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THE
CONTINENTAL MONTHLY:
DEVOTED TO
LITERATURE AND NATIONAL POLICY.
VOL. V.--MAY, 1864.--No. V.
AMERICAN FINANCES AND RESOURCES.
LETTER NO. V. OF HON. ROBERT J. WALKER.
LONDON, 10 Half Moon Street, Piccadilly,
_February 8th, 1864_.
In my third and fourth letters on American finances and resources, the
following comparisons were instituted: Massachusetts and New Jersey,
Free States, with Maryland and South Carolina, Slave States; New York
and Pennsylvania, Free States, with Virginia, Slave State; Rhode Island,
Free State, with Delaware, Slave State; Illinois, Free State, with
Missouri, Slave State; the Free States of 1790, with the Slave States of
that day; the Free States of 1860, with the Slave States of that date.
These comparisons were based on the official returns of the Census of
the United States, and exhibited in each case and in the aggregate the
same invariable result, the vastly superior progress of the Free States
in wealth, population, and education.
I will now institute one other comparison, Kentucky, slaveholding, with
Ohio, a Free State.
Kentucky--population in 1790, 73,077; Ohio, none. 1800: Kentucky,
220,955; Ohio, 45,365. 1860: Kentucky, 1,155,684; Ohio, 2,339,502. We
must institute the comparison from 1800, as Ohio was a wilderness in
1790, when Kentucky had a population of 73,077. In Kentucky, the ratio
of increase of population from 1800 to 1860 was 527.98 per cent., and in
the same period in Ohio 5,057.08. (Table 1, Census 1860.) Thus from 1800
to 1860 Ohio increased in nearly tenfold the ratio of Kentucky.
WEALTH.--By Tables 33 and 36, Census of 1860, the value of the product
of 1859 was as follows:
Ohio, $337,619,000
Kentucky, 115,408,000
_Per Capita._
Ohio, $144 31
Kentucky, 99 92
Thus is it, that, while in 1790 and 1800 Kentucky was so very far in
advance of Ohio, yet, in 1860, so vast was the advance of Ohio as
compared with Kentucky, that the value of the product of Ohio was nearly
triple that of Kentucky, and, _per capita_, much more than one third
greater. No reason can be assigned for these remarkable results, except
that Kentucky was slaveholding, and Ohio a Free State.
Their area is nearly the same, and they are adjacent States; the soil of
Kentucky is quite equal to that of Ohio, the climate better for crops
and stock, and the products more various.
We have seen the actual results in 1860, but if Kentucky had increased
in population from 1800 to 1860 in the same ratio as Ohio, Kentucky then
would have numbered 11,175,970, or nearly ten times her present
population; and if the product had been the same as in Ohio, _per
capita_, the value would have been $1,612,804,230, or more than fourteen
times greater than the result. Thus it is demonstrated by the official
Tables of the Census of the United States, that if Kentucky had
increased in wealth and population from 1800 to 1860 in the same ratio
as Ohio, the results would have been as follows:
Kentucky: population in 1860, 11,175,970; actual population in 1860,
1,155,684; value of products in 1860, $1,612,804,230; actual value in
1860, $115,408,000.
Some attempt has been made to account for these marvellous results, by
stating that Ohio has a border on one of the lakes, and Kentucky has
not. But to this it may be replied, that Kentucky borders for twice the
distance on the Ohio River, has a large front on the Mississippi River,
and embraces within her limits those noble streams, the Cumberland and
Tennessee Rivers, making, together with the Big Sandy, Licking,
Kentucky, Green, and Barren Rivers, the natural advantages of Kentucky
for navigation, superior to those of Ohio. But a conclusive answer to
this argument is found in the fact that, omitting all the counties of
Ohio within the lake region, the remainder, within the valley of the
Ohio River, contain a population more than one half greater than that of
the whole State of Kentucky.
LANDS.-The farm lands, improved and unimproved, of Ohio, in 1860, were
worth $666,564,171. The number of acres 20,741,138, value per acre
$32.13. (Census of 1860, p. 197, Table 36.) The farm lands of Kentucky,
improved and unimproved, were worth $291,496,953, the number of acres
19,163,276, worth per acre, $15.21. (_Ib._) Difference in favor of Ohio,
$375,067,165. But if to this we add the difference between the value of
the town and city lots and unoccupied lands of Ohio and Kentucky, the
sum is $125,009,000, which added to the former sum ($375,067,165) makes
the difference in favor of Ohio $500,076,165, when comparing the value
of all her lands with those of Kentucky. We have seen that the value of
the products in 1860 was, Ohio $337,619,000, Kentucky $115,408,000. But
these products embrace only agriculture, manufactures, the mines, and
fisheries.
We have no complete tables for commerce in either State, but the canals
and railroads are as follows (Census of 1860, No. 38, pp. 225, 226,
233): Ohio: Miles of railroad, 3,016.83; cost of construction,
$113,299,514. Kentucky: Miles of railroad, 569.93; cost of construction,
$19,068,477. Estimated value of freight transported on these railroads
in 1860: Ohio, $502,105,000; Kentucky, $48,708,000. On the 1st of
January, 1864, the number of miles of railroad in operation in Ohio was
3,356.74, costing $130,454,383, showing a large increase since 1860,
while in Kentucky there was none. (Amer. R. R. Journal, p. 61, vol. 37.)
Canals in 1860 (Census Table 39): Ohio, 906 miles; Kentucky, two and a
half miles. These Tables all prove how vast has been the increase of the
wealth of Ohio as compared with Kentucky.
Let us now examine some of the educational statistics.
By Census Table 37, giving the newspapers and periodicals in the United
States in 1860, the whole number of that year was 4,051, of which only
879 were in the Slave States; total number of copies circulated that
year in the United States, 927,951,548, of which number there were
circulated in the Slave States only 167,917,188. This Table shows the
total number of newspapers and periodicals published in Ohio in 1859 was
340, and the number of copies circulated that year in that State was
71,767,742. In Kentucky, the number of newspapers and periodicals
published in 1859 was 77, and the number of copies circulated that year
was 13,504,044, while South Carolina, professing to instruct and control
the nation, had a circulation of 3,654,840, although South Carolina, in
1790, had a population of 249,073, when Ohio was a wilderness, and
Kentucky numbered only 73,077.
As regards education, we must take the Tables for the Census of 1850,
those for 1860 not having been yet published.
By Table 144, Census of 1850, the total number of pupils in public and
private schools, colleges, and academies, was for that year as follows:
Ohio, 502,826. Kentucky, 85,914. Percentage of native free population
who cannot read or write (Table 155), Ohio 3.24; Kentucky, 9.12; Slave
States, native white adults who cannot read or write, ratio 17.23; Free
States, 4.12. (Table 157.) If we include slaves, more than one half the
adults of the Slave States cannot read or write. Indeed, it is made by
law in the Slave States a crime (severely punished) to teach any slave
to read or write. These Tables also show that in South Carolina, the
great leader of secession, (including slaves) more than three fourths of
the people can neither read nor write. Such is the State, rejoicing in
the barbarism of ignorance and slavery, exulting in the hope of reviving
the African slave trade, whose chief city witnesses each week the
auction of slaves as chattels, and whose newspapers, for more than a
century, are filled with daily advertisements by their masters of
runaway slaves, describing the brands and mutilations to which they have
been subjected; that passed the first secession ordinance, and commenced
the war upon the Union by firing upon the Federal flag and garrison of
Sumter. Yet it is the pretended advocates of peace that justify this war
upon the Union, and insist that it shall submit to dismemberment without
a struggle, and permit slavery to be extended over nearly one half the
national territory, purchased by the blood and treasure of the nation.
Such a submission to disintegration and ruin--such a capitulation to
slavery, would have been base and cowardly. It would have justly merited
for us the scorn of the present, the contempt of the future, the
denunciation of history, and the execration of mankind. Despots would
have exultingly announced that 'man is incapable of self-government;'
while the heroes and patriots in other countries, who, cheered and
guided by the light of our example, had struggled in the cause of
popular liberty, would have sunk despairingly from the conflict. This is
our _real offence_ to European oligarchy, that we will crush this foul
rebellion, extinguish the slavery by which it was caused, make the Union
stronger and more harmonious, and thus give a new impulse and an
irresistible moral influence and power to free institutions.
Let me recapitulate some of the facts referred to in these letters, and
established by the Census of the United States.
Area of the United States, 3,250,000 square miles, exceeding that of all
Europe--all compact and contiguous, with richer lands, more mineral
resources, a climate more salubrious, more numerous and better harbors,
more various products, and increasing in wealth and population more
rapidly than any other country.
_Miles._
Our ocean shore line, including
bays, sounds, and rivers,
up to the head of tide
water 33,663
Lake shore line 3,620
Shore line of Mississippi River
and its tributaries above tide
water 35,644
Shore line of all our other rivers
above tide water is 49,857
Total, 122,784
Our country, then, is better watered than any other, and has more
navigable streams, and greater hydraulic power.
We have completed since 1790, 5,782 miles of canal, costing
$148,000,000; and 33,860 miles of railroad (more than all the rest of
the world), costing $1,625,952,215. (Amer. R. R. Journal, 1864, No.
1,448, vol. 37, p. 61.)
Our land lines of telegraph exceed those of all the rest of the world,
the single line from New York to San Francisco being 3,500 miles. Our
mines of coal, according to Sir William Armstrong, the highest British
authority, are thirty-two times as great as those of the United Kingdom.
Annual product of our mines of gold and silver, $100,000,000, estimated
at $150,000,000 per annum by our Commissioner of the General Land
Office, when the Pacific railroad shall be completed.
Public lands unsold, belonging to the Federal Government, 1,055,911,288
acres, being 1,649,861 square miles, and more than thirty-two times the
extent of England.
Immigration to the United States from 1850 to 1860, 2,598,216, adding to
our national wealth during that decade $1,430,000,000.
Education--granted by Congress since 1790 for the purposes of public
schools--two sections (1,280 acres) in every township (23,040 acres), in
all 1,450,000,000 acres of public lands; one eighteenth part given,
being 80,555,555 acres, worth at the minimum price of $1.25 per acre,
$100,694,443--the real value, however, was much greater.
Granted by Congress for colleges and universities, 12,080,000 acres,
including 3,553,824 given by the Federal Government to the State of
Tennessee, worth, at the minimum price of $1.25 per acre, $15,100,000,
which is much below their true value.
Total in public lands granted by Federal Government for education,
92,635,555 acres; minimum value, $115,794,443.
In 1836, after full payment of the entire principal and interest of the
public debt, there remained in the Federal Treasury a surplus of
$38,000,000, of which about one half, $19,000,000, was devoted to
educational purposes.
Total Federal appropriations since 1790 for education, $134,794,443.
This is exclusive of the many millions of dollars expended by the
Federal Government for military and naval schools, etc., at West Point,
Washington, Annapolis, and Newport. Besides these Federal donations,
there has been granted by States, Territories, counties, towns, and
cities of the Union for education, since 1790 (partly estimated)
$148,000,000. Grand total by States and Federal Government appropriated
in the United States since 1790, for education, $282,794,443. This is
independent of numerous private donations for the same purpose, that by
Mr. Girard exceeding $1,500,000, and that by Mr. Smithson exceeding
$500,000. It is then a fact that the Governments of the United States,
State and Federal, since 1790, have appropriated for education more
money than all the other Governments of the world combined during the
same period. This is a stupendous fact, and one of the main causes of
our wonderful progress and prosperity. We believe that 'knowledge is
power,' and have appropriated nearly $300,000,000, during the last
seventy-four years, in aid of the grand experiment. We believe that 'man
is capable of self-government,' but only when educated and enlightened.
We believe that the power and wealth and progress of nations increase in
proportion to the education and enlightenment of the masses. We believe
in intellectual as well as machine and muscular power, and that when the
millions are educated, and work with their heads as well as their hands,
the progress of the nation will be most rapid. Our patent office is a
wonderful illustration of this principle, showing on the part of our
industrial classes more valuable inventions and discoveries, annually,
than are produced by the workingmen of all the rest of the world.
_Population._
In 1790, 3,922,827
In 1800, 5,305,937
In 1810, 7,239,814
In 1820, 9,638,191
In 1830, 12,866,020
In 1840 17,069,453
In 1850, 23,191,876
In 1860, 31,445,080
RATIO OF INCREASE.--From 1790 to 1800, 35.02; from 1800 to 1810, 36.45;
from 1810 to 1820, 33.13; from 1820 to 1830, 33.49; from 1830 to 1840,
32.67; from 1840 to 1850, 35.87; from 1850 to 1860, 35.59. Thus it
appears (omitting territorial acquisitions) that our ratio of increase
was much greater from 1850 to 1860 than during any preceding decade.
This was the result of augmented immigration, which is still to go on
with increased power for many years. Making allowance for all probable
contingencies, and reducing the decennial increase from 35.59 to three
per cent. per annum, our able and experienced Superintendent of the
Census, in his last official report, of 20th May, 1862, gives his own
estimate of the future population of the United States:
1870, 42,328,432
1880, 56,450,241
1890, 77,263,989
1900, 100,355,802
That, in view of our new Homestead law--our high wages--the extinction
of slavery--increased confidence in our institutions--and augmented
immigration, these results will be achieved, can scarcely be doubted. As
population becomes more dense in Europe, there will be an increased
immigration to our Union, and each new settler writes to his friends
abroad, and often remits money to induce them to join him in his Western
home. The electric ocean telegraph will soon unite Europe with America,
and improved communications are constantly shortening the duration of
the voyage and diminishing the expense. Besides, this war has made us
much better known to the European _masses_, who, everywhere, with great
unanimity and enthusiasm sustain our cause, and, with slavery
extinguished, will still more prefer our institutions.
From all these causes there will be an augmented exodus from Europe to
America, when our rebellion is suppressed, and slavery overthrown.
Besides, the President of the United States now proposes appropriations
of money by Congress in aid of immigration, and such will become the
policy of our Government. We have seen the official estimate made by our
Superintendent of the Census, but if we take the ratio of increase of
the last decade, the result would be as follows:
1870, 42,636,858
1880, 57,791,315
1890, 78,359,243
1900, 106,247,297
The estimate of the Superintendent is, therefore, six millions less than
according to the ratio from 1850 to 1860, and much less than from 1790
to 1860.
When we reflect that if, as densely settled as Massachusetts, our
population would exceed 513,000,000, or if numbering as many to the
square mile as England, our inhabitants would then be more than twelve
hundred millions, the estimate of 100,000,000 for the year 1900 cannot
be regarded as improbable.
Our national wealth was
in 1850, $7,135,780,228
In 1860, $16,159,616,068
Increase from 1850 to 1860, 126.45 per cent.
* * * * *
At the same rate of increase for the four succeeding decades, the result
would be:
In 1870, $36,593,450,585
In 1880, 82,865,868,849
In 1890, 187,314,053,225
In 1900, 423,330,438,288
_Tonnage._
In 1841, 1,368,127 tons.
" 1851, 3,772,439 "
" 1861, 5,539,812 "
At the same rate of increase as from 1851 to 1861, the result would be:
In 1871, 8,134,578 tons.
" 1881, 11,952,817 "
" 1891, 17,541,514 "
" 1901, 25,758,948 "
Total number of copies of our newspapers and periodicals circulated in
the United States in 1860, 927,951,548, exceeding that of all the rest
of the world.
Let us now recapitulate the results from our Census, founded on a
comparison of the Slave and Free States.
* * * * *
MASSACHUSETTS.--Free State. MARYLAND.--Slave State.
Area, 7,800 square miles 11,124 square miles.
Population in 1790, 378,717 319,728.
" 1860, 1,231,066 687,049.
Products in 1859, $287,000,000 $66,000,000.
" per capita, $235 $96.
Railroads, 1,340 miles 380 miles.
" cost, $61,857,203 $21,387,157.
Freight of 1860, $500,524,201 $101,111,348.
Tonnage built in 1860, 34,460 tons 7,789.
Bank capital, $64,519,200 $12,568,962.
Imports and exports, $58,190,816 $18,786,323.
Value of property, $815,237,433 $376,919,944.
Gross profit on capital,
35 per cent 17 per cent.
Copies of press circulated
in 1860, 102,000,760 20,723,472.
Pupils at public schools
in 1860, 176,475 33,254.
Volumes in public libraries,
684,015 125,042.
Value of churches, $10,206,000 $3,947,884.
NEW YORK.--Free State. VIRGINIA.--Slave State.
Area, 47,000 square miles 61,392 square miles.
Population in 1790, 340,120 748,308.
" 1860, 3,880,735 1,596,318.
Product of 1859, $606,000,000 $120,000,000.
Per capita, $156 $75.
Gross profit on capital,
34 per cent 15 per cent.
Value per acre of
farm lands, $38.26 $11.91.
Railroads, 2,842 miles 1,771 miles.
" cost of construction,
$138,395,055 $64,958,807.
Freight in 1860, $579,681,790 $110,000,000.
Canals, 1,038 miles 178 miles.
" cost, $67,567,972 $7,817,000.
Tonnage built in 1860, 31,936 4,372.
Bank capital, $111,441,320 $16,005,156.
Exports and imports,
1860, $394,045,326 $7,184,273.
Copies of press circulated
in 1860, 320,980,884 26,772,518.
Pupils at public schools
in 1860, 675,221 67,428.
Volumes in public libraries,
1,760,820 88,462.
Value of churches, $21,539,561 $2,002,220.
Percentage of native free
population who cannot
read or write, 1.87 19.90.
Compare the column as regards Virginia with the returns for
Pennsylvania, and the result is nearly as remarkable as that of New
York.
Pennsylvania, area 46,000, population in 1790, 434,373; in 1860,
2,900,115. Products of 1859, $399,600,000, _per capita_, $138, profit on
capital, 22 per cent. Value of farm lands per acre, $38.91. Railroads,
2,690 miles, costing $147,483,410. Canals, 1,259 miles, costing
$42,015,000. Tonnage built in 1860, 21,615 tons. Bank capital,
$25,565,582. Exports and imports, $20,262,608, Copies of press
circulated in 1860,116,094,480. Pupils at public schools, 413,706.
Volumes in public libraries, 363,400. Value of churches, $11,853,291.
ILLINOIS.--Free State. MISSOURI.--Slave State.
Area, 55,405 square miles 67,380 square miles.
Population, 1810, 12,282 20,845.
" 1860, 1,711,951 1,182,012.
Ratio of increase from 1810 to 1860,
13,838 per ct. 5,570.
Railroads in operation in 1860, 2,868 miles 817 miles.
Ditto, 1st of January, 1864, 3,080 miles 914 miles.
Value of farm lands, 1860, $432,531,072 $230,632,126.
Canals, 102 miles none.
Ratio of increased value of property from
1850 to 1860, 458 per cent. 265 per cent.
At same ratio from 1860 to 1870, as from
1850 to 1860, total wealth in 1870 would
be $3,993,000,000 $1,329,000,000.
RHODE ISLAND.--Free State. DELAWARE.--Slave State.
Area, 1,306 square miles 2,120 square miles.
Population in 1792, 69,110 59,096.
" 1860, 174,520 112,216.
Product in 1859, $52,400,000 $16,100,000.
Value of property in 1860, $135,000,000 $46,242,181.
Bank capital, $20,865,569 $1,640,675.
Copies of press issued in 1860, 5,289,280 1,010,776.
Pupils at public schools, 23,130 8,970.
Volumes in public libraries, 104,342 17,950.
Pupils at colleges and academies, 3,664 764.
Percentage of native free adults who cannot
read or write, 1.49 23.03.
Value of churches, $1,293,700 $340,345.
NEW JERSEY.--Free State. SOUTH CAROLINA.--Slave State.
Area, 8,320 square miles 24,500 square miles.
Population in 1790, 184,139 249,073.
" 1860, 672,035 703,708.
Ratio of increase from 1790 to 1860,
265 per cent. 182 per cent.
Population per square mile in 1860, 80.77 28.72.
Increase of population per square mile
from 1790 to 1860, 58.64 per cent. 18.55 per cent.
Ditto from 1850 to 1860, 21.93 per cent. 1.44 per cent.
Population in 1860, remaining the same per Population in 1860, remaining
square mile, if area equal to that of South the same per _square mile_, if
Carolina, 1,978,650. area equal to that of New
Jersey, 238,950.
Product of 1859, $167,398,003 $46,445,782.
Per capita, $249 $66.
Farm lands, 1860, improved and unimproved
acres, 2,983,531 15,595,860.
Value in 1860, $180,250,338 $139,652,508.
Agricultural products of 1860, $86,398,000 $39,645,728.
Product per acre, $28.96 $2.54.
Improved lands, 1,944,445 acres 4,572,060 acres.
Product per acre, $44.43 $8.67.
Value of farm lands per acre, $60.42 $8.95.
Value of farm lands, if worth
as much per acre as those of
New Jersey, $942,660,377.
Copies of press issued in 1860, 12,801,412 3,654,840.
Percentage of native free adults who cannot
read or write, 5.10 12.73.
Percentage of native white children at
school, 80.56. 26.025.
Pupils at colleges, academies, and public
schools, 88,244 26.025.
Value of churches, $3,712,863 $2,181,476.
MICHIGAN.--Free State. FLORIDA.--Slave State.
Area, 56,243 square miles. 59,268 square miles.
Population, 1810, 4,762 16,989, Spanish.
" 1820, 8,765 23,801, "
" 1830, 31,639 34,730.
" 1860, 749,113 140,425.
Population per square mile in 1810, 0.08 0.28.
" " " 1820, 0.15 0.38.
" " " 1830, 0.56 0.58.
" " " 1860, 13.32 2.37.
Absolute increase of population from
1830 to 1860, 717,474 105,695.
Relative rank in 1830, 25 26.
" " 1860, 16 31.
Absolute increase of population from
1850 to 1860 per _square mile_, 6.25 0.89.
Value of total product of 1859, $99,200,000 $12,300,000.
Of agriculture alone, $64,000,000 $9,600,000.
Total product per capita, $132.04 $87.59.
Farm lands improved and unimproved in 1860,
6,931,442 acres 2,849,572 acres.
Improved farm lands, 1860, 3,419,861 acres 676,464 acres.
Value of lands improved and unimproved in
1860, $163,279,087 $16,371,684.
Product per acre, $9.23 $3.01.
" of improved land, $18.71 $14.18.
Value of farm lands, 1860, per acre, $23.55 $5.74.
Value of farm lands of
Florida, if worth as much
_per acre_ as those of
Michigan, $67,105,222.
Product of Florida lands, if
equal_ per acre_ to those of
Michigan, in 1859,
$26,300,549.
Copies of press issued in 1860, 11,606,596 1,081,601.
Percentage of native free adults, who cannot
read or write, 2.84 9.18.
Public libraries, 107,943 volumes 2,660 volumes.
Pupils in public schools, academies, and
colleges, 112,382 3,129.
Percentage of native white children at
school, 99.53 35.77.
WISCONSIN.--Free State. TEXAS.--Slave State.
Area, 53,924 square miles 274,356 square miles.
Population in 1840, 30,749 80,983. (Republic.)
" 1860, 775,881 604,215.
Population per square mile in 1840, 0.57 0.29.
" " " 1860, 8.99 2.20.
Increase per square mile from 1840 to 1860,
8.42. 1.91.
Absolute increase of population from 1850
to 1860 per square mile, 8.99 1.41.
Value of total product of 1859, $101,375,000 $52,749,000.
Of agriculture alone, $72,875,000 $46,499,000.
Total product per capita, $130.39 $87.30.
Farm lands improved and unimproved,
7,899,170 acres 23,245,433 acres.
Improved farm lands, 1860, 3,746,036 acres 2,649,207 acres.
Value of lands improved and unimproved in
1860, $131,117,082 $104,007,689.
Product per acre of improved and unimproved
lands in 1859, $9.22 $2.00.
Product per acre of improved lands in 1859,
$19.45 $17.56.
Value of farm lands per acre, $16.59 $4.47.
Value of farm lands of Texas,
if worth as much per acre as
those of Wisconsin,
$385,641,733.
Product of Texas lands in
1859, if equal per acre to
those of Wisconsin,
$214,212,892.
Copies of press issued in 1860, 10,798,670 7,855,808.
Percentage of native free adults who cannot
read or write, 1.04 11.84.
Public libraries, 21,020 volumes 4,230 volumes.
Pupils in colleges and public schools,
61,615 11,500.
Percentage of native white children at
school, 74.90 45.82.
INDIANA.--Free State. TENNESSEE.--Slave State.
Area, 33,809 square miles 45,600 square miles.
Population, 1790, none 35,791.
" 1800, 4,875 105,602.
" 1860, 1,350,428 1,109,801.
Product of 1859, $175,690,628 $99,894,070.
Agricultural, $132,440,682 $82,792,070.
Total product, per capita, $130.10 $90.01.
Product of agriculture, per capita, $90.68 $74.60.
Population per square mile in 1800, 0.14 2.31.
Population per square mile, 1860, 39.63 24.34.
Absolute increase of population, from 1850
to 1860, per square mile, 10.72 2.35.
Relative rank in 1800, 20 15.
" " 1860, 6 10.
Farm lands improved and unimproved,
16,315,776 acres 20,355,934 acres.
Improved do., 8,161,717 acres 6,897,974 acres.
Value of farm lands, $344,903,776 $272,555,054.
Ditto, per acre, $21.13 $13.39.
Value of product per acre of improved and
unimproved farm lands, $8.17 $4.06.
Ditto, of Improved farm lands, $16.26 $12.
Volumes in public libraries, 68,403 22,896.
Pupils at public schools and colleges,
168,754 115,750.
FREE STATES OF 1790. SLAVE STATES OF 1790.
Namely: Massachusetts (then including Namely: Delaware, Maryland,
Maine), Rhode Island, Connecticut, Virginia, North Carolina,
New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, South Carolina, Georgia,
New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Kentucky, and Tennessee.
Area, 169,668 square miles 300,580 square miles.
Population in 1790, 1,968,459 1,961,372.
" 1860, 10,594,168 7,414,684.
Population per square mile in 1790, 11.60 6.50.
" " " 1860, 62.44 24.66.
Increase of population per square mile,
from 1790 to 1860, 50.84 18.14.
FREE STATES OF 1860. SLAVE STATES OF 1860.
Area, 835,631 square miles 888,591 square miles.
Farm lands, 161,462,000 acres 248,721,062 acres.
Value, $4,067,947,286 $2,570,466,935.
Value per acre, $25.19 $10.46.
Total product of 1859, namely: of
agriculture, manufactures, mines, and
fisheries, $4,150,000,000 $1,140,000,000.
Per capita, $217 $93.
Copies of press issued in 1860, 760,034,360 167,917,188.
By Table 157 (Census of 1850), ratio of
native white adults who cannot read or
write, 4.12 per cent. 17.23 per cent. (more than
4 to 1).
Same Tables for Census of 1860, partially
estimated, 3.21 per cent 17.03 percent. (more than
5 to 1).
Whole additional value of all
the Slave States, whether farm
lands or unoccupied, if worth
as much per acre as those of
the Free States,
$5,859,246,616.
Total value of products of the
Slave States in 1859, if equal
per capita to those of the
Free States, $2,653,631,032.
Deduct actual products of
1859, $1,140,000,000.
Absolute increase of 1859, if
Free States $1,513,631,032.
That is, the _additional_
value of the actual products
of the Slave States, caused by
emancipation, $1,513,631,032.
Total value of all the property, real and Ditto, of all the Slave
personal, of the Free States in 1860, States, including slaves,
$5,225,307,034. 852,081,081.
$10,
Annual gross profit of capital, 39 per cent. 22 per cent.
If we could add the annual
earnings of commerce (not
included in the Census
s T Tables), the yearly product
of the Free States per capita
would be almost triple that of
the Slave States, the commerce
of New York alone being nearly
equal to that of the entire
South.
Total agricultural product of Free States
in 1859, $2,527,676,000 $862,324,000 (Slave States).
Agricultural product of Free States per Ditto of Slave States per capita
capita in 1859, $131.48 in 1859, $70.56
Ditto, per acre in 1859, improved and
unimproved lands, $15.65 $3.58
Ditto, per acre, improved lands, $28.68 $11.55
It is thus demonstrated by the official statistics of the Census of the
United States, from 1790 to 1860, that the total annual product of the
Free States _per capita_ exceeds that of the Slave States, largely more
than two to one, and, including commerce, very nearly three to one. As
regards education, also, we see that the ratio in favor of the Free
States is more than four to one in 1850 (4.12 to 17.23), and, in 1860,
more than five to one (3.21 to 17.03). And even as regards agricultural
products, we have seen that those of the Free States were $2,527,676,000
per annum, and of the Slave States only $862,324,000. The value of the
lands of the Free States was $25.19 per acre, of the Slave States only
$10.46 per acre; the product of the improved lands of the Free States
was $26.68 _per acre_ and of the Slave States $11.55, while, _per
capita_, the result was $131.48 to $70.56.
These facts prove how much greater the crops of the Slave States would
be, if their farms (including cotton) were cultivated by free labor. It
is also thus demonstrated how completely the fertile lands of the South
are exhausted and reduced in value by slave culture. Having thus proved,
deductively, the ruinous effects of slavery, I will proceed, in my next
letter, inductively, to exhibit the causes which have produced these
remarkable results.
R. J. WALKER.
AENONE:
A TALE OF SLAVE LIFE IN ROME.
CHAPTER V.
The day wore quietly on, like any other day; for the confusion and
turmoil of the ovation were already a half-forgotten thing of the past,
and Rome had again subsided into its usual course: in the earlier hours,
a city of well-filled streets, astir and vocal with active and vigorous
trade and labor; then--as the noontide sun shed from the brazen sky a
molten glow, that fell like fire upon the lava pavement, and glanced
from polished walls until the whole atmosphere seemed like a furnace--a
city seemingly deserted, except by a few slaves, engaged in removing the
triumphal arches hung with faded and lifeless flowers, and by a soldier
here and there in glistening armor, keeping a lonely watch; and
again--as the sun sank toward the west, and, with the lengthening
shadows, the intensity of the heat diminished--a city flooded with
wealth and fashion, pouring in confused streams hither and thither,
through its broadest avenues and forums--groups of idlers sauntering
along to watch the inoccupation of others, and with the prospective bath
as the pretence for the stroll--matrons and maidens of high degree, with
attendants following them--a rattle of gayly caparisoned chariots, with
footmen trotting beside the wheels--guards on horseback--detachments of
praetorian soldiers passing up and down--here the car of a senator of the
broad purple--there the mounted escort of a Syrian governor--all that
could speak of magnificence, wealth, and authority, at that hour
thronged the pavement.
Leaving the Vanno palace, AEnone joined herself to this moving concourse.
At her side walked one of her bondwomen, and, at a pace or two behind,
properly attired, and armed only with a short sword, strode the armor
bearer. Thus attended, she pressed forward along the Appian Way toward
the outskirts of the city--past broad palaces and villas, with
encircling gardens and open paved courts--past shrubberies, fish ponds,
and statue-crowned terraces--past public baths, through whose broad
doorways the people swarmed by hundreds, and whose steps were thronged
with waiting slaves; now stopping until the armor bearer, running to the
front, could make a passage for her through some crowd denser than
ordinary--then gliding onward with more rapid pace, as the way became
clearer--and again arresting herself for a moment as the stream of
people also tarried to watch the approach of the gorgeous chariot and
richly uniformed guards of the emperor Titus Vespasian. At length,
turning the corner of a pillar-porticoed temple, which stood back from
the street, and up the gentle ascent of whose steps a concourse of
priests and attendants were forcing a garland-decked bullock,
unconscious of the sacrificial rites which awaited him within, she stood
beyond the surging of the crowd and in a quiet little street.
It was a narrow avenue, in whose humble architecture brick took the
place of stone; but by no means mean or filthy, like so many of the
streets of similar width in the central portion of the city. Stretching
out toward the open country, and not given up to merchandise or slave
quarters, its little houses had their gardens and clustering vines about
them, supplying with the picturesque whatever was wanting in
magnificence, and evidencing a pleasant medium between wealth and
poverty. The paved roadway was clean and unbroken; and far down as the
eye could reach no life could be seen, except a single slave with a
fruit basket balanced upon his head, and near him a group of children at
play.
Passing down this street, AEnone came to a spot where one of the great
aqueducts which supplied the city, crossed the roadway diagonally with a
single span. At the right hand stood a small brick house, built into the
nearest arch so snugly that it seemed as though its occupants could
almost hear the gurgling of the water flowing overhead from the hills of
Albanus. Like the other houses in its neighborhood, it had a small
courtyard in front, planted with a shrub or two. This was the home of
her father, the centurion Porthenus. Stopping here, she was about to
enter without warning, according to her usual custom, but as she
advanced, a dwarf, whom she recognized as the same which that morning
had so eagerly presented himself for notice in the front of her
husband's captives, sprang forward, grinned his recognition of the armor
bearer, made another grimace expressive of mingled respect and
admiration for herself, threw open the door, and ushered her in with an
outburst of ceremonious pride befitting an imperial reception.
At a back window of the house, from whence the line of aqueduct could be
seen for some distance leaping houses and streets in its undeviating
course to the centre of the city, sat the centurion. He was a man of
medium height, short necked, and thick set, with blunted features and
grizzled hair and beard. Two of the fingers of his left hand were
wanting, and a broad scar, the trophy of a severe skirmish among the
Alemanni, crossed his right cheek and one side of his nose, giving him
an expression more curious than pleasing. His general appearance was
after the common type of an old, war-worn soldier, rough and
unscrupulous by nature, hardened by camp life and dissipation, grown
cruel by excess of petty authority, overbearing with his inferiors,
jovial and complaisant with his equals, cringing to his superiors, and
with an air of discontent overlaying every other expression, as though
he was continually tortured with the belief that his success in life had
not equalled his merits. As AEnone entered, he was bending over a shield,
and earnestly engaged in burnishing its brazen mouldings. At his side
leaned a short sword, awaiting similar attention, and in a rack beside
him were a number of weapons of different varieties and sizes, which had
already submitted to his restorative skill, and now shone like glass.
Hearing her light step, he looked up, arose, flung the shield into a
corner, and, with a roar, as though ordering a battalion, called out to
the grinning dwarf, who had followed her in:
"Ho there, ape! A seat for my daughter, the wife of the imperator
Sergius Vanno!"
The dwarf sprang forward and dragged out a seat for her; having done
which, he seemed about to yield to his curiosity and remain. But the
centurion, disapproving of such freedom, made a lunge at him with the
small sword, before which the dwarf retired with a precipitate leap, and
joined the bondwoman and armor bearer outside. Then the father, being
left alone with his daughter, embraced her, and uttered such words of
welcome as his rough nature suggested.
As regarded his intercourse with her, perhaps the most noticeable traits
were the mingled reverence and familiarity with which he treated her. It
seemed as though he was actuated by an ever-pervading consciousness that
her exalted position demanded the observance of the deepest respect
toward her; but that this feeling was connected in his mind with an
unceasing struggle to remember that, after all, she was his own child,
and as such was not entitled to any undue consideration from him. Upon
the present occasion, he first timidly touched her cheek with his lips
and uttered a gentle and almost courtly salutation; but immediately
recollecting himself, and appearing to become impressed with the belief
that his unwitting deference was unworthy of the character of a father,
he proceeded to atone for the mistake by a rough and discomposing
embrace, and such a familiar and frolicksome greeting as none but a camp
follower would have felt flattered with. Then, seating himself before
her, he commenced his conversation in a rude and uncouth tone, and with
rather a forced affectation of military bluntness; from which, however,
as his eye dwelt upon the richness of her apparel and his mind began to
succumb to the charm of her native refinement, he gradually and
unconsciously subsided, in turn, into his former soft and deferential
manner.
'And so the imperator Sergius Vanno has returned,' he said, rolling upon
his tongue, with evident satisfaction, that high-sounding title--once
the acknowledged appellation of a conqueror, but now claimed as a right
by the imperial line alone, and no longer elsewhere bestowed except as
an informal and transitory compliment. 'It was a splendid ovation, and
well earned by a glorious campaign. There is no one in all the Roman
armies who could have managed it better.'
Nevertheless, with unconscious inconsistency, he immediately began to
show wherein the campaign could have been improved, and how many gross
mistakes were visible in every portion of it--how the force of Mutius
should have been diverged more in advancing inland--how, in the battle
along the shore, the three-oared galleys of Agricola should have been
drawn up to support the attack--the consequence of this omission, if the
leading cohort had met with a repulse--and the like. All this he marked
out upon the floor with a piece of coal, taking but little heed that
AEnone could not follow him; and step by step, in the ardor of criticism,
he advanced so far that he was soon ready to prove that the campaign had
been most wofully misconducted, and was only indebted to accident for
success.
'But it is of little use for me to talk, if I cannot act as well,' he at
length concluded, rising from the floor. 'And how could I act any part,
placed as I am? The father of the wife of the imperator Sergius Vanno
should be the leader of a cohort rather than of a mere century; and be
otherwise lodged than in this poor place. Then would they listen to
him.'
He spoke bitterly and enviously, exhibiting in his whole tone as well as
in his words his besetting weakness. For a while AEnone did not answer.
It was as far from her duty as from her taste and pleasure to remind
him, even if she could have done so to his comprehension, that her
husband had already advanced him as far as was possible or fitting, and
had otherwise provided for him in various ways as well as could
reasonably be expected. The views of the centurion were of a far
different nature. In giving his daughter to the patrician he had meanly
intended thereby to rise high in life--had anticipated ready promotion
beyond what his ignorance would have justified--had supposed that he
would be admitted upon an equal social footing among the friends of
Sergius, not realizing that his own native roughness and brutishness
must have forbidden such a connection--had dazzled his eyes too wilfully
with pictures of the wealth and influence and glory that would fall to
his lot. As long, therefore, as so many of those gilded imaginings had
failed in their promise, it seemed as nothing to him that Sergius, in
the first flush of admiration for the daughter, had removed the father
from rough provincial to more pleasing and relaxing urban duties, had
purchased him a house befitting his station, and had lightened his
condition in various ways.
'But we are gradually doing better,' AEnone said at length, striving to
cheer him by identifying her fortunes more nearly with his own, 'This is
a finer place than we had to live in at Ostia. Think how narrow and
crowded we were then. And now I see that we have a new slave to open for
us, while at Ostia we had only old Mitus. Indeed, we are very
comfortable.'
'Ay, ay,' growled the centurion; 'a new slave--a dwarf or idiot, or what
not--just such a creature as would not bring five sestertia in the
market; and, therefore, the imperator has cast him to me, like a bare
bone to a dog. Tell him I thank him for the gift. And in this matter it
has been with me as always heretofore--either no luck at all, or too
much. How often have I not passed a campaign without taking a prisoner,
while they fell in crowds to all around me? And when at last I gained my
share, when was it ever of any value to me, being hundreds of miles from
a market? And here it is the same again. For months, no slave at all;
and then all at once there are two, and I shall be,eaten out of my
house.'
'Two, father?'
'Listen to me. No sooner did your honored lord send me this dwarf, than
arrives Tisiphon of the twelfth cohort. He had long owed me a slave; and
now that a captive, poor and feeble, and likely to die, had fallen into
his hands, he thought it a fair opportunity to acquit himself toward me.
But for once Tisiphon has cheated himself. The slave he brought was weak
and sick, but it was only from want of food and rest. The fellow will
recover, and I will yet make much of him. Would you see him? Look out of
the back window there. He will turn out a fine slave yet, and, if this
dwarf had not come, would be right pleasing to me. But two of them! How
shall I find bread for both?'
AEnone walked to the window, and leaned out. The courtyard behind was but
limited in size, containing a few squares of burnt brick arranged for
pavement around a small plot of grass at the foot of a single plane
tree. The slave of whom the centurion spoke was seated upon this plot,
with his back against the tree, and his head bent over, while, with
vacant mind, he watched the play of a small green lizard. As she
appeared at the window, he raised his eyes toward her, then dropped them
again upon the ground. It was hardly, in fact, as much as could be
called a look--a mere glance, rather, a single tremor of the drooping
lid, a mute appeal for sympathy, as though there had been an inner
instinct which, at that instant, had directed him to her, as one who
could feel pity for his trouble and desolation. But at that glance,
joined to something strangely peculiar in the captive's figure and
attitude, a nervous thrill shot through AEnone's heart, causing her to
hold her breath in unreasoning apprehension; a fear of something which
she could not explain, a dim consciousness of some forgotten association
of the past arising to confront her, but which she could not for the
moment identify. And still she looked out, resisting the impulse of
dread which bade her move away, fixing a strained gaze upon the captive,
in a vain struggle to allay, by one moment of calm scrutiny, that
phantom of her memory which, act as she might, would not be repressed,
but which each instant seemed to expand into clearer certainty before
her.
'Do you see him? Does he appear to you a worthy slave?' cried the
centurion.
'A worthy slave, indeed,' she answered, in a low tone, feeling compelled
to make some response.
At her voice, the captive again raised his head, and looked into her
face; not now with a hasty, timid glance, but with the full gaze of one
who believes he has been spoken to, and waits for a renewal of the
question. And as she met the inquiring look, AEnone turned away and sank
back in terror and dismay. She knew it all, now, nor could she longer
deceive herself by vain pretences or assurances. The instinct which, at
the first had filled her soul with that unexplained dread, had not been
false to her. For that glance, as it now rested upon her with, longer
duration and deeper intensity, too surely completed the suggestion
which, at the first it had faintly whispered to her, flashing into her
heart the long-stifled memories of the past, recalling the time when, a
few years before, she had sat upon the rock at Ostia, and had gazed down
upon eyes lifted to meet her own with just so beseeching an appeal, and
telling her too truly that she stood again in the presence of him to
whom she had then promised her girlish faith, and whom she had so long
since looked upon as dead to her.
'I will call him in,' said the centurion, 'and you can see him closer.'
'Nay, nay, father; let him remain where he is,' she exclaimed, in
uncontrollable dread of recognition.
'Ha! art not afraid, girl?' demanded the old man. 'He can do no hurt,
even were he stronger; and now that he is weak, a child could lead him
with a string. Come hither, sirrah!'
The captive arose, smoothed down his tunic, and, obediently entering the
house, awaited commands; while AEnone, with as quiet movement as
possible, shrunk, into the most distant corner of the room. What if he
should recognize her, and should call upon her by name, not knowing her
changed position, or recollecting his own debasement into slavery? What
explanation other than the true one could she give to account for his
audacity, and save him from the chastisement which the offended
centurion would prepare to bestow upon him? This was but a momentary
fear, however, since she felt that the increasing glow of evening, added
to her own alteration by dress, and the certainty that he would not
expect to meet her thus, found a sure protection against recognition, as
long as she took care not to risk betrayal by her voice or manner. And,
perhaps, after all--and her heart lightened somewhat at the thought--it
might be that her reason had too freely yielded to an insane fancy, and
allowed her to be deceived by a chance resemblance.
'How is he called?' she inquired, disguising her voice as thoroughly as
she could. The instant she had spoken she would have retracted her
words, if possible, from the mere fear lest her father, in his response,
might mention her name. But it luckily chanced that the centurion did
not do so.
'How is he called? Nay, that thing I had not thought to ask as yet. Your
name, slave?'
'Cleotos.'
At the word, the blood again flew back to her heart. There could now no
longer be a doubt. How often had she repeated that name endearingly, in
those early days of her first romance in life!
'Cleotos,' said the centurion. 'It is a brave name. There was once a
leader of a full phalanx with that name, and he did well to the empire.
It is, therefore, scarcely a name for a slave to bear. But we will talk
some other time about that. It is of thine appearance now, that we will
speak. Is he not, after all, a pleasing youth? Did Tisiphon so surely
deceive me as he intended, when he gave the man to me? See! there is but
little brawn and muscle to him, I grant; and therefore he will not make
a good gladiator or even spearman; but he has a comely shape, which will
fit him well for a page or palace usher. And, therefore, I will sell him
for such. He should bring a good price, indeed, when the marks of his
toil and sickness have gone off from him, and he has been fattened into
better condition. But two of them!' continued the centurion, suddenly
recurring to his former source of grief. 'How can I fatten him when
there are two of them? How find bread for both? And yet he is not so
very thin, now. I will light a lamp, daughter, for it has grown quite
dark, and you shall come nearer and examine him.'
'Nay! nay!' exclaimed AEnone, in hurried resistance of this new danger.
'Not now. I am no judge of the merits of captives, and it is getting
late. I know that my lord will be expecting me, and perchance will be
vexed if I delay.'
'Be it so, then,' responded the other. 'And as it is dark, it is not
befitting that you should go without escort. Take, therefore--'
'I have the armor bearer for my escort, father.'
'It is something, but not enough,' said the centurion. 'Enough for
safety, but not for dignity. Remember that, while on the one hand you
are the wife of the imperator Sergius Vanno, you are also a daughter of
the house of Porthenus--a family which was powerful in the far-off days
of the republic, long before the house of Vanno had begun to take root,'
he continued, in a tone of pride. For then, as now, poverty consoled
itself for its privations by dreams--whether well or ill founded, it
mattered but little--of grandeurs which had once existed; and it was one
of the weaknesses of the centurion to affect superiority of blood, and
try to believe that therein he enjoyed compensations beyond anything
that wealth could bestow.
'Of the house of Porthenus,' he repeated, 'and should therefore be
suitably attended. So let this new slave follow behind. And take, also,
the dwarf. He is not of soldierly appearance, but for all that he will
count as one more.'
Fearful of offending her father by a refusal, or of encountering
additional risks of recognition by a more prolonged conversation at the
doorway, now brightened by the light of the newly risen moon, AEnone
hastily assented, and started upon her homeward route. Clinging closely
to the side of her bondwoman, not daring to look back for a parting
adieu to her father, who stood at the door leaning upon his sword, and
grimly smiling with delight at fancying his child at last attended as
became a scion of the house of Porthenus--not regarding the
half-smothered oaths and exclamations of contempt with which the armor
bearer behind her surveyed his two new companions upon guard--she
pressed rapidly on, with the sole desire of reaching her house and
secluding herself from further danger of recognition.
The moon rose higher, silvering the city with charms of new beauty,
gleaming upon the surface of the swift-rolling Tiber, giving fresh
radiance to the marble palaces and temples, adding effect to whatever
was already beautiful, diminishing the deformity of whatever was
unlovely, even imparting a pleasant aspect of cheerfulness to the lower
quarters of the city, where lay congregated poverty and dishonor and
crime. The Appian Way no longer swarmed with the crowd that had trodden
it an hour ago. The priests had completed the sacrifice and left the
temple, the bathers had departed, the slaves no longer lingered upon the
porticos, and the riders in gay chariots no more were to be seen. A
calmer and more quiet occupancy of the street had ensued. Here and there
a soldier paced to and fro, looking up at the moon and down again, at
the glistening river, and thought, perhaps, upon other night watches in
Gallia, when just such a moon had gleamed upon the silver Rhone. Here
and there two lovers, loth to abandon such a pleasant light and warmth,
strolled slowly along, and, as lovers have ever done, bade the moon
witness their vows. But not the river or the moonlight did AEnone now
linger to look upon, nor lovers' vows did she think about, as she glided
hastily toward her own home. The peacefulness and quiet of nature found
no response in her heart. Her only emotion was one of dread lest each
ray of light might shine too brightly upon her--lest even her walk might
betray her--lest every sound might be an unguarded recognition from the
poor, unconscious captive behind her.
At length she reached her home, passed up the broad flight of steps in
front, and stood panting within the doorway. A momentary pause ere she
entered, and then, unable to continue the control which she had so far
maintained over herself, she turned and cast one hasty, curious glance
below. The two new slaves of the centurion stood side by side in the
street, gazing up at the palace walls, the dwarf with a grin of almost
idiotic glee, the other with a grave air of quiet contemplation. But
what was that sudden look of startled recognition that suddenly flashed
across the features of the latter? Why did his face turn so ghastly pale
in the moonlight, and his limbs seem to fail him, so that he grasped his
companion's arm for support? AEnone shrank terrified into the obscurity
of the doorway.
But in an instant she recovered her self-possession. It must be that he
had been faint or giddy, nothing more. It could not have been
recognition that had startled him from his earnest contemplation, for he
had not been looking toward her, but, with his body half turned away,
had been gazing up at the highest story of the palace.
CHAPTER VI.
And now, having avoided the immediate peril of recognition, AEnone turned
into the palace. Even there, however, her disordered fancy pictured
dangers still encompassing her. How, after all, could she feel sure that
she had not been known? During that clear moonlight passage along the
Appian Way, what revelations might not have been made by a chance look
or gesture! At the very first she had almost stumbled upon the truth
merely through the magic of one upward glance of the eye of the wearied
slave; why, then, might she not have unconsciously revealed herself to
him by even a wave of the hand or a turn of the instep, or by some other
apparently trivial and unimportant motion? And if so, at what instant
might he not forget his fallen condition, and disregard not only his
safety but her reputation, by pressing into the palace and claiming the
right of speech with her? Rasher deeds were not seldom done under the
promptings of desperation. Trembling beneath the sway of such
imaginings, each footfall that resounded in the hall seemed like the
light and buoyant step of him who had trodden with her the sands of
Ostia--each figure that passed by bore, for the instant, the outline of
his form--even at the open window the well-known face seemed to peer in
at every corner and watch her.
This paroxysm of terror gradually passed away, but was succeeded by
other fancies equally productive of inquietude. What if the captive,
having recognized her, had whispered his story to the companions with
whom he had walked! He would surely not do so if he still loved her; but
what if his love had ceased, and he should be meanly desirous of
increasing his own importance by telling how he, a slave, had been the
chosen lover of the proudly allied lady before him? Nay, he would never
act thus, for it would be a baseness foreign to his nature; and yet have
not men of the most lofty sense of honor often fallen from their
original nobility, and revelled in self-degradation? And it somehow
seemed as though, at the last, the dwarf had looked up at her with a
strangely knowing leer. And was it merely her imagination that made her
think there was a certain sly approach to undue familiarity in the
usually deferential deportment of the armor bearer?
With the next morning, however, came more composed reflections. Though
the forebodings of the evening had naturally tinged her dreams with
similar vague imaginings of coming trouble, yet, upon the whole, her
sleep had brought rest, and the bright sunlight streaming in at the
window drove away the phantoms which, during the previous gloom, had so
confusedly disported themselves in her bewildered brain. She could now
indulge in a more cheering view of her situation; and she felt that
there was nothing in what had transpired of sufficient importance, when
coolly weighed and passed upon, to make her anxious or afraid.
In a sick and travel-worn slave she had recognized one to whom, in her
younger days, she had plighted her faith, and who had, in turn, given
his faith to her. He was now a captive, and she had become one of the
nobles of the empire. But his evil lot had not been of her procuring,
being merely one of those ill fortunes which are cast broadly over the
earth, and whose descent upon any one person more than upon another can
be attributed to destiny alone. Nor, in accepting her high position, had
she been guilty of breach of faith, for she had long awaited the return
of her lover, and he had not come. And through all those years, as she
had grown into more mature womanhood, she had vaguely felt that those
stolen interviews had been but the unreasoning suggestions of girlish
romance, too carelessly indifferent to the exigencies of poverty and
diverse nationality; and that, if he had ever returned to claim her,
mutual explanation and forgetfulness could have been their only proper
course. There was, therefore, nothing for which she could reproach
herself, or for which he could justly blame her, were he to recognize
her as the wife of another man.
But there was little chance, indeed, that such a recognition could take
place. Certainly, now that, apart from her troubled and excited fears of
the previous day, she more deliberately weighed the chances, she felt
assured that in her rapid passage through the evening gloom, nothing
could have betrayed her. And it was not probable that even in open
daylight and in face-to-face encounter with him he would be likely to
know her. She had recognized him almost at a glance, for not only was
his dress composed of the same poor and scant material which had served
him years before, but even in form and feature he seemed unchanged, his
slight frame having gained no expansion as his manhood had progressed,
while his face retained in every line the same soft and almost girlish
expression. But with herself all things had altered. It was not merely
that the poorly clad maiden who, with naked feet, well-tanned hands, and
tangled and loosely hanging curls, had been wont to wander carelessly by
the shore of a distant bay, had become a richly adorned matron of the
imperial centre. Beyond all that, there was a greater change, which,
though in its gradual progress almost inappreciable to one who had
watched her day by day, could not but be remarked after a lapse of many
years. The darker hair, the softer complexion, the suave smile into
which the merry laugh of girlhood had little by little subsided, the
more composed mien, replete with matronly dignity, the refinement of air
and attitude insensibly resulting from long continued instinctive
imitation, the superior development of figure--all these, as they were
improvements in her former self, were also just so many effective
disguises upon which she could safely rely, unless she were to provoke
inordinate scrutiny by some unguarded action or expression. But all this
she would earnestly guard against. She would even put no trust in the
natural immunity of which her reason assured her, but would make
everything doubly safe by totally refraining from any encounter with one
whose recognition of her would be so painful.
This she could do, and yet not fail in any friendly duty which the
remembrance of their former love might enjoin upon her. Unseen in her
retirement, she could watch over and protect him, now that in his sorrow
and degradation he so greatly needed a friend. She could ameliorate his
lot by numberless kindnesses, which he would enjoy none the less for
being unable to detect their source. She would cunningly influence her
father to treat him with tenderness and consideration. And when the
proper time arrived, and she could take her measures without suspicion,
she would herself purchase his freedom, and send him back rejoicing to
his native land. And when all this was done, and he should again have
reached his home, perhaps she might then write to him one line to tell
him who it was that had befriended him, and that she had done so in
memory of olden times, and that now, when she was so far removed from
him, he should give her one kind thought, utter a prayer to the gods in
her behalf, and then forget her forever.
So much for her security and her friendly duty. As for the feelings of
her heart, she was at rest. Strong in self-confidence, she had no fear
that her mind could be influenced to stray from its proper path. It is
true that during the previous evening, in the first tumult of troubled
thought, she had felt a vague presentiment that a day of temptation
might be before her, not as the result of any deliberate choice upon her
part, but rather as a cruel destiny to be forced upon her. But now the
current of her mind moved more clearly and unobstructedly; and she felt
that however chance might control the worldly prosperity of each one,
the will and strength to shape his own destiny, for good or evil, are
still left to him unimpaired. Away, then, with all thoughts of the past.
In her heart there could be but one affection, and to her life there
could be but the one course of duty, and in that she would steadfastly
walk.
Strengthened, therefore, with the well-assured belief that the impulsive
affection of her youth had become gradually tempered by lapse of years
into a chaste and sisterly friendship, and that the pleasant memories
which clustered about her heart and made her look back half regretfully
upon those former days would be cherished only as the mere innocent
relics of a girlish romance, she felt no fear that her faith could be
led to depart from its lawful allegiance. But aside from all this, there
lurked within her breast an uneasy sense of being the holder of a great
secret which, in the end, would surely crush her, unless she could share
its burden with another. In this desire for confidence, at least, there
could be no harm; and her mind rapidly ran over the array of her few
friends. For the first time in her life, perhaps, her isolation from
close and unfettered companionship with others was forced upon her
attention, and her soul grew faint as she thought upon her dependence
upon herself alone for comfort or advice. To whom, indeed, could she
venture to pour out her heart? Not to her father, who, with unreasoning
ignorance and little charity, would coarsely form base conclusions about
her, and would most likely endeavor to solve the problem by cruelty to
the unfortunate slave who had so unwittingly originated it. Not to any
of those matrons of whom her rank made her the associate; and who, after
gaining her confidence, would either betray it to others, or else,
wrongly misconstruing her, and fancying her to be influenced by scruples
which they might not have felt, would scarcely fail to ridicule and cast
disdain upon all the most tender emotions of her heart. And above all
others, not to her husband, to whom, if she dared, she would have wished
to reveal everything, but who had, she feared, at the bottom of his
soul, a jealous and suspicious nature, which would be sure to take
alarm, and cause him to look upon her story, not as a generous
confidence bestowed in the hope of comfort and assistance, but rather
as a cunningly devised cover for some unconfessed scheme of wrong
against him.
Burdened by these reflections, AEnone slowly passed from her room into
the antechamber. Lifting her eyes, she there saw her husband standing at
the window, and, at the distance of a pace or two from him, a female
figure. It was that of a girl of about eighteen years, small, light, and
graceful. Her costume, though not in form such as belonged to the
freeborn women of Rome, was yet far superior in richness of material to
that usually worn by persons of low degree, and was fashioned with a
taste which could not fail to assist the display of her graceful
perfection of form, indicated in part by the rounded lines of the
uncovered neck and arms. As AEnone entered the room, Sergius advanced,
and, taking her by the hand, said:
'Yonder is a new slave for you--the present about which I yesterday
spoke. I trust it will prove that during my absence I was not unmindful
of you. It was at Samos that I obtained her. There, you may remember, we
tarried, after taking the town and burning part of the fleet.'
Samos! Where had AEnone heard that place mentioned? Searching into the
recesses of her memory, it at last flashed upon her. Was it not from
Samos that he--Cleotos--had come? And was it fate that forced the
recollection of him ever upon her? She turned pale, but by a violent
effort succeeded in maintaining her self-possession and looking up with
a smile of apparent interest upon her husband as he spoke.
'She had nearly fallen the prey of one of the common soldiers,' he
continued; 'but I, with a few pieces of gold, rescued her from him,
picturing to myself the gratification you would feel at being so fitly
attended. And that you might the better appreciate the gift, I have
retained her till to-day before showing her to you, in order that you
might first see her recovered from the toil of travel and in all her
recovered beauty. A rare beauty, indeed, but of a kind so different from
thine that your own will be heightened by the contrast rather than
diminished. How many sestertia I have been offered for her, how many
high officers of my forces have desired to obtain her for service upon
their own wives, I cannot now remember. But I have refused and resisted
all, for I would that you should be known throughout all Rome by the
beauty of those in waiting about you, even as you are now known by your
own beauty. Pray, accept of her, therefore, as your attendant and
companion, for it would sorely disappoint me were you to reject such a
pleasing gift.'
'Let it be as my lord says,' responded AEnone. 'And if I fail in due
utterance of my thanks, impute it not to want of appreciation of the
gift, but rather to inability of proper expression.'
It was with real gratitude that AEnone spoke; for, at the instant, a
thought of cheering import flashed upon her, swelling her heart with
joy, and causing her to welcome the captive girl as a gift from the
gods. Here, perhaps, as though in direct answer to her prayer for
sympathy, might be the one for whom her heart had been longing; coming
to her, not laden with any of that haughty pride and ill-befitting
knowledge with which the Roman world about her reeked, but rather as she
herself had once come--with all her unstained provincial innocence of
thought yet nestling in her shrinking soul--one, like herself, an exile
from a lowly state, and with a heart filled with those simple memories
which must not be too carelessly exposed--so seldom do they gather from
without anything but cruel ridicule or cold lack of comprehension--one
whom she could educate into an easy intimacy with her own impulses and
yearnings, and thus, forgetting all social differences, draw closer and
nearer to her as a friend and confidant.
As she thus reflected, she felt the soft pressure of lips upon her left
hand, which hung idly at her side, and, looking down, she saw that the
captive girl had knelt before her, and, while lightly grasping her
fingers, was gazing up into her face with a pleading glance. AEnone's
first impulse was to respond with eager warmth to that humble appeal for
protection and friendship; and had it not been for the morbid fear she
felt lest her husband, who stood looking on, might chide such
familiarity, or at the least might cast ridicule upon the feeling which
prompted it, she would have raised the captive girl and folded her in
her arms. As it was, the impulse was too spontaneous and sudden to be
entirely resisted, and she held forth her other hand to lift the
kneeling figure, when a strange, intuitive perception of something which
she could scarcely explain, caused her to withhold further action.
Something, she knew not what, in the attitude and expression of the
captive before her, which sent her warm blood flowing back with a
chilled current--something which told her that her hopes of the moment
had been smitten with decay as suddenly as they had been raised, and
that, instead of a friend, she had perhaps found an enemy. The full dark
eye yet gazed up at her with the same apparent moistened appeal for
friendly sympathy; but to AEnone's alarmed instinct it now seemed as
though behind that glance there was an inner depth of cold, calculating
scrutiny. Still, almost unheeding the gentle gesture of the hand
extended to raise her, the Greek knelt upon the floor, and, with an
appearance of mingled timorousness and humility, laid her lips upon the
gathered fingers; but now there appeared to be no natural warmth or glow
in the pressure or real savor of lowliness in the attitude, but rather a
forced and studied obsequiousness. For the instant AEnone paused, as
though uncertain how to act. Then, fearing to betray her doubts, and
hoping that her startled instinct might have deceived her, she bent
forward once more and raised the captive to her feet.
It had all been the work of an instant; passing so quickly that the
pause between the impulse and its completion could hardly have been
noticed. But in that instant a change had swept over the expressions of
both; and as they now stood opposite and gazed more intently upon each
other, the change still progressed. The face of the young Roman matron,
but a moment before so glowing with sympathy and radiant with a
new-discovered hope of future happiness, now seemed to shrink behind a
veil of despairing dread--the fear chasing away the joy as the shadow
flits along the wall and banishes the sunlight; while, though every
feature of the Greek still seemed clothed with trembling humility, yet,
from some latent depths of her nature, a gleam of something strangely
wild and forbidding began to play upon the surface, and invest the
moistened eye and quivering lip with an undefinable repulsive harshness.
'Your name?' said AEnone, rousing herself with exertion, as though from a
painful dream.
'Leta, my lady,' was the reply, uttered in a tone of despairing sadness,
and with eyes again cast upon the floor.
'Leta,' repeated AEnone, touched in spite of her forebodings by that
guise of an unhappiness which might, after all, be real. 'It is a
fair-sounding name, and I shall call you always by it. Poor girl! you
are an exile from your native land, and I--I cannot call myself a Roman.
We must be friends--must we not?'
She spoke rather in the tone of one hoping against evil auguries than as
one indulging in any confident anticipations of the future. The Greek
did not answer, but again slowly raised her eyes. At first, as before,
with the same studied expression of pleading humility; but, as she
glanced forward, and saw Sergius standing behind, and gazing at her with
an admiration which he did not attempt to dissemble, a strange glow of
triumph and ambitious hope seemed to light up her features. And when,
after a hasty glance of almost responsive meaning toward Sergius, she
again looked into the face of the other, it was no longer with an
assumption of humble entreaty, but rather with an expression of wild,
searching intensity. Before it the milder gaze of AEnone faltered, until
it seemed as though the two had suffered a relative interchange of
position: the patrician mistress standing with troubled features, and
with vague apprehension and trembling in her heart, and as though
timorously asking for the friendship which she had meant to bestow; and
the captive, calmly, and with a look of ill-suppressed triumph, reading
the other's soul as though to learn how she could most readily wield
supremacy over her.
'OUR DOMESTIC RELATIONS; OR, HOW TO TREAT THE REBEL STATES.'
In the _Atlantic Monthly_ for October, 1863, is an article with the
above caption, in which the author, we think, develops ideas and
theories totally at variance with the spirit of our Government, and
which, if acted upon, and followed to their legitimate results, tend to
subvert that self-government which is the privilege and pride of the
American citizen. The result of his reflection is, that the States
which, more conveniently than accurately, are termed the rebel States,
have practically become Territories, and as such are to be governed by
Congress. Is this proposition true? Let us examine--not hastily, not
rashly, not vindictively, or in a party spirit--but wisely,
magnanimously, and lovingly, and see if there be not a truer conclusion
and one more in accordance with the spirit of our republican
Constitution.
When the rebel _States_ (?) passed their respective ordinances of
secession, what results flowed from the action? The political doctrine
that the union of the States is not a mere confederation of separate
States, but a consolidation, within the limits of the Constitution, of
the different States, otherwise independent, into _one nation_, is now
too well established to remain a subject of debate. We are not,
therefore, members of a confederacy, but are a unit--one. It follows, as
a matter of course, that no State can withdraw or hide itself from the
control of the National Government. The ordinances of secession passed
by the rebel States did not, therefore, affect the Federal authority.
The broad and just ground taken by President Lincoln in his Inaugural
Address was, that the rebel States were still _in_ the Union; and it is,
we apprehend, the only tenable ground of right upon which we can carry
on the war in which we are now engaged. The Constitution of the United
States requires (art. ii. sec. 3) that the President shall 'take care
that the laws be faithfully executed.' When the present head of the
executive came into office, in March, 1861, he found several of the
States, having already seceded on paper, seeking to perfect their
treason by 'the armed hand.' Lighthouses had been destroyed, or their
beacon fires--the sentinels of the sea--shrouded in darkness, custom
houses were given into rebel hands, the revenue cutters were
surrendered, and deed followed deed in this dark drama of treason, until
it was consummated by firing upon the unarmed Star of the West, while
she was performing her errand of mercy, to relieve the hunger and
reenforce the exhausted strength of the heroic little garrison of Fort
Sumter. The plain and immediate duty of the President was, therefore, to
call out the strength of the nation to assist him in 'taking care that
the laws be faithfully executed.' And this brings us to the proposition
that _the Government is not engaged in a war of conquest with another
nation, but in enforcing the laws in what is already a part of the
Union_.
The Constitution (art. ii. sec. 2) makes the President the
'commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States, and of
the militia of the several States when called into the actual service of
the United States.' In the President, and in him alone, supremely, is
vested the authority which is to conduct the course of war. Congress has
the war-making power, but war once brought into being (if we may be
allowed the expression), the manner in which it shall be conducted rests
with the executive. It is, of course, to be conducted in accordance with
the laws of nations and of civilized warfare. The first step necessary
to enable the President to enforce the laws in the seceded States is to
put down the military power by which their execution is resisted. That
is now being done. By the 'necessity of war,' then, the executive is
authorized to take such measures as may be necessary to put down the
rebellion; and though no power is given him to appoint Governors over
the States in ordinary times, it _is_ given him, indirectly, but as
surely as if expressly granted, to be used in times of actual war, by
the clause of the Constitution which we have just quoted, making him
commander-in-chief of the national military force. Whenever the States,
or any of them, cease to be debatable ground--that is, when the military
force of the rebellion is put down, the military necessity ceases, and
with it the authority of the President to appoint military governors.
Nor is there danger of encroaching upon the liberties of the nation;
for, as the power attaches to the President, not in his capacity as the
civil head of the nation, but as the military commander-in-chief, it
ceases the moment military opposition is overcome. The fear of the
_Atlantic_ author would seem to be ill grounded, for we cannot believe
that any military force could be raised by a despotic executive who
might endeavor to place himself in absolute power, and we think there is
little danger that the Government may 'crystallize into a military
despotism.' Would supplies be granted by Congress; or, if granted, would
not the people of a country which has sprung to arms only to defend a
_free_ government, be strong enough to resist any single military
despot? Let the history of the present rebellion, in which a population
of only eight millions, and that in the least defensible States of the
Union, has resisted for nearly three years the combined power of all the
other States, with a population of more than twenty millions, answer the
question. The _Atlantic_ writer admits the propriety of appointing
military governors in the cases of Mexico and California before the
latter was admitted as a State, but denies it in the cases of the rebel
States, because they are States, and therefore (as he says) within the
civil jurisdiction. But at the period to which we refer, Congress had
jurisdiction over both California and Mexico by the express provision of
the Constitution (art. iv. sec. 3), 'the Congress shall have power to
dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations concerning the
territory or other property belonging to the United States.' If, then,
the power of the President be admitted in the two cases referred to, it
is even stronger in the cases of the rebel States, where no such power
is given to Congress. And further it would seem that the act of
admission to the Union would operate rather to take the Territory from
under the jurisdiction of Congress, and give the right of government
into the hands of the PEOPLE of the new State, even if their State
officers did seek to betray them into treason. Our author asserts that
'there is no argument for military governors that is not equally strong
for Congressional governments; but we suspect his mistake here, as, in
fact, his whole theory comes from his neglect to note that this
appointing power attaches to the President, not as the civil head of the
nation, but as military commander-in-chief under the necessity of war.
To sum up the argument on this point, it stands thus: Neither Congress
nor the President has power under the civil head to institute
governments of their own in the rebel States: that power must arise, if
at all, under the head of military necessity, and must attach to the
commander-in-chief, viz., the President, and ceases the moment that
necessity ceases. In the authority quoted from Chancellor Kent by the
author of the _Atlantic_, we find nothing to shake our argument; for,
though the power be, as the learned Chancellor says, 'to be exercised
subordinate to the legislative powers of Congress,' still it is an
executive power, and must be exercised by--must emanate from--the
President. The same learned authority, from whose lucid and fascinating
pages we enjoyed the first glimmerings of the 'gladsome light of
jurisprudence,' says (vol. i. p. 264): 'The command and application of
the public force, to execute the law, maintain peace, and resist foreign
invasion, are powers so exclusively of an executive nature, and require
the exercise of powers so characteristical of this department, that they
have always been _exclusively_ appropriated to it in every
well-organized government upon earth.' Taking this provision of the
Constitution, so interpreted by Chancellor Kent, as vesting the power
_exclusively_ in the executive, it only remains to be considered how far
it is a necessity of war.
In all the rebel States there is a population, more or less dense, to be
protected and governed; but what can a civil authority accomplish when
the States are overrun by a military force which has so long defied the
power of the army? Advancing as our armies conquer, and fleeing as they
are overcome by the rebel hordes, it could accomplish nothing but its
own ludicrous history and the fettering of the military power, which so
eminently requires one secret and independent will. How little a
military force so fettered by civil authorities could accomplish can
hardly be fully realized but by those who, like the author, have
summered and wintered upon the 'dark and bloody ground' of the
rebellion. But, it will be asked, how are the rebel States to be
governed when the military power of the rebellion is crushed, and the
authority of the executive ceases with the necessity of war? No express
power is given by the Constitution to Congress to govern any other
territory than the District of Columbia, the dockyards, lighthouses, and
lands ceded to the United States for similar purposes, and the territory
not included in the several States, but belonging to the United States.
Under these three heads is included all the territory over which
Congress can claim jurisdiction by direct grant; and, by the
Constitution (Amendments, art. x.), 'the powers not delegated to the
United States, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the
States respectively or to THE PEOPLE.' Unless, therefore, the rebel
States have lapsed into Territories, Congress can have no authority over
them, except the general powers which it may exercise over all the
States of the Union. The question then arises, and it seems to be purely
a legal one--have the rebel States lapsed into Territories?
We have already seen that the doctrine maintained by our Government is,
that the rebel States have not, by their ordinances of secession,
separated themselves from the Union, but that they are still _in_ the
Union. The ordinances of secession are, like any other unconstitutional
law, even supposing them to have been the will of the people (of which
we will speak hereafter), to be set aside by a competent tribunal, if
brought to the test at all. Their paper treason, then (to commit a
solecism), amounting only to so much waste of paper and ink, did the
overt act of firing upon the flag of the United States operate more
effectually to destroy the State identity? If they are incapable of
separating themselves from the nation, and if, as is clearly the case,
there is no power vested in the General Government to expel them from
the Union, from what source does the power or act arise which destroys
their identity? The rebel States are either _in_ the Union or _out_ of
it. We cannot claim that they are in the Union for the purpose of
enforcing submission, and then, when that object is accomplished, turn
round and say they are out of it, and must be governed as Territories.
But it is a fixed fact, and history will so record it, that the voice of
the _people_ in the rebel States never concurred in the ordinances of
secession. In the few cases where they were submitted to the popular
vote, force was used to awe that vote into acquiescence; while in most
cases they never were submitted to the _form_ of such a vote; and why?
Because the leaders in treason dared not trust the voice of the people:
they knew too well that it would thunder a rebuke in their ears. They
were merely the act of the _individuals_ who were chosen as members of
the several Legislatures, and who, in betrayal of their trust, sought to
commit the States which they misrepresented to treason. In any one of
the States which we have solecistically termed rebel States, we venture
to assert that, if fairly and fully taken, the vote of the people at any
time during the last five years, and now, would be, by a large majority,
in favor of the Union. Wherever our armies have obtained a permanent
footing, the people have, almost unanimously, given their expression of
attachment to the old flag. Shall, then, the treason of those
individuals who, for the time being, held the places of power in the
rebel States, be construed to the prejudice of a whole people, who had
no part nor lot in the crime, in face of the often declared law that a
State cannot commit treason? If we turn to the fact that many, if not
most of the citizens of the rebel States, have done treasonable acts
under compulsion of those who were the leaders in the rebellion, we are
met, at the very threshold, by no less an authority than Sir William
Blackstone, who says (Bl. Commentaries, book iv. p. 21): 'Another
species of compulsion or necessity is what our law calls _duress per
minias_, or threats and menaces which induce fear of death or other
bodily harm, and which take away, for that reason, the guilt of many
crimes and misdemeanors, at least before the human tribunal. _Therefore,
in time of war or rebellion, a man may be justified in doing many
treasonable acts by compulsion of the enemy or REBELS, which would admit
of no excuse in the time of peace._' The fact that such violent
compulsion was and still is used to overawe the Union sentiment of the
South is patent. It has been and still is the cry, coming up on every
breeze from that bloodstained land, that the leaders of the rebellion
seek to crush, by whatever means, those who are
'Faithful among the faithless found.'
But, supposing for the moment that the majority of the citizens of the
rebel States are, of their own free will, participators in the
rebellion; where is the grant of power to Congress to establish a
government in any of the rebel States? No clause of the Constitution
gives it; and by the express terms of that instrument, 'all powers not
granted by it to the United States, nor prohibited to the States, are
reserved to the States respectively or to THE PEOPLE.' But, while no
such power is granted by the Constitution to the Federal Government, it
is, we think, strictly forbidden by that clause of the instrument which
declares that 'the United States shall guarantee to every State in this
Union a republican form of government.' Would this injunction be
complied with if Congress were to establish, directly, a government of
its own over the rebel States? Would it not rather be a transgression of
the provision? The essential nature of a republican government is that
it is elective; but a Congressional government would be directly the
reverse; for it takes the power from the hands of the people and places
it in the hands of the national council. Mark the form of the
expression, too, that the republican form of government is to be
guaranteed, not merely by Congress or the executive, but by the _United
States_; as if to pledge the whole power of the nation, of whatever
kind, to protect this priceless blessing, through all coming time, to
the use and benediction of all ages. Notice, too, to whom the guarantee
runs--not to the territory now composing the State, but to the State its
very self--_ei ipsi_; as if the Constitution could not contemplate such
a thing as a State being struck out of existence, under whatever phrase,
whether of 'State forfeiture,' 'State suicide,' or 'State abdication,'
even if treason were attempted by those in power. The Constitution still
terms it _a State_. Is not the present precisely the event, or rather
one of the events, which it contemplates and provides for? The doctrine
of 'State Rights,' whether as contemplated and maintained by Calhoun in
the days of Nullification, or as declared by Jefferson Davis and his
compeers in treason, we abhor utterly, whenever and wherever it may lift
its serpent head, and whether supported by Southern men with Southern
principles, or by Northern men with no principles. But a true and
indisputable doctrine of State Rights there is, which ought to be as
jealously maintained and guarded as the doctrine of National
Sovereignty. The _Atlantic_ author asserts that, because the State
offices in the rebel States have been vacated, therefore Congress has
the authority to govern them, and intimates that all powers not reserved
to the respective States belong to Congress, _because there is no other
to wield them_. This is not true. Every power possessed of the Federal
Government must be actually granted. It must attach to that Government,
not because it belongs to no other, but because it is granted by the
Constitution.
Our author quotes Mr. Phillimore as saying 'a state, like an individual,
may die, by its submission and the donation of itself to another
country.' Very true; but the word _state_ must, in that sense, be
equivalent to _nation_; and our author admits that a State cannot
perform the first act necessary to be done in so giving itself away,
viz., withdrawing itself from the Union. If, therefore, it cannot
withdraw itself from the authority of the Federal Government, very
clearly it cannot donate itself to the self-styled Confederate
Government. If a thief sell or give his ill-gotten possession to
another, it in no way affects the right of the owner. He cannot give
away that which he does not own; and so of a State. Another error into
which the _Atlantic_ author has fallen, is that, in assigning the three
sources of Congressional power, 'ample and hospitable,' he enumerates as
one of them 'the necessity of the case;' but, as we have already seen,
Congress possesses no powers but those expressly granted by the
Constitution. If Congress may assert its authority in this instance,
from the necessity of the case, and be itself the judge of that
necessity, when no authority is given by the instrument, which expressly
declares that all powers not granted by it are reserved, where are we to
find a limit, and why may not that body assert itself in any number of
instances, until, at length, the rights of the States are wholly
absorbed by the overmastering power of the Federal Government? There is
but _one_ rightful source of authority to Congress, and that is the
Constitution, which itself so declares, and which is the supreme law of
the land.
But the true course to be pursued is, we think, to allow the rebel
States (as indeed we cannot help doing) to be governed by the military
power until such time as a civil government can be maintained, and then
for the whole Government of the United States, legislative, judicial,
and executive, to stand by, as the constitutionally appointed guardian,
_and permit_ THE PEOPLE _to elect their own State officers_. Whether the
conventions of the people are called by law of Congress or by
proclamation of the President, would seem to be immaterial, though the
latter seems the least cumbersome method. Thus the rebel States would
pass from rebel forms to constitutional ones, in a legal and formal
manner. Sooner or later this must be done, even if, for a time,
provisional governments are instituted; for no Congressional government
can be an elective government, and hence not a constitutional one,
because the elective principle is necessary to a republican form of
government. But if, under the clause of the Constitution which enjoins
upon the United States to guarantee a republican form of government to
each State, conventions of the people be called to elect their own
officers, they are at once put in possession of their constitutional
rights. And how can a State be _re_admitted to a Union which it has
never left?
The writer has no pet theory to maintain, but is, like the writer in the
_Atlantic_, 'in search of truth;' and the views here expressed are the
result, not merely of closet reflection, but of observation and
experience in the seceded States, while 'marching under the flag and
keeping step to the music of the Union.' If only, through this baptism
of blood, the nation, freed at last from the blighting curse of slavery,
and purified into a better life, shall lift her radiant forehead from
the dust, and, crowned with the diadem of freedom, go on her glorious
way rejoicing, the writer will count his past sufferings and shattered
health only as the small dust in the balance compared with the priceless
blessings of peace, freedom, and national unity, which they may have
contributed, however slightly, to purchase. Only to have contributed,
however little, something for the peace--something for the
glory--something for the permanence, beautiful and bright--of those
institutions which are for America the pride of the past and the hope of
the future, will be a joy through life and a consolation in death.
THE MOUND BUILDER.
INTRODUCTION.
All over Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and other Western States--but
chiefly over these--are the monumental remains of an ancient race, long
anterior to the present race of Indians, concerning whom we have no
other record than that which is afforded by their mounds, earthworks,
fortifications, temples, and dwelling places. Even these cannot at first
be distinguished and identified the one from the other; and it takes a
person skilled in such lore to determine the character and uses of the
various mounds and groups of mounds, which he meets with at all points,
and in all directions, as he traverses the wilderness.
I have lived a long time in the woods and prairies, following the
occupation of a hunter, but with ulterior antiquarian and
natural-history objects and purposes. From the time when I first heard
of the mounds, which was in the year 1836, when I entertained, in my
chambers in New York, an old frontiersman from Chicago--a fine, brave
fellow, whose whole life was a romance of the highest and noblest
kind--I resolved that as soon as fortune should favor me with leisure
and opportunity, I would make a first-hand investigation of these
curious antiquities, and try if I could render an intelligent exposition
of their meaning. Twenty years passed away, and I was no nearer to the
accomplishment of my purpose than I was in that notable year 1836, when
the apocalypse of the West and its mystic mound seals were first
revealed to me. At last, about four years ago, all things being
favorable, I struck my tents in the big city--the wonderful Arabian
Nights city of New York!-and, taking a sorrowful leave of my friends and
literary associates, I set off for the region round about the Black
River in Wisconsin. Here, among the bluffs and forests, within hailing
distance of a prairie of some hundred thousand acres, I bought a
well-cultivated farm of two hundred and eighty acres, bounded on the
south by a deep, romantic ravine, at the bottom of which ran a
delightful stream of water, full of trout, always cool and delicious to
drink, and never known to be dry even in the fiercest summer droughts. A
large log cabin, with a chimney opening in the kitchen, capable of
conveying the smoke and flames of half a cord of wood burning at once on
the hearthstones, and having other commodious conveniences, was my
headquarters, and I intended it to be my permanent home. But thereby
hangs a tale--which, though interesting enough, and full of romantic and
startling episodes, I will not here and now relate, as being somewhat
extraneous to the subject matter before us.
I had no sooner made all the dispositions necessary to the good
husbanding of the farm, than I hired a half breed, well known in those
parts, and subsequently a Winnebago Indian, to whose wigwam the half
breed introduced me at my request. And with these two, the one a
veritable savage, and the other very nearly related to him, I set off
with a wagon, a yoke of oxen, a large tent, and abundance of provisions,
on a journey of mound discoveries.
I have only space here to say that we traversed the whole of the north
and west of the State of Wisconsin, and through the chief parts of
Minnesota and Iowa; and that subsequently, about, eighteen months
afterward, we visited the region of the Four Lakes, of which Madison is
the centre, where there are hundreds of mounds, arranged in nearly every
form and of nearly every animal device, which we had found in our
previous travels.
I made drawings of all the remarkable groups which I met with; and,
without going into particulars, I may give you some idea of their
likelihood in the following summary: Mounds arranged in circles of three
circles, with a large earthwork in the inner one; the outer circle
containing sixty mounds, the second thirty, the first fifteen. I
examined the earthwork, and found in it, about four feet below the
surface, remains of charcoal and charred bones, burnt earth, and
considerable quantities of mica. It had evidently been an altar or
sacrificial mound--and I afterward, upon examination, found many
such--but they were always enclosed by other mounds; and these (the
outer mounds) contained nothing but earth, although there was this
remarkable peculiarity about them, that the earth of which they were
composed was altogether of a different nature from the surrounding
earth, and must have been brought to that spot, as the old Druids
brought the enormous blocks of stone which composed their temples and
altars at Stonehenge, from an unknown distance.
Other mounds were arranged in squares, triangles, and parallelograms.
Others, in a series of successive squares, about three feet apart,
having an opening to the east and west, and terminating in a square of
about fourteen feet in the centre, where a truncated mound is sure to be
erected.
Others, formed a good deal like a Minie rifle ball, but with a more
pointed apex, running on both sides of the earth effigy of a monstrous
bear for upward of forty rods.
Others, shaped like an eagle with outstretched wings, having walls of
earthwork two feet high, of oblong shape, and enclosed on all sides
except at the east and west, where there are entrances of about four
feet in width.
Others, composed of hundreds of tons of earth, shaped like a tortoise,
with truncated mounds all around it.
Others, fashioned like men, and Titans at that, some lying prone upon
the prairie, others in the act of walking. The limbs clearly defined,
the body vast and well moulded, like a huge colossus. One near Baraboo,
Sauk County, Wisconsin, discovered by Mr. William H. Canfield, and
reported to the Philosophical Society by Mr. Lapham, of Milwaukee, was
visited also by us. It is two hundred and fourteen feet in length; the
head thirty feet long, the body one hundred feet, and the legs
eighty-four. The head lies toward the south, and the motion (for he is
represented in the act of walking) is westward. All the lines of this
most singular effigy are curved gracefully, much care having very
clearly been bestowed upon its construction. The head is ornamented with
two projections or horns, giving a comical expression to the whole
figure.
Near the old military road, about seven miles east of the Blue Mounds,
in Dare County, Wisconsin, we found another man effigy. It lies in an
east and west direction, the head toward the west, and the arms and legs
extended. It is one hundred and twenty-five feet long, one hundred and
forty feet from the extremity of one arm to that of the other. The body
is thirty feet in breadth, and is most carefully moulded and rounded;
the head twenty-five feet; the elevation above the surface of the
prairie nearly six feet.
On the north side of the Wisconsin River, about four miles west of the
village of Muscoda, we heard of and found another human effigy. Its
peculiarity was that it had two heads, and they reclined with a certain
grace over the shoulders. The arms were not in proportion, nor fully
represented. Length of body fifty feet, legs forty feet, arms one
hundred and thirty feet; lying north and south, the head southward.
Others, a kind of hybrids, half man half beast or bird.
Others, representing birds with outstretched wings, like the forked-tail
hawk or swallow.
Others, eagles without heads.
Others, coiled snakes, or outstretched snakes.
Others, elk or deer.
Clusters of mounds star shaped, seven in number, with the sun-shaped
mound in the centre.
Others, representing mathematical symbols.
On the banks of the Black River, near the Ox Bow, are the remains of an
elevated road, about three feet high and seven feet wide, extending for
miles, intersected near the river by the great Indian war path. The
settlers call it the Railroad, and it has all the appearance of a work
of this nature, and is strongly and carefully built--a fine remain of
the old mound builders' time.
Long lines of mounds, extending for scores and probably hundreds of
miles, nearly all of the same shape, varying in their distance from each
other from one to four miles.
Circular mounds of a base of two hundred feet, and a height of twenty
feet.
Others, two hundred yards long, from ten to twenty feet wide, and from
two to three feet high--these last, also, having an open space through
them, as if intended for an entrance gate.
Others, in the form of rabbits, badgers, bears, and birds; others, of
unknown monstrous animals.
We examined in all thirty-nine mounds; and in one, at the very base, on
the floor of the natural earth upon which the mound was built (the soil
of the mound being, as I said, always of a different character to the
surrounding soil) we discovered and carried away with us the perfect
skeleton of a man, with a few arrow heads made of flint, and a tobacco
pipe, made also of stone, with a very small and narrow bowl, having a
device on it like some of the hieroglyphic monsters of Egypt or old
India.
In twelve we found skeletons, male and female, of the present race of
Indians, with their bows and arrows, or, as was the case in four
instances, their rifles and knives and tobacco pipes; some of these last
elaborately carved in red stone. In Iowa we dug into a large mound, and
discovered fragments of an ancient pottery, with the colors burned into
the material, and various bones and skulls, arrow heads, and a flint
knife, and saw.
We saw the painted rocks, also, on the Mississippi shores, near Prairie
du Chien--said to be of an immemorial age--and the questions, Who was
this old mound builder--whence did he come--when did he vanish from this
continent? have haunted me ever since. That he was the primitive man of
this planet, I think there is good reason to believe. Go where we will,
to what portion soever of the earth, we shall find these mound evidences
of his existence. In Asia, Europe, Africa, and all along the backbone of
the American continent, he has established his record. Yet no one knows
anything about him: all tradition even of him and of his works is lost.
When Watkinson started from the middle of Asia to visit the newly
acquired country of Russia--the beautiful, fruitful, invaluable country
of the Amoor--he was confronted at the very outset by a cluster of seven
of these very mounds, and his book, from that time forth, extending over
thousands of miles, is full of descriptions of these unknown earthworks.
I have no doubt they mark the progressive geographical movements of a
race of men who came from Asia. From Behring's Strait to the Gulf they
can easily be traced.
But I have said enough, and will stop here.
THE MOUND BUILDER.
Who art thou? old Mound Builder!
Where dost thou come from?
Womb of what country,
Womb of what woman
Gave birth to thee?
Who was thy sire?
Who thy sire's sire?
And who were his forbears?
Cam'st thou from Asia?
Where the race swarms like fireflies,
Where many races mark.
As with colored belts, its tropics!
What pigment stained thy skin?
Was it a red, or wert thou
Olive-dyed, or brassy?
Handsome thou couldst hardly have been,
With those high cheek-bones,
That mighty jaw, and its grim chops,
That long skull, so broad at the back parts,
That low, retreating forehead!
Doubtless thine eyes were dark,
Like fire-moons set in their sockets;
Doubtless thine hair was black,
Coarse, matted, long, and electric;
Thy skeleton that of a giant!
Well fleshed, well lashed with muscles,
As with an armor of iron;
And doubtless thou wert a brave fellow,
On the old earth, in thy time.
I think I know thee, old Mole!
Earth delver, mound builder, mine worker!
I think I have met thee before,
In times long since, and forgotten;
Many thousands of years, it may be,
Or ever old Noah, the bargeman,
Or he, the mighty Deucalion,
Wroth with the world as he found it,
Uprose in a passion of storm
And smote with his fist the sluices,
The water sluices of Cloudland--
Locked in the infinite azure--
Drowning the plains and mountains,
The shaggy beasts and hybrids,
The nameless birds--and the reptiles,
Monstrous in bulk and feature,
Which alone were thy grim contemporaries.
Here, in the State of Wisconsin,
In newly discovered America,
I, curious to know what secrets
Were hid in the mounds of thy building,
Have gone down into their chambers,
Into their innermost grave-crypts,
Unurning dry bones and skulls,
Fragments of thy mortality!
Oftentimes near to the surface
Of these thy conical earth-runes,
--For who shall tell their secret?--
Meeting with strange interlopers,
Bodies of red Winnebagoes,
Each with its bow and its arrows,
Each with its knife and its war gear,
Its porphyry-carved tobacco pipe,
Modern, I know by the fashioning.
Often, I asked of them,
As they lay there so silently,
So stiff and stark in their bones,
What right they had in these old places,
Sacred to dead men of a race they knew not?
And oh! the white laughters,
The wicked malice of the white laughters
Which they laughed at me,
With their ghastly teeth, in answer!
Was never mockery half so dismal!
As if it were none of my business.
Nor was it; save that I liked grimly to plague them,
To taunt them with their barbarity,
That they could not so much as dig their own graves,
But must needs go break those of the dead race,
Their far superiors, and masters in craft and lore!
And bury themselves there, just out of sight,
Where the vulture's beak could peck them,
Were he so obscenely minded,
And the wolf could scrape them up with his foot.
Curious for consideration
All this with its dumb recordings!
Very suggestive also,
The meeting of him, the first-born,
Who lived before the rainbow
Burst from the womb of the suncloud,
In the Bible days of the Deluge--
The meeting very suggestive
Of him, with the red Winnebago,
Such immemorial ages,
Cartooned with mighty empires,
Lying outstretched between them.
He, the forerunner of cities
--His mounds their type and rudiment--
And he, the fag-end of creation,
Meaningless sculpture of journeymen,
Doomed to the curse of extinction.
Curious, also, that I,
An islander from far-off Britain
Should meet them,
Or, the rude scrolls of them.
Both together in these wilds,
Round about the region of the Black River,
Cheek by jowl in a grave.
Who was the builder of the grave?
A primitive man, no doubt,
Of the stone era, it may be,
For of stone are his implements.
And not of metal-work, nor the device of fire.
He may have burrowed for lead
And dug out copper ore,
Dark-green as with emerald rust, from the mines
Long since forsaken, and but newly found
By the delvers at Mineral Point.
He, or his subsequents, issue of him,
I know not; and, soothe to say,
Shall never know.
Neither wilt thou ever know
Anything of me, old Mound Builder!
Of the race of Americans, nothing,
Who now, and ever henceforth,
Own, and shall own, this continent!
Heirs of the vast wealth of time
Since thou from the same land departed;
New thinkers, new builders, creators
Of life, and the scaffolds of life,
For far-off grand generations!
This skull which I handle!--
How long has the soul left it tenantless?
And what did the soul do in its house,
When this roof covered it?
Many things, many wonderful things!
It wrote its primeval history
Is earthworks and fortifications,
In animal forms and pictures,
In symbols of unknown meaning.
I know from the uncouth hieroglyphs,
And the more finished records,
That this soul had a religion,
Temples, and priests, and altars:
I think the life-giver, the sun,
Was the god unto whom he sacrificed.
I think that the moon and stars
Were the lesser gods of his worship;
And that the old serpent of Eden
Came in for a share of devotion.
I find many forms of this reptile,
Scattered along the prairies,
Coiled on the banks of the rivers,
In Iowa, and far Minnesota,
And here and there, in Wisconsin.
Now he is circular,
Gnawing his tail, like the Greek symbol,
Suggesting infinite meanings
Unto the mind of a modern
Crammed with the olden mythologies.
Now, uncoiled in the sunlight,
He stretches himself out at full length
In all his undulate longitude.
His body is a constellation of mounds,
Artfully imitative,
From the fatal tail to the more fatal head.
Overgrown they are with grass,
Short, green grass, thick and velvety,
Like well cared-for lawns,
With strange, wild flowers glittering,
Made up of alien mould
Brought hither from distant regions.
Curiously I have considered them,
Many a time in the summer,
Lying beside them under the flaming sky,
Smoking an old tobacco pipe,
Made by one of these moundsmen.
Who in his time had smoked it,
Perchance over the council fire,
Or in the dark woods where he had gone a-hunting;
In war time--in peaceful evenings,
With his squaw by his side,
And his brood of dusky papposins
Playing about in the twilight
Under the awful star-shadows.
It seemed that I was very close to him, at such times;
And that his thick-ribbed lips,
--Gone to dust for unknown centuries--
Had met mine inscrutably,
By a magic hid in the pipestem,
Making me his familiar and hail fellow.
Almost I felt his breath,
And the muffled sound of his heart-beats;
Almost I grasped his hand,
And shook the antediluvian,
With a shake of grimmest fellowship
Trying to cozen him of his grim secret.
But sudden the gusty wind came,
Laughing away the illusion,
And I was alone in the desert.
If he could only wake up now,
And confront me--that ancient salvage!
Resurgated, with his faculties
All quick about him, and his memories,
What an unheard-of powwow
Could I report to you, O friends of mine!
Who look for some revelation,
Some hint of the strange apocalypse,
Which the wit of this man, living
So near to the prime of the morning,
So near to the gates of the azure,
The awful gates of the Unseen--
Whence all that is seen proceeded--
Hath wrought in this new-found country!
I wonder if he would remember
Anything about the Land of the Immortals.
Something he would surely find
In the deeps of his consciousness
To wake up a dim reminiscence.
Dreamy shadows might haunt him,
Shadows of beautiful faces, and of terrible;
Large, lustrous eyes, full of celestial meanings,
Looking up at him, beseeching him,
From unfathomable abysses,
With glances which were a language.
The finalest secrets and mysteries,
Behind every sight, and sound, and color,
Behind all motions, and harmonies,
Which floated round about him,
Archetypes of the phenomenal!
Or, it might be, that coming suddenly in his mind
Upon some dark veil, as of Isis,
He lifts it with a key-thought,
Or the sudden memory of an arcane sign,
And beholds the gardens of Living Light,
The starry platform, palaces, and thrones--
The vast colossi, the intelligences
Moving to and fro over the flaming causeways
Of the kingdoms beyond the gates--
The infinite arches
And the stately pillars,
Upbuilt with sapphire suns
And illuminated with emerald and ruby stars,
Making cathedrals of immensity
For the everlasting worship without words.
All, or some, of the wondrous, impenetrable picture-land:
The crimson seas,
Flashing in uncreated light,
Crowded with galleons
On a mission to ports where dwell the old gods
And the mighty intellects of the Immortals.
The ceaseless occupations,
The language and the lore;
The arts, and thoughts, the music, and the instruments;
The beauty and the divine glory of the faces,
And how the Immortals love,
Whether they wed like Adamites,
Or are too happy to wed,
Living in single blessedness!
Well, I know it is rubbish,
The veriest star-dust of fancy,
To think of such a thing as this
Being a memorial heirloom of the fore-world,
Such rude effigies of men,
Such clodbrains, as these poor mound builders!
Their souls never had any priority in the life of them;
No background of eternity
Over which they had traversed
From eon to eon,
Sun-system to sun-system,
Planets and stars under them,
Planets and stars over them;
Now dwelling on immeasurable plains of azure
Bigger than space,
Dazzling with the super-tropical brightness
Of passionate flowers without a name,
In all the romance of color and beauty--
Now, in the cities celestial,
Where they made their acquaintances
With other souls, which had never been incarnated,
But were getting themselves ready
By an intuitive obedience
To a well-understood authority,
Which had never spoken,
To take upon themselves the living form
Of some red-browed, fire-eyed Mars-man,
Some pale-faced, languishing son
Of the Phalic planet Venus,
Or wherever else it might be,
In what remote star soever
Quivering on shadowy battlements.
Along the lines of the wilderness,
Of worlds beyond worlds,
These souls were to try their fortunes.
Surely, no experience of this sort
Ever happened unto them,
Although one would like to invest them
With the glory of it, for the sake of the soul.
But they were, to speak truth of them,
A sort of journeyman work,
Not a Phidian statuary,
But a first cast of man,
A rude draft of him;
Huge gulfs, as of dismal Tartarus,
Separating him from the high-born Caucasian.
He, a mere Mongolian,
As good, perhaps, in his faculties,
As any Jap. or Chinaman--
But not of the full-orbed brain,
Star-blown, and harmonious
With all sweet voices as of flutes in him,
And viols, bassoons, and organs;
Capable of the depths and circumferences of thought,
Of sphynxine entertainments,
And the dramas of life and death.
A plain fellow, and a practical,
With picture in him and symbol,
And thus not altogether clay-made,
But touched with the fire of the rainbow,
And the finger of the first light,
Waiting for the second and the third light,
Expectant through the ages,
And disappointed;
Never receiving more,
But going down, at last, a dark man,
And a lonely, through the dark galleries
Of death, and behind the curtain
Where all is light.
I like to think of him, and see his works:
I like to read him in his mounds,
And think I can make out a good deal of his history.
He was a half-dumb man,
Very sorrowful to see,
But brave, nevertheless, and bravely
Struggling to fling out his thoughts,
In a kind of dumb speech;
Struggling, indeed, after poetry
Daedalian forms, and eloquence;
Ambitious of distinguishing himself
In the presence of wolves and bisons
And all organic creatures;
Of making his claim good
Against these, his urgent disputants,
That he was lord of the planet.
If he could not write books,
He could scrawl the earth with his record:
He could make hieroglyphs,
Constellations of mounds and animals,
Effigies of unnamable things,
Monsters, and hybrids unnatural,
Bred of grotesque fancies; and man-forms.
These last, none of your pigmies
A span long in the womb,
And six feet, at full growth, out of it--
But bigger in chest and paunch,
In the girth of his muscular shackle-bones,
Round his colossal shoulders,
Round his Memnonian countenance,
Over the dome of his skull-crypts--
From crown to foot of his body--
Than grimmest of old Welsh giants,
Grimmest of Araby ogres!
Many a time talking with gray hunters,
Who leaned on their rifles against a tree,
And made the bright landscape
And the golden morning fuller of gold and brightness
By the contrast of their furrowed faces,
Their shaggy eyebrows,
And the gay humor laughing in their eyes,
Their unkempt locks, their powder horns, and buskins,
And the wild attire, in general, of their persons--
Many a time have I heard them
Tell of these man-effigies
Lying prone on the floors of the prairie.
And, in my whim for correspondence,
And perpetual seeking after identities,
I have likened them to the stone sculptures, in cathedrals,
Cut by pious hands out of black marble,
Memorial resemblances of holy abbots,
Of Christian knights, founders of religious houses,
Of good lords of fair manors,
Who left largess to these houses,
Beneficed the arched wine-cellars
With yearly butts of canary,
Or, during their lifetime,
Beautified the west front with stately windows
Of colored glass, emblazoned with Scripture stories,
The sunlight in shadowy reflections painting the figures
With blue and gold and crimson
Upon the cold slabs of the pavement.
These effigies, stiff, formal,
Rudely fashioned, and of poor art,
All of them lying, black and stark,
Like a corpse-pageantry visioned in some monk's dream,
Lying thus, in the transepts,
On the cold, gray floor of the cathedral.
A curious conceit, truly!
But the prairie is also consecrated,
And quite as sacred I think it
As Rome's most holy of holies.
It blossoms and runs over with religion.
These meek and beautiful flowers!
What sweet thoughts and divine prayers are in them!
These song birds! what anthems of praise
Gush out of their ecstatic throats!
I pray you, also, tell me,
What floors, sacred to what dead,
Can compare with the elaborate mosaic work
Of this wide, vast, outstretching floor of grass?
As good a place, I take it,
For the mound builder to make his man-effigies
Out of the mould in,
As the cathedral is, for its artists
To make man-effigies out of the black marble!
And the thought, too, is the same!
The thought of the primeval savage of the stone era,
Roaming about in these wilds,
Before the beautiful Christ
Made the soul more beautiful,
Revealed the terror of its divine forces,
Announced its immortality,
And was nailed on a tree for His goodness!
While the monk, therefore, lay yet in the pagan brain,
And' Time had not so much as thought
Of sowing the seed for his coming--
While his glorious cathedral, which, as we now know it,
Is an epic poem built in immortal stone,
Had no archetype except in the dreams of God,
Dim hints of it, lying like hopeless runes
In the forest trees and arches,
Its ornamentations in the snow drifts, and the summer leaves and flowers--
No doubt, the mound-builder's man, put in effigy on the prairie,
Had been a benefactor, in his way and time;
Or, a great warrior; or learned teacher
Of things symbolized in certain mound-groups,
And which, from their arrangement,
Appertain, it would seem, to mysteries,
And ghostly communications.
They thought to keep green his memory,
The worship of him and his good deeds,
Unto the end of time,
Throughout all generations.
The holy men, born of Christ,
All Christendom but the development of him,
And all the world his debtor;
Even God owing him more largely
Than He has thought fit to pay back,
Taking the immense credit
Of nigh two thousand years!
These holy men, so born and cultured,
Could think of no way wiser,
Of no securer method
Of preserving the memory of their saints,
And of those who did good to them,
Than this rude, monumental way of the savage.
So singular is man,
So old-fashioned his thinkings,
So wonderful and similar his sympathies!
Everywhere the same, with a difference;
Cast in the same moulds,
Of the same animal wants, and common mind,
Of the same passions and vices,
Hating, loving, killing, lying--
A vast electrical chain
Running through tradition, and auroral history,
Up through the twilights,
And blazing noons,
Through vanishing and returning twilights,
Through azure nights of stars--
Epochs of civilization--
Unto the calmer glory,
Unto the settled days,
Unto the noble men--
_Nunc formosissimus annus!_
Thus do I, flinging curiously the webs of fancy
Athwart the time-gulfs, and the ages,
Reconcile, after a kind, the primitive savage of America
With the wonderful genealogies--
Upsprung from the vital sap
Of the great life-tree, Igdrasil!
Thick and populous nations
Heavily bending its branches,
Each in its autumn time of one or two thousand years,
Like ripe fruits, fully developed and perfected,
From the germ whence they proceeded;
Nourished by strong saps of vitality,
By the red, rich blood of matured centuries,
By passionate Semitic sunlights;
Beautiful as the golden apples of the Hesperides!
Radiating, also, a divine beauty,
The flower-blossom and the aroma,
The final music, of a ripe humanity,
Whereof each particular nation
Was in its way and turn
The form and the expression,
Grand autumns were some of them!
Grand and beautiful, like that of Greece,
Whose glorious consummation always reminds me
Of moving statues, music, and richest painting and architecture:
Her landscapes shimmering in golden fire-mists,
Which hang over the wondrously colored woods,
In a dreamy haze of splendor;
Revealing arched avenues, and tiny glades,
Cool, quiet spots, and dim recesses,
Green swards, and floral fairy lands,
Sweeping to the hilltops;
Illuminating the rivers in their gladsome course,
And the yellow shadows of the rolling marshes,
And the cattle of the farmer as they stand knee-deep
Switching their tails by the shore;
Lighting up the singing faces,
The sweet, laughing, singing faces,
Of the merry, playful brooks,
Now running away over shallows,
Now into gurgling eddies;
Now under fallen trees,
Past beaver dams long deserted;
Now under shady banks,
Lost in the tangled wood-growths;
Quivering now with, their laughter,
Out in the open meadow,
Flowing, singing and laughing,
Over the weeds and rushes,
Flowing and singing forever!
Plastic and beautiful, and running over
With Schiller's 'play impulse,' was the genius of Greece,
Of which her institutions and civility were the embodiment.
Other autumn times of the nations
Were calm and peaceful,
Symbolized above, as fruit on the branches
Of the life-tree, Igdrasil!
And when their time came,
They dropped down silently,
Like apples from their boughs on the autumn grass;
Silently dropped down, on moonlight plains,
In the presence of the great company of the stars,
And the flaming constellations,
Which evermore keep solemn watch over their graves.
Others were blown off suddenly,
And prematurely--all the elements enraged against them;
And others, like the Dead Sea fruit,
Were rotten at the heart before their prime!
The old mound builder stands at the base of the tree,
At the base of the wonderful tree Igdrasil,
And the mighty branches thereof,
Which hang over his head in flame-shadows,
Germinated, and blossomed with nations,
In other lands, in another hemisphere
Far away, over the measureless brine,
From the mother earth where he was planted,
Where he grew and flourished,
And solved the riddle of life,
And tried death,
And the riddle beyond death.
He thought this passionate America,
With its vast results of physical life,
Its beautiful and sublime portraitures,
Its far-sweeping prairies, rolling in grassy waves
Like the green billows of an inland sea--
Its blue-robed mountains
Piercing the bluer heavens with their peaks--
Its rivers, lakes, and forests--
A roomy, and grand-enough earth to inhabit,
Without thought of anything beyond it.
And yet he is related to all
That was, and is, and shall be!
That idea which was clothed in his flesh
Is fleshed in I know not how many
Infinite forms and varieties,
In every part of the earth,
In this day of my generation.
But the flesh is a little different,
And here and there the organism a nobler one,
And the idea bigger, broader, deeper,
Of a more divine quality and diapason.
He is included in us, as the lesser in the greater;
All our enactments are repetitions of his;
Enlarged and adorned;
And we pass through all his phases,
Some time or other, in our beginnings--
Through his, and an infinity of larger ones--
And we have the same inevitable endings.
A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE:
ITS POSSIBILITY, SCIENTIFIC NECESSITY, AND APPROPRIATE CHARACTERISTICS
The idea of the possibility and desirableness of a universal language,
scientifically constituted; a common form of speech for all the nations
of mankind; for the remedy of the confusion and the great evil of Babel,
is not wholly new. The celebrated Leibnitz entertained it. It was, we
believe, glanced at among the schemes of Lord Monboddo. Bishop Wilkins
devoted years of labor to the accomplishment of the task, and thought he
had accomplished it. He published the results of his labors in heavy
volumes, which have remained, as useless lumber, on the shelves of the
antiquarian, or of those who are curious in rare books. A young
gentleman of this city, of a rare genius, by the name of Fairbank, who
died by a tragical fate a few years since, labored assiduously to the
same end. A society of learned men has recently been organized in Spain,
with their headquarters at Barcelona, devoted to the same work. Numerous
other attempts have probably been made. In all these attempts, projects,
and labors, the design has never transcended the purpose of _Invention_.
The effort has been simply to _contrive_ a new form of speech, and to
persuade mankind to accept it;--a task herculean and hopeless in its
magnitude and impracticability; but looking still in the direction of
the supply of one of the greatest needs of human improvement. The
existence of no less than two or three thousand different languages and
idioms on the surface of the planet, in this age of railroad and
steamship communication, presents, obviously, one of the most serious
obstacles to that unification of humanity which so many concurrent
indications tend, on the other hand, to prognosticate.
Another and different outlook toward a unity of speech for the race
comes up from a growing popular impression that all existing languages
must be ultimately and somewhat rapidly smelted into one by the mere
heat and attrition of our intense modern international intercourse. Each
nationality is beginning to put forth its pretensions as the proper and
probable matrix of the new agglomerate, or philological pudding-stone,
which is vaguely expected to result. The English urge the commercial
supremacy of their tongue; the French the colloquial and courtly
character of theirs; the Germans the inherent energy and philosophical
adaptation of the German; the Spanish the wide territorial distribution
and the pompous euphony of that idiom; and so of the other
nationalities.
Both invention, which is the genius of adaptation, and the blending
influence of mere intercourse, may have their appropriate place as
auxiliaries, in the reconstruction of human speech, in accordance with
the exigencies of the new era which is dawning on the world; but there
is another and far more basic and important element, which may, and
perhaps we may say must, appear upon the stage, and enter into the
solution. This is the element of positive Scientific _Discovery_ in the
lingual domain. It may be found that every elementary sound of the human
voice is _inherently laden_ by _nature herself_ with a primitive
significance; that the small aggregate of these meanings is precisely
that handful of the Primitive Categories of all _Thought_ and all
_Being_ which the Philosophers, from Aristotle up to Kant, have so
industriously and painfully sought for. The germ of this idea was
incipiently and crudely struggling in the mind of the late
distinguished philologist, Dr. Charles Kreitser, formerly professor of
languages in the University of Virginia, and author of numerous valuable
articles in Appletons' 'Cyclopaedia;' the most learned man, doubtless,
that unfortunate Hungary has contributed to our American body of savans.
This element of discovery may, in the end, take the lead, and immensely
preponderate in importance over the other two factors already mentioned
as participating in the solution of a question of a planetary language.
The idea certainly has no intrinsic improbability, that the normal
language of mankind should be matter of discovery as the normal music of
the race has been already. There was an instinctual and spontaneous
development of music in advance of the time when science acted
reflectively upon the elements and reconstituted it in accordance with
the musical laws so discovered. Why may we not, why ought we not even to
expect, analogically, that the same thing will occur for speech?
Setting aside, however, for the present occasion, the profounder inquiry
into the inherent significance of sounds, and into all that flows
logically from that novel and recondite investigation, we propose at
present to treat in a more superficial way the subject indicated in the
title of this article--A Universal Language; its Possibility, Scientific
Necessity, and Appropriate Characteristics.
The expansion of the scope of science is at this day such that the
demand for discriminating technicalities exceeds absolutely the capacity
of all existing language for condensed and appropriate combinations and
derivations. Hence speech must soon fail to serve the new developments
of thought, unless the process of word-building can be itself
proportionately improved; unless, in other words, a new and
scientifically constructed Language can be devised adequate to all the
wants of science. It would seem that there should occur, in the range of
possibilities, the existence of the _Plan_ in _Nature_ of a _New_ and
_Universal Language_, copious, flexible, and expressive beyond measure;
competent to meet the highest demands of definition and classification;
and containing within itself a natural, compact, infinitely varied, and
inexhaustible terminology for each of the Sciences, as ordained by fixed
laws preexistent in the nature of things.
This language should not then be an arbitrary contrivance, but should be
elaborated from the fundamental laws of speech, existing in the
constitution of the universe and of man, and logically traced to this
special application. This knowledge of the underlying laws of speech
should determine the mode of the combination of _Elementary Sounds_ into
Syllables and Words, and of Words into Sentences naturally expressive of
given conceptions or ideas. Such a language would rest on discovery, in
that precise sense in which discovery differs from invention, and would
have in itself infinite capacities and powers of expression, and again
of suggesting thought; and might perhaps come to be recognized as the
most stupendous discovery to which the human intellect is capable of
attaining. 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.' The Word, or the _Logos_, is the underlying or
hidden _Wisdom_ of which _speech_ is the external utterance or
expression. Who can say how profoundly and intimately the underlying and
hitherto undiscovered Laws of Speech may be consociated with the basic
Principles _of all truth_ embedded in the Wisdom-Nature of God himself?
The old Massonites had a faith, derived from certain mystical utterances
of the Greek Philosophers, that whosoever should discover the right name
for anything, would have absolute power over that thing. The Wisdom of
Plato and the deeper Wisdom of Christ meet and are married to each
other in the conception of John when he makes the startling assertion
that the Logos, the Logic, the Law, the Word, is synonymous with God
himself.
The possibilities of the existence of such a language, divinely and
providentially prepared in the constitution of things, and awaiting
discovery, begins to be perceived, if the conception of the existence of
an absolutely universal analogy be permitted fairly to take possession
of the mind. Such an infinite scheme of analogy, rendering the same
principles alike applicable in all spheres, must itself, in turn, rest
upon a Divine Unity of Plan reigning throughout the Universe, the
execution of which Plan is the act or the continuity of the acts of
Creation. The Religious Intuition of the Race has persistently insisted
upon the existence of this Unity, to the conception of which the
scientific world is only now approximatingly and laboriously ascending.
If there be such Analogy in Nature furnishing an echo and an image in
every department of Being of all that exists in every other department
of Being, certainly that Analogy must be _most distinct_ and _clearly
discoverable as between the Elements, or the lowest and simplest
Constituents of Being in each Sphere_. The lowest and simplest elements
of Language are Oral Sounds, which in written Languages are represented
by Letters, and constitute the Alphabets of those Languages. The
Alphabets of Sound must be clearly distinguished from the mere
Letter-Alphabets by which the Sounds are variously represented. The
Sound-Alphabets (the Scales of Phonetic Elements) of any two Languages
differ only in the fact that one of the Languages may include a few
Sounds which are not heard in the other, or may omit a few which are.
The Mouth, the Larynx (a cartilaginous box at the top of the windpipe),
and the Nose--the compound organ of speech--constitute an instrument,
capable, like the accordeon, for instance, of a certain number of
distinct touches and consequent vocal effects, which produce the sounds
heard in all existing Languages. The total of the possible sounds so
produced or capable of production may be called the Crude or Unwinnowed
Alphabet of Nature, or the Natural Alphabet of Human Language
generically or universally considered. Thus, for instance, the sound
represented in English and the Southern European Languages generally, by
the letter _m_, is made by the contact of the two lips, while at the
same time the sounding breath so interrupted is projected upon the
_sounding board_ of the head _through the nose_, whence _resounding_, it
is discharged outwardly, this process giving to the sound produced that
peculiar effect called _nasal_ or _nose-sound_; and precisely this sound
can be produced by the voice in no other way. This sound is,
nevertheless, heard in nearly all Languages, although there are a few
imperfect savage dialects which are destitute of it. The production of
this sound, as above described, will be obvious to the reader if he will
pronounce the word _my_, and will attend to the position of the lips
when he begins to utter the word. Let him attempt to say _my_, without
closing the lips, and the impossibility of doing so will be apparent.
The production of the sound is therefore mechanical and local; and the
number of sounds to be produced by the organ fixed and limited,
therefore, by Nature herself. The very limited number of possible sounds
may be guessed by the fact that of sounds produced by _completely
closing the two lips_, there are only three, namely, _p_, _b_, _m_, in
all the Languages of the earth (as in _p_-ie, _b_-y, _m_-y).
It is the same with all the other vocal sounds. They are _necessarily_
produced at certain fixed localities or Seats of Sound, in the mouth,
and by a certain fixed modulation or mechanical use of the Organs of
Speech. At least they are produced in and are confined to certain
circumscribed regions of the mouth, and so differ in the method of
their production as to be appropriately distributed into certain Natural
Classes: as Vowels and Consonants; Labials (Lip Sounds); Linguo-dentals
(Tongue-Teeth Sounds); Gutturals (Back-Mouth or Throat Sounds), etc.,
etc.
From the whole number of sounds which it is possible to produce--the
whole Crude Natural Alphabet--one Language of our existing Languages
selects a certain number less than the whole, and another Language doing
the same, it happens that while they mainly coincide, they, so to speak,
shingle over each other at random, and it follows: 1. That the Number of
Sounds in different Languages is not uniform; 2. That of any two
Languages compared, one will chance to have several sounds not heard in
the other; and, 3. The erroneous impression is made upon the casual and
superficial observer that in the aggregate of all Languages there must
be an immense number of sounds; whereas, in fact, the total Alphabet of
Vocal Sounds in nature, like the Gamut of Colors or Musical Tones, is
quite limited, if we attend only to those which distinctly differ, or
stand at appropriate and appreciable distances from each other.
Further to illustrate: Assume that there are, capable of being clearly
discriminated by the human ear, say sixty-four or seventy-two distinct
Elementary Sounds of the human voice, in all--as many, for example, as
there are Chemical Elements; some existing Languages select and make use
of twenty, some of twenty-four, some of thirty, and some of forty of
these sounds, omitting the rest.
But--and here is a very important point and a real discovery in this
investigation--it will be found, if closely attended to, that a certain
selection of one half of this number, say thirty-two or thirty-six of
these sounds, embraces the whole body of vocal elements _usually
occurring_ in all the forms of speech on the planet; the remaining half
consisting of rare, exceptional, and, we may nearly say, useless sounds.
This statement will again be better understood by analogy with what
regards the Elements of Chemistry. Just about one half of the known
elements of matter occur with frequency, and enter into useful and
ordinary combinations to produce the great mass of known substances. The
remaining half are unfrequent, obscure, and relatively unimportant; some
of them never having been seen even by many of our most eminent
chemists. Even should a few new elements be discovered, it cannot be
anticipated that any one of them should prove to be of leading
importance, like oxygen, carbon, or sulphur.
On the other hand, should some future great chemical discovery realize
the dream of the alchemists, and enable us to transmute iron into gold,
and indeed every chemical Element into every other chemical Element
(convertible identity), still the sixty-four (nearly) Chemical Elements
now known would remain the real Elements of Organic and Inorganic
Compounds, in a sense just as important as that in which they are now so
regarded. The now known Elements would still continue to constitute _The
Crude Natural Alphabet of Matter_, and be correspondential with _The
Crude Natural Alphabet of Sounds in Language_. The transmutability of
one element into another indefinitely, would not, in any but a certain
absolute or transcendental sense, cause the Elements to be regarded as
one, or as any less number than now. It would be, on the contrary, a
fact precisely corresponding with the actual and well-known
transmutability of speech-sounds into each other as occurs in the
phenomena of Etymology and Comparative Philology. This is so extensive,
as now understood by Comparative Philologists, that it would be hardly
difficult to prove that every sound is capable of being transmuted into
every other sound, either directly or through intermediates; and yet we
do not in the least tend to cease to regard the several sounds as they
stand as the real Elements of Speech.
It is this transmutability of Correspondential Elements in another
sphere of Being, which bases the presumption, or gives to it at least
countenance from a new quarter, that the metals and other chemical
Elements may be actually convertible substances by means of processes
not yet suspected or sufficiently understood. The more careful study of
the Analogy with the Elements of other spheres, and perhaps specifically
with the Elements of Language, under the presiding influence of larger
scientific generalizations and views than those which now prevail in the
scientific world, may be, and, it would even seem, ought to be the means
of revealing the law of Elementary Transmutations in the Chemical
Domain. The expectation of a future discovery of the resolution of the
existing Elements of Matter, and their convertibility even, is reviving
in the chemical field, and even so distinguished a chemist and thinker
as Professor Draper does not hesitate to sustain its probability by the
weight of his authority and belief. The process by which the
transmutation of Elements is actually effected in Language, is by _Slow
and Continued Attrition_. These very words suggest a process but little
resorted to in chemical experiment, but which probably intervenes in the
Laboratory of Nature, when she makes the diamond out of a substance,
simple carbon, the most familiarly known to chemistry, but out of which
the human chemist is entirely unable by any process known to him to
produce that precious gem.
Whether this particular hint is of any value or not, one thing is
certain, that it is in the direction of Universal and Comparative
Science--the analogical echo of the parts of one Domain of Being with
the parts of another Domain and of all other Domains of Being; of the
phenomena of one Science with the phenomena of other Sciences; and
especially as among the Elements of each--that we must look for the next
grand advances in Scientific Discovery. The world urgently requires the
existence of a new class of scientific students who shall concern
themselves precisely with these questions of the relations and the
indications of unity between the different Sciences; not to displace,
but to transcend and to cooerdinate the labors of that noble Army of
Scientific Specialists, with which Humanity is now so extensively and so
happily provided.
The _Select_ Lingual Alphabet of Nature, as distinguished from the
_Crude_ Natural Alphabet above described, is then the expurgated scale
of sounds, say thirty-two; the sounds of usual occurrence in polished
languages; one half of the whole number; the residuum after rejecting an
equal number of obscure, unimportant, or barbarous sounds, of possible
production and of real occurrence in some of the cruder Languages, and
as crude elements even in the more refined Languages now extant. The two
sounds of _th_ in English, as in _th_igh and _th_y (the _theta_ of the
Greek), and the two shades of the _ch_-sound in German, as in na_ch_ and
i_ch_, are instances of crude sounds in refined Languages, for which
other Languages, more fastidious for Euphony, as French and Italian for
example, naturally substitute _t_, _d_, and _k_ (_c_). The obscure and
crude sounds would always retain, however (in respect to the idea of a
Universal Alphabet), a subordinate place and value, and should be
gathered and represented in a Supplementary Alphabet for special and
particular uses.
It has been the mistake of Phoneticians and Philologians, heretofore, to
recognize no difference in the relative importance of sounds. They have
sought, through every barbarous dialect, as well as every refined
tongue, and gathered by the drag-net of observation, every barbarous and
obscure as well as every polite sound which by any accident ever enters
into the constitution of speech. The clucks of Hottentot Tribes and the
whistle heard in some of the North American Languages have been reckoned
in, upon easy terms, with the more serviceable and euphonious members of
the Phonetic family, and mere trivial shades of sounds were put upon the
same footing as the pivotal sounds themselves. This is as if certain
obdurate compounds were introduced in the first instance among Chemical
Elements--which subsequent analysis may even prove to be the case in
respect to some substances that we now recognize as Elements--and then,
by assigning to the least important of Elements the same rank, and
giving to them the same attention as to the most important, the number
were augmented beyond the practical or working body of Elements, and our
treatises upon Chemistry encumbered by a mass of useless matter. Or
again, it is as if among the Elements of Music were included all
conceivable sounds, as the squeal, the shriek, the sob, etc.; and as if,
in addition to this, the least intervals, the quarter tones for
instance, were ranked as the musical equals of the whole tones.
If it should prove a matter of fact, as capable of exact scientific
demonstration as any other, that the Consonant and Vowel Elements of
Oral Language are, in a radical and important sense, repetitory of, or
correspondential with, Musical Tones or the Elements of Music, as well
as with Chemical Elements, and these again with the Elements of
Numerical Calculation, of Form, or the Science of Morphology, and, in
fine, with the Prime Metaphysical Elements of Being, or the first
Categories of Thought, perhaps we may by such speculations catch a
glimpse of the possibilities of a great lingual discovery, having the
attributes here indicated. _Why should not the Elements of Speech have
been brought by Nature herself into some sort of parallelism with the
Elements of Thought which it is the special province of Speech to
represent?_ Why, again, should not the Prime Elements of every new
domain of Being be merely a Repetition in new form of the Prime Elements
of the Universe, as a whole, and of those especially of Language, its
representative domain?--Language being the literal word, as Universal
Law is the Logos or the Word _par excellence_, and Divine. In that
event, every speech-element would be of necessity inherently charged
with the precise kind and degree of meaning specifically relating it,
first to one of the Prime Elements of Being, metaphysically considered,
and then, by an echo of resemblance, to one of the Prime Elements of
every subordinate domain of Being throughout the Universe. The
Combinations of the Letter-Sounds would then constitute words exactly,
simply, and naturally expressive of any combination of the Elements of
Being, either, first, in the Universal domain, or, secondly, in any
subordinate domain, physical or psychical. In this way a grand and
wonderful system of technicals would be wrought out for all the
sciences--_provided by Nature herself, and discovered, only, by man_. It
is at least certain that if a grand Science of Analogy is ever to be
discovered, capable of Unifying all our knowledges, an anticipation
vaguely entertained by our most advanced scientific minds, it must be
sought for primarily among the simplest elements of every domain of
science, or, what is the same thing, every domain of Thought and Being.
It is alike certain that heretofore the first step even has never been
rightly taken among the men of science to investigate in that direction.
The failure of all those who have entertained the idea of a Universal
Analogy as a basis of Scientific Unity, has resulted from the fact that,
drawn rapidly along by the beauty of their conceptions, they have
attempted to rush forward into the details of their subject, and have
lost themselves in the infinity of these, without the wisdom and
patience to establish a basis for their immense fabric in the exact
discovery and knowledge of Elements. They have hastened forward to the
limbs and twigs and leaves and flowers and fruitage, without having
securely planted the roots of their scientific tree in the solid earth.
Such was the case with Oken, the great German Physio-Philosopher and
Transcendental Anatomist, the pupil of Hegel, who exerted a profound
influence over the scientific mind of Germany for thirty years, but has
now sunk into disrepute for want of just that elementary and
demonstrative discovery of first Elements, and the rigorous adhesion to
such perceptions of that kind as were partially entertained by him and
his school of powerful thinkers and scientists.
To repeat the leading idea above, which is so immensely pregnant with
importance, and, perhaps we may add, so essentially new: The
combinations of Speech-Elements--in a perfect and normal Language for
the Human Race, which we are here assuming that Nature should have
provided, and which may be only awaiting discovery--when they should be
rightly or scientifically arranged into words and sentences, would be
exactly concurrent and parallel with the combinations of the _Prime
Elements_ of Thought and Being in the Real Universe; so that each word,
so formed, would become exactly charged with the kind and amount of
meaning contained in the thing named or the conception intended. An idea
will thus be obtained by the reader, somewhat vague, no doubt, at first,
but which would become perfectly distinct, as the subject should be
gradually unfolded, of the way in which a universal language naturally
expressive of Thoughts and Feelings, and capable of unlimited expansion,
might perhaps be evolved from a profound understanding of the Analogies
of the Universe. It is important, however, in order that this theory,
now when it is first presented, should not unnecessarily prejudice
cautious and conservative minds, and seem to them wholly Utopian, to
guard it by the additional statement that, while such a language might
be appropriately denominated Universal, there is a sense in which it
would still not be so; or, in other words, that it could only become
Universal by causing to coalesce with its own scientifically organized
structure, the best material already wrought out, and existing as
_natural growth_ in the dead and living languages now extant; by
absorbing them, so to speak, in itself. It would have no pretension,
therefore, directly to supersede any of the existing languages, nor even
ultimately to dispense with the great mass of the material found in any
of them.
It is a common prejudice among the learned that Language is a growth,
and cannot in any sense be a structure; in other words, that it is
purely the subject of the instinctive or unthoughted development of man,
and not capable of being derived from reflection, or the deliberate
application of the scheming faculty of the intellect. A little
reflection will show that this opinion is only a half truth. It is
certain that language has received its primitive form and first
development by the instinctive method. It is equally true, however, that
even as respects our existing languages, they have been overlaid by a
subsequent formation, originating with the development of the
_Sciences_, due wholly to reflection on the scheming faculty of man, and
already equal in extension to the primitive growth. The Nomenclature of
each of the Sciences has been devised by the reflective genius of
individuals, and arbitrarily imposed, so to speak, upon the Spoken and
Written Languages of the World, as they previously existed. From the
cabinets and books of the learned, they gradually pass into the speech
of the laity, and become incorporated with the primitive growth. If,
instead of the Carbonate of Soda, the Protoxide of Nitrogen, and other
Chemical Technicalities arbitrarily formed in modern times from the
ancient Greek Language, terms which the ancient Greeks themselves never
heard nor conceived of, we had words derived from similar combinations
of Anglo-Saxon or German Roots; if, for instance, for Protoxide of
Nitrogen, we had the _First-sour-stuffness_, or the
_First-sharp-thingness of Salt-petreness_, and so throughout the immense
vocabulary of chemistry, what an essentially different aspect would the
whole English Language now wear! Had Lavoisier, therefore, chosen the
Anglo-Saxon or the German as the basis of the chemical nomenclature now
in use, we can readily perceive how the intellectual device of a single
savant, would, ere this time, have sent a broad current of new
development through the heart of all the advanced Languages of the
earth; of a different kind wholly, but no more extensive, no more novel,
and truly foreign to the primitive instinctual growth of those
Languages, no more purely the result of intellectual contrivance, than
the current of development to which he actually did give origin.
Lavoisier chose the dead Greek as a fountain from which to draw the
elements of his new verbal compounds, assigning to those elements
arbitrarily new volumes of meaning, and constructing from them, with no
other governing principle than his own judgment of what seemed best, a
totally new Language, as it were, adequate to the wants of the new
Science. Still, despite these imperfections in the method, the demand,
with the growth of the new ideas, for a new expansion of the powers of
Language, in a given direction, made the contrivance of the great
chemist a successful interpolation upon the speech-usages of the world.
It is certainly not therefore inconceivable--because of any governing
necessity that Language should be a purely natural growth--that other
and greater modifications of the speech of mankind may occur; when--not
an arbitrary contrivance upon an imperfect basis and of a limited
application is in question, but--when a real discovery, the revelation
of the true scientific bases of Language, and limitless applications in
all directions, should be concerned.
On the other hand, the extent of the practical applications of strictly
scientific principles to the Structure of Language is subject to
limitation. Even mathematics, theoretically the most unlimited of the
existing Sciences, is practically limited very soon by the complexity of
the questions involved in the higher degrees of equations. In the same
manner, while it may be possible to construct a Scientific Language
adequate to all the wants of Language, in which exactness is involved;
that is to say, capable of classifying and naming every object and idea
in the Universe which is itself capable of exact classification and
definition, still there remains an immense sphere, an equal half, it may
be said, of the Universe of objects and conceptions, which have not that
susceptibility; which are, in other words, so complex, so idiosyncratic,
or so vague in their nature, that the best guide for the formation of an
appropriate word for their expression is not Intellect or Reflection,
but that very Instinct which has presided over the formation of such
Languages as we now have. We may accurately define a triangle or a cube,
and might readily bring them within the range of a Universal Language
scientifically constructed; but who would venture to attempt by any
verbal contrivance to denote the exact elements of thought and feeling
which enter into the meaning of the verbs _to screech_ or _to twinge_?
There is, therefore, ample scope and a peremptory demand for both
methods of lingual development. The New Scientific Language herein
suggested would be universal within the limit within which Science
itself is universal. But there is another sphere within which Science,
born of the Intellect, has only a subordinate sway, and in which
instinct, or that faculty which, in the higher aspect of it, we
denominate Intuition, is supreme. This faculty has operated as instinct
in the first stage of the growth of Language, the Natural or
Instinctual; it should now give place to the Intellect, in the second
stage, the Scientific; after which it should regain its ascendency as
Intuition, in the final finish and perfectionment of the Integral Speech
of Mankind, the Artistic.
Such a Language would be, to all other Languages, precisely what a
unitary Science would be to all the special Sciences; and we have seen
how it might happen that the same discovery should furnish both the
Language and the Science. Without rudely displacing any existing
Language, it would, besides filling its own central sphere of uses,
furnish a rallying point of unity between them all. It would ally them
to itself, not by the destruction of their several individualities, but
by developing the genius of each to the utmost. It would enrich them
all, by serving as the common interpreter between them, until each would
attain something of the powers of all, or at least the full capacity for
availing itself of the aid of all others, and chiefly of the central
tongue, in all those respects in which in consequence of its own special
character it should remain individually defective. The new Scientific
and Central Language might thus plant itself in the midst of the
Languages; gradually assimilate them to itself; drawing at the same time
an augmentation of its own materials from them, until they would become
mere idioms of it, and finally, perhaps, in a more remote future,
disappear altogether as distinct forms of speech, and be blended into
harmony in the bosom of the central tongue.
The resources of Language for the formation of new words, by the
possible euphonic combination of elementary sounds, is as nearly
infinite as any particular series of combinations usually called
infinite; all such series having their limitations, as in the case of
the different orders of the Infinite in the calculus which are limited
by the fact that there are different orders. Yet, notwithstanding that
this inexhaustible fountain of Phonetic wealth exists directly at hand,
none of these resources have ever been utilized by any scientific
arrangement and advice. Only so many verbal forms as happen to have
occurred in any given language, developed by the chance method, in the
Greek, for instance, are chosen as a basis, and employed as elements for
the new verbal formatives now coming into use with such astonishing
rapidity in all the sciences. For instance, let us take the consonant
combination _kr_ (or _cr_), and add the following series of vowels: _i_
(pronounced _ee_), _e_ (pronounced _a_), _a_ (pronounced _ah_), _o_
(pronounced _aw_), _u_ (pronounced _uh_), _o_ (pronounced _o_), and _u_
(pronounced _oo_); and we construct the following series of euphonic
triliteral roots:
Kri (Kree)
Kre (Kra or Kray)
Kra (Krah)
Kr_o_ (Kraw)
Kr_u_ (Kruh)
Kro (Kro)
Kru (Kroo).
Let us now add the termination _o_, and we have the following list of
formatives:
Kri-o (Kree-o)
Kre-o (Kra-o)
Kra-o (Krah-o)
Kr_o_-o (Kraw-o)
Kr_u_-o (Kr_uh_-o)
Kro-o (Kro-o)
Kru-o (Kroo-o).
Of these verbal forms only two occur in any of the well-known
Southwestern Languages of Europe, namely, _Creo_, I CREATE, of the
Latin, Italian, etc., and _Crio_, I REAR, of the Spanish. The other
forms are entirely unused. Of any other simple series of Euphonic
combinations, such as Phonetic art can readily construct, there is the
same wasteful neglect, and, in consequence of this total failure of the
scientific world to extract these treasures of Phonic wealth lying
directly beneath their feet, they are driven to such desperate devices
as that of naming the two best-known and most familiar order of fishes,
those usually found on our breakfast tables, _Acanthopterygii
Abdominales_, and _Malacopterygii Subbrachiati_; and the common and
beautiful bird called bobolink is _Dolichonyx Orixyvora_. For the same
reason--the entire absence of any economical and systematized use of our
phonetic materials by the scientific world--the writer found himself,
recently, in attempting certain generalizations of the domain of
science, stranded almost at the commencement, upon such verbal shoals as
_Anthropomorphus Inorganismoidismus_; and the subsequent steps in the
mere naming of discriminations simple enough in themselves, became
wholly impossible. The urgent necessity existing, therefore, for the
radical intervention of Science in the discovery of true principles
applicable to the construction of its own tools and instruments, can
hardly be denied or questioned.
The immense condensation of meaning, and the consequent compactness and
copiousness of which a Language based on a meaning inherently contained
by analogy in the simplest elements of sound would be susceptible, would
give to such a Language advantages as the instrument of thought and
communication, which are but very partially illustrated in the
superiority of printing by movable types over manuscript, for the rapid
multiplication of books.
In the _compound words_ of existing Languages each root-word of the
combination has a distinct meaning, and the joint meaning of the parts
so united is the description or definition of the new idea; thus in
German, _Finger_ is FINGER, and _Hut_ is HAT, and _Finger-hut_
(FINGER-HAT) is a _thimble_; _Hand_ is HAND, _Schue_ is SHOE, and
_Hand-schue_ is _a glove_, etc. So in English, _Wheel-barrow_,
_Thunder-storm_, etc. The admirable expressiveness of such terms, and
the great superiority in this respect of Languages like the Sanscrit,
Greek, German, etc., in which such self-defining combinations are
readily formed, over Spanish, Italian, French, and other derivative
languages, the genius of which resists combination, is immediately
perceived and acknowledged. But if we analyze any one of these compound
words, _Finger-hut_, for instance, we shall perceive that while each of
the so-called elements of combination, _Finger_ and _Hut_, has a
distinct meaning, which enters into the more specific meaning of the
compound, yet they are not, in any true sense, elements, or, in other
words, that they are not the ultimate elements of the compound words.
_Finger_ is itself constituted, in the first instance, of two syllables,
_Fing_ and _er_, which, in accordance with the same principle upon which
the compound word _Finger-hut_ is organized, should describe the thing
signified, as would be the case if _Fing_ meant HAND, and _er_ meant
CONTINUATION. _Finger_ would then mean HAND-CONTINUATION, and
_Finger-hut_ (_thimble_) would then be a HAND-CONTINUATION-HAT. But,
again, _Fing_ consists of three elementary sounds, _f-i-ng_, _er_ of
two, _e-r_, and _hut_ of three, _h-u-t_. Suppose now that the primary
sound _f_ had been scientifically discovered to be correspondential
throughout all the realms of Nature and of Thought with _Superiority_,
_High-position_, or _Upperness_; _i_ with _centrality_, or _main body_,
and _ng_ with _member_ or _branch_; the syllable _Fing_ would then
signify UPPER-BODY-BRANCH, a very proper description of _the arm_.
Suppose that _e_ signified, in the same way, _flat, palm-like ideas and
things generally_ and that _r_ alone signified _continuation_; then _er_
would signify PALM-CONTINUATION, and _Finger_ would signify an
UPPER-BODYBRANCH-PALM-CONTINUATION, or, in other words, a
_Palm-continuation of an upper-body-branch_, and would so be completely
_descriptive of_, at the same time that it would _denote_, a Finger.
Suppose, again, that _h_ signified inherently _rotundity_ or
_roundness_; _u_, _closeness_; and _t_, _roof_ or _covering_; then _hut_
would signify ROUND-CLOSED-COVER, a proper description of a _hat_; and
_Finger-hut_ would then mean
AN-UPPER-BODY-BRANCH-PALM-CONTINUATION-ROUND-CLOSED-COVER, or _the
round-closed-cover of a palm-continuation of a superior limb or branch
of the body_. It will be at once perceived how, with such resources of
signification at command, compounds like _Acanthopterygii_ to signify
_thornfins_, _Malacopterygii Subbrachiati_, to signify _Under-arm soft
fins_, or _Anthropomorphus Inorganismoidismus_, to signify _things in
unorganized form, having a resemblance to man_, would soon come to be
regarded as the lingual monsters which they really are.
The difference between commencing the composition of words by the real
elements of speech, represented by single letters, each charged with its
own appropriate meaning, and conveying that meaning into every compound
into which it should enter, from commencing the composition by assuming
long words already formed in some existing language, as _Anthropos_
(Greek word for _man_), _Acanthos_ (Greek word for _spine_), _Keron_
(Greek word for _fin_ or _wing_), etc., as the first element of the new
compounds, is infinite in its results upon the facility, copiousness,
and expressiveness of the terminology evolved. It is like the difference
of man working by the aid of the unlimited resources of tools and
machinery and the knowledge of chemistry, on the one hand, and man
working with his unaided _bare hands_, and in ignorance of the nature of
the substances he employs, on the other hand. The scientific world has
not hitherto known how to construct the lingual tools and instruments
which are indispensable to its own rapidly augmenting and complicated
operations; to analyze and apply the lingual materials at its command;
and to simplify and unify the nomenclatures of all the sciences, in
order to quicken a thousandfold the operation of all the mental
faculties, in the perception and exact vocal indication of all the
infinitely numerous close discriminations and broad generalizing
analogies with which nature abounds.
It is hardly necessary to say that the particular meanings assigned
above to the single sounds in the analysis of the German word
_Finger-hut_, are not assumed in any sense to be the real meanings of
the vocal elements involved. The whole case is supposititious, and
assumed merely to illustrate the unused possibilities of Language in the
construction of significant words, and especially in the construction of
scientific technicalities. To found a real Language of this kind, it
would be necessary, first, to work up patiently to the true meanings of
the Elementary Sounds of Human Speech, and then to the analogy of those
meanings with the elements of universal being (the categories of the
understanding, etc.), and finally of these again with the elements of
each of the special Sciences.
Could such a discovery be actually accomplished; should it prove to be
the simple fact of nature that every sound of the human voice is
Nature's chosen vehicle for the communication of an equally elementary
idea; and that the Combinations of the Elementary Sounds into Words do
inherently and necessarily, so soon as these primitive meanings and the
law of their combination are known, produce words infinite in number and
perfect in structure, naturally expressive of every precise idea of
which the human mind is capable, it becomes perfectly conceivable how a
Natural Universal Language would be evolved by discovery alone. The
creation of the Language would belong to Nature as truly and
absolutely--in a sense, more truly and absolutely--than our existing
instinctual Languages. It would be in fact the normal Language of
Humanity, from which, for the want of such a discovery, mankind has been
unnaturally debarred. The fact would prove to be that we have ever been
banished from our true vernacular, and have been, all our lives,
speaking foreign or strange tongues, from which we have only to recur or
come home. May we not, therefore, found in Science the rational
expectation, that in due time, from a Lingual Paradise Lost in the
remote Past, we may recur to a Lingual Paradise Regained, in literal
fulfilment of the promise of prophecy, that all the nations of the earth
shall be of one speech?
A SUMMER'S NIGHT.
[_Translated literally from the original Polish of Count S. Krasinski,
by Prof. Podbielski; prepared for_ THE CONTINENTAL _by Martha Walker
Cook._]
'O'er this sad world Death folds his gloomy pall,
Bright buds hatch worms, flowers die, and woe shrouds all.'
MALIZEWSKI.
'Oh, look on me, my fellow countrymen,
From the same Fatherland! On me, so young,
Passing o'er the last road, gazing for the last time
On Helios--to see him rise no more for ever!
In his cold cradle Death rolls all asleep;
Me _living_ he conducts to his black shores;
Me wretched! unbetrothed! upon whose ears
No bridal chant has ever hymned its joys,
Stern Acheron alone calls to his side,
And Death must be my icy Bridegroom now!'
SOPHOCLES: _Antigone_.
CHAPTER I.
I behold her as they lead her forth, with myrtle wreath upon her brow,
and floating drapery of snow. She moves slowly, as if in fear, and the
church rises like a vast cemetery before her eyes. Charmed with her
modest loveliness, men smile on her as she glides forward, while
children, changed into little angels, strew fresh flowers before her.
The bishop and attendant priests look bright in gay dalmatics; and
throngs of people crowd round, praising, envying, and wishing bliss. She
alone is silent, with long lashes shading her downcast eyes, as she
leans on the arms of her maidens.
Weariness is in every movement of her slight form, her nerves seem
unstrung, and the rays of soul gleam vague and troubled through the
expanded pupils of her blue eyes; it were indeed hard to divine whether
plaint or prayer would breathe through the half-open lips. As she passes
on before the shrines and chapels she lifts her hand, as if intending to
make the sign of the cross, but she seems without energy to complete the
symbols, and they fall broken and half formed in the air. Inclining her
head before the Mother of God, she bends as if about to kneel, but, her
strength evidently failing her, she moves tremblingly on toward the
sanctuary, and the Great Altar in its gloomy depths looms before her
like a sepulchre.
There, encircled by relations and friends, with pride and pleasure
beaming from his aged eyes, her father awaits her; and well may he be
proud, for never had God given to declining years a lovelier child. She
shines upon the sunset of his life with the growing lustre of the
evening star, and never has its light beamed dim upon him until this
very hour. He will not, however, think of this momentary eclipse now,
for this same hour will see the fulfilment of his brightest dreams. In
his joy and pride he exclaims to the friends around him: 'Look on my
child; how young, pure, and innocent she is--trembling in the ignorance
of her approaching happiness!' Then he gazes wistfully, far as his eye
can reach, down the long aisles of the church, to ascertain if the
bridegroom yet appears, and, seeing him not, his gray eyebrows fall, and
settle into a frown.
* * * * *
But peace soon again smoothes his broad forehead. Alas! the illusions of
the old stand round their petrifying souls like statues of granite; no
earthly power avails to strike them down, and death alone can break
them. The young see their dreams floating in the air, while shifting
rainbows play above them as they rise and melt upon the view. But the
hopes of the old grow hard and stony as they near the grave; their
_desires_ assume the form of _realities_. The harsh rock of bygone
experience stands between them and the truths of the present. Seating
themselves immovably upon it, the surging life-stream hurtles on far
below, bearing them not forward on its hurrying flow. Withered garlands
and the ashes of once fiery hearts drift on; shattered wrecks, with torn
sails and broken masts, driven and tossed by eternal whirlwinds, appear
and vanish in the river's rush; but the old remain motionless above. The
hot rain of stars forever falling there dies out with dull moan, while
the glad waves and white foam laugh as the ruined wrecks toss helplessly
in the strong winds; but the aged heed it not: they have grown into one
with the rock of the past, they build air castles over the roaring
depths, they look upon the waves, as they surge into each other, as
stable altars of peace and happiness. They command their sons and
daughters to vow faith in the light of the past, but ere the oath is
fully spoken, the altar is under other skies, encircled by other
horizons!
* * * * *
Surrounded by friends in gay attire, the bridegroom, full of life and
vigor, rushes into the church. He wears a national dress, _but his
nation is not that of the old man_. The crowd disperse from right to
left as he passes on, greeting him with lowly bows: scarcely deigning to
return the courtesy, he clatters up the aisle with rapid stride, and
stands by the side of the kneeling bride. He places his lips to the ear
of the old man, and whispers to him; they converse in low tones, the old
man with an air of regal authority, the young one gesturing rapidly with
his hands.
The bishops now slowly approach, the tapers are lighted upon the altar,
a solemn silence falls upon the holy temple, two hands, two souls are to
be united forever! A shiver of awe thrills through the assembly.
* * * * *
The beams of the setting sun pour in through the stained panes of the
windows their lines of crimson light, as if streams of blood were
flowing through the church. Deepening in the approaching twilight, they
fall in their dying splendor on the brow of a man who stands alone in
one of the side chapels. The figure of a dead hero extended upon a
monument lies near him, as, immovable as the statue itself, he stands
with his gaze riveted upon the altar whence the bishop addresses the
bride. The crimson light falling full upon him betrays the secrets of
his soul, his noble brow tells of fierce struggle within, but neither
prayer, sigh, nor groan escapes him. His lips are closely pressed
together, while suppressed anguish writhes them into a stern smile--but
the streams of ruby light which had shone on his face for the moment,
fade in the twilight, and he is lost in the gloom of the deepening
shadows.
* * * * *
But when the vows were all spoken, the ceremonies over, when the
bridegroom raised up the bride, and she fell into the arms of her
father, when he bore her onward to the gates of the church, with
thousands of tapers following after, when the crowd dispersed, and the
sounds of the footsteps were dying away in the distance, and the
cathedral grew still as the grave, holding only the dead and the few
half-living monks moving darkly in its depths--the man on whom had shone
the crimson light leaves the chapel, comes up the aisle, strikes his
breast, and falls forward on the steps of the altar, rises suddenly, and
again falls, then seats himself, while the lights from behind the great
crucifix of silver shine down solemnly upon him. His face is turned away
from the holy things of the sanctuary; his eyes gaze afar, past the
gates through which the bride had vanished. He sees the blue night-sky,
and a single star sparkling upon it, and as he looks upon the star, he
takes a sword from under his cloak, draws the steel from the scabbard,
and, still gazing upon the star, sharpens it on his whetstone. Thus,
with widely opened eye, yet seeing, hearing nothing, the somnambulist,
wrapped in deep, magnetic sleep, strides on in the moonlight, possessed
by a power of which he is not conscious, which may stain his hands with
blood, or hold him back from the verge of an abyss. Passion drinks its
glow from the rays of the sun; it may lead us safely, or drive us far
astray!
* * * * *
A monk approaches the man kneeling before the high altar, and says:
'Brother, whosoever thou mayst be, go to rest, and do not disturb the
peace of the Lord.'
The man answers nothing. Another draws near him, saying:
'Away from the church; be not guilty of sacrilege!'
The man makes no reply. A third monk stands beside him and says:
'I excommunicate thee, and the steel which thou darest to draw at the
very foot of the cross.'
The culprit then rises, and replies:
'I waited for these words, that the stroke might be certain, and the
blow mortal.'
He leaves the church slowly--slowly, as if counting his own footfalls,
knowing them to be his last on earth!
* * * * *
Meanwhile the night falls so softly, the skies hang so transparently
above, the air is so tranquil, that the soul trembles with delight, and
the heart unconsciously forebodes happiness. The stars peer up above the
mountains, like the eyes of angels flashing through the blue spaces of
the heavens. Swathed in her bands of darkness, and breathing up to them
the perfume of her flowers and the sighs of her lovers, the earth seems
grateful to them for their golden glances. A fitting night, surely, for
a bridal so illustrious as the one we have just seen; a long spring will
bloom from it upon the aged father. What more could he ask for his
children? His new son in high favor with the emperor, lord of lands and
serfs; his daughter, good and beautiful as an angel, goes not
portionless into the house of her husband, but is the sole heiress of
immense estates. What maiden would not envy her; what youth not wish to
take his place? And the thoughts of the old man run pleasantly on: he
thinks how happily his days will flow, blessed with the smiles of his
daughter, and surrounded by the splendor of his son. He already sees the
little grandchildren springing up before him; flowers blooming along the
pathway leading to his grave.
* * * * *
A splendid festival is to take place in his castle; few princes would
be able to give such an entertainment. The grounds are illumined as if
it were day, barrels of pitch are everywhere burning, torches are
blazing high upon his walls, windows and doors are thrown open, harps
sound and trumpets thunder, mazourkas swell upon the ear, and the gay
groups twine, twist, reel, half mad with joyous excitement. The old man
strays through the lighted halls, and converses with his guests. Tears
tremble in his eyes. Ah, many tears had gathered there in the troubled
days of his life, through its hours of sweat and blood, but they are all
passing now into these drops of gratitude to God who has brought him to
this happy time in which past sorrows are all to be forgotten. Moving
out upon his wide porticos, he pours coins from dishes of silver to the
people below. Returning, he places clusters of diamonds on the young
bosoms of the bridesmaids. Servants follow his footsteps, bending under
the wealth they bear, handing to him glittering swords and golden
chains, ostrich plumes, and Turkish scymitars, which, in memory of the
day, he distributes among his guests. Sometimes he stops to take a
chalice from the hands of a page, and wets his lips with Tokay, greeting
his guests as he moves courteously on, wishing to warm all with the
sunshine of his own happiness.
* * * * *
He enters now the central dome of the castle, lined with exotic trees
and perfumed plants; the vaulted roof is corniced with wrought marble,
emblazoned with escutcheons of his ancestors, unsullied, glorious, holy!
Stopping at the entrance, he looks for his child: she is not among the
dancers, nor in the throngs of the spectators. The bridegroom is indeed
there, amusing himself with the various beauties present; and, for the
second time in this happy day, the forehead of the old man lowers in
grief or anger. He makes his way through the crowd, passes on through
the orange trees, in the niches between which stand the now deserted
seats rich in broidered tapestry. He lingers among them seeking his
child, when he suddenly stops as if stricken with fierce pain. He has
found her now; she is sitting quite alone, gazing sadly on a bunch of
roses lying on her knee: dreamily she picks off the perfumed leaves,
until the bare stems and thorns alone remain in her fragile hands. The
old man silently approaches her. Suppressing his emotion, he says, with
gentle voice:
'How happy thy poor mother would have been to-day, my daughter! Ah, why
was it not the will of God she should have blessed this bridal hour!'
She raises her head, crushing the remains of the roses in her trembling
hands, and in her confusion tries to fasten them on the hem of her
dress: the sharp little stems plant themselves there, but stain its snow
with the blood they had torn from the unconscious fingers.
'Why weepest thou, my child? It cannot surely be the memory of thy
mother which so moves thee: thou hast never seen her--she went to the
fathers in the very hour in which thou camest to me. Look, daughter,
thou woundest thyself!'
He takes her hand in his, and softly draws from it the sharp thorns.
'O father, it is not that which pains me! Forgive me--it is that--only
that, my father.'
She stands silently before him--great tears were falling slowly down her
cheeks. He leans heavily upon her arm:
'Thou must support me now, child, for I grow old and frail, my knees
tremble under me; be thou my stay!'
He walks on thoughtfully with her, trying to speak, but saying nothing,
while around them float the perfumes of the flowers, and triumphal music
swells upon the air.
* * * * *
As they move on, the great clock of the castle strikes the hour. It is
fastened to the moulding high on the wall; over it sits an ancient
monarch in bronze, a ruler of many kingdoms, and at each stroke the
statue of a palatine sallies forth, bows to the king of bronze, and
again disappears within the opening wall--twelve strokes toll as they
pass, and twelve palatines appear, make obeisance, and vanish. Hark!
from the distant chambers sound the choir of female voices; vague and
dreamy the notes begin, but at each return they grow clearer and more
defined. They are gliding on from hall to hall, ever drawing nearer and
ever calling more loudly upon the bride. The old man trembles; the pale
girl falls into his arms. But soon recovering, she flies on from passage
to passage, from room to room, from gallery to gallery, from vault to
vault, everywhere pursued by the choir of bridesmaids, dragging the old
man with her, not able to utter a single word--while around them breathe
the perfumes of the flowers, and triumphal music swells upon the air.
At last they stop in the chapel of the castle, where the ancestors rest
in their coffins of stone. A few tapers burn around, and black draperies
broidered with silver flow closely round the tombs. She, the youngest
and last of the proud House, falls upon the grave of her mother,
shudders, but speaks not. The old man says to the trembling girl:
'Daughter, God did not vouchsafe to give me a male descendant to prolong
the power of our race; He blessed me only with a maiden; but thy husband
has sworn to take thy name, and thy children will bear the name of our
fathers. Honor, then, the favor with which God has crowned thee. No lady
in the land is thy equal, heiress as thou art of glory, treasures, and
estates--it is thy duty to be obedient and faithful to thy husband until
death.'
He speaks to her in soft, low tones; slowly, as if he sought with each
word to touch the heart of the silent child. She answers not, but lower
and lower droops the fair young head, until her pale face is buried in
her white hands, and the bridal wreath and veil fall from her brow upon
the grave of her mother. A low groan bursts from the heart of the old
man as he cries:
'Daughter, dost thou hear? they approach to bear thee from the breast on
which thou hast rested from thy very birth; to take thee from the arms
of the old man who has so loved thee! Look up, look into my face; thou
art another's now--take leave of me--say, 'Father, I am happy!''
More and more closely she presses her hands to her face--and remains
gloomily silent.
'Child, dost thou really wish to lay me here among the dead? Dost thou
desire me to rise no more on earth forever? Ah, the love in thy blue
eyes has been my solace through my many life-storms. Thou art my single
pearl, and I have given thee to the hands of the stranger, that thy
brilliancy may remain unclouded, that it may ever glitter in its full
splendor. What is the matter with thee? Speak, child, even if it be to
complain, to tell me thou art wretched.'
Grasping the white marble of the grave with both hands for support, with
gasping breath he awaits her answer. The vengeful sword of remorse is
already in his soul; one groan, one spasm of anguish from the innocent
victim would break his heart. Raising her heavy eyelids, his child seems
to trace an expression of pity on his face, and for a moment dreams that
hope is not yet past. Kneeling on the marble of the grave, and turning
her young face, so sweet in its appealing anguish, full upon him, a
_name_ forces itself through her quivering lips--a sudden shivering
shakes the frame of the old man, throwing him off from the grave of his
young wife.
'What name hast thou uttered? It must never be repeated--never! No; it
were impossible. Tell me I have not heard thee aright; let it rest in
eternal oblivion! Thou canst not dream of that ungrateful exile,
conspiring against me because I prepared for him a brilliant future--the
son of my brother joining with my enemies to compass my ruin! If them
regrettest him, if thou hast a single lurking hope that I will ever
permit thee to see that banished rebel, to clasp his hand in even common
friendship, may the eternal curses of God rest upon you both!'
A voiceless victim offered up upon the altar of the vengeful gods, the
maiden has as yet suffered in silence, but rising now in solemn dignity,
in a cold, firm, resolute tone, she says:
'I love him, father.'
The old man cannot bear these chill and fatal words. His brain reels,
his hopes die, he falls at the foot of the grave, his soul rests for the
moment with the ghosts of his ancestors. When he awakes to
consciousness, the pale face of his child is bending tenderly over him,
her caresses call him back to life. Hark! again he hears the sounding
strophes of the wedding song; the chanting maidens cross the threshold;
slowly singing, they surround the bride with snowy circle; nearer and
nearer they cluster round her--she throws herself for refuge in the old
man's arms!
* * * * *
The maidens now clasp, embrace the trembling bride, take her from her
father's arms, and bear her on with them. They strew flowers in her
path, burn incense around her, as they chant in ever-renewed chorals the
dawning of a new and happy life, full of honor and blessing. The old man
solemnly follows the choir until they reach the great stairway leading
to the bridal chamber: there he bids them stop, and, making the sign of
the cross, for the last time blesses the half-swooning girl.
He stands for a moment wrapt in thought, then wends his way to the hall
of feasting. Recovering his presence of mind, he flings aside the truth
just forced upon him, as if it were all a dream; he commands it not to
be; he almost persuades himself to believe it has never been! Greeting
his guests anew, his air is calm and regal.
The bridegroom, turning to his friends, exclaims:
'Companions in arms, with whom I have spent so many joyous hours in camp
and hall, I dedicate to you the hours of this my wedding night; nor will
I seek my bride until the flush of dawn is in the sky. What hour do the
heavens tell?'
One of the revellers rises, draws back the curtain from the window, and
says:
'It is just past midnight; the moon rides high in the sky.'
'Then am I still yours,' exclaims the youth, 'and again I pledge you in
the rosy wine.' As he speaks he fills the cup of gold studded with
diamonds, swallows the contents, and passes it to the nearest guest. But
the heavy palm of the castle's lord rests upon his shoulder. Seizing
another brimming cup, he says: 'I drain this to thy health, father, and
our guests will surely pledge it with me.'
The lord of the castle thanks him not; he points to the open door,
through which may be seen, as they wind along the distant galleries and
archways, the retreating forms of the now silent bridesmaids. Shaking
his blonde curls, the youth answers:
'These brave men have always served me faithfully; I have sworn to
consecrate this night to them; we drink and feast together until Aurora
leads the dawn.' Seizing the hands of those nearest to him, he resumes:
'Companions, for this sacrifice swear to pursue, to hunt to death, as I
shall command, the vile mob of rebels and traitors who infest these
mountains.'
They give the pledge, while _vivats_ fill the hall. 'Long live our
prince!' The face of the proud old man glimmers with a bluish rage, but
the loud plaudits, the outstretched arms, the dazzling, naked swords,
the wild, warlike enthusiasm bewilder his brain, while pride and hate,
splendor and power, tempting and blinding his soul, veil in fleeting
glitter the broken form of the lonely, weeping, wretched child. He is
carried away in the excitement of the hour, and the loud voice which had
once thundered in the battles of _his own_ unhappy land, joins in the
cry: 'Death to the rebels!' Deigning not, however, to remain longer with
the guests, he sternly beckons to his attendants. They file in order
before him with lighted torches. The youth rises, leaves his friends for
an instant, and accompanies to the door of the saloon the old man, who
takes leave of him with an air of aversion, while the youth returns to
his friends:
'By my good sword!' he exclaims, 'I will brook no control. I wedded a
fair girl, not chains nor fetters. Let the dim moon light the solving of
love's riddle for older maidens; my bride is young and lovely enough to
bear the growing light of dawn.'
Then taking aim with his Greek knife at the golden boss on the opposite
wall, he strikes it in the centre; the guests follow, aim, and knives
fly through the air, but none strike the centre of the target except
himself. Full cups are poured to pledge their glorious chief. The flush
of gratified vanity blooms in his young cheek, he caresses his mustache
and plays with his blonde hair, he jokes with his guests; his jests are
keen, light, witty, piercing like the sting of a wasp, and loud
applauses greet his eager ear. Gliding over the surface of life, knowing
nothing of its depths, he floats gracefully through its shallows. His
blood, quickened by praise, flushes his face, his eye sparkles, his
features play, but his heart is empty, his soul void, his intellect
without expansion; he is as vain, weak, and selfish as an old coquette.