and always in company

with others who wished to see the lions of the place, and for the same

reason that would have taken us to see a menagerie. Why did the monks

never think of applying to such places the figure by which they

protested against the introduction of coffee, "the fumes of hell"? The

smoke of five hundred cigars or pipes rising to a ceiling which had been

thus smoked for centuries,--the hoarse hum of five hundred voices

uttering the German gutturals from tongues thickened by the use of beer,

and floating heavily through an atmosphere of densest smoke, dimming the

lights and turning all into an indefinite and uniform brown color,--this

may indeed be a picture of Elysium to some minds, but to ours it is not.

I never found a vacant seat there, nor felt a desire to occupy one, had

there been such. Stone mugs of double the size of the common glasses are

used, perhaps to save servants' labor in drawing, which is no small

matter, as a barrel of beer lasts not more than ten minutes at the

height of the drinking-time of the evening.

None of the drinking-places in the city are filled until evening. In the

afternoon many take their walks into the suburbs, and turn aside where a

glass may be had. On all holidays the whole city is adrift, much of it

in the surrounding country, and most of this drift lodges against the

suburban beer-houses. In summer evenings there are frequent

entertainments, some provided by the government,--as one every Saturday

evening from six to seven o'clock, from May to November, a mile from the

city, in the English Garden, where sometimes two thousand persons may be

in attendance, to hear the royal bands play. It is presumed that there

will always be a considerable number among these who will not be able to

stand it an hour without beer, and a beneficent provision is made for

such,--seats and tables for at least five hundred persons being there

provided, and often filled, so that some must drink standing.

The regularity with which the men of Munich bring themselves around to

the same place at about the same time of day, especially if that place

is a beer-house, is remarkable,--indeed, amusing. A gentleman residing

in Berlin, where this everlasting beer-drinking does not prevail,

mentioned to me, as one of the most ludicrous occurrences of his life,

an invitation which he once received to visit a Munich professor whose

acquaintance he had made in Berlin. The professor told him, that, in

case he should arrive in Munich after a certain hour of the day, he must

go directly to the Court Brewery, and would find him there. We do

indeed regard this as the consummation of the ridiculous; but to this

bachelor professor it was the most natural thing in the world. He might

change his lodgings half a dozen times in a year, and so might not be

readily found; but the Court Brewery would remain from generation to

generation, and while he lived he expected regularly to appear there,

and there, of course, was the only place where he could make

appointments for years to come.

This incident will intimate what an external view of this dark brown

mass of humanity would never have hinted,--that it contains men of

learning and parts. Could one go round and listen to each party by

itself, instead of hearing the low rumble which falls upon the ears of

the general observer, the profoundest problems of philosophy,

statesmanship, philology, geography, ethnography, and history would be

found undergoing the most searching examination. Fame says of _our_

politicians who rise to positions which ought to be occupied only by

statesmen, that they frequent low places and mingle with the boisterous

crowd. This is probably not a slander. But these men frequent such

places only for a purpose. Their tastes do not lead them thither. They

go no oftener than serves their purpose. Not so with the learned German

beer-drinker. He is in his own proper society. Chinese or Sanscrit,

Arabic or Coptic, the last discoveries in the interior of Africa or

about the North Pole, or the more recondite regions of chemistry or

mineralogy, may be the theme of a familiar discourse, which each of the

party may fully appreciate.

To these places, of course, only the men resort. Indeed, in this part of

Germany there is little of family-life. The members of the family take

their coffee separately, as each rises and is ready. The men quite

generally dine and sup away from home, and that, too, when their

business and their residence are in the same house, and the hotel or

eating-house is at a distance. An English gentleman told me of a German

friend of his who appeared in his seat in the beer-house on the evening

of his wedding-day; and to the suggestion that this was not quite right

to the newly married wife, he replied that it did indeed seem so, but he

thought it better not to encourage hopes destined to disappointment.

This may, too, have been one of those numerous instances in which the

parties had already spent many evenings together in such a way as to

have diminished the interest of both in each other's society on the

first evening of married life. A genuine Munich man would never be

embarrassed like the Parisian, of whom the well-known story is told,

that, having been accustomed to spend all his evenings in the

drawing-room of a certain lady, he was advised, on the death of her

husband, to marry her, and promptly replied with the question, "_Where,

then, should I spend my evenings?_" A true South-Bavarian's plan of

spending his evenings is not affected by the trifling event of his

marriage.

Indeed, there is an aspect of this virtual dissolution of family-life

which has great interest as connected with German erudition. The English

or American scholar, whose social hours are mainly spent with his

family, or in the mixed society of the sexes, would never think of

introducing the subjects of his study into such circles, and hence is

without the best means of familiarizing his mind with the very topics to

which all his hours of close application are devoted; for no subject is

fully understood and reduced to material for ready use until it has been

in some form the theme of frequent familiar discourse. It is thus turned

over,--looked at on every side,--the views of men of different tastes,

studies, and orders of mind, who have not disqualified themselves for

this by being curled into the same nutshell, are called forth,--and the

sparks thus elicited catch on other tinder, which had not been touched

by those struck out in solitary study. It is thus that the thoughts of

the learned are familiarized, and their area extended. It is thus that

subjects which sit upon us as holiday-clothes are, in a society of

German _literati_, who are together every day at dinner, or over their

coffee after dinner, and every evening over their beer, become to them

as their every-day clothing. I am not of those who deem this result well

purchased at the price of the refining influence of the other sex, and

the virtual breaking-up of family-life; but if some middle way could be

hit upon to secure the two advantages at once, both science and society

would be great gainers.

The government has regulated the manufacture of beer, and collected an

income-tax upon it, for centuries past; and this is even now one of its

most puzzling problems. It determines the price, both wholesale and

retail, at which the beer may be sold. The calculations are based upon

an estimate of the medium amount of fixed capital necessary for the

manufacture, then the labor, then the average price of barley and hops

at the October and November markets of each year; every item which

enters into the manufacture, including interest at five per cent on

capital, enters also into the government's calculation by which it

determines its tax and the price of beer. The price is never increased

or diminished by less than half a kreutzer, or two pfennigs, that is,

one-third of a cent, per mass. The fractional parts of this

half-kreutzer which may appear in the calculation are divided by a fixed

rule between the public and the brewer: that is, when the fraction is

one-fourth of a kreutzer, or less, the brewer must drop it for the

public benefit; when more, he may call it a half for his own benefit.

The government tax is nearly one kreutzer per mass, making about six

millions of florins. There is also in several places an additional local

beer-tax, amounting to nearly two million florins more. The population

of the kingdom is about five millions. A considerable portion of this

population are wine-growing, and manufacture and drink but little beer.

Ledlmayr, the largest brewer in Munich, made in the year 1856--the

latest statistics published--one hundred and twenty-nine thousand

eimers. Allowing three hundred working-days to the year, this would be

four hundred and thirty eimers, or twenty-seven thousand five hundred

and twenty masses, per day, and would pay to the government, at one

kreutzer per mass, one hundred and eighty dollars of our money for each

of these working-days, or fifty-four thousand dollars yearly. In a time

of popular sensitiveness, there is nothing which the government could do

that would be so likely to be followed by a revolutionary outbreak as to

add a kreutzer to the price of the mass or quart of beer. This article

is ranked in all police-regulations among the necessaries of life. The

bakeries and beer-houses must remain open at those holiday-hours when

all other shopkeepers, except the apothecaries, must close their shops.

The statistics already given have reference to the common beer; but,

besides this, the brewers have permission to brew for certain short

periods what are called the double beers, without paying a tax upon

them. My statistics of the beer-drinking will, therefore, fall short of

the truth, at least by this uncertain quantity. During the brief periods

of the sale of the double beers, there is a great rush for them,

relieving somewhat the monotony of the ordinary routine. The two

principal kinds of double beer are the Bock-beer and the Salvator-beer.

The latter creates quite a furor. Many, led by curiosity to the

head-quarters of its sale, find their amusement there in testing the

capacity of some great beer-drinker,--and such are always on hand

waiting the chance,--by paying for all he will drink. These curious

visitors seldom return without a similar test of their own capacities;

and as the article has double the alcohol of the common beer, many a one

staggers a little on his homeward way who had never felt such effect

from the common form of the beverage.

There is also no small amount of wine drunk in Munich. I have not the

statistics, but the number of large houses with the sign,

"Weinhandlung," and of the smaller ones with the sign, "Weinschenck,"

and then the fact that at all the large hotels wine is mainly drunk at

dinner, furnish my data for this conclusion. In the wine-growing

districts of Bavaria beer-drinking is reduced to about one-fourth of the

Munich standard, and so we may suppose that the removal of all wine from

the capital might add one-fourth to the beer-drinking as given

above,--at least, it takes the place of one-fourth of that which would

be the aggregate of the beer-drinking.

The government has a commission for the examination of the quality of

the beer; and, indeed, aside from this, the popular taste is not a bad

test in this respect. There is an error in the lines of Prior,--

"When you with High-Dutch Herren dine,

Expect false Latin and stummed wine:

They never taste who always drink;

They always talk who never think."[C]

The most common manifestation of Bavarian beer-drinking is a perpetual

tasting, and not a pouring-down of the liquid a glass at a time. These

people seem to have the art of doing this thing so gradually and quietly

that the soothing liquor passes gently into the circulation, and

produces an effect very different from that which would result from

swallowing it a glass at a draught, enabling them to drink without

visible effect a much larger quantity in the aggregate. They practise

upon the proverb, "The still sow drinks the swill,"--a proverb which

would serve admirably the purpose of those who desire to join in the

general sarcasm expended upon Bavarian beer-drinking, since almost every

word in it seems to express so exactly some characteristic which North

Germans and others are disposed to attribute to Bavarians.

Reference was made above to the government's regulating the price of

beer. The margin allowed between the wholesale and retail price is half

a kreutzer on the mass,--that is, one-fourth of a kreutzer or one-sixth

of a cent on the glass. What a blessing, if the retail liquor-trade in

our country were reduced to such a scale of profit! This would bring

less than two dollars on one thousand glasses. The work would have to be

turned over to benevolence for its prosecution, and would doubtless be

done much more to the advantage of the community. The profit, however,

on this trade in Bavaria is somewhat increased by the manner in which

servants are paid. Especially if good-looking girls are employed, the

employer may pay them nothing, but leave them to get their pay from the

customer. They bring him his change in kreutzers and fractions of a

kreutzer, and he shoves back to them often these fractional parts; and

if no such are there, a truly liberal soul may give the girl a whole

kreutzer, and then in return he will receive an expression of thanks

somewhat stronger than our lordly porters would allow themselves to make

for half a dollar on which they had no claim. Small as this profit is,

it brings to the retailers of Munich about five hundred thousand

florins, somewhat more than two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in

gold per annum. Then, if the servants receive from the customers

gratuities of half that amount, that is, an average of one-twelfth of a

cent on the glass, this amounts to two hundred and fifty thousand

florins per annum. In view of all these facts, it can be conceived that

nothing would be so certain to be followed by a revolutionary outbreak

as the addition of a kreutzer to the price of a mass of beer.

The wit which sparkles and flashes in a Bavarian beer-house may be as

much less boisterous, or rather as much more quiet, than that which

explodes over the distilled spirits of our bar-rooms, as the stimulant

itself is less exciting, but is for this very reason the more genuine.

Like the myriads of fire-flies on a warm summer evening amid the rising

fog of a marshy ground, so gleams this wit in its smoky atmosphere;

still it is there, notwithstanding the popular notion of Bavarian

stupidity. The North German, and even English and American satirists of

these people, fare generally much as did Ulysses's men on drinking of

Circe's magic cup; and once turned into swine, they are seldom turned

back again, at least until they leave the charmed spot. When once drawn

into the vortex of students' convivial gatherings, they feel that there

is no escape without flying from the place.

A drinking frolic, involving Americans, once called in my aid to settle

a great international difficulty--that is, one about as threatening as

most of those diplomatic cases flaunted so often in our

newspapers--between the United States and Bavarian governments. Two

American art-students had taken a room at Nymphenburg, a little village

in the vicinity of Munich, the site of a royal _château_, which in

summer is always occupied by a royal prince. There the great Napoleon

lodged, when he visited the Bavarian capital. There the present king was

born. There, at the time to which I refer, the king's youngest brother,

Adalbert,--who would have succeeded Otho on the throne of Greece, if the

Greeks had not otherwise determined,--was residing in the palace, and a

company of cuirassiers was stationed in the town. The two students were

visited on a Sunday evening by three or four more Americans, and one

English and two Bavarian friends. The usual beer-guzzling prevailed;

some exciting topic was up, and each must have his glass empty when the

time for refilling was announced. One of the Americans felt his capacity

not quite equal to the demands made upon it. The shift often resorted to

in such a trying situation is quietly to empty the glass under the table

or out of a window, if this can be done without observation,--and most

young men are not very observing at such times. Under the window,

outside, sat a party of the cuirassiers drinking, about a dozen of whom

made a sudden irruption into that bacchanal chamber, and, with little

explanation, proceeded to clear it of its tenants and guests, knocking

down, beating, and pitching them headlong down-stairs, until the work

was done. There were sundry flesh-bruises inflicted, some small

blood-vessels lying near the surface tapped, one collar-bone fractured,

a wrist sprained, garments torn off or left hanging in shreds; and

rarely has the darkness of a summer evening concealed a more ludicrous

spectacle than that of these dispersed beer-bacchanalians, each running

on his own account, hatless or coatless, as he happened to have been

left by some stout cuirassier into whose hands he had fallen. The next

day, a deputation of the injured company and their friends came to me,

desiring that redress might be demanded of the Bavarian government. They

stated their case both verbally and in writing. They were conscious of

no offence. If the assailants gave any reason for their assault, it was

not understood. Most of the young men knew but little German, and

perhaps just then less than usual of that or any other language. The

supposition was, that the rough treatment grew out of the cuirassiers'

jealousy that they were not so well served by the waiting-maids as the

American company and their guests. One, however, stated the unimportant

incident, that the coat of the man who handled him so carelessly seemed

to be very wet. One of the Americans who had been present on this

occasion did not present himself until sent for several days afterwards.

He had observed an incident seen by no other,--one of which the

performer, himself as honest a young man as ever lived, was utterly

unconscious,--_the pouring of a glass of beer from the window_. The beer

did as little harm on the cuirassiers' coats as it would have done in

the American's stomach, and was at least the incidental means of

bringing the whole scene to an abrupt end. The government was inclined

to do us justice, but very naturally thought that the drenching of its

cuirassiers might be pleaded in abatement of the insult to our national

dignity; and so a nominal punishment of the offenders finally settled

the question.

If asked whether inebriation and its accompaniments are as marked under

the reign of beer as under that of the more fiery fluids used among us,

I should feel bound to reply negatively. The common Bavarian beer has

but about half the strength of the average malt liquors of our country,

and seldom produces real intoxication except upon novices. It may

stupefy, though this is by no means observable in the mental action of

learned Bavarians. The charge of dulness, so sarcastically made against

them, could be retorted with about as much show of reason against

Prussians, Hanoverians, Saxons, or, indeed, any other people. The

students, after their _Kneips_, have what they call

_Katzenjammer_,--cat-sickness,--the effect of debauch, loss of rest, and

general irregularities; and those who do most of the beer-drinking do

least of the studying. I should, indeed, fear fatal effects from

drinking half the quantity of water which some of them take of beer. The

drunkenness produced by beer is at least a very different thing from

that produced by distilled spirits. The one may be a stupor, the other

is a brief and sudden insanity. Beer holds no one captive by such spell

as that which seizes some natures on the first taste of ardent spirits,

throwing them beyond their own control until their week's frolic is

ended. The cases are rare, if they ever occur, in which the beer-drinker

is enticed from the prosecution of his business, if he has one,--and

beer furnishes the main substitute for business to those who have no

other employment. If it causes men to pursue their avocations lazily or

stupidly, it does not cause the irregularities and neglects of American

inebriation. Cases of pawning clothes and impoverishing families from

the appetite for beer may occur, just as from laziness, but not as from

the bewitching appetite for ardent spirits.

The practice of Americans in Bavaria, even of those who never drink a

drop of beer at home, is, so far as I know, to drink a little while in

the country, acting from a supposed necessity in that climate, or

impelled by the want of other beverages. Physicians advise it, and I

suppose that American physicians would do the same in the case of their

countrymen temporarily residing there. In my own family, it was taken

every day at dinner as a kind of prescription, and the children were

disciplined to drink their little glass daily with rather less urging

than would have been necessary, had the dose been castor-oil; and they

always felt that they deserved an expression of approbation as being

"good children," if they drank their entire portion. Our taste for beer

never increased, but rather the contrary; and should I again reside in

that country, notwithstanding the general impression that its use is a

kind of necessity, as a security against the fevers incident to the

climate, I should feel just as secure without a drop. My little boy,

born in Bavaria, and but four years old when we left the kingdom, liked

the beer better than the other children, and so gave some support to the

theory that the Bavarians take to beer by instinct. He shared, too, in

the patriotic doubt of the people as to the possibility of successfully

imitating the article in other countries. When, on our journey homeward,

the train brought us into the little city of Koethen, we found evidence

of one of those attempts so unsuccessfully made everywhere in North

Germany to imitate the Bavarian beer. A man passed along by the train,

crying at the top of his voice, "_Baierisches bier!_" upon which the

little fellow, in the height of his indignation, cried out,

"_Baierisches Bier nicht!_"--("Not Bavarian beer!")--and so the cry and

response continued until the parties were out of each other's hearing,

and all the passengers in the train had their attention called, and

their main amusement furnished, by this childish outburst of patriotic

indignation. At this point, my life, observation, and adventures in

connection with Bavarian beer ceased, and almost the last echo of its

magic name in the original tongue died on my ears. That the results may

not be lost and forgotten, I now commit them to paper and to the

public.

* * * * *

FRIAR JEROME'S BEAUTIFUL BOOK.

The Friar Jerome, for some slight sin,

Done in his youth, was struck with woe.

"When I am dead," quoth Friar Jerome,

"Surely, I think my soul will go

Shuddering through the darkened spheres,

Down to eternal fires below!

I shall not dare from that dread place

To lift mine eyes to Jesus' face,

Nor Mary's, as she sits adored

At the feet of Christ the Lord.

Alas! December's all too brief

For me to hope to wipe away

The memory of my sinful May!"

And Friar Jerome was full of grief,

That April evening, as he lay

On the straw pallet in his cell.

He scarcely heard the curfew-bell

Calling the brotherhood to prayer;

But he arose, for't was his care

Nightly to feed the hungry poor

That crowded to the Convent-door.

His choicest duty it had been:

But this one night it weighed him down.

"What work for an immortal soul,

To feed and clothe some lazy clown!

Is there no action worth my mood,

No deed of daring, high and pure,

That shall, when I am dead, endure,

A well-spring of perpetual good?"

And straight he thought of those great tomes

With clamps of gold,--the Convent's boast,--

How they endured, while kings and realms

Passed into darkness and were lost;

How they had stood from age to age,

Clad in their yellow vellum-mail,

'Gainst which the Paynim's godless rage,

The Vandal's fire could nought avail:

Though heathen sword-blows fell like hail,

Though cities ran with Christian blood,

Imperishable they had stood!

They did not seem like books to him,

But Heroes, Martyrs, Saints,--themselves

The things they told of, not mere books

Ranged grimly on the oaken shelves.

To those dim alcoves, far withdrawn,

He turned with measured steps and slow,

Trimming his lantern as he went;

And there, among the shadows, bent

Above one ponderous folio,

With whose miraculous text were blent

Seraphic faces: Angels, crowned

With rings of melting amethyst;

Mute, patient Martyrs, cruelly bound

To blazing fagots; here and there,

Some bold, serene Evangelist,

Or Mary in her sunny hair:

And here and there from out the words

A brilliant tropic bird took flight;

And through the margins many a vine

Went wandering--roses, red and white,

Tulip, wind-flower, and columbine

Blossomed. To his believing mind

These things were real, and the soft wind,

Blown through the mullioned window, took

Scent from the lilies in the book.

"Santa Maria!" cried Friar Jerome,

"Whatever man illumined this,

Though he were steeped heart-deep in sin,

Was worthy of unending bliss,

And no doubt hath it! Ah! dear Lord,

Might I so beautify Thy Word!

What sacristan, the convents through,

Transcribes with such precision? who

Does such initials as I do?

Lo! I will gird me to this work,

And save me, ere the one chance slips.

On smooth, clean parchment I'll engross

The Prophet's fell Apocalypse;

And as I write from day to day,

Perchance my sins will pass away."

So Friar Jerome began his Book.

From break of dawn till curfew-chime

He bent above the lengthening page,

Like some rapt poet o'er his rhyme.

He scarcely paused to tell his beads,

Except at night; and then he lay

And tossed, unrestful, on the straw,

Impatient for the coming day,--

Working like one who feels, perchance,

That, ere the longed-for goal be won,

Ere Beauty bare her perfect breast,

Black Death may pluck him from the sun.

At intervals the busy brook,

Turning the mill-wheel, caught his ear;

And through the grating of the cell

He saw the honeysuckles peer;

And knew't was summer, that the sheep

In golden pastures lay asleep;

And felt, that, somehow, God was near.

In his green pulpit on the elm,

The robin, abbot of that wood,

Held forth by times; and Friar Jerome

Listened, and smiled, and understood.

While summer wrapped the blissful land,

What joy it was to labor so,

To see the long-tressed Angels grow

Beneath the cunning of his hand,

Vignette and tail-piece deftly wrought!

And little recked he of the poor

That missed him at the Convent-door;

Or, thinking of them, put the thought

Aside. "I feed the souls of men

Henceforth, and not their bodies!"--yet

Their sharp, pinched features, now and then,

Stole in between him and his Book,

And filled him with a vague regret.

Now on that region fell a blight:

The corn grew cankered in its sheath;

And from the verdurous uplands rolled

A sultry vapor fraught with death,--

A poisonous mist, that, like a pall,

Hung black and stagnant over all.

Then came the sickness,--the malign

Green-spotted terror, called the Pest,

That took the light from loving eyes,

And made the young bride's gentle breast

A fatal pillow. Ah! the woe,

The crime, the madness that befell!

In one short night that vale became

More foul than Dante's inmost hell.

Men cursed their wives; and mothers left

Their nursing babes alone to die,

And wantoned, singing, through the streets,

With shameless brow and frenzied eye;

And senseless clowns, not fearing God,--

Such power the spotted fever had,--

Razed Cragwood Castle on the hill,

Pillaged the wine-bins, and went mad.

And evermore that dreadful pall

Of mist hung stagnant over all:

By day, a sickly light broke through

The heated fog, on town and field;

By night the moon, in anger, turned

Against the earth its mottled shield.

Then from the Convent, two and two,

The Prior chanting at their head,

The monks went forth to shrive the sick,

And give the hungry grave its dead,--

Only Jerome, he went not forth,

But hiding in his dusty nook,

"Let come what will, I must illume

The last ten pages of my Book!"

He drew his stool before the desk,

And sat him down, distraught and wan,

To paint his darling masterpiece,

The stately figure of Saint John.

He sketched the head with pious care,

Laid in the tint, when, powers of Grace!

He found a grinning Death's-head there,

And not the grand Apostle's face!

Then up he rose with one long cry:

"'Tis Satan's self does this," cried he,

"Because I shut and barred my heart

When Thou didst loudest call to me!

O Lord, Thou know'st the thoughts of men,

Thou know'st that I did yearn to make

Thy Word more lovely to the eyes

Of sinful souls, for Christ his sake!

Nathless, I leave the task undone:

I give up all to follow Thee,--

Even like him who gave his nets

To winds and waves by Galilee!"

Which said, he closed the precious Book

In silence with a reverent hand;

And, drawing his cowl about his face,

Went forth into the Stricken Land.

And there was joy in heaven that day,--

More joy o'er that forlorn old friar

Than over fifty sinless men

Who never struggled with desire!

What deeds he did in that dark town,

What hearts he soothed with anguish torn,

What weary ways of woe he trod,

Are written in the Book of God,

And shall be read at Judgment-Morn.

The weeks crept on, when, one still day,

God's awful presence filled the sky,

And that black vapor floated by,

And, lo! the sickness passed away.

With silvery clang, by thorp and town,

The bells made merry in their spires,

Men kissed each other on the street,

And music piped to dancing feet

The livelong night, by roaring fires!

Then Friar Jerome, a wasted shape,--.

For he had taken the Plague at last,--

Rose up, and through the happy town,

And through the wintry woodlands passed

Into the Convent. What a gloom

Sat brooding in each desolate room!

What silence in the corridor!

For of that long, innumerous train

Which issued forth a month before,

Scarce twenty had come back again!

Counting his rosary step by step,

With a forlorn and vacant air,

Like some unshriven church-yard thing,

The Friar crawled up the mouldy stair

To his damp cell, that he might look

Once more on his beloved Book.

And there it lay upon the stand,

Open!--he had not left it so.

He grasped it, with a cry; for, lo!

He saw that some angelic hand,

While he was gone, had finished it!

There't was complete, as he had planned!

There, at the end, stood _finis_, writ

And gilded as no man could do,--

Not even that pious anchoret,

Bilfrid, the wonderful,--nor yet

The miniatore Ethelwold,--

Nor Durham's Bishop, who of old

(England still hoards the priceless leaves)

Did the Four Gospels all in gold.

And Friar Jerome nor spoke nor stirred,

But, with his eyes fixed on that word,

He passed from sin and want and scorn;

And suddenly the chapel-bells

Rang in the holy Christmas-Morn!

In those wild wars which racked the land,

Since then, and kingdoms rent in twain.

The Friar's Beautiful Book was lost,--

That miracle of hand and brain:

Yet, though its leaves were torn and tossed,

The volume was not writ in vain!

* * * * *

LITERARY LIFE IN PARIS.

THE DRAWING-ROOM.

PART I.

We are no "lion-hunters." When we wish to learn something of eminent

authors, we hasten to the nearest book-shop and buy their works. They

put the best of themselves in their books. The old saw tells us how

completely all great men give the best part of themselves to the public,

while the _valet-de-chambre_ picks up little else than food for

contempt. Nevertheless, we are as inquisitive about everything that

concerns eminent people as anybody can be. We would not blot a single

line from Boswell. We protest against a word being effaced from the

garrulous pages of Lady Blessington and Leigh Hunt. We "hang" the stars

with which Earl Russell has _milky-wayed_ Moore's Diary. But we are no

"lion-hunters," (the name should be "lion-harriers,") simply because

this chase is not the best way to take the game we desire. What does the

lion-hunter secure? A commonplace observation upon the weather, an

adroit or awkward parry of flattery, and some superficial compliment

upon one's native place or present residence; for a great man at bay is

nothing more nor less than a casual acquaintance extremely on his guard,

and, commonly, extremely fatigued by admirers. True, one obtains an

acquaintance with the great man's voice, and the hearth where he lives,

and the right to boast with truth, "I have seen him." _Voilà tout!_ Now

this is not what we want. We desire some good, clear, faithful account

of these people, as they are, when they talk freely and easily to their

contemporaries, to their peers. Boswell's picture of the Literary Club

is invaluable, although, with the insatiable curiosity of the nineteenth

century, we regret that the prince of reporters failed to sketch the

persons and peculiarities of the _dramatis personæ_ whose conversations

he has so faithfully recorded.

We wish to go behind the scenes, and to hear the conversation engaged in

in the green-room. We expect to see some dirt, some grease-pots, stained

ropes, and unpainted pulleys,--and, to tell the truth, we want to see

these blemishes. They are encouraging. They lessen the distance between

us and it by teaching us that even fairy-land knows no exemption from

those imperfections which blur our purest natures.

A work has lately appeared in Europe which in some measure gratifies

this desire. It exhibits in full light a good many scenes of literary

life in Paris. They may be and probably are exaggerated, but

exaggerations do not mar truth; if they did, we should be obliged to

throw away the microscope, with nativities and divining-rods. We are

tempted to give our readers a share of the pleasure we have found in

perusing this picture of Paris life. We forewarn them that we have taken

liberties innumerable with the book. We have compressed into these few

leaves a volume of several hundred pages. We have discarded all the

machinery of the author, and introduced him personally to the reader in

the character of an autobiographer. We have not scrupled to make

explanations and additions wherever we thought them necessary, without

resorting to the artifice of notes or of quotation-marks. We repeat,

that we have taken a great many liberties with the author; but we have

made no statement, advanced no fact, indulged no reflection, which is

not to be found in the work referred to, or in some trustworthy

authority. And now we leave him the door without another observation.

I am Count Armand de Pontmartin. I was born of noble parents at Aix, in

Provence, in 1820. I was educated at Paris, but the first twelve years

after I left college were passed on my estate in the enjoyment of an

income of three thousand dollars a year. Belonging to a Legitimist

family, my principles forbade my serving the Orléans dynasty, and I

should scarcely have known how to satisfy that thirst for activity which

fevers youth, had I not for years burned with the ambition to acquire

literary fame. Circumstances conspired to thwart these literary schemes,

and it was not until I had reached my thirtieth year that I came to

Paris with a heart full of emotion and hope, a trunk full of

manuscripts, and some friends' addresses on my memorandum-book. Before I

had been a week in town they had introduced me to three or four editors

of newspapers or reviews, and to several publishers and theatrical

managers. In less than a fortnight I breakfasted alone at Café Bignon

with one of my favorite authors, the celebrated novelist, Monsieur Jules

Sandeau.[D] I was confounded with astonishment and gratitude that he

should allow me to sit at the same table and eat with him. I felt

embarrassed to know where to find viands meet to offer him, and

beverages not unworthy to pass his lips. There were in his works so many

souls exiled from heaven, so many tearful smiles, so many melancholy

glances constantly turned towards the infinite horizon, that it seemed

to me something like sacrilege to offer to the creator of this noble and

charming world a dish of _rosbif aux pommes_ and a _turbot à la

Hollandaise_ and a claret wine. I could have invented for him some of

those Oriental delicacies made by sultans during harem's heavy hours;

rose-leaves kneaded with snow-water, dreams or perfumes disguised as

sweetmeats, or citron and myrtle-flowers dew-diamonded in golden

beakers. Of a truth, the personal appearance of my poetical guest did

give something of a shock to the ideal I had formed. Many and many a

time I had pictured him to myself tall and thin and pale, with large

black eyes raised heavenwards, and hair curling naturally on a forehead

shadowed by melancholy! In reality, Monsieur Jules Sandeau is a good

stout fellow, with broad, stalwart shoulders, a tendency to premature

obesity, small, bright, gentle, acute eyes, a head as bald as my knee,

rather thick lips, and a rubicund complexion; he has an air of

good-nature and simplicity which excludes everything like sentimental

exaggeration; he wears a black cravat tied negligently around a muscular

neck; in fine, he looks like a sub-lieutenant dressed in

citizen's-clothes. I got over this shock, and hunted all through the

bill of fare, (which, as you know, forms in Paris a duodecimo volume of

a good many pages,) trying my best to discover some romantic dish and

some supernal _liqueur_, until he cut short my chase by suggesting a

dinner of the most vulgar solidity; and when I tried to retrieve this

commonplace dinner by ordering for dessert some vapory _liqueurs_, such

as uncomprehended women sip, he proposed a glass of brandy. This was my

first literary deception.

A theatrical newspaper was lying on the table. It contained an account

of a piece played the evening before. The writer spoke of the play as a

masterpiece, and of the performance as being one of those triumphs which

form an epoch in the history of dramatic art. I read this panegyric with

avidity, and exclaimed,--

"Oh, what a glorious thing success is! How happy that author must be!"

"He!" replied Monsieur Sandeau, smiling; "he is mortified to death; his

play is execrable, and it fell flat."

"You must be mistaken!"

"I was present at the performance; and I have no reason to be pleased at

the miscarriage of the piece, for I am neither an enemy nor an intimate

friend of the author."

Monsieur Jules Sandeau then went on to explain to me how the theatrical

newspapers, which contain the lists of performers and of pieces in all

the theatres of Paris, (play-bills being unknown,) enter into a

contract, which is the condition precedent of their sale in the

theatres, stipulating that they will never speak otherwise than in

praise of the pieces brought out. The report of the new piece is often

written and set up before the performance takes place.

I blushed and said,--

"That is deplorable! But, thank Heaven! these are only the Grub-Street

writers, the mere penny-a-liners; the influential reporters of the great

morning papers, fortunately, are animated by a love of truth and

justice."

Monsieur Sandeau looked at me, and smiled as be remarked,--

"Oh! as for them, they don't care a whit for piece or author or public.

They think of nothing but showing off themselves. Monsieur Théophile

Gautier has no care except to display the wealth of a palette which

mistook its vocation when it sought to obtain from pen, ink, and paper

those colors which pencil and canvas alone can give. He discards

sentiments, ideas, characters, dialogue, probability, intellectual

delicacy, everything which raises man above wood or stone. He would be

the very first writer of the age, if the world would agree to suppress

everything like heart and soul. He is never more at ease than when he

has to report a piece whose literary beauties are its splendid scenery

and costumes. He will dismiss the subject, the plot, the characters, and

the details in five lines; while fifteen columns will not suffice for

all the wonders of the decorations. If you ask him to send you to some

person most familiar with contemporary dramatic art, instead of sending

you to Alexandre Dumas, the elder or the younger, to Ponsard, or to

Augier, he will send you to the celebrated scene-painters, to Cicéri or

Séchan or Cambon. As for Monsieur Jules Janin, of whom I am very fond,

he is--You have sometimes been to concerts where virtuosos play

variations on the sextuor of "Lucie," or the trio of "William Tell," or

the duet of "Les Huguenots"? You listen attentively, and do at first

detect a phrase here and a phrase there which vaguely recall the work of

Donizetti, or of Rossini, or of Meyerbeer; but in an instant the

virtuoso himself forgets all about them. You have nothing but volley

after volley of notes, a musical storm, tempest, avalanche; the

primitive idea is fathoms deep under water, and when it is caught again

it is drowned. Now Monsieur Jules Janin has had for the last

five-and-twenty years the business of executing brilliant variations

upon the piano of dramatic criticism. He acts like the virtuosos you

hear at concerts. He writes, for conscience' sake, the name of the

author and the title of the play at the head of his dramatic report, and

then off he goes, heels over head, with variation and variation, and

variation and variation again, in French and in Latin, until at last no

human being can tell what he is after, where he is going, what he is

talking about, or what he means to say. He will tell you the whole story

of the Second Punic War, speaking of a sentimental comedy played at the

Gymnase Theatre, and a low farce of the Palais Royal Theatre will

furnish him the pretext to quote ten lines of Xenophon in the original

Greek. Monsieur Jules Janin is, notwithstanding all this, an excellent

fellow, and a man of great talents; but you must not ask him to work

miracles; in other words, you must not ask him to express briefly and

clearly what he thinks of the play he criticizes, nor to remember to-day

the opinion he entertained yesterday. These are miracles he cannot work.

He hears a piece; he is delighted with it; he says to the author, 'Your

piece is charming. You will be gratified by my criticism upon it.' He

comes home; he sits at his desk. What happens? Why, the wind which blew

from the north blows from the south; the soap-bubble rose on the left,

it floats away towards the right. His pen runs away with him; praise is

thrown out by the first hole in the road; epigram jumps in; and at last

the poor dramatic author, who was lauded to the skies yesterday,

complimented this morning, finds himself cut to pieces and dragged at

horses' tails in to-morrow's paper. Don't blame Monsieur Jules Janin for

it. 'Tis not his fault. The fault lies with his inkhorn; the fault lies

with his pen, which mistook the mustard-pot for the honey-jar; 'twill be

more careful next time. 'Tis the fault of the hand-organ which would

grind away while he was writing; 'tis the fault of the fly which would

keep buzzing about the room and bumping against the panes of glass; 'tis

the fault of the idea which took wings and flew away. The poor dramatic

author is mortified to death; but, Lord bless your soul! Monsieur Jules

Janin is not guilty."

"What do you think of Monsieur Sainte-Beuve? Is he as unfaithful a

critic as Monsieur Théophile Gautier and Monsieur Jules Janin?" I asked,

rather timidly.

"Monsieur Sainte-Beuve has received from Heaven (which he has ceased to

believe in) an exquisite taste, an extraordinary delicacy of tact,

admirable talents of criticism, relieved, and, as it were, fertilized,

by rare poetical faculties. He possesses and exercises in the most

masterly manner the art of shading, of hints, of hesitations, of

insinuations, of infiltrations, of evolutions, of circumlocutions, of

precautions, of ambuscades, of feline gambols, of ground and lofty

tumbling, of strategy, and of literary diplomacy. He excels in the art

of distilling a drop of poison in a phial of perfume so as to render the

poison delicious and the perfume venomous. His prose is as attractive

and magnetizing as a woman slightly compromised in public opinion, and

who does not tell all her secrets, but increases her attractions both by

what she shows and by what she conceals. Monsieur Sainte-Beuve has had

no desire but to be a pilgrim of ideas, lacking the first requisite in a

pilgrim, which is faith. He has circumnavigated, merely in the character

of amateur, every doctrine of the century; but though he has never

adopted one of them for his creed, when he abandoned them he seemed to

have betrayed them. Accused unjustly of treachery and apostasy, he has

done his best to confirm his reputation, and has ended by becoming the

enemy of those from whom at first he had only deserted. His error has

been in adulterating that which he might have put, with singular grace,

talents, and natural superiority, pure into currency,--in acting as if

literature were a war of treachery, where one was constantly obliged to

keep a sword in the hand and a poniard in the pocket. They say he is at

great pains to provide himself with an immense arsenal of defensive and

offensive weapons, that he may be able to crush those he loves to-day

and may detest to-morrow, and those he hates to-day and wishes to wreak

vengeance on hereafter. Monsieur Sainte-Beuve might have been the most

indisputable of authorities: he is only the most delightful of literary

curiosities."

Such was the language of Monsieur Jules Sandeau. He spoke in the same

strain of many another eminent literary man. Around these illustrious

planets gravitated satellites. When new pieces were brought out, he told

me one could see between the acts the lieutenants go up to the

captain-critics and receive instructions from them; the consequence was,

the theatrical criticisms were either collective apotheoses or

collective executions. One day it was Mademoiselle Rachel they put on

the black list for three months, and they raised up against her Madame

Ristori, declaring that she was as superior to Rachel as Alfieri was to

Racine. Then 'twas the Gymnase Theatre they put in Coventry, for having

spoken disrespectfully of newspaper-writers. Another day Monsieur Scribe

was their victim, to punish him for fatiguing with his dramatic

longevity the young men, the new-comers, who are neither young men, nor

new men, nor men of talents. Monsieur Jules Sandeau had passed through

the thorny paths, the steppes, and the waste frontiers of literary life

in Paris, without losing his honor, but without retaining a particle of

illusion. He told me of his days of harsh and pernicious poverty, the

abyss of debt, the constable at the door, the agony of hunting after

dollar by dollar, "copy" hastily written to meet urgent wants, and the

sweet toil of literary exertion changed into torture. I questioned him

about Madame George Sand. What child of twenty has not been fired by

that free, proud poetry which refused to accept the cold chains of

commonplace life and justified the paradoxes of revolt by the eloquence

of the pleading and the beauty of the dream? I soon discovered that the

ideal and the real are two hostile brothers. De Balzac's works had

kindled sincere enthusiasm in my breast. Monsieur Jules Sandeau showed

me the dash of madness and of ingenuous depravity mixed with

incontestable genius in that powerful mind. He told me of De Balzac's

insane vanity, of his furious passion for wealth and luxury, of his

readiness to plunge and to drag others after him into the most hazardous

adventures, and of his insensibility to commercial honor.

After parting from Monsieur Jules Sandeau, I strolled towards a

circulating-library. I was asking the mistress of the establishment some

questions about the latest publications, when all of a sudden the glass

door opened in the most violent manner, and who should come in but

Monsieur Philoxène Boyer, rushing forward like a whirlwind, a last lock

of hair dancing on top of a bald pate, a livid complexion, a feverish

eye, a sack-overcoat friable as tinder, a hat reddened by the rain,

trousers falling in lint upon boots run down at the heel: such was the

appearance presented by Monsieur Philoxène Boyer, our old classmate at

college, and now a critic, a romantic, an uncomprehended man of genius,

and a literary man. I had already seen at the Exchange the martyrs of

money; I now saw a martyr of letters. Monsieur Philoxène Boyer is

neither a fool nor a foundling; he was educated with care; he belongs to

an excellent family of Normandy; he might have been at this very hour an

excellent gentleman-farmer, honored by his neighbors, and leading a

quiet, useful life, while cultivating his paternal acres, and making a

respectable woman happy. But when he graduated at the Law School, the

demon of literature seized and refused to release him. His patrimonial

estate was worth thirty thousand dollars; ignorant of business, he sold

it below its true value, and, instead of placing the capital out at

interest, he put it in his pocket and dissipated it in those taxes, as

varied as old feudal burdens, which the poor, uncomprehended men of

genius levy on their wealthy brethren. One day it went in dinners given

to brethren who deliver diplomas of genius; another day it went in money

lent to Grub-Street penny-a-liners who were starving; again it went to

found petty newspapers established to demolish old reputations and raise

new ones, and to die of inanition at their fifth number for want of a

sixth subscriber. In fine, before three years had passed away, not a

cent was left of Monsieur Philoxène Boyer's estate, and in return he had

acquired neither talents nor fame. He is scarcely thirty years old: he

looks like a man of sixty. I know no man in the world who, for the hope

of half a million of dollars and a place in the French Academy, would

consent to bear the burden of tortures, privations, and humiliations

which make up Monsieur Philoxène Boyer's existence. He undergoes the

torments of the damned; he fasts; he flounders in all the sewers of

Paris. But he is riveted to this horrible existence as the galley-slave

to his chain; he can breathe no other air than this mephitic atmosphere;

he can lead no other life. When I saw him on the threshold of that

sombre and humid reading-room, muddied, wet, pale, thin, almost in rags,

I could not help thinking of this wretched galley-slave of literary

ambition as he might have been at home in his old Norman mansion, cozily

stretched before a blazing fire, with a cellar full of cider and a

larder groaning beneath the fat of that favored land, smiling at a young

wife on whose lap merry children were gambolling. He was in the vein of

bitter frankness. He had not dined the preceding day. He seized me by

the arm, and, dragging me out of the circulating-library, said to me, in

a voice as abrupt as a feverish pulsation,--

"Don't listen to that old hag! All the books she offers you are

miserable stuff, fit at best for the pastry-cooks. Oh! you don't know

how success is won nowadays. I'll tell you. There is an assurance

society between the book, the piece, and the judge. Praise me, and I'll

praise you. If you will praise us, we will praise you. The public buys."

Then he went on with his bitter voice to utter a furious philippic

against our celebrated literary men. He attacked them all, with scarcely

an exception. This one sold his pen to the highest bidder; that one

levied contributions of all sorts on the vanity of authors and artists;

another was a mere actor; a fourth was nothing but a mountebank; a fifth

was a mere babbler; and so on he went through the whole catalogue of

authors. The illustrious literary democrats were Liberals and Spartans

only for the public eye. They cared as much about liberty as about old

moons: this one speculated on a title; that one on a vice; a third, to

possess a carriage and dine at Vefour's, had become the thrall of a

wealthy stockjobber who paid his virtues by the month and his opinions

by the line. He spoke in this way for an hour, bitter, excessive,

nervous, extravagant, and sometimes eloquent. All at once he

stopped,--and pressing my hand with a mixture of bitterness and

cynicism, he said,--"Old boy, I have now given you a dollar's worth of

literature; lend me ten dimes." I hastily drew from my pocket three or

four gold coins, and, blushing, slipped them into his hand; it trembled

a little; he thanked me with a glance, and, muttering something like

"Good bye," disappeared around the next corner.

The next time I met Monsieur Jules Sandeau he said to me,--"I want you

to go with me to Madame Émile de Girardin's to-morrow evening. She is to

read a tragedy she has written in five acts and in verse. You will meet

a good many of our celebrated literary men there. You must remember that

the watchword at that house is, Admiration, more admiration, still more

admiration. You must excite enthusiasm to ecstasy, compliments to

lyrical poetry, and carry flattery to apotheosis. But before we go there

I beg you to allow me to return your aristocratic breakfast by a poor

literary man's dinner, which we will eat, not in Bignon's sumptuous

private room, but outside the walls of Paris, at 'Uncle' Moulinon's,

which is the rendezvous of the supernumeraries of art and literature.

The wine, roast, and salad are cheaper than you find them on the

Boulevard des Italiens, and it is advisable that a fervent neophyte like

you should take all the degrees in our freemasonry as soon as possible.

'Uncle' Moulinon's dining-saloon is to Madame Émile de Girardin's

drawing-room what a conscripts' barrack is to the official mansion of a

French marshal."

I gratefully accepted the invitation, and at the appointed time I joined

Monsieur Jules Sandeau. We left Paris by the Barrière des Martyrs,

climbed Montmartre hill, and entered "Uncle" Moulinon's dining-saloon

when it was full of its usual frequenters. I had never seen such a sight

before. Imagine a gourmand obliged to witness with gaping mouth all,

even the most _prosaic_ details of the culinary preparations for a grand

dinner. The dining-saloon was a long, narrow room, low-pitched and

sombre; it was filled with small tables, where in unequal groups were

seated young men between eighteen and fifty-five, anticipating glory by

tobacco-smoke. Here were beardless chins accompanied by long locks;

there were bushy beards which covered three-quarters of the owners'

cadaverous, wasted faces; yonder were premature bald heads, leaden eyes,

feverish glances: look where you would, you saw everywhere that uneasy,

startled air which bore witness to a disordered life. To the sharp aroma

of tobacco were joined the stale and rancid odors peculiar to

fifth-rate eating-houses. I sought in vain upon all those faces youth's

gentle and poetical gayety, the exuberance of gifted natures, the

amiable cordiality of travelling-companions pressing on together in

different paths. The most salient characteristics of this bizarre

assembly were sickly smiles, an incredible mixture of triviality and

affectation, motions of wild beasts trying their teeth and claws,

starving attitudes, words tortured to make them look like ideas, a

brutal familiarity, and the evident desire to devour all their superiors

that they might next crush all their equals. I was glad when dinner was

over, for I felt ill at ease,--the sight before me differed so much from

that I had dreamed.

Monsieur Jules Sandeau gave me his arm, and we walked towards the Avenue

des Champs Elysées. It was nine o'clock when we reached the Rue de

Chaillot, where Madame Émile de Girardin resided. She lived in a sort of

Greek temple, built about thirty feet below the level of the street, and

down to which we had to go as if we were entering a cellar. The house

was full of columns, statues, flowers, paintings, candelabra, and

servants in black dress-coats and short breeches; but everything about

the place looked so accidental and ephemeral that the Comte de

Saint-Brice, a very witty frequenter of the house, used to

say,--"Whenever I visit the place, I am always afraid of finding the

horses sold, the servants dismissed, the husband run away, the

drawing-room closed, and the house razed." The Comte de Saint-Brice's

fears must have been allayed on this evening. Everything was in its

place,--horses, servants, husband, drawing-room, house. Madame Émile de

Girardin was in full dress; the manuscript tragedy was in her lap. I

found in the drawing-room Monsieur Victor Hugo, Monsieur de Lamartine,

Monsieur Alfred de Musset, the three stars of our poetical heavens;

Monsieur Théophile Gautier, Monsieur Méry, Monsieur Paulin Limayrac, the

secondary planets; Madame George Sand, the great Amazon novelist; some

doctors, some artists, two or three actors from the French Comedy, and

some other gentlemen. At this period of time Madame Émile de Girardin

was forty-five years old. Her flatterers still spoke of her beauty. Her

conversation was dazzling, but it lacked charm: her talents forced

themselves upon one; her _bons mots_ took you by storm. Strength had

overcome everything like grace, and two hours' conversation with Madame

Émile de Girardin left one with a sick-headache or exhausted by fatigue.

Nevertheless, one of her most fervent admirers has uttered this singular

paradox about her: "She would be the first woman of the age, if she had

always talked and never written a line."

Her husband, Monsieur Émile de Girardin, was present, with his pale

face, lymphatic complexion, glassy eye, and forehead checkered with a

Napoleon-like lock. He was then, and has remained ever since, the most

exact personification of a pasteboard man of genius lighted by

histrionic foot-lights. He was a compound of the dandy, the sophist, and

the agitator. His talents lay in making people believe him in possession

of ideas, when he had none,--just as speculators disseminate the

illusion of their capital, when in reality they are worse than bankrupt.

He began what others have since completed,--that is, he made trade and

advertisements the sovereign masters of literature and newspapers.

Abetted by the spirit of the age, he introduced into the intellectual

world the risks and unexpected hazards of stock-jobbing circles. He made

a great deal of money in this trade, and, besides, it gave him the

pleasure of making a great deal of noise in the world, of overturning

governments, of dreaming of being minister, nay, prime-minister, when

the day may come in which good, sense is to be challenged and France

made bankrupt. Everybody around him, even his wife, seemed to accept his

superiority for something unquestionable. Their union was not one of

those affectionate, faithful, and tender marriages, such as commonplace

folk hope to enjoy, but it was a copartnership of two smart people,

aided by two bunches of quills. Each pretended to admire the other with

an extravagance of show which made it hard for the bystander to repress

doubts and smiles.

Monsieur Jules Sandeau had informed Madame Émile de Girardin that he

intended to bring me with him. I do not know how she found out that I

had, in the very heart of the Faubourg Saint Germain, an old aunt, a

_real_ duchess, who was recognized as an authority whose _dicta_ could

not be disputed by any noble family to be found from the Quai Voltaire

to the Rue de Babylone, which, as all the world knows, are the frontiers

of that, the most aristocratic quarter of Paris. Madame de Girardin knew

that my aunt was in a position to open to vanity the portals of some

noble houses which talents and fame alone could not open. Now Madame

Émile de Girardin's monomania was to be received in the noble

_faubourg_,--to live there perfectly at home, as if it were her native

sphere,--to be able to say, "My friend, the little Marchioness," or, "I

have just come from our dear Jeanne's house, my charming Countess, you

know: she is suffering dreadfully from her neuralgia." She reckoned a

triumph of this sort a thousand times preferable to the applause of her

readers and her friends. All the dull pleasantries with which she

adorned her over-praised "Letters" owed their origin solely to the

unequivocal veto placed by two or three courageous noble ladies on the

attempts made by Madame Émile de Girardin to force her entrance _vi et

armis_ into their mansions. For my aunt's sake, she received me with

especial courtesy, which I was ingenuous enough to attribute to my own

personal merit. However, I had not time to indulge in analysis: she was

about to begin to read her tragedy.

The tragedy was that "Cléopâtre" in which Mademoiselle Rachel appeared,

after wrangling for some time with the authoress to induce the latter to

give Antony some other name, vowing that _Antoine_ was entirely too

vulgar to be uttered on the stage. The great tragic actress had never

heard of the illustrious Roman, and knew no other Antony but the

_Antoine_ who scrubbed her floors and brought her water. It was a

woman's tragedy, but written by a woman in man's attire, determined to

write a very masculine, vigorous work, but succeeding in producing only

a _plated_ piece, in which everything was puerile, artificial, and

conventional, from the first word to the last line. It was an _olla

podrida_, in which Shakspeare hobnobbed with Campistron, Théophile

Gautier locked arms with Dorat, Plutarch was dovetailed with the

Mantua-Makers' Journal of Fashions. Cleopatra spouted long speeches upon

archæology, hieroglyphics, the sun, climate, and virtue; Antony was

guilty of _concetti_ in the style of Seneca; Octavia prattled like a

respectable Parisian lady, who takes care of her children when they have

the measles, and hides from them their father's bad habits. It was

neither antique nor Roman, nor classic nor romantic, nor good nor bad

nor indifferent; it was a tragical wager won by a smart woman at the

expense of her audience. The latter, nevertheless, bravely did their

duty. Neither "Le Cid," nor "Polyeucte," nor "Andromaque," nor

"Athalie"--Corneille and Racine's masterpieces--ever produced such

rapturous enthusiasm. Monsieur Méry dashed off extemporaneously, in

Marseillais accent, admiring paradoxes which lacked nothing but splendid

rhyme. Monsieur Théophile Gautier, who looked like an obese Turk habited

in European clothes, laid aside his Moslem placidity to cry that the

tragedy was marvellous. Monsieur Alfred de Musset, lolling in his

arm-chair in an attitude which seemed a compromise between sleep and

_Kief_, smiled beatifically. Monsieur Victor Hugo vowed that nothing

half so fine had ever before been written in any age or in any country

or in any language--except (_aside_) "my own 'Burgraves'"! Monsieur de

Lamartine, like a god descended upon earth and astounded to find himself

at home, let fall from his divine lips compliments perfumed with

ambrosia, sparkling with poetry, and glittering with indifference.

Monsieur Paulin Limayrac, that little bit of a fellow, the fly of the

political and literary coach, went first to one and then to another, his

eye-glass incrusted in his eyebrow, stiffening his wee form as long as

he could make it, rattling his high-heeled boots as loudly as he could

contrive, stretching out his round, dogmatic face, puffing and blowing

to give himself importance, dying to be the Coryphæus of the company,

and mortified to see himself reduced to sing his enthusiasm in the

chorus; he frisked about the room, and seemed to be handing around his

rapture on a waiter, as domestics hand around cake and ices at parties.

The tragedy fatigued me. This comedy of adulation disgusted me. My very

humble and obscure position in the midst of all these illustrious

shareholders of the Mutual-Admiration Society, organized by the vanity

of all to the profit of the vanity of each, kindled in me a desire to

show myself frank and independent. I murmured, loud enough to be heard

by all my neighbors,--"Of a truth, the Country's Muse is not Melpomene!"

Madame Émile de Girardin, when Mademoiselle Delphine Gay and in the most

brilliant period of her poetical youth, had styled herself "the

Country's Muse"; her admirers had adopted the title, and it had remained

her poetical _alias_. The exclamation was, therefore, if not very

brilliant, at least very plain and quite just. It soon went around the

room as rapidly as every ill-natured phrase will go; for everybody is

glad to borrow such remarks from his neighbor without paying the price

of them himself. I soon saw one of Madame Émile de Girardin's intimate

friends whisper something into her ear. She blushed. Her thin lips

became thinner. Her nose and her chin, which always seemed as if about

to wage war on each other, became more menacing than ever; her bright,

clear eyes turned from her friend and gave me a glance ten times more

tragic than the five acts of her tragedy. I saw that my exclamation had

been repeated to her, and that a universal anathema was thundered at the

rustic boor, at the barbarian impudent enough to dare to be witty by

Monsieur Méry's side, and to affect to be insensible to the sublime

beauties of "Cléopâtre." However, all was not yet lost; I had

unconsciously another way of conquering Madame de Girardin's favor. Her

countenance became wreathed in smiles, she advanced towards me, and

said, in a honeyed tone,--"Well, Count, give me some tidings of our

excellent Duchess de ----, your aunt, I believe?"

In the mood of mind I was then in, nothing could have been more

disagreeable to me than this way of recalling my aristocratic titles at

the very moment when I sought to be nothing but a literary man. I

replied with a careless, indifferent, plebeian air, as if noble titles

were nothing in my opinion,--"The Duchess de ----! Gracious me! I never

see her, and I could not tell you for the life of me whether she is my

aunt or my cousin. Her drawing-room is the stupidest place on earth.

They played whist there at two cents a point. Every door was wadded to

keep draughts and ideas out. I long ago ceased to go there, and now I

would not dare show my face again."

"Admirable! The Provinces are not devoid of sprightliness!" dryly

replied Madame Émile de Girardin.

That was enough. I was weighed in the balance and found sadly wanting by

an ill-natured remark _plus_ and a duchess _minus_. Fifteen minutes

afterwards we took leave of Madame de Girardin. She gave Monsieur Jules

Sandeau a fraternal and virile shake of the hand in the English style; I

received only a very cold and very dry nod, which was as much as to

say,--"You are an ill-bred fellow and a fool; I have no fancy for you;

return here as rarely as possible."

Soon after this memorable evening, Monsieur Jules Sandeau's friendly

offices acquainted literary circles that a young man of the best

society, devoted to literature, the author of some remarkable sketches

in the newspapers and reviews, was about to appear as the literary

critic of "L'Assemblée Nationale," the well-known dally newspaper, which

has been since suppressed by the government. A month afterwards my

signature might have been read at the foot of a _feuilleton_ of fifteen

columns. About the same period of time a fashionable publisher brought

out a volume of tales by me. This was my literary honey-moon. I was

astonished at the number of friends and admirers that rose on every side

of me. I could scarcely restrain myself from parodying Alceste's

phrase,--"Really, Gentlemen, I did not think myself the fellow of

talents I find I am!" But, of all surprises, the human heart finds this

the easiest to grow accustomed to. I soon found it perfectly natural

that people should look upon me as a genius, and I ingenuously

reproached myself for not having sooner made the discovery. Everybody

praised my little book as if it were a masterpiece. I might have made a

volume with the packets of praises sent to me; but I must add, for

truth's sake, that most of my panegyrists took care to slip under the

envelope which covered their letter of praise a volume of their works. I

have kept several of these letters. Here are copies of three of them.

"Sir,--Your appearance among us is an honor in which every

literary man feels he has a share. You will regenerate criticism,

as you have purified novel-writing. One becomes better as he reads

your works, and feels an irresistible desire to do better that he

may be more worthy of your esteem. The days your criticisms appear

are our red-letter days, and every line you give our poor little

books is worth to them the sale of a hundred copies. I take the

liberty to send you herewith a humble volume. You may, perhaps,

find in it some over-crude tones, some raw shades; but do not

forbear to exercise your critical perspicuity. I submit myself in

advance to your reproaches and to your reservations; to be

censured by you is even a piece of good fortune, as your

reprimands themselves are adorned with courtesy and grace."

"Sir,--I admire you the more because our opinions are not the

same; they may be said to be contrary; but extremes meet, and we

join hands on a great many points: are we not both of us

vanquished? Châteaubriand sympathized, nay, more, fraternized,

with Armand Carrel. I am not Carrel, but you may be Châteaubriand

before a very long while. I would beg to lay before you the book

which goes with this note; some passages of it may, perhaps, wound

your honorable regrets, your chivalrous respects, but they are

sincere; and this sincerity I have never better understood and

practised than when I assure you that I am your most assiduous

reader and most fervent admirer."

"Sir,--Do not judge me, I pray you, from the newspapers in which,

to my great regret, I write: imperious circumstances, old

acquaintance, and--why shall I not confess it?--the necessities of

Parisian life, have driven me to appear to have enlisted on the

side of the most numerous battalions. But I have in the Provinces

a good old mother who reads no newspaper but yours; one of my

uncles is a Chevalier de Saint Louis; another served in Condé's

army; my Aunt Veronica is a pious woman, who would forever look

kindly upon me, if she should ever perceive through her spectacles

her nephew's name followed by praise from your pen. For I need not

say that you are her favorite author, as, of a truth, you are of

everybody; for who can remain insensible to those treasures of....

[Here my modesty refuses to copy the text before me]. There is but

one opinion upon this subject. Royalists and democrats, disciples

of tradition or fanatics of fancy, _voltigeurs_ of the old

monarchy or reformers of the future, are all unanimous in

saluting, as a rising glory of our literature, the pure and noble

talent which.... [Here my modesty again refuses to copy the text

before me].

"P.S. I send you herewith two copies of my works, which I submit

to your able and kind criticism."

Nor were appeals like these the only sort of seduction to which I was

exposed when I became the literary critic of "L'Assemblée Nationale."

The eminent men, sublime philosophers like Monsieur Victor Cousin and

Monsieur de Rémusat, incomparable historians like Monsieur Guizot,

Monsieur Thiers, Monsieur de Barante, admirable literary men like

Monsieur Villemain and Monsieur de Salvandy, (all of whom had spent

their lives in laying down political maxims, and in expressing their

astonishment that French heads were too hard or French nature too fickle

to conform French life to the profound maxims which they, the former,

had weighed and meditated in the silence of their study,) who had for

eighteen years ruled France, found themselves, one February morning in

1848, stripped of power and of place. They returned to their favorite

studies, and produced new works, to the delight of lettered men

everywhere. But, as the human heart, even in the beat of men, has its

weaknesses, these eminent men, who could not for a single instant doubt

either their talents or their success or the universal admiration in

which they were held, were a little too fond of hearing these agreeable

truths told them in articles devoted especially to their works. Now to

heighten the zeal of the authors of these articles, the eminent retired

statesmen held in their hands an infallible method: They would take

these trumpeters of fame aside, and, without contracting any positive

engagement, would distinctly hint to these critics, (a word to the wise

is sufficient!) that, after a few years of these excellent and useful

services in the daily press or in the periodicals, they, the former,

would elect the latter members of the French Academy. A seat in the

French Academy was the object of the most ardent ambition. No sooner was

the breath out of the body of one of the forty members of the French

Academy than twenty candidates entered the lists, and canvassed,

canvassed, canvassed the nine-and-thirty living Academicians, without

losing a minute in eating, drinking, or sleeping, until the election

took place.

You may now see the various sorts of seductions which assailed me during

this short and brilliant period of my literary life. The world lay

smiling before me, and I felt quite happy,--when I met Monsieur Louis

Veuillot, the eminent editor of "L'Univers," which the government has

since suppressed.

We had exchanged visiting-cards several times, and a few letters, but I

did not as yet know him. I was attracted to him by the very contrasts

which existed between us. My elegant and delicate nature (as the

newspapers then styled it: they _now_ call it my weak and morbid nature)

seemed in absolute contradiction to that robust frame, that oaken

solidity, which revealed beneath its rugged bark its virile juices. His

masculine and potent ugliness reminded me of Mirabeau, of a plebeian

Mirabeau with straight black hair, of a Mirabeau who had found at the

foot of the altar calmness for his tempest-tossed soul. His conversation

delighted and fascinated me. One felt (despite some coarseness in minor

details, and which almost seemed to be assumed) that there glowed within

him the energetic convictions of an honest man and a Christian, who had

at command the most stinging language that ever wrung the withers of

Voltaire's pale successors. No man among our contemporaries has been

more hated than Monsieur Louis Veuillot. He has flagellated, kicked,

cuffed, jeered, mocked, humiliated, exasperated, better than anybody

else, the writers I most detest. He has given them wounds which will

forever rankle. He has indelibly branded these miserable actors who play

upon the theatre of their vices the comedy of their vanity. We together

examined the pages where I had expressed my opinion upon contemporary

authors.

"Are these," said Monsieur Louis Veuillot, speaking severely to me,

"are these all your sacrifices to the truth? Praises to that one,

flattery to this one, soft words to him, compliments to another? You

blame them just enough to incite people to buy their books. Is that what

you call serving our noble and austere cause? Oh, Sir! Sir!" ...

He lectured me long and well. He spoke with the edification of a sermon

and the brilliancy of a satire. At last, ashamed of my weakness,

electrified by his language, burning to repair lost time, I said to him,

pressing his hands in mine,--

"I am dwelling amid the luxuries of Capua; when next you hear from me, I

shall be in the midst of the field of battle."

I at once began my campaign. I made war upon Voltaire, Béranger, Eugene

Sue, De Balzac, George Sand, Victor Hugo, Michelet, Quinet; and as for

the small fry of literature, I showed them no mercy. War was soon

declared on _me_,--war without quarter.

My first adversary was little Monsieur Paulin Limayrac. He has become

the most accomplished specimen of the job-editor. As firmly convinced of

the supremacy of the Articles of War as the best disciplined private

soldier who ever showed how perfect an automaton man may become by

thorough discipline, his political opinions are something more than a

creed: they are a watchword which be observes with a most supple

obstinacy. The cabinet-minister he calls master is a corporal who has

the right to think for him; and were the corporal to contradict himself

ten times in the course of a single day, imperturbable little Paulin

Limayrac would demonstrate to him that he was ten times in the right.

But then (that is, in 1855) Monsieur Paulin Limayrac was a Republican, a

Socialist; and his weakness lay in imagining not only that people read

his articles in "La Presse," but that they remembered them for a whole

sennight after reading them. When you met him, he always commenced

conversation:--

"Ah, ha! what did I tell you? Am I not an excellent prophet? You

remember the prophecy I made the other day? It has come to pass just as

I predicted it!"

Poor Paulin Limayrac really thought himself a prophet, when in good

truth he was not even a conjurer. Stiffening himself up on his stumpy

legs, he stared as hard as he could through his eye-glass, and from his

giant's height of four feet ten, at everybody who pretended to believe

there was a God in heaven. His occupation just at that time was to toss

the incense-burning censer in honor of Madame, Émile de Girardin under

her aquiline nose. He had become the page, the groom, the dwarf of this

celebrated woman, who had, alas! only a few months more to live. He

opened the fire against me. To gratify Madame Émile de Girardin, he one

day wrote on the corner of her table twenty harsh lines against me, (he

took good care not to sign them,) in which he said of me exactly the

contrary of what he had written to me. As these lines were anonymous, I

did not care to pretend to recognize the author; besides, can you feel

anger towards such a whipper-snapper? I met him a short time afterwards,

and he gave me a more cordial shake-hands than ever. Now comes the cream

of the fellow's conduct: for all this that I have mentioned is as

nothing, so common of occurrence is it in Paris. Note that Madame Émile

de Girardin was dying: I was ignorant of it, but Monsieur Paulin

Limayrac knew it well. Note further, that for weeks before this he had

celebrated in the tenderest sentimental strains the loving friendship

which existed between Madame George Sand and Madame Émile de Girardin.

Note lastly, that Monsieur Paulin Limayrac had good reason to think that

I knew perfectly well who was really the author of the malicious attack

on me in "La Presse," which was his paper. Remember all this while I

repeat to you the dialogue which took place between us under an arcade

of the Rue Castiglione. I said to him,--

"Ah! my dear Sir, Madame George Sand must be gratified this time! Your

article this morning upon her autobiography really did hit the

bull's-eye, plumb! What fire! what enthusiasm! what lyric strains!"

"I could not help myself," replied he. "It is one of the fatigues of my

place, I was obliged to write it."

"Well, between you and me, the truth is that your admiration is a little

exaggerated. The work is less dull since Madame George Sand has reached

the really interesting periods of her life; but how fatiguing the first

part of it was! What stuff she thrust into it! What particulars relating

to her family and her mother, which were, to say the least of it,

useless!"

"Why, my dear fellow," replied Monsieur Paulin Limayrac, with a knowing

look, "don't you know the secret?"

"What secret?"

"Ah! you have not yet shaken off provincial dust! Madame George Sand,

with that carelessness one almost always finds in great artists, sent to

Monsieur Émile de Girardin that enormous packet of four-and-twenty

volumes, at the same time authorizing him to retrench at least one-third

of the manuscript, if he thought fit. But Madame de Girardin (who is

extremely astute) thought, that, if the work were published without the

numerous dull chapters of the first part, it would command too brilliant

a success; and Her Most Gracious Majesty determined that the whole

four-and-twenty volumes should appear without the omission of a single

line,--which is all the more noble, grand, and generous, as we pay a

high price for the 'copy,' and it has curtailed our subscription-list a

good deal."

"I thought Madame George Sand and Madame Émile de Girardin were upon the

footing of a most affectionate friendship."

"'Tis a woman's friendship. 'Tis a poet's love for a poet. Each adores

the other; but then what is more vulgar than to love one's friends when

they are successful? Every hind can do that; while none but delicate and

sensitive souls can shed torrents of tears over a friend's reverses."

A fortnight after this conversation took place, Madame Émile de Girardin

died. There was a flood of panegyrics and of tears. Monsieur Paulin

Limayrac was chief pall-bearer, and demonstrated in the columns of "La

Presse" that Madame Émile de Girardin had herself alone more genius than

Sappho, Corinne, Madame de Sévigné, Madame de Staël, and Madame George

Sand, all put together.

* * * * *

THE LITTLE COUNTRY-GIRL.

CHAPTER I.

My father's old friend, Captain Joseph, came down by the morning train,

to inquire concerning a will placed in my keeping by Farmer Hill, lately

deceased.

This is his first visit since our marriage.

He declares himself perfectly satisfied with--a certain person, and

insists on my revealing the reason, or reasons, of her choosing--a

certain person, when she might, no doubt, have done better.

And he is equally charmed with our locality,--is glad to find such a

paradise.

I like Captain Joseph. He doesn't croak. Some old men would look dismal,

and say, perhaps,--"Happiness is not for earth," or, "In prosperity

prepare for adversity." As if anybody could!

"A beautiful spot," says Captain Joseph. And truly it is a pleasant

place here, close by the sea,--a place made on purpose to live in. It is

a sort of valley, shut in on the east and on the west by high wooded

hills, which stretch far out into the sea, and so make for us a charming

little bay. There are only a few houses here: the town proper, where I

have my law-office, is a mile off.

I found this nook quite accidentally, while sketching the islands off in

the harbor, and the water, and the deep shading on the woods beyond. The

people here took me to board. That was ten years ago.

Then the family was large. There was old Mr. Lane, his wife, their five

grown-up boys, Emily, the sick one, and Miss Joey. The eldest son went

out to China, and there died. The next three, at different times,

started for California. Two died of the fever, and the third was

supposed to have been murdered in crossing the Plains.

David remained. He was a tall, well-made youth, with plenty of health

and good looks, willing to work on the farm, but devoted mainly to his

little sloop-boat. People called him odd. He was both odd and even. He

was odd in being somewhat different in his habits from other young men;

but then he had an even way of his own, which he kept. With him, the sea

and his little sloop-boat and the daily paper supplied the place of

balls, concerts, parties, and young women.

"Why don't you dress up, and go gallivantin' about 'mong the gals?" his

old mother used to say. But he would only laugh, and pshaw, and walk off

to the shore. And I, watching his erect gait and firm tread, would

wonder how it was that one good-looking young man should be so different

from all other good-looking young men. Still, there was a sort of

sheepishness about the eyes, and that was probably why he never turned

them, when meeting the girls, but strode along, looking straight ahead,

as if they had been so many fence-posts.

Fanny J---- once laid a wager with me that she would make him bow. She

contrived a plan to meet him as he returned from the Square. I hid

behind the stone wall, and peeped through the chinks. Just as they met,

she almost let the wind blow her bonnet off, hoping to catch his eye.

But he looked so straight forward into the distance that I was alarmed,

thinking there might be a loose horse coming, or a house afire. That was

in the first of my staying there. We were afterwards great friends. He

liked me, because I was good to the old folks, and to Emily,--and had a

sort of respect for me, because I was the oldest, and because I could

talk, and because of the great thick books in my room. I respected him,

because I had seen the world and its shams, and knew him to be good all

the way through, and because he couldn't talk, and also, perhaps,

because he was so much bigger and handsomer than I. In fact, I should

have felt quite downhearted about my own looks, if I hadn't learned from

books--not the thick ones--that sallow-looking men, with dark eyes, are

interesting.

David's mother approved of steady habits, but for all that she would

rather have had him waste some of his time, and be like the rest of his

kind.

"Poor David!" she would say, sometimes, "if anybody could only make him

think he _was_ somebody, he'd _be_ somebody. But he 'a'n't got no

confidence."

"Mother," I would answer, "don't worry about David. He's good, and

goodness is as good as anything."

She liked to have me call her mother. I had been there so long that I

almost filled the place of one of her lost ones. Besides, I had no

mother of my own, and no real home.

Miss Joey, not being past thirty, had a plan in her head. Her head was

small,--so was she,--but the plan was large enough and good enough.

This plan, however, was upset, and by her own means, even before the

prospect of its being carried out was even probable. It was Miss Joey's

own notion that one half the house should be let.

"We are so dwindled down," she said. "A small, quiet family would bring

in a little something, and be company." This was at the close of a long

and rather lonely winter.

So, one day, Mr. Lane came home, and said he had let the other half to a

family from up-country,--man and wife and little girl.

"The very thing!" said Miss Joey.

Alas for human foresight!

The next day, at sundown, a loaded wagon drove up; then a carryall, from

which stepped an elderly couple and a sweet pretty girl.

"What angel is that, alighting upon earth?" I exclaimed, looking over

Miss Joey's head.

"Thought she was goin' to be a little girl," said she.

"Wal," replied Mr. Lane, "that's what he called her: suppose she seems

little to him. But so much the better. The bigger she is, the more

company she'll be."

Miss Joey went in to receive them, and I retired to my chamber. From the

window I observed that the pretty girl was very handy about helping, and

heard her mother call her Mary Ellen.

The next morning, just as I was leaving for the office, I heard a quick

step across the entry. The door opened, and "the little girl," Mary

Ellen, came in. Her hair was pushed straight behind her ears, and her

sleeves were rolled up to the elbows.

"I came in," said she, rather bashfully, "to ask if Mr. Lane would help

us set up a bedstead; father had to go, and mother's feeble."

"Mr. Lane's gone to get his horse shod," said Miss Joey.

Mary Ellen stood still, doubting whether to speak, but looking rather

puzzled; for David was in plain sight, fixing his pickerel-traps in the

back-room.

"Miss Joey," said I, smiling, and looking towards him, "there are two

Mr. Lanes, you know."

"Oh, David,--yes,--David. Wal, so David could."

And so David did. I bit my lip, and went out.

In turning the corner of the house, I passed the open window, and

glanced in, as was natural. 'Twas an old-fashioned bedstead, and there

was David, red as a rose, screwing up the cord, while Mary Ellen, fair

as a lily, was hammering away at the wooden peg, while the old lady

stood by, giving directions.

It struck me so queerly that I laughed and talked to myself all the way

to the office.

"Poor David!" I muttered, "how could he steady his hands, with such a

pair of white arms near them? Good! good!" And then I would ha! ha! and

strike my stick against the stones. "Turner," said I, addressing myself,

"she's what you may call a sweet pretty girl."

I addressed the same remark to Miss Joey that night at tea.

"The girl," said she, "is an innocent little country-girl. She's got a

good skin and a handsome set of teeth. But there's no need of her

findin' out her good looks, unless you men-folks put her up to 't."

This I of course took to myself, David being out of the question.

An innocent little country-girl! And so she was. She brought to mind

damask roses, and apple-blossoms, and red rosebuds, and modest violets,

and stars and sunbeams, and all the freshness and sweetness of early

morning in the country. A delicious little innocent country-girl! Poor

David! who could have guessed that you were to be the means of letting

in upon her benighted mind the secret of her own beauty?

Anybody who has travelled in the country has noticed two kinds of

country-girls. The first are green-looking and brazen-faced, staring at

you like great yellow buttercups, and are always ready to tell all they

know. The others are shy. They look up at you modestly, with their blue

or their brown eyes, and answer your questions in few words. Of this

last kind was Mary Ellen. She looked up with brown eyes,--not dark

brown, but light,--hazel, perhaps.

And those brown, or hazel, or grayish eyes looked up to some

purpose,--as David, if he had had the gift of speech, might have

testified. But a man may tell a good deal and never use his tongue at

all. The eyes, for instance, or even the cheeks, can talk, and are full

as likely not to tell lies.

It might have been two months, perhaps, after the other half was let,

that I heard Mrs. Lane say one day,--

"Joey, there's an alteration in David."

"For better or wuss?" calmly inquired that maiden.

I did not hear the reply, but I had seen the alteration. In fact, I had

noticed it from the beginning, and had come to the conclusion that the

mischief was done the first day,--that his heart somehow got a twist in

the screwing-up of the bed-cord,--that it received every one of the

blows which those white arms were aiming at the insensible wood.

It was a case which had vastly interested me. I mean that it was quite

in my line, detecting a man's secret in his countenance. I was glad of

the practice.

Mary Ellen knew, too; and yet she had received no help from the

profession. Only an innocent little country-girl! 'Twas her natural

penetration. What a pity women can't be lawyers, they have so much to

start with!

Poor David! He wasn't sensible of what had befallen him. How should he

be? He didn't know why he smarted up his dress, why Bay-fishing wasn't

profitable, or why working on the land agreed with him best. He hadn't

even found out, as late as June, why he liked to have her bring out the

luncheon-basket to the mowers. But before the autumn he had discovered

his own secret. He knew very well, then, why he thought it a good plan

for Mary Ellen to come in and pare apples with Miss Joey at the halves.

I could have wished him a pleasanter way, though, of finding out his

secret.

There was another that saw the alteration, and that was Emily, the sick

one,--the care and the blessing of the household. For twelve summers her

foot had never pressed the greensward. They told me that once she was a

gay, frolicsome girl. 'Twas hard to believe, so tranquil, so spiritual,

so heavenly was the expression which long suffering had brought to her

face. That face, apart from this wonderful expression, was beautiful to

look upon. It seemed as if sickness itself was loath to meddle with

aught so lovely. So, while her body slowly wasted from the ravages of

disease, her countenance remained fair and youthful.

She often had days of freedom from suffering,--days when, as she

expressed it, her Father called away His unwelcome messengers. At these

times she would sit in her stuffed chair, or lie on the sofa, and the

family went in and out as they chose. Everybody liked to stay in Emily's

room. Its very atmosphere was elevating.

Then there were collected so many beautiful things,--for these she

craved. "I need them, mother," she would say,--"my soul has need of

them. If there are no flowers, get green leaves, or a picture of Christ,

or of some saint, or little child." And sometimes I would dream, for a

moment, that even I, with all my obtuseness, my earthiness, could have

some faint perception of the way in which, in the midst of suffering,

any form of beauty was a strength and a consolation.

And singularly enough for a sick girl, she liked gold ornaments and

jewels. People used to lend her their chains and bracelets. "I know it

is strange, mother," she said, one day, while holding in her hand a ruby

bracelet,--"strange that I care for them; but they look so strong, so

enduring, so full of life: hang them across the white vase, please; I

love to see them there."

It was good for her when Mary Ellen came, vigorous, fresh, beautiful,

like the early morning. She liked to have her in the room, to watch her

face, to braid her long brown hair, and dress it with flowers, or

pearls, or strings of beads,--to clasp her hands about the pretty white

throat, as if she were only a pigeon, or a little lamb, brought in for

her to play with.

She was pleased, too, about David. "He is so good," she said to me one

day. "I always knew he had love and gentleness in his heart, and now an

angel has come to roll away the stone."

I thought a great deal of my privilege of going into her room, the same

as the rest. After the perplexing, and often low, grovelling duties of

my profession, it was like sitting at the gate of heaven.

I used to love to come home, at the close of a long summer's day, and

find the family assembled there. I felt the _rest_ of the hour so much

more, sitting among people who had been hard at work all day.

The windows would be set wide open, that not a breath of out-door air

might he lost. And with the air would seem to come in the deep peace,

the solemn Hush of a country-twilight. It pervaded the room; and even my

cold, worldly nature would be touched.

In these dim, shadowy hours, when Nature seemed to stand still,

breathless, waiting for the coming darkness, if I longed for anything,

it was for a voice to sing. Speech seemed harsh. Yet we often repeated

hymns and ballads. Emily knew a great many, and, after saying them over,

would dwell upon them, drawing the most beautiful meanings from passages

which to me had seemed obscure, and sometimes talked like one inspired.

I felt that these seasons were my salvation,--were saving me from my

worldliness. Still, I sometimes had a guilty feeling, as if I were

drawing from Emily her beautiful life,--as if I were getting something

to which I had no right, something too good for me,--as if she might

exclaim, at any moment, "Virtue is gone out from me!"

But Mary Ellen could sing. That was good. She knew hymns by dozens, and

tunes to them all, both old and new. Besides these, she could sing

love-songs and quaint old ballads, that nobody ever heard before.

After she came, we had music to our twilights.

David, of course, was a listener. He said he was always fond of music. I

used sometimes to wonder if the pretty singer of love-songs had any

special designs upon him. For I had been curiously watching this

innocent little country-girl.

In talking with a friend of mine, he had laid it down as a law of

Nature, that all women, wild or cultivated, delight to worry and torment

all men; that they play with and prey upon their hearts; and that this

is done instinctively, as a cat worries a mouse.

"A ministering angel thou," quoted I, rather abstractedly, as if

comparing views.

"Angels? Yes,--and so they are," he answered, rather smartly. "And every

man's heart is a pool, into which they must descend and trouble the

waters!"

I knew my friend had reason for his bitterness. Still, I resolved to

watch Mary Ellen.

David's bashful attentions were by no means displeasing to her: that I

saw. She had not been accustomed to your glib, off-handed, smartly

dressed youths. Here was a good-looking young man, of blameless life,

who helped her draw up the bucket, took her to sail, taught her to row,

brought her home bushes of huckleberries and branches of swamp-pinks

from the pasture, and shells from the beach.

That few words accompanied his offerings was matter of little moment,

since what he would have said was easily enough read in his face. It was

sufficient that his eyes spoke, that they followed her motions, that he

seemed never ready to go so long as she remained, that when she went he

could not long stay behind.

Poor David! It wasn't his fault. He didn't mean to. Everybody knew 't

wasn't a bit like him. He was charmed. And that reminds me of what Miss

Joey said to Mr. Lane, the old man.

It was just about sundown, and they two were sitting in the front-room,

looking out of the windows. It had been a sultry day. I was trying to

keep comfortable, and had found a nice little seat just outside the

door, underneath the lilacs.

Mary Ellen and David came slowly walking past. They didn't seem to be

saying much. She had come out bareheaded, just for a little fresh air

and a stroll round the house. How cool she looked, in her light blue

gown, and her white apron, that tied behind with white bows and strings,

or streams! A May-bee buzzed about their ears, and lighted on her

shoulder. Poor David! He brushed it off before he thought. How

frightened he looked! how confused! But then just think of all the other

may-bes he had in his head, confusing him, buzzing to him all manner of

beautiful things!

They stopped under the early-ripe tree. Mary Ellen pointed upwards,

laughing. He sprang up and snatched off the apple. Then she pointed

higher, and still higher, until at last he climbed the tree, and dropped

the apples down into her apron.

"Mr. Lane," said Miss Joey, in an impressive undertone, "did you ever

hear of anybody's bewitchin' anybody?"

"In books, Joey," he answered.

"Wal," said she, in a low, but decided voice, "I'll tell you what I

think, and what's ben my mind from the beginnin' on't. That gal's

bewitched David. Don't you remember," she continued, "that the fust week

they come David had a bad cold?"

"Wal, like enough he did," drawled the old man. "David was always

subject to a bad cold."

"He did," replied Miss Joey. "I've got the whole on't in my mind now.

And mebby you've noticed that these folks are great for gatherin' in

herbs, and lobely, and bottlin' up hot-crop?"

"Pepper-tea's a suvverin' remedy for a cold," put in the old man.

"But now," Miss Joey proceeded, sinking her voice almost to a whisper,

"I want to fix your thoughts on somethin' dark-colored, in a vial, that

she fetched across the entry for him to take."

"Help him any?"

"Can't say it did, and can't say it didn't. But ever sence that, David's

ben a different man. He's follered that gal about as if there'd ben a

chain a-drawin' him,--as if she'd flung a lassoo round his neck, and was

pullin' him along. See him, and you see her. If she wants huckleberries,

she has huckleberries. If she wants violets, she has violets. See him

now, lookin' down at her through the branches. And see her, turnin' her

face up towards him. He's nigh upon addled. Shouldn't wonder this

minute, if he didn't know enough to keep his hold o' the branch. Does

that seem like our David, Mr. Lane, a bashful young feller like him?"

"Bashful or bold makes no difference," replied the old man. "Love'll go

where't is sent,--likely to hit one as t' other. And when they're hit,

you can't tell 'em apart.--Why, Joey," he continued, suddenly quickening

his tone, "there's the Doctor's boy, as I'm alive!"

Dr. Luce lived the other side of "the Crick." The young man coming along

the road was his son, just arrived home.

As he came nearer, I took notice of his dress. I usually did, when

people came from the city. He wore a black bombazine coat, white

trousers, white waistcoat, blue necktie, and a Panama hat. His

complexion was fair, with plenty of light hair waving about his temples.

He stepped briskly along, with shoulders set back, twirling his glove.

I knew Warren Luce well enough. I could tell just how it would strike

him, seeing David up in a tree, flinging down apples to a girl. I could

very well judge, too, how he would encounter the fair apparition

beneath.

But how would he strike Mary Ellen,--this polished, smooth-tongued,

handsomely dressed youth? I had forebodings. I seemed to divine the

future. I fidgeted upon my seat, and straightened myself up, rather

pleased that my studies were getting complicated,--that I should have a

chance of searching out the natural heart of woman, when under the most

trying circumstances.

But just as I was making ready to commence upon my new chapter, Mrs.

Lane called me to come and help move Emily. I very often lifted her from

the chair to the sofa. It could hardly be called lifting. 'Twas like

taking a little bird out of its nest and placing it in another. "The

Doctor's boy has come," said I, very quietly, when I had wheeled the

sofa so that she might feel the air from the window.

She made no answer then; but a little after, when her mother stepped out

a minute, she said, just as quietly,--

"How will it be?"

"How do you think?" I said.

"I wish," she replied, "that he hadn't come. David is a dear brother. I

fear."

When Emily said "I fear," there was no need to ask what. She feared the

effect upon Warren Luce of Mary Ellen's fresh and simple beauty. She

feared the effect upon her of his city-manners and fluent speech. She

feared for David an abiding sorrow. Warren Luce had travelled, had been

in society, and had been educated. I knew him well for a selfish,

heartless fellow, whose very soul had been drowned in worldly pleasures.

Just from the midst of artificial life, how charming must appear to him

our sweet wild-rose, our singing-bird, our fresh, untutored, innocent

little country-girl!

"But why borrow trouble?" I said to myself. "It will come soon enough.

If not in this way, then in some other. Trouble stays not long away."