CHAPTER III.--THE INFINITE.

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THE

CONTINENTAL MONTHLY.

DEVOTED TO

Literature and National Policy.

VOL. IV.

JULY-DECEMBER, 1863.

New York:

JOHN F. TROW, 50 GREENE STREET,

(FOR THE PROPRIETORS.)

1863.

ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by

JOHN F. TROW,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the

Southern District of New York.

JOHN F. TROW, PRINTER, STEREOTYPER, AND ELECTROTYPER, 46, 48, & 50

Greene St., New York.

* * * * *

INDEX TO VOLUME IV.

Abijah Witherpee's Retreat, 16

Across Maine in Mid-Winter, 138

A Detective's Story, 474

American Finances and Resources. By Hon.

Robert J. Walker, 463

Autumn Leaves. By Mrs. Martha Walker

Cook, 136

Buckle, Draper, and a Science of History.

By Edward B. Freeland, 610

Buckle, Draper, and the Law of Human Development.

By Edward B. Freeland, 529

Currency and the National Finances. By J.

Smith Homans, 419

Dead. By Anna Gray, 683

Diary of Frances Krasinska; or, Life in Poland

during the 18th Century, 42, 150, 274 394, 491, 624

Dying in the Hospital. By Mary E. Nealy,

Louisville, Ky., 229

Early History of Printing and the Newspaper

Press in Boston and New York. By W.

L. Stone, 256

Editor's Table, 118, 237, 355, 598, 711

Emancipation in Jamaica, By Rev. C. C.

Starbuck, 1

Evergreen Beauty. By Major S. H. Hurst, 227

Extraterritoriality in China. By Dr. Macgowan, 556

Japanese Foreign Relations. By Dr.

Macgowan, 333

Jefferson Davis and Repudiation. By Hon.

Robert J. Walker, 207, 352

Jefferson Davis--Repudiation, Recognition,

and Slavery. By Hon. R. J. Walker, 390

Ladies' Loyal League. By Mrs. O.S. Baker, 51

Letters to Professor S. F. B. Morse. By

Rev. Dr. Henry, 514

Letter Writing. By Park Benjamin, 648

Literary Notices, 114, 231, 478, 594, 706

Maiden's Dreaming. By E. W. C., 403

Matter and Spirit. By Lieut. E. Phelps,

with Reply of Hon. F. P. Stanton, 546

Mrs. Rabotham's Party. By L. V. F. Randolph, 33

My Lost Darling, 160

My Mission. By Ella Rodman, 633

November. By E. W. C., 500

October Afternoon In the Highlands, 433

Our Future. By Lt. Egbert Phelpe, U.S.A. 121

Patriotism and Provincialism. By H. Clay

Preuss, 59

Reason, Rhyme, and Rhythm. Compiled

and written by Mrs. Martha Walker

Cook, 20, 168, 293, 412

Reconnoissance near Fort Morgan, and Expedition

in Lake Pontchartrain and Pearl

River, by the Mortar Flotilla of Captain

D. D. Porter, U. S. N. By F. H. Gerdes,

Ass't U.S. Coast Survey, 269

Reconstruction. By Henry Everett Russell, 630

Remembrance. By G.F.G., 296

She Defines her Position. By Eliza S. Randolph, 702

Southern Hate of New England. By Miss

Virginia Sherwood, 241

Spring Mountain, 314

The Assizes of Jerusalem. By Prof. Andrew

Ten Brook, 501

The Brothers. An Allegory, 367

The Buccaneers of America. By W. L.

Stone, 175

The Cavalier Theory Refuted. By W. H.

Whitmore, 60

The Chicago (Illinois) and other Canals. By

Hon. Robert J. Walker, 92

The Defence and Evacuation of Winchester.

By Hon. Frederick P. Stanton, 481

The Deserted House, 312

The Early Arbutus. By Grace De la Veríte, 72

The Freedom of the Press. By Edward B.

Freeland, 361

The Grave, 292

The Great American Crisis. By Stephen P. Andrews, 658

The Great Riot. By Edward B. Freeland, 302

The Isle of Springs. By Rev. C. C. Starbuck, 284, 433

The Lions of Scotland. By W. Francis Williams, 584

The Nation. By Hugh Miller Thompson, 601

The Restoration of the Union. By Hon. F.P. Stanton, 73

The Sleeping Peri, 159

The Sleeping Soldier. By Edward N. Pomeroy, 632

The Spirit's Reproach. By Mrs. Martha W. Cook, 204

The Third Year of the War. By Hon. F. P. Stanton, 73

The Two Southern Mothers. By Isabella MacFarlane, 490

The Year. By W. H. Henderson, 657

Thirty Days with the Seventy-First Regiment, 404

Treasure Trove, 545

Under the Palmetto. By H. G. Spaulding, 188

Unuttered. By Kate Putnam, 377

Virginia. By H. T. Tuckerman, 690

Voiceless Singers, 473

Waiting for News. By Mrs. Mary E. Nealy, 255

Was He Successful? By Richard B. Kimball, 82, 346, 452, 670

West of the Mississippi, 56

We Two. By Clarence Butler, 591

Whiffs from My Meerschaum. By Lieut. R. A. Wolcott, 704

William Lilly, Astrologer. By H. Wilson, 379

Woman, 105

* * * * *

Number 19 25 Cents

THE

CONTINENTAL

MONTHLY.

DEVOTED TO

Literature and National Policy.

JULY, 1863.

NEW YORK:

JOHN F. TROW 50 GREENE STREET

(FOR THE PROPRIETORS).

HENRY DEXTER AND SINCLAIR TOUSEY.

WASHINGTON, D. C.: FRANCK TAYLOR.

CONTENTS.--No. XIX.

Emancipation in Jamaica. By Rev. C. C. Starbuck, 1

Abijah Witherpee's Retreat, 16

Reason, Rhyme and Rhythm. Compiled and written by

Mrs. Martha Walker Cook, 20

Mrs. Rabotham's Party. By L. V. F. Randolph, 33

Diary of Frances Krasinska, 42

Ladies' Loyal League. By Mrs. O. S. Baker, 51

West of the Mississippi, 56

The Cavalier Theory Refuted. By W. H. Whitmore, 60

The Early Arbutus. By Grace De la Veríte 72

The Third Year of the War. By Hon. Frederick P.

Stanton, 73

Was He Successful? By Richard B. Kimball, 82

The Chicago (Illinois) and other Canals. By Hon. Robert J. Walker, 92

Woman, 105

Literary Notices, 114

Editor's Table, 118

This Number of the Continental contains an article by the Hon. ROBERT J.

WALKER, written from Ireland.

All communications, whether concerning MSS. or on business, should be

addressed to

JOHN F. TROW, Publisher, 50 GREENE STREET, NEW YORK.

ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by JOHN F.

TROW, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States

for the Southern District of New York.

JOHN F. TROW, PRINTER.

* * * * *

THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY:

DEVOTED TO

LITERATURE AND NATIONAL POLICY.

VOL. IV.--JULY, 1863.--No. I.

EMANCIPATION IN JAMAICA.

The luminous summary of statistical facts published in the March number

of the _Atlantic Monthly_ for 1862, has, in a few pages, conclusively

settled the question whether emancipation in the smaller islands of the

British West Indies has been a success or a failure. It applies the

standard of financial results, which, though the lowest, is undoubtedly

the best; for the defenders of slavery would hardly choose its moral

advantages as their strong position, and if its alleged economical

advantages turn out also an illusion, there is not much to be said for

it. Indeed, of late they have been growing shy of the smaller islands,

which furnish too many weapons for the other side, and too few for their

own; and have chosen rather to divert attention from these by triumphant

clamors about the forlorn condition of Jamaica. This magnificent island,

once the fairest possession of the British crown, now almost a

wilderness, has been the burden of their lamentations over the fatal

workings of emancipation. And truly if emancipation has really done so

much mischief in Jamaica as they claim, it is a most damaging fact.

Testimony of opposite results in the smaller islands would hardly

countervail it. Such testimony would be good to prove that the freedom

of the negro works well in densely peopled insular communities, where

the pressure of population compels industry. The opponents of

emancipation are willing sometimes to acknowledge that where the

laboring population are, as they say, in virtual slavery to the

planters, by the impossibility of obtaining land of their own, their

release from the degradation of being personally owned may act favorably

upon them. But they maintain that where the negro can easily escape from

the control of the planter, as in Jamaica, where plenty of land is

obtainable at low rates, his innate laziness is there invincible. This

very representation I remember to have seen a few years ago in a Jamaica

journal in the planting interest, which maintained that unless the

negroes of that island were also reduced to 'virtual slavery'--using

those very words--by an immense importation of foreign laborers, it

would be impossible to bring them to reasonable terms.

Now the condition of the South is like that of Jamaica, not like that of

the smaller islands. Were the Southern negroes emancipated, and should

they desert the plantations in a body, it is not likely that they would

starve. They could at least support themselves as well as the white

sandhillers, and probably better, considering their previous habits of

work. Besides, as in Jamaica, there would of course be many small

proprietors, who would be ruined by emancipation or before it, and from

whom the negroes could easily procure the few acres apiece that would be

required by the wants of their rude existence. Jamaica, then, is far

nearer a parallel to the South than most of the smaller islands, and for

this reason an inquiry into the true workings of emancipation there is

of prime interest and importance.

The writer is very far indeed from pretending to have carried through

such an inquiry. His personal acquaintance extends to but seven of the

twenty-two parishes of the island, and he is intimately acquainted with

not more than three of those seven. He has but a meagre knowledge of

statistical facts, bearing on the workings of emancipation in the

island, and indeed the statistics themselves, as Mr. Sewell complains,

are very meagre and very hard to get. Still the writer has been able to

gather some facts which will speak for themselves, and he claims for his

personal impressions on points concerning which he cannot give

particular facts the degree of confidence deserved by one who has

resided five years and a half in a rural district, who has lived

familiarly conversant with negroes and with whites of all classes, who

has heard all sides of the question from valued personal friends, and

who neither carried to Jamaica nor brought away from it any peculiar

disposition to an apotheosis of the negro character.

There is, however, an excess of candor affected by some writers on this

question, which is neither honorable to them nor wholesome to their

readers. They would have us believe that they began their inquiries

entirely undecided whether slavery or freedom is the normal condition of

the African race, and that their conclusions, whatever they are, have

been purely deduced from the facts that they have gathered. The writer

lays claim to no such comprehensive indifference. He would as soon think

of suspending his faith in Christ until he could resolve all the

difficulties of the first of Genesis, as of suspending his moral

judgment respecting the system which makes one man the brute instrument

of another's gain, till he knew just how the statistics of sugar and

coffee stand. Woe unto us if the fundamental principles which govern

human relations have themselves no better foundation than the

fluctuating figures of blue-books!

But if freedom is better than slavery, she will be sure to vindicate her

superiority in due time, and is little beholden to overzealous friends

who cannot be content meanwhile that present facts shall tell their own

story, whatever it be. There is much, very much, in the present

condition of Jamaica, to cause an honest man to think twice before

setting it down as testifying favorably for emancipation, or before

dismissing it as not testifying unfavorably against it.

And first, all rose-colored accounts of the Jamaica negro may be

summarily dismissed. He is not a proficient in industry, economy,

intelligence, morality, or religion, but, though rising, is yet far down

on the scale in all these respects. Nor is it true that all his peculiar

vices are to be referred to slavery. The sensuality, avarice, cunning,

and litigiousness of the Creole[1] negro correspond exactly with Du

Chaillu's and Livingstone's descriptions of the native African.[2] But

on the other hand, the accounts of these travellers bear witness to a

freshness and independence of spirit in the native African, which has

been crushed out of the enslaved negro. Several missionaries have gone

from Jamaica to Africa, and they speak with delight of the manliness

and vigor of character which they find among the blacks there, as

contrasted with the abjectness of those who have been oppressed by

slavery and infected with its sly and cringing vices. Although the

faults of the negro, except this servile abjectness, may not have been

created by slavery, yet slavery and heathenism are so identical in

character and tendency that there is scarcely a heathen vice, and, as we

have found of late to our sorrow, scarcely a heathen cruelty, which

slavery would not create if it did not exist, and of course scarcely one

already existing which it does not foster and intensify. The unsocial

selfishness of the emancipated black man, his untrustworthiness and want

of confidence in others, are traits that his race may have brought with

it from Africa, but they have been nourished by slavery, until it seems

almost impossible to eradicate them. I am happy to say, however, that

the young people who have been subjected to the best influences, exhibit

already the virtues of public spirit and faithfulness to a very

gratifying degree. The trouble is that they are a minority of the whole.

And until the character of the negroes can be so elevated as to bring

them to put some confidence in one another, they may improve in

individual industry, as they manifestly are improving, but the benefits

resulting from combined action can be enjoyed only in a very limited

measure. Even now two black men can hardly own so much as a small sugar

mill in common. They are almost sure to quarrel over the division of the

profits. The consequence is, that, whereas they might have neighborhood

mills and sugar works of the best quality at much less expense, now,

where the small settlers raise the cane, each man must have his little

mill and boilers to himself, at all the extra cost of money and labor

that it occasions. And so of savings banks and associations for

procuring medical aid, and a thousand other objects of public utility,

without which a people must remain in the rudest state. Fortunately,

however, the negro is strongly disposed to worship, and the church, that

society out of which a thousand other societies have sprung, has a

strong hold upon him. Under the shelter of that, many other beneficent

associations will doubtless grow up.

But if rose-colored accounts of the freed negro are to be dismissed

unceremoniously, on the other hand, the malignant representations which

Mr. Carlyle seems to find such a relish in believing deserve to be

branded as both false and wicked. His mythical negro, up to the ears in

'pumpkin,' working half an hour a day, and not to be tempted by love or

money to work more, would have been, during my whole residence in the

island, as great a curiosity to me as an ornithorhynchus. Doubtless

something approaching to the phenomenon can be found; for a young

Scotchman, a friend of mine, who was appointed to take the census of a

secluded district, came to me after visiting it, and gave me an account

of the people he had found in the bush, answering pretty nearly to Mr.

Carlyle's description. But though he had been in the island from a boy,

he spoke of it with something of the surprise attending a new discovery.

I should state, however, that my residence was in a district mostly

occupied by small freeholders, and containing but few estates. In

planting districts the number of worthless, idle negroes is much larger.

I have been assured that the negroes of the parish of Vere are

peculiarly so. The men, I have been told, do scarcely any work, except

in crop time; the women do none at all, not even to keep their houses

neat. There is scarcely a cottage in the parish that has a bread-fruit

or a cocoanut tree on its ground.[3] Everything is dirty and forlorn. On

the other hand, in Metcalfe and the adjoining parts of St. Andrew, and

St. Thomas in the Vale, although the mass of the working people have

certainly not learned much about comfort yet, still the number of neat,

floored, and glazed houses, the fruit trees on almost every negro plot,

the neat hibiscus hedges, with their gay red flowers, surrounding even

the poorer huts, the small cane fields and coffee pieces noticeable at

every turn, and the absence of loungers about the cottages, go to make

up a very different picture from what has been drawn of Vere. It is

plain, then, that the impressions which travellers bring away with them

from Jamaica will vary almost to entire opposition, according to the

quarters they have visited. Now what is the cause of these glaring

contrasts? The negro character is remarkably uniform. If there are great

differences among them, every one that knows them will ascribe it to a

difference in circumstances. What is the difference then between

Metcalfe and Vere? Simply this: Metcalfe is the home of small

freeholders; Vere is a sugar parish, where the estates are in prosperous

activity. It has been less affected by emancipation than any other

parish. In Metcalfe the negroes are independent; in Vere they are

completely subject to the planters. It is said that not even an ounce of

sugar is permitted to be sold in the parish. All is for exportation. If

the writer then attempts to vindicate the character of the blacks from

the reproaches of incurable laziness and unthriftiness that have been

cast upon it, he wishes it to be understood that he speaks only for the

freeholders, who have homes of their own, which they have an inducement

to improve and beautify, and who have land of their own which no

dishonest motive prompts them to neglect, and for the estate laborers

whose condition most nearly resembles theirs. If the blacks on many

plantations are little disposed to adorn homes from which they may be

ejected at any time; if they are discouraged from the minor industries

essential to comfort, lest these should interfere with the grosser labor

required of them; if they are kept idle out of crop time for fear they

should not be available in crop time; if their mental improvement is

discouraged by the planter instinct, unchanged in nature though

circumscribed in scope; if on many estates they are herded in barracks

whose promiscuous life debases still lower their already low morality;

if their labors are directed for absentee masters by hired overseers,

whose interest is not to create a wholesome confidence between laborers

and proprietors, but to get the most they can out of them during their

own term of employment; if they are treated with the old slaveholding

arrogance, embittered by the consciousness of a check; and if thereby

the more self-respecting are driven off, and the more abject-spirited

who remain are rendered still more abject: I submit it is not fair to

argue from this class of semi-slaves to the character of those who are

really free, who call no man master, who have a chance to be men if they

will, unhampered except by the general depressing influences that will

always work in a country where slavery has lately existed, and where the

slaveholding class have still a predominant social and political

influence. And it is to be noted that Carlyle's picture is drawn from

the neighborhood of a plantation, and so are Trollope's. Mr. Trollope,

it is true, takes all imaginable pains to write himself down an ass. By

his own ostentatious confessions, the only intellectual

comprehensiveness to which he can lay claim is an astonishingly

comprehensive ignorance. In view of this, his sage discoursings upon

grave questions of political and social economy have about as comical an

effect as the moralizings of a harlequin. But he is a lively describer

of what passes under his eyes, and his sketches of what he heard and saw

among the planters and on the plantations are doubtless authentic.

However, he did not visit the small settlers; and to take pains to

inform himself of the condition of a class of the population which he

was not among, except by catching up the dinner-table maledictions of

his planting friends against the class which they hate most, as being

least dependent on them, would be of course entirely contrary to his

professed superficiality.

There are but two recent works of much value on emancipation in

Jamaica--Underhill's and Sewell's. The work of Mr. Underhill, although,

as a delegate of a missionary society which had much to do in bringing

about emancipation, he might be supposed to have a strong party

interest, is marked by an impartial caution which entitles it to great

respect and confidence.[4]

As to Mr. Sewell's book, it is marvellous how he could obtain so clear

an insight in so short a time into the true condition of things. The

paucity of statistical facts, however, plagued him, as it does every

writer on Jamaica; and while the delinquencies of the planters are

patent and palpable, he could not appreciate so well as a resident the

difficulties arising from the provoking treacherousness of the negro

character.

It is known by most, who do not choose to remain conveniently ignorant,

that though the ruin of Jamaican planting prosperity has been

accelerated by emancipation, it had been steadily going on for more than

a generation previous. In 1792 the Jamaica Assembly represented to

Parliament that in the twenty years previous one hundred and

seventy-seven estates had been sold for debt. In 1800, it is stated in

the Hon. Richard Hill's interesting little book, 'Lights and Shadows of

Jamaica History,' judgments had been recorded against estates in the

island to the enormous amount of £33,000,000. In the five years before

the slave trade was abolished in 1807, sixty-five estates had been given

up. Against the abolition of the slave trade the Assembly made the most

urgent remonstrances, representing that it would be impossible to keep

up the supply of labor without it. In other words, the slaves were

worked to death so rapidly that natural increase alone would not

maintain their number. The result justified their prediction.[5] In

1804, it appears that there were eight hundred and fifty-nine sugar

estates in operation in the island. In 1834 there were six hundred and

forty-six. In 1854 there were three hundred and thirty. Thus it appears

that in the thirty years previous to the abolition of slavery, one

quarter of the estates in operation at the beginning of that term had

been abandoned, and in the twenty years succeeding abolition one half of

those remaining had been given up. It is certainly no wonder that so

great a social shock as emancipation, coming upon a tottering fabric,

hastened its fall. But the foregoing facts show that, in the language

of Mr. Underhill, 'ruin has been the chronic condition of Jamaica ever

since the beginning of the century.'

The distinguished historian of the island, Bryan Edwards, himself a

planter, and opposed to the abolition of the slave trade, describes the

sugar cultivation, even before the supply of labor from Africa was cut

off, as precarious in the highest degree, a mere lottery, and often, he

says, 'a millstone around the neck of the unfortunate proprietor.' That

this was from no invincible necessity, the uniform prosperity of

numerous estates shows. But these estates are all conducted

economically, while, on the other hand, reckless extravagance was the

rule in the palmy days of the olden time, and has remained, even in

humbler circumstances, an inborn trait of the Creole gentleman.

If this was so during the continuance of the slave trade, what could

have been looked for when this means of obtaining labor was suddenly cut

off? Sewell states the estimated supply of negroes from Africa necessary

to make up the annual waste at ten thousand. When this ceased it was

obvious that only such a complete revolution in the system of labor as

should save the horrible waste of life could preserve the plantations

from ruin and the island from depopulation. But though the waste of life

was diminished, it still went on. Estate after estate had to be given up

for want of hands, at the same time that a constant decrease in the

price of sugar in London, amounting to fifty per cent between 1815 and

1835, made it less and less profitable to work the remaining ones, and

thus the planters were going steadily to ruin and the negro population

steadily to extinction, for almost a generation before emancipation. In

a memorial of the planters to Parliament in 1831, three years before

abolition, they declare that without Parliamentary aid they are doomed

to hopeless ruin. Already, they say, hundreds of respectable persons had

been reduced almost to beggary by the precarious condition of the

planting interest. In this memorial they make no allusion to the

anti-slavery agitations, which produced no serious effect in the colony

till 1832. Indeed the West Indian interest had been a notorious

mendicant of old, and as in time a large part of West Indian estates had

come to be owned by the British aristocracy, this begging was not apt to

be in vain. Could Creole thriftlessness have been abolished and the

slave trade retained, the ruin of the estates might have been averted.

But as human power was not adequate to the first, nor Christian

conscience capable of the second, no course was left but to let planting

prosperity go its own way to destruction, and endeavor at least to save

the population of the island from extermination. This emancipation

effected, and this was its work. If it hastened the ruin of an interest

which not even Parliamentary subsidies and high protective duties could

prop up without the horrors of the middle passage, its trespass was

certainly a very venial one compared with its work of salvation.

Undoubtedly the great transition from slavery to freedom might have been

better managed had the planters, recognizing it as inevitable, concurred

heartily in efforts to smoothe the passage. The emancipationists in

Parliament had at first no thought of immediate or even of speedy

abolition. They did not suppose it wise or humane. Their first efforts

merely contemplated such ameliorations of the condition of the slaves as

common decency and humanity would prompt. They brought the Imperial

Government to propose to the slaveholding colonies the enactment of laws

abolishing the flogging of females, mitigating punishments, allowing the

slaves to testify in court in cases to which whites were parties,

providing for their religious instruction, appointing guardians of their

scanty rights, giving them one week day for themselves, and restricting

arbitrary sales of slaves. Not one of the colonies would agree to a

single one of these measures. That peculiar obstinacy which slaveholding

dominion seems to engender, made them, as with us, bent on having all or

nothing. All hopes of instituting a gradual preparation for freedom

being thus defeated by the stubborn refusal of the slaveholders to

concur, speedy emancipation became a necessity. But even yet the

abolitionists had not learned that if slaves are to be set free from

their masters, the more quickly they are put out of their hands the

better. A muzzled wolf, appointed to keep sheep he would much rather

eat, would make about as amiable a custodian as masters allowed to

exercise a limited authority over bondmen whom they have hitherto always

had at their own will, and know they are about to lose altogether. I

think it is generally agreed that the few years of apprenticeship were

more plague than profit to all parties, and made the alienation between

proprietors and laborers still more complete. At the same time, as the

hours of labor were limited to eight, and Saturday was secured to the

apprentices for themselves, the negroes fell into a way of thinking that

they could only work those eight hours anyhow, and must have an idle

time on the Saturday; and this notion continued to foster indolence for

a good while after they were their own masters. The short time, too,

which the planters knew they should have them at their control,

naturally stimulated them to make the most of them meanwhile. One

gentleman in Metcalfe, for instance, laid out a thousand acres of coffee

on a newly enlarged property, and gave orders to transfer a gang of

negroes from an estate of his some twelve miles distant. The negroes

cling like oysters to their birthplace, and they flatly refused to leave

their grounds and their friends. The master summoned policemen, and had

them cruelly flogged till they consented to go. Apprenticeship was

abolished two years earlier than he had reckoned on, and the laborers

thus forcibly transferred left him then in a body, and the thousand

acres of coffee went to ruin. Had some Trollope chanced then to be

travelling through that quarter, and been entertained by the

disappointed proprietor with all the noble bounteousness which

distinguished him, we can easily imagine how this fact would have

figured in his book, as a proof of unconquerable negro laziness.

It was peculiarly unfortunate for Jamaica at this juncture, that the

estates were mostly managed by attorneys and overseers for absentee

landlords. Middlemen, it is said, ruined Ireland, and it is certain that

they have helped mightily to ruin Jamaica. If attorneys had been ever so

honest, how could they be efficient, when one attorney had very commonly

the charge of four, six, ten, or even fourteen estates? If he paid a

hasty visit to each one once in two years he did well. And as to

overseers, how could honesty be expected when common morality was not

permitted? It was a rule, having almost the force of law, that an

overseer, if he married, was at once dismissed.[6] Loose licentiousness

and loose dishonesty are very apt to go hand in hand, and it is certain

that they did in Jamaica. A saying still in use among the whites of the

island illustrates the standard of integrity: 'Make me your executor,

and I do not ask you to make me your heir.' No wonder that estates went

down like a row of bricks, one after another, when they had such

managers. Had Jamaica been occupied at the time of emancipation by a

resident proprietary, it is not likely that even they could have so far

overcome their despotic habits and contempt for the negro as to treat

the laboring population with fairness, and what they value still more,

with decent respect. But still less could it be expected of the

overseers that they would exercise foresight and self-control enough to

retain the good will of the blacks. They had all the feelings of

slaveholders, aggravated by more direct contact with the slaves, while

their interest only bound them to make the most out of the estates

during their own term of employment, no matter if they took a course

that would ruin them eventually. Besides, an overseer must have been

often tempted to work on the fears of a proprietor, just after

emancipation, to persuade him to sell the estate to him; and many a one

would not hesitate to ruin the property to bring down its price to his

own means, knowing that the sale of the land or its conversion to

pasturage would reimburse him.

The various means by which the planters endeavored to keep the negroes

on the estates are too well known to require detail. Summary ejectments

of the refractory from their dwellings, destruction of their provision

grounds, refusal to sell them land except at exorbitant prices, were all

tried. But there is too much land in Jamaica, and too few people, to

make this game successful. There were abundance of thrown-up estates,

and especially of coffee properties in the mountains, whose owners were

only too glad to sell land at reasonable rates, and so this policy of

coercion simply wrought out an incurable alienation between a large part

of the proprietors and a large part of the peasantry. It must not be

supposed, however, that the tyranny was all on one side. If at

emancipation there was an unprincipled strife on the part of the

planters to get the better of the negroes, there was an equally

unprincipled and far more adroitly managed strife on the part of the

negroes to get the better of the planters. Long and close observation of

the emancipated black has satisfied the writer beyond all doubt that

laziness is not one of his prominent faults. Negligent, unthrifty,

careless of time, and sufficiently disposed to take his ease, he

undoubtedly is. But every year of freedom has shown an advance, and the

five years and a half of the writer's residence showed so unmistakable

an advance in regular industry, carefulness of time, skill in laying out

labor, and in the increase of the wants that stimulate industry, that

his early misgivings as to the capacity and disposition of the freed

negro to take care of himself were finally put to rest. But a

disposition to take care of himself and a disposition to be faithful to

the interests of others are two very different things. At emancipation,

the negroes' stimulants to making money were very strong. In the first

impulse of their zeal they were everywhere erecting chapels and schools,

raising large sums for the support of their ministers and schoolmasters;

they were everywhere building houses, buying land, and laying the

foundation of that settled well-being which time has continually made

firmer. Then, too, money was plentiful, sugar bore a high price, and,

notwithstanding the churlishness of many planters, more, perhaps, were

eager to retain their hands by offering the highest possible wages, and

even higher in many cases than the estates would bear. Nor were the

blacks at all averse to making money. But though the Jamaica negro does

not object to work, he dearly loves to cheat. The keenest Yankee that

ever skinned a flint, cannot approach him in trickiness. This native

trait has been sharpened to the utmost by the experience of slavery,

which left him with the profound conviction that 'Buckra'[7] was fair

plunder. The poor fellow could not be very severely blamed for thinking

thus, for certainly he had been fair plunder for Buckra from time

immemorial. Accordingly, the first few years after emancipation appear

on many estates to have been passed in a continual struggle on the part

of the negroes to see how much they could get out of the planters and

how little they could give in return. They knew they had the whip hand

of massa, and they were not slow to profit by the knowledge. They would

saunter to their work at eight or nine o'clock in the morning, dawdle

through it with intensely provoking unfaithfulness till three or four in

the afternoon, and then would raise a prodigious uproar if they were not

paid as liberally as if they had done an honest day's work. The poor

planter meanwhile was at his wits' end. It was of no use to turn them

off and hire another set, for, like the fox in the fable, he knew he

should only fare the worse. If the estate was large enough to stand the

strain for two or three years, and the manager was a man of self-control

enough to keep his temper, and firmness enough to persevere in a

winnowing of the whole region round about, treating them meanwhile with

decency, and paying them honestly and promptly, he would at last be able

to get a set of trusty hands, and give all the negroes of the

neighborhood such an understanding of him that they would be ready, if

they went to work for him, to leave off cheating, and honestly earn

their wages. A friend of mine took an abandoned estate in 1854, and

though for two or three years he was tortured like a bear at a stake, he

succeeded at last, by the most scrupulous fairness on his own part, and

by not tolerating the least dishonesty in a hand, in creating such a

public sentiment among his laborers, that for their own credit they

would themselves expose the dishonesty of a comrade. Now, he has as many

laborers, and profitable ones, as he needs. But how many planters could

be expected to have the principle or patience to carry out such a course

of discipline? The ruin of the estates, or rather the acceleration of

their inevitable ruin, is justly attributed, in large measure, to the

planters, to their imperious bearing toward the enfranchised blacks, to

their harsh expedients for keeping in dependence the large and much the

best class of blacks, who wanted to become freeholders, to the slackness

and unfaithfulness with which the wages of the people were often paid,

to the debasing influences of the plantation, which drove off the more

self-respecting, and to the waste, dishonesty, and shortsightedness

inevitable in the management of several hundred estates mainly by

middlemen. But on the other hand, it is not to be forgotten that the

African barbarian, brought a heathen from home, and plunged into the

deeper darkness of a compulsory heathenism, rigorously secluded by

jealous cupidity from every ray of intellectual, and, so far as

possible, of spiritual light, liable to cruel punishment if he snatched

a few hours from his rest or his leisure to listen to the missionary,

from whom alone he heard words of heavenly comfort or of human sympathy,

condemned to a lifetime of unrequited labor--it must not be forgotten

that he could not fail to come out from this school of supreme

dishonesty with its lessons so deeply imprinted on his mind that not one

generation or two would eradicate them, and that of all others he would

be most inclined to practise them upon the white man, whom, having

always known as a plunderer, he was only too glad to have an opportunity

to plunder in return. Had Jamaica been occupied by a resident

proprietary, attached by hereditary affection and pride to the soil,

elevated by family sanctities, connected by something like kindly ties

with their bondmen, and regarded by these in turn with something of

affectionate fealty, in that case, although it is not likely that the

ruin of the plantations could have been averted, it might have been

delayed and mitigated. Mr. Underhill indeed goes further, and quotes the

testimony of an overseer in the west of the island, that he knew of no

estate managed, since emancipation, by a resident owner, which had not

continued profitable. But a class of hirelings, debased in morals by the

cruel selfishness of their employers, tempted almost irresistibly to

unfaithfulness by the five thousand miles of ocean between them and

their principals, and to recklessness and tyranny by the uncertain

tenure of their places, and connected with the slaves by none but the

grossest and most sordid ties--such management, in such a crisis, when

the ties of old subjection were suddenly dissolved, and the negro stood

independent, and knowing his independence, before his masters, would

have ruined any country under the sun.

As to the present condition of the emancipated blacks, it is certain

that the 7,340 freeholds which had been acquired in 1840, two years

after emancipation, have considerably increased in number. I never heard

of a negro freehold being given up,[8] while I did know of continual

purchases of land by the blacks, either to make new holdings or to

extend old ones.

The parish of Hanover is one in which happily the various classes are in

a good degree united in feeling. The Hanover Society of Industry

prepared a report about three years ago, quoted by Mr. Underhill, which

shows that in that parish about seven eighths of the people are on

holdings of their own, of which 891 consist of 1 acre, 431 of 2 acres,

and 802 average 5-1/4 acres each. Each family on an average consists of

4-1/2 persons, and cultivates something over an acre, securing an income

of about £28. Those who own land are five times as numerous as those who

only hire it. The annual value of produce from the small holdings,

estimated at £28 for each (£2 less than the society's estimate), is

about £60,000. There are, besides, 29 estates having 3,675 acres under

cultivation, and employing 2,760 laborers, of whom two thirds are

females.[9] About one eighth of the population is at work upon them.

These estates average 2,608 hogsheads of sugar, and 1,435 puncheons of

rum. Of the whole area of the estates, 3,555 acres are in pasturage, and

28,552 acres inaccessible or ruinate. There are, besides, 151 small

properties of 20 acres and upward. In six districts, comprising about

one fourth of the parish, there were found 143 small cane mills, valued

at £10 apiece, which turned out, in 1859, 455 barrels of sugar, worth

about £900, to say nothing of the pork fattened on the refuse molasses.

One district of the six, constituting the quarter of the parish

examined, produced, in 1857, 146 barrels; in 1858, 227 barrels; in 1859,

261 barrels.

This is a pretty fair picture of what may be expected in parishes where

the whites show some regard for the blacks; not very magnificent

results, it is true, but showing the disposition of the people to

procure land of their own, and their increasing disposition to add to

the raising of provisions the cultivation of the great staple of the

soil. The report of the Society of Industry bears the following

testimony to their character: 'The peasantry are, generally speaking,

industrious and well behaved, and are gradually becoming more

comfortable in their worldly circumstances. In the town of Lucea there

has been a decided increase in the amount of business within the last

three years as compared with a number of years previously.' In Hanover,

in 1845, there were 70 estates in operation. In 1860 there were only 29.

The planters of this parish, however, do not lay the blame on the

negroes, but attribute the decline to the mountainous character of the

parish, which made it unprofitable to continue the estates after the

great fall in the price of sugar.

Now the blacks of Hanover are just the same race as the rest of the

negro population of the island. The only difference is that the whites

of that parish, instead of treating them with contempt and neglect, have

shown something of courtesy and care toward them. The numerous

conversations which Mr. Underhill reports with the owners and managers

of successful estates show how simple are the rules by which they secure

success. To manifest a decent respect for the blacks, to be firm, but

temperate and fair in dealing with them, to use the best improvements in

machinery, and to exercise a strict economy of management--this appears

to be the sum of the difference between prosperous and unprosperous

plantations, provided of course that both are equally well situated for

success.

Metcalfe, the writer's residence during most of his stay in Jamaica, is,

like Hanover, a parish of small freeholders, but unlike Hanover, the

blacks and the few whites are not on good terms. Excepting what has been

done by missionaries, which is not a little, they are little indebted to

any but themselves for their prosperity. And as one charged with their

religious instruction, the writer can bear witness that for several

years they have needed to be restrained from avarice more than to be

stimulated to industry. A clergyman, a friend of mine, humorously

complained that he had lost by stirring up his people to work, for that

now they were so diligently employed upon their own places, that he

could get scarcely anybody to work for him. The average number of acres

owned by forty families, of which I made lists, is seven--a pretty fair

estimate, I should judge, of the whole; and seven acres in Jamaica is

equivalent in productiveness to a much larger amount here. One fourth

had floored houses, and as large a proportion had sugar mills. Many of

the families have one or two horses, worth commonly from £5 to £12

apiece. Not a few have mules, which are much more valuable; and nearly

all the rest have donkeys. The proportion of floored and glazed houses,

some of them shingled, is steadily though not very rapidly increasing;

and I need not say that in that climate, and with their yet rudimentary

ideas of comfort, a floor of earth is no indication of indigence.

The holdings vary from one to forty acres, but are more commonly from

three to six. Almost every freeholder hires land besides, and a great

deal of time is lost in going to distant pieces of ground. The wants of

the people have increased faster than they reckoned on, and the land was

bought up so rapidly around them that now they are subject to this

disadvantage in making new purchases. In St. Ann, the Baptist

congregations alone spent £10,000 in a few years in buying land.

The furniture of the poorer houses is miserably scanty; £3 would more

than cover it. But the better houses, now multiplying year by year,

boast their four-post bedsteads, often of the native mahogany, sometimes

mahogany chairs, and corresponding articles. If a white family, on

removing, expose their furniture to sale, it is caught up by the people

with eagerness at almost any price asked. The very improvidence of the

negroes stimulates their industry. They are exceedingly litigious, and

exceedingly ostentatious on the few grand occasions they enjoy.[10]

These luxuries, especially the former, cost them dear, but their very

expense makes it the more necessary to work to find the means of

indulging in them. Remunerative labor is eagerly sought after. The

magnificent road now building through the island and traversing the

parish of Metcalfe, has a superfluity of workmen, notwithstanding the

shameful unfairness with which they have often been treated by the

superintendents. I have known the people go in numbers to an estate ten

miles distant, and remain there for weeks, except on the Saturdays and

Sundays, away from their homes, working hard at digging and embanking,

because they could secure one and sixpence sterling a day. I have often

had occasion to employ men on short jobs, and though not unfrequently

obliged to wait some time before securing a workman, I never suffered

delay because they were too idle, but because they were too busy to

attend to me. During my residence among them their progress in industry

became too marked to be overlooked. However negligent our observations,

we could not fail to notice the increasing patches of cane in some

quarters, the extending provision grounds in others, the multiplying

houses of the better sort, the earlier hours of going to the field, and

the later hours coming from it at night. A firm in Kingston, accustomed

to sell the implements of negro labor, found the demand for tools

increasing faster than they could supply it. And we were glad to find

that they were becoming not merely more industrious, but more skilful in

their industry. A friend, who had much to do with them, assured me that

the young men greatly surpass their parents in forecast in the laying

out of labor, and had got over the miserliness shown by the old people

in providing means for carrying it on. He said a few years before he

could not have sold a good tool, and now he could not sell a bad one. An

old negro, he remarked, would groan over a sixpence extra in buying a

tool; the young man would say: 'Come, let us have things in good style

at the start, and our profits will soon pay for them.' Not that habits

of industry are so confirmed that there are not a good many local and

temporary relapses into the old careless ways. But the relapses are

fitful, the advance is steady. Of course, with growing means their wants

rise, and increasing wants in turn react happily upon their industry.

The friend to whom I have several times referred, and who, being both a

missionary and a proprietor, is placed in a pretty impartial equipoise

of judgment, remarks that if some of those at home who imagine the

Jamaica negro as lying lazily in the sun, eating bananas, could see the

bill of fare of a good many black men, and compare it with what they

were used to eat in time of slavery, they would probably be rather

astonished. His estate is not large, but I remember that he has been

unable for several weeks in the height of the sugar season to put up a

barrel of sugar, on account of the people's buying it off in small

quantities as fast as it was made. The many families that have small

mills, of course, supply their own wants fully before they sell, and

they commonly prefer selling the surplus among their neighbors to taking

it down to the exporters. Thus it appears that the diminution in the

exports of Jamaica is not wholly owing to the decrease of production.

Mr. Underhill says he was assured by an overseer that the present

consumption of sugar by the people of Jamaica was much greater

proportionately than its use by the English, and there can be no doubt

of this. It was very different in slavery. Undoubtedly there is less

produced, much less, for production is diminished by the want of the ten

thousand men a year that were used up to keep it at its highest point.

Naturally, freemen prefer their own lives to the extra hogsheads of

sugar that can be turned out by sacrificing them. It is also diminished

by the steady fall in the price of sugar, which has made a difference

between 1815 and 1850 of seventy-five per cent., rendering the

inveterate extravagance of old management ruinous. It is diminished

because slavery ruined confidence and good will between owners and

laborers. It is diminished because an immense amount of labor has been

diverted to the establishment of the homes, churches, and schools of a

prosperous yeomanry. It is diminished because the growth of family life,

though feeble and struggling, has withdrawn from the field wholly, or in

part, thousands of women and children. It is diminished because higher

than bodily necessities now consume time that was once rigorously denied

to them. And lastly, it is diminished because the alienation caused by

slavery has thrown upon themselves thousands of the emancipated bondmen,

formerly accustomed to labor only as mechanical implements, to acquire

skill, economy, and thrift by a long course of untutored experiments. On

the other hand, much that is now produced makes no figure in the markets

of the world, because it is consumed by the people themselves, no longer

kept, for the profit of masters, at the lowest point at which they could

maintain an animal existence. And not only do they consume so much, but

they have enough left to buy from abroad whatever their increased

necessities cannot find at home. It was not so in the good old times.

Then the money that was made was sent to England to be spent by noble

and gentle landlords there, and little good did Jamaica get of it. So

little indeed was the island thought of even by the residents as a place

to spend money on, so much as a place to get money in that was to be

spent in England, that, as Mr. Sewell remarks, good roads have begun to

be built, to any considerable extent, only since freedom. Forlorn as

Kingston is, it was always forlorn; and not till slavery was abolished

did they think to introduce the water which is now supplied in such

abundance to the city. A rude profusion of luxury was all the planters

aimed at till they could get home to the refinements of the mother

country. In a word, in time of slavery, Jamaica was simply an

aggregation of sugar and coffee mills, kept running by a stream of human

blood. Now it is a land whose inhabitants are free to live for

themselves and for God, to enjoy the gifts of His hand, and to send into

the markets of the world, not a surplus which has cost one hundred

hecatombs of men each year, but a surplus which has cost no life, but

whose rich fruits come back to cheer and adorn thousands of lives.

Commerce may have lost by the change, and there may be some jewels the

less in the coronets of English nobility, but we may be permitted to

believe that Christ and humanity have no reason to grieve.

It must not be thought, however, that estates are going down as rapidly

now as formerly. Indeed, for a few years, I question whether more have

not been resumed than abandoned. In 1855 the value of exports of the

four staples, coffee, pimento, rum, and sugar, was £786,429; in 1856,

£814,659; in 1857, £1,141,472. I have not the statistics of the years

following. This check to the ruin of the estates is a matter of

rejoicing, for the entire abandonment of the island by the whites would

be a great disaster. As Mr. Underhill well observes, the ascendency of

the white man is needed to temper the enmity between the browns and the

blacks. The former, who constitute about one fifth of the population,

although sharing the wealth and intelligence of the whites, are regarded

with strong dislike by the blacks. Hayti shows how dangerous it is to

leave these two elements in a society without a moderating force. I

cannot share the pleasure with which some anticipate the complete

Africanization of the West Indies. European intelligence, European

conscience, and European firmness of will are necessary to insure to the

blacks the permanence of those rich blessings which emancipation has

bestowed. The black man has the industry and is daily improving in the

skill necessary to secure his material well-being; but for very many

years to come, it would be a most disastrous thing for him, hazarding

the loss of all that he has gained, to be deprived of either the

religious or the political oversight of the white race. The planters of

Jamaica are not distinguished by a very rigid morality or a very severe

integrity, but their withdrawal would inflict incurable harm on

intelligence, order, industry, and civilization. They may be

contemptuously indifferent to the moral and intellectual improvement of

the blacks, but they have no longer a lively interest in opposing it. By

this time they are gradually becoming convinced that the spirit of

slavery cannot be maintained when its power is gone, and are growing

disposed, so far as they have dealings with the blacks, to deal with

them on more equal terms. Bare justice may be the most they are willing

to accord, but even that is a great gain. The journals in their interest

no longer lavish on the freeholding blacks the abuse with which they

once teemed, even after the writer went to the island. The planters are

willing to admit, like those of Westmoreland in an appeal to the

Assembly in behalf of immigration, 'that they do not find fault with

the difficulty of getting labor, which is a necessary result of the

easy acquisition of land,' The more candid are willing to say, as I

heard a gentleman of their class observe: 'We do not complain of the

negroes; they have done as well for themselves perhaps as any people

would. But just because they are doing so well for themselves, they

cannot be depended on to do well for us.' Hence the call for immigrant

laborers; a just and reasonable call, if only the immigration is

conducted with that rigid and conscientious care for the comfort of the

immigrants for which Mr. Sewell gives the government of Trinidad credit,

and if it is really voluntary. The fear that it will injure the negro,

or that he dreads it, is wholly baseless. The negroes have remained

utterly indifferent to the whole agitation of the subject, and are on

perfectly amiable terms with the few coolies already introduced. Indeed

it will be rather for their interest, as a negro remarked to Mr.

Underhill, by giving them a better sale for their produce. The coolies

now in the island appear to have done well. And the danger of

overcrowding the population on a land teeming with tropical plenty,

whose area of 6,400 square miles is occupied by but 441,000 inhabitants,

is not a very imminent one, from any number within the means of the

colony to introduce. And on the ability to procure foreign labor very

much depends the hope of reviving the planting prosperity of Jamaica on

a sounder basis, and in such a degree as is compatible with the

substantial good of the whole population. It is true the population,

relieved from the dreadful waste of slavery, is increasing. The census

of 1844 showed a population of 377,433. That of 1861 showed one of

441,264, an increase of 63,831 in seventeen years. The immigration of

coolies during that time has been between 18,000 and 20,000; the

decrease of the whites, 3,000. The net increase by immigration then has

been at the most 17,000, leaving 47,000 as the natural increase, or 12

per cent., in seventeen years. This is what remains after two terrible

visitations of cholera, and one of small pox, all within eleven years,

which together are computed to have swept off 40,000 persons. The

increase would doubtless be much greater but for the loose living and

careless habits of the negroes, and their almost entire destitution of

medical attendance. There are now, it appears, but fifty qualified

practitioners in the island, with no hopes of reinforcement.

The results of this census were very gratifying, and very unexpected.

Such scanty means are there, ordinarily, of knowing the true condition

of the country, that it was a prevailing impression that the population

was decreasing. Had slavery continued, the present population would

probably have been about 275,000. The difference of 165,000 in favor of

freedom tells its own story. But the present necessities of the estates

call for a more speedy augmentation of the laboring force than is

furnished by natural increase alone.

I have omitted to mention in its proper place one gratifying sign that

those minor industries which make so large a part of the prosperity of

the wealthiest free communities, but which are neglected by the coarse

labor of slaves, and have been particularly despised by the Jamaica

planters, are now coming up in the island. Hitherto, sugar, rum, and

coffee have been the all in all of prosperity to Jamaicans. But in 1838,

the pimento export was 2,708,640 pounds; in 1858, 9,465,261 pounds. In

1838 the export of logwood was 8,432 cwt.; of fustic, 2,126 cwt.; of

mahogany, 1,936 feet; of cocoanuts, 0; of honey, 0. In 1859, the export

of logwood was 14,006 cwt.; of fustic, 2,329 cwt.; of mahogany, 35,000

feet; of cocoanuts, 712,913; of honey, 6,954 pounds. The ginger export

has diminished from 1,834,120 pounds in 1841, to 709,620 pounds in 1858.

This increase in the lesser articles of trade shows a brisker

circulation in the capillaries of the social system, a sure token of

reviving health. Indeed, before the writer left the island, that dreary

uncertainty how affairs were turning, which prevailed for the first half

of his stay, had given way to the returning cheerfulness arising from

the feeling that Jamaica had touched bottom, and that henceforward,

however slowly, her prospects were brightening. This cheerful feeling

displays itself in a late report of Governor Darling to the Home

Government, some paragraphs of which follow, quoted from Mr. Underhill's

book, from which the writer has derived so large a part of the facts

that he has had to take at second hand, and which he is glad again to

commend as kindly, impartial, and full of carefully gathered and exactly

appreciated information. His conjectural estimates of property, however,

are exceptionable, as decidedly too high.

Governor Darling, himself a planter, says:

'The proportion of those who are settling themselves industriously

on their holdings, and rapidly rising in the social scale, while

commanding the respect of all classes of the community, and some of

whom are, to a limited extent, themselves the employers of hired

labor, paid for either in money or in kind, is, I am happy to

think, not only steadily increasing, but at the present moment is

far more extensive than was anticipated by those who are cognizant

of all that took place in the colony in the earlier days of negro

freedom.

'There can be no doubt, in fact, that an independent, respectable,

and, I believe, trustworthy middle class is rapidly forming.... If

the real object of emancipation was to place the freedman in such a

position that he might work out his own advancement in the social

scale, and prove his capacity for the full and rational enjoyment

of personal independence, secured by constitutional liberty,

Jamaica will afford more instances, even in proportion to its large

population, of such gratifying results, than any land in which

African slavery once existed.

'Jamaica, at this moment, presents, I believe, at once the

strongest proof of the complete success of the great measure of

emancipation, as relates to the capacity of the emancipated race

for freedom, and the most unfortunate instance of a descent in the

scale of agricultural and commercial importance as a colonial

community.'

Governor Darling's words suggest the exact reason why Jamaica may be

looked upon either as the most fortunate or the most unfortunate of the

emancipated colonies. All depends upon the point of view. If the largest

amount of individual well-being and the most favorable conditions of

gaining independence and self-respect constitute a community fortunate,

then Jamaica stands at the head of her island sisters. If immense

wealth, centred in a few, constitutes a community fortunate, then

Barbados is at the head. In Barbados the wealth of the planters is

greater, in Jamaica the condition of the laborers is better. The late

Mr. Sewell remarked to the writer that the common people in Jamaica had

a more manly and self-respecting look than in any of the smaller islands

which he had visited. It is much to be lamented that the divorce between

the proprietary and the laboring interest was so complete in this

island, and the consequent industrial anarchy so great. But even this

was better than the depressed condition in which the peasantry of the

smaller islands are kept by the hold that the planters have upon them.

Manhood is a better crop than either sugar or coffee, and in the long

run brings all other things with it. The article in the March number of

the _Atlantic Monthly_ for 1862, shows, in brief compass, what

inestimable benefits have followed in the smaller islands from

conferring the boon of personal freedom, even with so stringent a social

dependence remaining. In Jamaica, freedom has been more complete, and

the recoil of the social elements from each other more violent. The

disaffection of the governing class has also been greater, and Freedom

has been left to take care of herself.[11] But though thwarted and

frowned upon, she is at the last justified of her children. Mr. Sewell

has most happily hit the whole truth in a few lines: 'The crop' (of

freedom), he says, 'appears in patches, even as it was sown, forcing

itself here and there through the ruins of the fabric which disfigures

still the political complexion of the island, and sorely cramps the

energies of its people.' Governor Darling's words show how rapidly the

crop, thus negligently sown, is forcing itself into prosperous and

prevailing growth.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Negro of West Indian birth. Creole, used alone, signifies a

West Indian white.]

[Footnote 2: However, I should say that there are portions of Western

Africa where trustworthy accounts give to the negroes a widely different

and far more favorable character.]

[Footnote 3: Mr. Underhill's account, so far as it goes, corroborates

this description.]

[Footnote 4: It will be understood that I speak only of his remarks upon

the economical aspect of emancipation.]

[Footnote 5: Different estimates conflict as to numbers, though all

agreeing in the fact of an extensive and steady decline. I have used a

statement which appeared trustworthy.]

[Footnote 6: This was an absurd and wicked expedient for keeping him

free from family interests.]

[Footnote 7: This African epithet for the whites is said, in the

original, to bear the complimentary signification of 'devil.']

[Footnote 8: This is partly owing to the unwillingness of continued from

previous page: the negroes to remove to an unaccustomed place; but also,

I think, to their rooted conviction that the only security for their

independence is in having possession of the soil.]

[Footnote 9: Hanover has about one nineteenth of the whole population of

the island. But the economical condition of the parishes varies too

widely to make that of any one a basis for a general estimate.]

[Footnote 10: In common, they are by no means either so tawdry or so

ostentatious as they have the credit of being.]

ABIJAH WITHERPEE'S RETREAT.

For many years Abijah Witherpee had kept, in East Hampton, the largest

country store for miles around, and by more than ordinary shrewdness had

accumulated a snug little fortune, and with it the reputation among the

country folk of being an immensely rich man. It is no trifle, as every

one knows, in a small village, to be accounted its richest man, but that

was the least of Abijah's honors. It appears by record that Abijah

maintained the responsible--and, since Squire Adams has been gathered to

his fathers, the solitary--dignity of justice of the peace in and for

the county of which East Hampton formed a highly respectable portion. It

was not the mere flourish of 'Esq.' at the end of the great man's

name--it was the essence of the great man himself. It found him, as he

was proud to think, an ordinary, commonplace individual. The good people

of East Hampton saw what it had made him, and trembled. And well they

might, where justice herself, in the person of the magistrate, stood in

awe of her own responsibility and power.

We have been told that, at the outset of Squire Witherpee's

administration, he held his breath at the thought of venturing upon

judicial grounds with much the same uneasiness that the tyro in science

exhibits in some new and hazardous experiment. The honors of office had

grown scarcely a week old upon him, when opportunity offered for a full

display of the 'feeling and perspiration' (to borrow the words of our

informant) 'with which he dispensed justice at the lowest cash price.'

It was bright and early one winter morning that two tall, raw old

farmers drove up to the 'West India Goods and General Emporium'

establishment, and emerging from an avalanche of buffalo robes, made

good their way into the back part of the store, where the customary knot

of hangers-on was gathered around the stove, to drag through the day,

doing nothing and talking politics. A single look convinced the

proprietor that he was wanted 'professionally;' he was informed that

they wished to have a deed executed. With great presence of mind, Abijah

concealed every symptom of growing palpitation, and led the way out of

the store into the kitchen of his house near by, where Mrs. Witherpee

was busy ironing, and several little Witherpees at 'sixes and sevens'

about the floor.

Like all justices, he thought it of prime importance to be assured that

the instrument had been drawn up in proper shape, though he consumed

about five times the time ordinarily devoted to such preliminaries. His

protracted scrutiny would have alarmed the parties in waiting, less

gifted as they were in the mysteries of legal lore, had it not been for

a generous approval that he gave at intervals, of 'Wells' and 'Ahems',

in a tone that was intended to let them know he was doing them a special

favor to think so well of what they had submitted.

'Well, my friends,' he remarked, laying down the sacred document, 'it

seems that at this stage of proceedings, the statute requires that--'

and then a pause which was solemn enough.

''Squire, hadn't I ought to sign that 'ar now?' timidly suggested one of

the party. The 'Squire was taking a hasty run over the pages of the

'Town Justice' for instruction in such emergencies, but finding none, he

kept on at a venture, and replied with native dignity: 'I decide you'd

ought to.'

While the 'grantor' was 'putting his hand and seal' to the deed, in the

largest-sized penmanship that can conveniently be displayed on half a

foot of paper with all the advantages of a slant up hill, the magistrate

had arrived at the place desired, and was now 'in his element.' Kindly,

and yet with no lack of firmness, he is said to have turned to Mrs.

Witherpee and observed:

'Wife, I think you'd better go into the next room and take the children

with you!'

After this fraction of the family had been removed to a place of safety,

the prudent husband and father continued:

'Hold up your hands! You severally and solemnly swear that this is all

right, true, and legal, according to the provisions of the Constitution

of the United States, and the laws and regulations of the State of----.

So help you God, gentlemen, and me, Abijah Witherpee, Justice of the

Peace, fee two shillings.' There is reason to believe that both parties

experienced a sense of relief when the crisis was over, and the

requirements of the law had been satisfied.

Rich and varied as Abijah's legal experiences may have been, it was not

on their account that he has been introduced, but rather for the

contemplation of his 'fine points' as a citizen. He was never classed

among those men who exaggerate to the assessors the value of their

worldly possessions; in fact, it was always difficult to discover where

'what little money he had' _was_ invested. There was one piece of

property, however, of which he not only acknowledged himself the owner,

but publicly declared he never would dispose of, a threat that seemed

harmless enough, there not being the slightest possibility that any one

else would be willing to hold such a miserable waste on any pretext

whatever:--a half acre down by the railroad, slabsided, full of gnarled

stumps and brake, and about equally distributed into rock, black mud,

and water. Had the original trees been standing, it must have approached

quite as near the correct type of the 'howling wilderness,' the _horrida

inculta_, as could be exhibited this side of 'Turkey Buzzard's Land,

Arkansas.' Few strangers were suffered to pass by the locality in

company with any of the East Hampton folk, without having their

attention directed to 'Abijah Witherpee's Retreat;' and the opinion was

apt to be freely ventured that at some period of his life, that

gentleman had come into what is popularly termed 'a tight fix.'

The place had originally belonged to nobody in particular, and one day

fell into the hands of a Mr. Jones, at a merely nominal price, in

connection with a large tract through which it was thought the railroad,

then contemplated, would be likely to run. The railroad changed its

mind, as all railroads do, and Mr. Jones's speculation was not so

profitable as he had anticipated. It happened that among his friends was

a wild, freakish fellow, Charley Davis, who undertook to be on the best

of terms with everybody, and had succeeded admirably, with the exception

of Justice Witherpee, who, he swore, had swindled him outrageously in a

business transaction they had together in getting out lumber. What made

it all the worse, the aggrieved party used to say, was the shameful

manner in which the 'old reprobate' would publicly boast of it.

'I say, Jones,' exclaimed the Major (as he was called) one day as he sat

smoothing off a new ramrod for his fowling piece, 'what would you say to

a chance of getting that old stick-in-the-mud, Witherpee, on the hip? I

rather flatter myself that I can do it.'

'Go ahead, my son,' said Jones, pleasantly, by way of encouragement.

'You own that infernal piece of swamp down by the railroad crossing,

don't you? That air's a valuable piece of real estate!'

'Well, yes. It's never been spoilt by too much cultivation that I know

of.'

'I reckon I can just get a heap of money for that air; and what's more,

I can have the satisfaction of selling it to a gentleman who can

appreciate it.'

'It does you credit, Major. That's what I call a genuine love of nature.

It ain't every man that sees the beauties of a first-class rural retreat

like that,' and the speaker's countenance was radiant with

benignity--whether at the high-toned sentiment of his friend, or at the

prospect of getting the better of the 'Squire, it was difficult to

determine. He thought it well, however, to add: 'But I'd advise you to

be mighty careful if you're calc'lating to run a saw on old 'Bijh.

What's your programme?'

'You see this here interesting and valuable collection of gold dust,'

said the Major, producing a vial which contained particles of the ore in

unusual abundance, and flourishing it in his hand in a manner intensely

theatrical. 'Belonging to a friend of mine, he donates it for this

occasion only, so to speak. It will appear, of course, to have been dug

out of a piece of ground belonging to that highly respectable and public

spirited citizen, Mr. G. G. Jones. With a cupidity not at all to be

wondered at, I shall attempt to keep the matter secret and immediately

to make a purchase. I shall apply to Witherpee, as a man of wealth, to

advance me part of the funds, or get him, rather, to act as my agent in

buying it, because you, Jones, a friend of mine, would suspect me of

being up to something if I should offer to buy it myself. D'ye see the

bait, now? Catch _him_ playing off!'

As further conversation was modulated to an undertone, and accompanied

with a complete signal code of nods and chuckles, it is fair to presume

that Mr. J. _did_ see the bait--and was sure of a good nibble too.

No time was lost before the speculator and his victim had their knees

under the same table--with a mug of hard cider between them. Mingled

suspicion and avarice in Abijah's expression argued well for the success

of the scheme. As is often the case, his love of money was only

surpassed by the credulity with which he gave ear to new plans for

satisfying it. He was slow to trust Davis, because they had not been the

best of friends, but the Major played his cards so well that the old

fellow did not waver long:

'All you will have to do is to hand it right over to me, you know, and

take your commission money. You see just as well as I do that it

wouldn't do no how for me to undertake it on my own hook.'

And the 'Squire said, 'Yes, certainly,' but couldn't see it distinctly

either, and after they had fixed upon the maximum price, and the 'Squire

had feasted his eyes once more on the 'real glitter,' and Charley had

explained for the twenty-first time that the divining rod had

demonstrated the singular fact that not a bit of ground outside that

particular lot was worth a red cent to prospect on, and the 'Squire had

once for all swallowed the whole story, and declared it the most

remarkable thing he ever heard of, he consented to act as agent in the

purchase.

* * * * *

For some unaccountable reason, Abijah Witherpee found Mr. Jones not at

all in the humor for a bargain. The land wasn't worth much, he knew, and

it was very handsome in the 'Squire to offer fifty dollars for it, but

the fact was that his feelings somehow prompted him to keep it: it was a

silly idea, perhaps, but he had always thought, ever since he had owned

the land, that some day it would be worth gold to him.

'Gracious goodness!' thought Abijah; 'Jones swore that it was a secret

that only he and the diviner knew. Could this man have felt it out by

animal magnetism, or anything of that sort?' But his mind was at ease

again when he was assured by further conversation that the owner was

entirely ignorant of the momentous truth. The 'Squire's offers were

tempting, and, from byplay and bantering, at last amounted to what

appeared a perfectly fabulous sum. The upshot of the matter was that the

coolheaded Jones got rid of the wretched little lot for $490 cash. The

purchaser was now quite sure that he was the shrewdest fellow in that

part of the country.

Just as had been anticipated, the agent's next move was to lay claim to

the auriferous region himself, and refuse to turn it over to the lawful

owner. The Major exhibited a proper degree of anxiety to learn the

results of the interview, and appeared well enough satisfied with the

price--high as it was.

He was deaf to every proposition of the 'Squire, who was ready almost to

double on the purchase money; till at last the latter declared point

blank that he meant to stick to the property himself; that the agreement

was verbal merely, and he would have ownership in writing, in spite of

what Major Davis or anybody else could do. It was in vain that the Major

protested and threatened prosecution for swindling, and called witnesses

to the transaction. Before sunset, Witherpee was the sole and

indisputable proprietor of the newly discovered El Dorado.

It is hardly worth while to state how so extraordinary a financier

succeeded when he came to actual prospecting. It was currently reported

that there was 'some pretty tall digging going on down in that swamp

lot.' It required a lengthy series of geological arguments, with

practical illustrations, to convince 'Squire Witherpee that the soil of

East Hampton was somewhat feeble in the production of the precious

metals--except, perhaps, in a metaphorical sense.

When he talked of 'taking the law on those rascals,' he found after all

that the best thing he could do was not to move in the matter at all.

Mr. Jones and his friend were no rascals, and took pleasure in

contributing every cent of the money to the town fund for supporting the

poor. Abijah Witherpee was since known to have acknowledged that though

rather hard, it was no more than he had deserved, and the change that

was wrought in his dealings gained him from that time no more faithful

friends than the confederates, Jones and the Major.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 11: A gradual change is, indeed, observable, but as yet, it is

only an incipient one.]

REASON, RYHME, AND RYTHM.

CHAPTER III.--THE INFINITE.

The Divine Attributes are the base of all true Art.

No work of art can be considered truly beautiful unless it recalls or

reproduces, even in its finite form, some of the divine attributes; not

that the work must treat of them, or consciously suggest them to the

intellect, but that they must enter into the creation of the artist,

that the immediate and intuitive perception of beauty, always attached

to their manifestation, may appeal to those faculties or instincts which

ever answer in delight when these attributes are suggested to the human

spirit; for, consciously or unconsciously, the soul yearns for a clearer

view of the beauty of God.

Whatever good there may be desirable by man, more especially good

belonging to his moral nature, there will be a corresponding

agreeableness in whatever external object reminds him of such good,

whether it remind him by arbitrary association, by typical resemblance,

or by awakening intuitions of the divine attributes, which he was

created to glorify and to enjoy eternally. Leibnitz says:

'The perfections of God are those of our own souls, but He

possesses them without limit; He is the exhaustless ocean from

which we have received but a drop; we have some power, some wisdom,

some love; but God is all power, all wisdom, all love. Order,

unity, proportion, harmony, enchant us; painting, sculpture, music,

poetry, charm us in the degree in which, in their appropriate

spheres, they have succeeded in manifesting fragments of the above:

but God is all order, all proportion, all unity, all harmony; and

all beauty visible here is but a dim reflex of the eternal rays.'

The fact of our deriving constant pleasure from whatever is a type or

semblance of the divine attributes, and from nothing enduringly but that

which is, is the most ennobling of all that can be said of human nature,

not only setting a great gulf of specific separation between us and the

brutes that perish, but it seems a promise of a communion ultimately

deep, close, and conscious with the Being in whose darkened

manifestations we here unconsciously and instinctively delight. It is at

least probable that the higher the order of intelligences, the more of

the divine image becomes palpable in all around them, and the redeemed

spirits and angels may have perceptions as much more full and rapturous

than ours, as ours than those of the beasts and creeping things. It may

be received almost as an axiom that no natural instinct or desire can be

entirely frustrated, and as these desires for the beautiful are so

unfailing that they have not escaped the thinkers of any age, but were

held divine of old, and even in heathen countries, it must be admitted

that in these visionary pleasures, lightly as we may now be disposed to

regard them, there are causes of gratitude, grounds of hope, anchors of

faith, more than in all the manifold material gifts with which God

mercifully crowns the years and hedges the path of men.

We turn to Plato to show how clearly such ideas were held by the

thinkers of antiquity:

'Eternal beauty, not created, not made; exempt from increase or

decay; not beautiful in one part and deformed in another, beautiful

in such a time, such a place, such a relation; not beauty which

hath any sensible parts or anything corporeal, or which may be

found comprised in any one thought or science, or residing in any

creation different from itself, as in an animal, the earth, or the

heavens;--but absolute beauty, identical and invariable in itself;

beauty in which, would they please the spirit of men, other things

must participate, but their creation or destruction brings IT

neither diminution, increase, nor the slightest change.'

Plotinus writes in the same spirit:

'Let him who has closed his eyes upon mere sensuous beauty, advance

boldly into the depths of the sanctuary. Let him reverently gaze

upon the true beauty, the original type of those pale and fleeting

images to which he may have hitherto applied the holy name of

beautiful.'

We propose to consider reverently and with a humble sense of the limited

sphere from which we must regard the infinite, some of the divine

attributes, which must, in the finite mode, enter into every creation of

artistic excellence. We begin our reflections with the infinite itself.

Infinite--this word is by no means the expression of a clear idea: it is

merely the expression of an effort to attain one. It stands for the

possible attempt at an impossible conception. Man needed a term by which

to point out the direction of this effort--the cloud behind which lay,

forever invisible, the object of this attempt. The fact is, that upon

the enunciation of any one of that class of terms to which 'infinite'

belongs--the class representing thoughts of thought--he who has a right

to say he thinks at all, feels himself called upon, not to entertain a

conception, but simply to direct his mental vision toward some given

point, in the intellectual firmament, where lies a nebula never to be

resolved. And yet to this very point, which the intellect cannot define,

are our spirits forever tending. No artistic creation ever fully pleases

unless there is given in it some suggestion of this mystic attribute,

underlying and permeating all other attributes of Deity. It is the dim

unconscious feeling after this attribute which causes the forever

recurring dissatisfaction with the finite, which so ruthlessly pursues

us through life. It is the source of that vague but tender longing, that

restless but dreamy yearning, that haunting melancholy, which

characterize human souls created for the enjoyment of the infinite;

divining and insatiably thirsting for the absolute.

Let us now attempt to trace some of the various ways in which this

feeling after the infinite manifests itself. Plato and his school tried

to explain the existence of absolute ideas in the soul by the hypothesis

of its preëxistence to that of the body in the bosom of the Absolute,

the Infinite, the Eternal; and, consequently, that such ideas are but

reminiscences of a more perfect life. We find the following passage in

an ode of Wordsworth's:

'Our birth is but a sleep, and a forgetting:

The soul that rises with us, our life's star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home.

'Hence, in a season of calm weather,

Though inland far we be,

Our souls have sight of that immortal sea

Which brought us hither,

Can in a moment travel thither,

And see the children sport upon the shore,

And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.'

It seems useless here to enter upon the vexed subject of 'innate ideas,'

or to attempt to convince the reader, metaphysically, that the very

negation contained in the word finite, necessarily suggests its

affirmation in the word infinite. Enough that the idea of the infinite

is certainly found in the mind of man, that he seeks it in the material

world, in himself, in God. High gifts may have been wrought into the dim

soul, which are destined to be gradually awakened through the growing

perceptions of the mind. Every spiritual being created by eternal love

may have had imparted to him a ray from the sun of eternal love, which,

in its due time and place, is to manifest itself in his consciousness.

Such participation in God as the primary source of all that is to abide

eternally with the redeemed, has, in the present state of our vague

consciousness, been described by men who felt its stirrings in their

soul as the memory of eternal love. It might more properly be called an

intuition of eternal love; such an instinct as leads the chrysalis to

prepare for the change which it certainly does not understand. Life,

such as the beat of the heart, the action of the lungs, is not

manifested to the consciousness--neither is the source of this

intuition, which, however, gives evidence of itself by an intuitive

feeling of incessant longing. It reveals its presence constantly;

sometimes in an undefinable feeling of profound desire, satisfied with

no earthly object, yet but vaguely directed to the eternal or divine;

sometimes in a profound and absorbing religiosity. This longing exists

in an inchoate state; it is a love yet to be developed. From this mystic

root springs much that is intellectually great, even the love of

scientific certainty. Philosophy may, indeed, almost be termed the

science of longing.

Developing in its normal growth, it gives us our true saints; those who

live but to love God, and to serve man. But like all human gifts, it may

be perverted. It is some such perverted apprehension or illusory longing

for the infinite, which causes a man to surrender himself, heart and

soul, to the despotic tyranny of some ruling habit, some favorite and

engrossing pursuit. Alas! it often leads the most gifted of our race to

devote all their energies, thoughts, feelings, to one faulty, fading,

changing object, vainly pouring that worship upon the creature, which

should be rendered only to the Creator.

'He that sits above

In His calm glory, will forgive the love

His creatures bear each other, even if blent

With a vain worship, for its close is dim

Ever with grief, which leads the wrung soul back to Him.'

The despair which this feeling sometimes occasions in the perverted soul

of one intent upon feeding it with the gross aliments of the debased

senses, is, without doubt, a very frequent cause of suicide. It may

lead, in the soul of the infidel or sensualist, to the idolatry of art.

It is a feeling, and requires direction. When enlightened by revelation

and purified by faith, it manifests itself in the sublime abnegation and

ardent love of the faithful follower of Jesus Christ.

This instinctive longing for the infinite, existing in the soul itself,

cannot be satisfied by any earthly longing, sensual gratification, or

external possession. Made 'to glorify God and enjoy Him forever,' man is

ruined and eternally miserable if he refuse to fulfil the destiny for

which he was created. His misery springs from the root of his greatness;

it is because there is an infinite in him, which, with all his cunning,

he cannot succeed in burying under the finite. This is a pregnant

subject; under this strange caption might be written the psychological

history of most human despair.

'The Fiend that man harries

Is love of the Best;

Yawns the pit of the Dragon

Lit by rays from the Blest.

The Lethe of nature

Can't trance him again,

Whose soul sees the Perfect

His eyes seek in vain.'

Thus is faith a necessity of the soul, 'the evidence of things not

seen.'

The idea of eternity is necessarily evolved from the negation contained

in the limited meaning of the word time. Eternity is the all embracing,

completely complete time; eternity, which is infinite not only _a parte

externa_, that is everpassing yet everlasting, without beginning and

without end; but also infinite _a parte interna_--so that in the

endlessly living, thoroughly luminous present, the whole past, also the

whole future, are equally actual, equally clear, and equally present to

us, as the very present itself. Can we indeed form any other conception

of a state of _perfect_ bliss? Is the idea of a state of entire

happiness at all compatible with the regret that must be felt for a

blissful past; the consciousness of a flying present; and the fear of an

uncertain future? Yet the idea of time does not seem necessarily

excluded from a conception of the essence and operations of God. Does

there in very reality exist such an absolute opposition between time and

eternity, that it is quite impossible for them to subsist in any mutual

contact or relation? Is there no transition from the one to the other

conceivable? Is eternity anything more than time vitally full,

blissfully complete? If eternity is nothing more than the living, full,

essential time, and if our earthly, fettered, and fragmentary time is,

as the great poet says, 'out of joint,' fallen with man's disobedience

to his God into a state of strange disorder--it is easily conceivable

that the two do not stand apart so as to have no mutual contact. Those

who have seen a holy death leave a calm and beautiful smile upon the

face of a dying Christian, can scarcely help believing that the

beginning of a blissful eternity has impressed itself upon the rapt

features, actually breaking through the shackles of time before the

prisoner was emancipated from its fetters. And those brief intervals of

rapture which are sometimes experienced in the midst of earnest and

ardent devotion--what are they but eternity thus manifesting itself

through time in the soul? Those who have been rescued from the very jaws

of death, frequently tell us that the moment preceding insensibility was

crowded and filled with vivid recollections of the whole apparently

forgotten past--thus bringing into the soul in the midst of time, a

foretaste and interval of eternity! and those prophetic intimations of

things yet to be, which frequently break in with startling power upon

the human spirit, what indeed are they but sudden contacts between our

fettered time, 'so out of joint,' and the fulness of eternity? Men rave

against the justice of eternal punishment, as if its duration were not

essentially part of their own immortality! Ah! if the memories of the

deeds done in the body are essentially undying, were it not well for us

that the writing traced against us by our own hands should be nailed to

the cross, obliterated in the blood of the Immaculate Victim? that

mystic blood which has bathed the universe!

The innate longing for the infinite, with its accompanying intuitions of

the eternal love, and the yearnings for that fulness of time when the

past and future shall live with us as really as the present itself, are

ever vivid within us, and are two of the great vital arteries of all

true art. This burning human thirst for the fulness of eternity in

opposition to our fragmentary time manifests itself in our agonizing

efforts to bring back the past, to which sad efforts we have given the

melancholy name of memory; shows itself in our restless longing for the

future, which we call hope; and frequently reveals itself in an insane

seizing upon something in the imperfect and fleeting present, which it

insists upon worshipping, in regarding as divine. Upon this last phase

is dependent all that excited, exaggerated, but frequently beautiful

passion of language which marks our poems of love. Ah! it is the

merciful will of the Creator that we should worship only the divine, and

so the human passion ends in sobs and wails of anguish, for the finite

idol can never fill the shrine of the Absolute, the infinite God!

As the intuition of eternal love in the past, we find this longing for

the infinite breathing through poetry in the form of elegy; in sad

recollections of a faded world of demigods and heroes; and in the

plaints for the loss of man's native home in Paradise, in the faint and

dying echoes of the happy innocence of creation before the first

outbreak of evil, and the consequent misery of nature. Poetry is indeed

so full of haunting, melancholy memories, that it might almost be called

the 'mind's supersensuous recollection of the eternal.' And what else

can be said of music? Is it not an art eminently addressed to this

intuition of eternal love, this constant longing for the infinite? Do

not its giddy flights and dying falls at once arouse this mystic

yearning, seeking, feeling, which may appropriately be termed the

passion of the soul? That music holds some deep relation to the soul not

yet clearly developed, may be inferred, not only from the magic power it

sways over our spirits, but from the fact that the inspired writers

picture it among the joys of heaven. It is now the language of our

'divine despair;' it is yet to be the speech of our eternal beatitude!

'God is love:' through all the hidden veins of ever-germing life beats

this divine pulse of universal being. Hope, faith, and charity spring

from the revelation and answering intuitions of this blissful love: from

the hope, faith, and love of men sprang all the really noble works of

art. All this is full of consolation, 'though inward far we be'--even

the mournful memory of a past of celestial innocence becomes the

harbinger of a divine hope. Let the poet then still sing of the past;

like the glories of the setting sun flushing down the golden west, it

but whispers of a more glorious rise in the mythic east. The root of art

springs from the intuitions of eternal love; its leaves, flowers, and

fruit, are faith, hope, and charity. May the rapt artist ever remember

that the beauty of this earth was not intended to satisfy the

requisitions of his longing soul, but to awaken and nourish in it the

love of eternal beauty!

A golden thread of glories yet to be, twines through the woof of this

our mortal life, and by tracing its wavy lines of glittering brilliancy,

shining even through the dim symbolism of matter, many secrets of the

life to come may be divined. The arts may be regarded as significant

hieroglyphics of delights yet to be fulfilled in other spheres of being.

The living pulse of omnipotence, the heart of God, beats sensibly in the

beauty of the boundless universe; it is the fountain at which the young

immortal is to imbibe his first draught for eternity. Not that, as

erroneously held by the Pantheists, nature is God, no more than Raphael

is the pictures he paints; but assuming the existence of a God as the

creator of the worlds, what else can nature be but a revelation of God

and divine love, a visible and symbolic representation thereof in

matter; living, because His breath is life?

The following remarkable passage on the religious origin and consecutive

order of the arts occurs in De La Mennais' 'Sketch of Philosophy:'

'The temple of art is an emanation from that Divine Spirit who

fills it with Himself. It is the plastic evolution of the idea

which man has of Him, of His nature, of His ways, as manifested in

the universe. From its central sanctuary in which He, the unseen,

dwells, this temple projects, extending itself in space in every

direction; but by an opposite movement all its parts, closely

united, converge to the sanctuary, gravitating toward the central

point where their Head, their essential and primordial Reason,

dwells; they struggle to penetrate its mystic veil, to mingle with

it, to have their being in it, in order to accomplish the perfect

union of variety with unity, of the finite with the infinite.

'The art temple struggles to develop itself by a process analogous

to that of creation. The surface of the earth was first clothed

with vegetation, from the lowly moss and creeping lichen to the

lofty cedar, whose solemn branches mingle with the floating clouds.

When the earth was ready for their habitation, came the animals,

gifted with higher life, with spontaneous motion, with instinct and

sensibility. At last came man, endowed with the incomparable

faculties of love and reason.

'The art temple has also its vegetation. Its walls are covered with

varied plants, which wind along its cornices and wreathe its

plinths; they blossom round the oriels, brightening or deepening in

the light; they twine through the nerves of the vaulted arch; like

the liane of the cedars, they embrace the tall minarets of the

heaven-seeking spire, mounting into the blue depths of ether; they

bind the clustering shafts of the columns in heavy sheaves, and

crown their capitals with flowers and foliage. The stone grows more

and more animated, puts forth in more luxuriant growth; multitudes

of new forms spring up in the bosom of this magnificent creation;

when lo! at length man completes and embodies them all--his own

noble image stands revealed--the rude, but white and glittering

stone glows almost into life under the passion of his forming hand.

'Sculpture is but an immediate development of architecture,

proceeding naturally and organically from it. In proof of this, we

have only to examine it in its first efforts. Forms, unfinished and

embryonic, at first closely attached to the stone, growing by

degrees in accordance with their own fixed laws until able to

detach themselves from the medium through which they were

originated, after having acquired the conditions necessary for

their individual life, spring to actual life, to independent life,

almost as the organized being springs from the womb of its mother.

'Sculpture, however, represents but imperfectly the marvellous

glories of God's creation. It can give but faint ideas of the

various effects of light and shade, the constantly shifting play of

colors; it cannot offer that full harmony of beauty which nature is

ever spreading before us in the complicated scenes of life. To

satisfy this want, a new art is created! Closely linked with all

those which have preceded it, its development is but their

legitimate expansion. The gray and stern arches, the hitherto

colorless sky of the art temple, now take the azure hue of the

heavens, while hovering cherubs look down from their cerulean

depths; the relievos glow, and color defines, as it etherealizes,

the works of man. Painting, at first absorbed in the plastic arts,

scarcely begins to show symptoms of life until she is fully born,

and living in her own distinctive form! As that power which

develops the almost infinite variety of forms is to the universe,

so is painting with its ever ready and vivid canvas to the temple

of art.

'Meanwhile the art temple has not remained wrapped in gloomy

silence; and another series of developments, bearing the same

relation to sound and hearing as the first did to light and sight,

have commenced. As beings ascend in the scale of life, the forms

appealing to sight alone, become less capable of expressing their

nature. If the universe had been without voice, the highest which

it contains had been shrouded in the pall of an eternal silence;

but creation has a voice which is specific in every genus, in every

species, in every individual. Transport yourself in thought to one

of the vast solitudes of the New World--listen to the rustling of

the myriad-leafed forests as they forever murmur on the banks of

the thousands of nameless and unknown streams which ripple through

them; to the clash of the impetuous torrents as they rush down the

precipitous sides of the mountains to glide on from their feet

through beds of soft moss or sedgy grass; to the booming thunder,

driving, scattering, and tearing the flying clouds; to the

intermingling sounds arising from the myriads of creatures which

are roaring, bellowing, humming, buzzing, hissing, singing, upon

the bosom of this primeval world--listen! this is the voice of

nature, indistinct and confused, but majestic, solemn,

multitudinous, full of mystery and palpitating with vague emotions.

'As the art temple symbolizes the creation, is the plastic image of

it, a voice is also heard from its depths, which rides upon the

winds, and pierces afar off. The echo of an invisible world, it is

solemn, mysterious, and multiform, appealing to the inmost

feelings, rousing the sleeping powers, awakening the internal life

of the soul, which without it might lie forever benumbed and

silent. Corresponding to the voice of nature, it, too, is

specifically marked, is individualized in every medium through

which it is produced. Developing in unceasing variety, yet ever

bound in the closest unity, language syllables air into thought,

love. As soon as man mingles his voice, his speech, with that of

inferior beings, the whole creation is enlarged, dilates and throbs

with new and glowing life. A closer tie unites the two worlds--the

world of phenomena and the world of ideas. Rising from the bosom of

organic nature, pressing up like a bud closely wrapped in its sheaf

of clustering and sheltering leaves, destined to indefinite

development, the human word is born; it is named: Oratory, Poetry,

Music! The art temple is now complete. Symbol of the universe, it

represents all that is contained therein under the glittering veil

of art.'

It is strange how, in the middle ages, the temple of art almost grew

into one with the temple of faith; to this fact may be traced the

elevated and devout character of the _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of those dim

centuries. Thus the church became a sublime poem, where the glowing

imagination of a tender faith lavished all its glories. That the

Christian church then satisfied the heart with its mystic dogmas and

symbolic representations, is proved by the fact that the masses did not

care how obscure and squalid their own hovels might be, provided the

temple was great and magnificent. It was the temple of simple,

unreasoning, unquestioning faith, but decorated with the highest marvels

of art; it was always thrown open to the people, and in it they passed

nearly half their days. Man brought what he held to be his best to the

temple in which he came to worship God, and in it was concentrated all

the world knew of beauty. Its light but ornate steeples seemed to pierce

the very clouds; its columns rivalled the shafts of the forest; its

balustrades were exquisitely chiselled; its tapestry inwrought with the

finest needle work;--all gave evidence that the hand of love had

lingered tenderly over every line in the house dedicated by man to his

Maker. The pictured saints and angels seemed to smile upon the kneeling

people, while the majestic chants and requiems sounded to them like the

very voices of the angels, heard from within the 'jasper gates' of the

heavenly city. The white-robed and entoning priests were their joy and

pride; they, as well as the cherished artists, were most frequently from

their own oppressed ranks. Religion and art were alone then democratic;

alone expounded to them the original equality of man. Thus they looked

upon these temples, which art beautified for faith, as peculiarly their

own, their refuge, their solace, their ark of safety in those times of

war and trouble. They earnestly and devoutly believed them to be the

sanctuaries of the risen God, in which dwelt his glorified Body. With

the first rays of the sun flushing with roseate hues the mystic beauty

of the temple, they congregated there to receive, in the glorious unity

of a common humanity, Him whom the heavens cannot contain--the Son of

God. They did not think, they felt; they could not reason, but they

heard the church. Naive, simple, and trusting souls, with the Virgin to

smile upon them, and the saints to pray for them.

It cannot surely be denied that art is full of indefinite and

instinctive longing for the infinite.

Poetry is full of its pining voice. Chateaubriand says:

'When we are alone with nature, the feeling of the infinite forces

itself irresistibly upon us. When the universe with its

inexhaustible variety opens before us, when we contemplate the

myriads of stars moving in ever-mystic harmony through the

limitless immensity of space, when we gaze upon the ocean mingling

with the sky in the boundless distance of the far horizon, when the

earth and sea are rocked into profound calm, and creation itself

seems wrapped in mystic contemplation--an undefinable feeling of

melancholy seizes upon us, unknown desires awaken in the soul, they

seem to call us into other countries far beyond the limits of the

known--must it not then be the vague feeling after, the dim longing

for, the infinite, which at such moments we feel strangely stirring

in the calm depths of the divining soul?'

We find the same yearning breathing through the following beautiful

poem of Mrs. Osgood's:

'As plains the home-sick ocean shell

Far from its own remembered sea,

Repeating, like a fairy spell,

Of love, the charmed melody

It learned within that whispering wave,

Whose wondrous and mysterious tone

Still wildly haunts its winding cave

Of pearl, with softest music-moan--

'So asks my home-sick soul below,

For something loved, yet undefined;

So mourns to mingle with the flow

Of music from the Eternal Mind;

So murmurs, with its childlike sigh,

The melody it learned above,

To which no echo may reply

Save from thy voice, Eternal Love!'

It is to his fervent and fiery expression of this longing for the

infinite, characterizing, whether pure or perverted, almost the whole of

Byron's poetry, breaking out sometimes in imprecations and despair, and

not to his immorality, that his great popularity is to be attributed.

Even in the midst of the most unhappy scepticism, it was the haunting

passion of his soul. Alas! that this longing for the food of heaven

should have been fed on husks until the lower rungs of the heaven ladder

became so covered with the corruption of matter and fiery sparks of

evil, that it seemed rather meant for the foul feet of demons, than for

the elastic tread of the redeemed human soul to God! We quote from him

in proof:

'Blue rolls the water, blue the sky

Spreads like an ocean hung on high,

Bespangled with those isles of light,

So wildly, spiritually bright;

Who ever gazed upon them shining

Nor turned to earth without repining,

Nor wished for wings to flee away,

And mix with their eternal ray?'

'Oh, thou beautiful

And unimaginable ether! and

Ye multiplying masses of increased

And still increasing lights! what are ye?

What

Is this blue wilderness of interminable

Air, wherein ye roll along as I have seen

The leaves along the limpid streams of

Eden?

Is your course measured for ye? or do ye

Sweep on in your unbounded revelry

Through an aerial universe of endless

Expansion, at which my soul aches to think--

Intoxicated with eternity?'

'All heaven and earth are still--though not in sleep,

And breathless, as we grow when feeling most;

And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep;--

All heaven and earth are still: from the high host

Of stars, to the lulled lake and mountain coast,

All is concentred in a life intense,

Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost,

But hath a part of being, and a sense

Of that which is of all Creator and Defence.

'Then stirs the _feeling infinite_, so felt

In solitude, where we are least alone;

A truth, which through our being then doth melt,

And purify from self: it is a tone

The soul and source of music, which makes known

Eternal harmony, and sheds a charm,

Like to the fabled Cytherea's zone,

Binding all things with beauty; 'twould disarm

The spectre Death, had he substantial power to harm.'

In some of the most forcible lines ever penned, Byron has given us the

whole psychological analysis of the effects of human passion, when, in

its insane perversion, and misdirected thirst for the infinite, it pours

upon the dust that love and worship which is due to God alone. No one

who has thus sinned, will refuse to acknowledge their force and truth.

Fearful in their Medusa-like beauty, they fascinate the heart, only to

turn its warm pulses into ice. They are actually withering in their

despair. Poor Byron! did he never, never cry with the repentant but

happy St. Augustin: 'Oh, eternal beauty! too late have I known thee!'

'Alas! our young affections run to waste,

Or water but the desert; whence arise

But weeds of dark luxuriance, tares of haste,

Rank at the core, though tempting to the eyes,

Flowers whose wild odors breathe but agonies,

And trees whose gums are poison; such the plants

Which spring beneath her steps, as Passion flies

O'er the world's wilderness, and vainly pants

For some _celestial fruit_ forbidden to our wants.

'O Love! no habitant of earth thou art--

An unseen seraph, we believe in thee;

A faith whose martyrs are the broken heart,

But never yet hath seen, nor e'er shall see

The naked eye, thy form, as it should be;

The mind hath made thee, as it peopled heaven

Even with its own desiring phantasy,

And to a thought such shape and image given,

As haunts the unquenched soul--parched--wearied--wrung and riven.

'Of its own beauty is the mind diseased,

And fevers into false creation:--where,

Where are the forms the sculptor's soul hath seized?

In him alone. Can Nature show so fair?

Where are the charms and virtues which we dare

Conceive in boyhood and pursue as men,

The unreached Paradise of our despair,

Which o'er informs the pencil and the pen,

And overpowers the page where it would bloom again?

'Who loves, raves--'tis youth's frenzy--but the cure

Is bitterer still; as charm by charm unwinds

Which robed our idols, and we see too sure

Nor worth nor beauty dwells from out the mind's

Ideal shape of such; yet still it binds

The fatal spell, and still it draws us on,

Reaping the whirlwind from the oft-sown winds;

The stubborn heart, its alchemy begun,

Seems ever near the prize--wealthiest when most undone.

'We wither from our youth, we gasp away--

Sick--sick; unfound the boon--unslaked the thirst,

Though to the last, in verge of our decay

Some phantom lures, such as we sought at first--

But all too late, so are we doubly cursed.

Love, fame, ambition, avarice--'tis the same,

Each idle--and all ill--and none the worst--

For all are meteors with a different name,

And Death the sable smoke where vanishes the flame.

'Few--none--find what they love or could have loved,

Though accident, blind contact, and the strong

Necessity of loving, have removed

Antipathies--but to recur, ere long,

Envenomed with irrevocable wrong;

And circumstance, that unspiritual god

And miscreator, makes and helps along

Our coming evils with a crutch-like rod,

Whose touch turns hope to dust--the dust we all have trod.

'Our life is a false nature--'tis not in

The harmony of things,--this hard decree,

This uneradicable taint of sin,

This boundless Upas, this all blasting tree.

Whose root is earth, whose leaves and branches be

The skies which rain their plagues on men like dew--

Disease--death--bondage--all the woes we see--

And worse--the woes we see not--which throb through

The immedicable soul, with heartaches ever new.'

Again:

'What is the worst? Nay, do not ask--

In pity from the search forbear:

Smile on--nor venture to unmask

Man's heart, and view the hell that's there!'

Merciful God! how men suffer when they fly from Thee. When they refuse

to listen to the sublime voice implanted within, which calls them to

Thee, forever reminding them that they were made for things infinite,

eternal! O ye men of pleasure, it is the very greatness of your nature

which torments you: there is nothing save God capable of filling the

immeasurable depths of your longing! How different the language of

Klopstock, as already quoted: 'What recompense could I ask? I have

tasted the cup of angels in singing of my Redeemer!'

One of the most dangerous, yet most brilliant among the novelists of the

present day, says:

'Properly speaking, love is not a violent aspiration of every

faculty toward a created being; it is rather a holy thirst of the

most ethereal part of our being for the unknown. Tormented with

intuitions of an eternal love, filled with torturing and insatiate

desires for the infinite, we vainly seek their gratification in the

dying forms which surround us, and obstinately adorn our perishable

idols with that immaterial beauty which haunts our dreams. The

emotions of the senses do not suffice us; in the treasure house of

the simple joys of nature there is nothing sufficiently exquisite

to fill our high demands; we would fain grasp heaven, and it is not

within our reach. Then we seek it in a creature fallible as

ourselves; we expend upon it all the high energies given us for far

nobler ends. We refuse to worship God, and kneel before a worm like

ourselves! But when the veil falls, when we see behind the clouds

of incense and the halos woven by love, only a miserable and

imperfect creature--we blush for our delusion, overturn our idol in

our despair, and trample it rudely under foot. But as we must love,

and will not give our hearts to God, for whom they were created, we

seek another idol--and are again deceived! Through this bitter,

bitter school we are purified and enlightened, until, abandoning

all hope of finding perfection on earth, we are at last ready to

offer God that pure, but now broken-hearted worship, which should

never have been given save to Him alone.'--GEORGE SAND.

Thus is it that 'love's best interpreter is still a sigh.'

Let him who would in safety delight his soul with mystic intuitions of

the infinite, turn to that most exquisite of all poems, the Apocalypse,

for 'blessed is he that readeth and heareth the words of this prophecy,

and keepeth those things which are written in it.' St. Jerome says 'it

contains as many mysteries as words'--as many truths as mysteries--and

these truths are all revelations of the infinite. 'Be thou faithful unto

death, and I will give thee the crown of life,' says He who can bring

thee into that heavenly city which needeth no temple: 'For the Lord God

Almighty is the temple thereof, and the Lamb! And the city hath no need

of the sun, nor of the moon to shine in it. For the glory of God hath

enlightened it, and the Lamb is the lamp of it.' There shall we feed

upon the infinite!

The pantheistic _feeling_ into which the imaginative mind so readily

falls, is thus sketched by a poet of our own times:

'I seated myself, after sunset, by the water's side; nothing was to

be heard save the dash of the waves as they broke upon the lonely

shore; and I gradually fell into that state so well known among

solitary travellers:--no distinct remembrance of my own separate

being remained to me: I seemed to be but a part of some great

whole, to undulate with the lake, to vegetate with the trees, to

sigh with the winds, to blossom with the flowers.'

This feeling of the infinite so pervaded antiquity, that man almost lost

the consciousness of his own personality in the immensity of the

universe, regarding himself but as an element of the absolute unity of

the world. His imagination fell into profound reverie, he felt himself

but as an integral part of a universal movement drawing all things to a

single centre, confounding all beings with one sole substance. We have

only to open the Vedas to convince ourselves how deeply this feeling

pervaded the early philosophy of the Hindoos. For example:

'Brahma is eternal, the only substantial being, revealing himself

in happiness and joy. The universe is his name, his image; this

primal existence, containing all in itself, is the only one

substantially existing. All phenomena have their cause in Brahma:

he is not subjected to the conditions of time and space. He is

imperishable; he is the soul of the world; the soul of every

individual being. The universe is Brahma--it comes from Brahma--it

subsists in Brahma--Bramah, or the sole self-existing being, is the

form of all science, the form of systems of worlds, without end

forever. The universes of stars are one with him; they have no

being but as they exist in the supremacy of his will. This eternal

will is the central heart of all that is. It reveals itself in

creation, in preservation, in destruction, in motion, in rest, in

space, in time.'

Such an absorption of all things in the infinite, with the consequent

loss of personality, individuality, and all moral responsibility, had a

most depressing effect upon the character of the people who embraced

this strange system. This is so manifest that it may be plainly read in

the sombre character of their architectural remains.

'In their subterranean, vast, and dim excavations; in the gigantic

proportions of their colossal architecture, always impressing us

with sadness and with the nothingness of man; in their long, still,

damp, dreary cities of sepulchres; in their half-shrouded and

mummy-like statues, which, in their corpse-like immobility, seem

struck with eternal death, or in slowly detaching themselves in

their vast and unfinished forms from primeval and gigantic rocks,

grow into a kind of dull, embryonic, and stagnant life, far more

abhorrent than death itself--do we not clearly recognize the idea

of the infinite absorbing all things into itself, crushing the

soaring spirit of man under a blind fatalism, robbing him of all

hope and aim in life, of the dignity of personal effort and moral

responsibility, presenting as the only aim of all his glowing

desires, the utter absorption of his own individuality in the bosom

of the limitless whole--thus reducing the vivid action of his

varied life to the stillness of the grave, without its repose?'

It is a strange fact, which we will view more closely when we treat of

Unity, that the quest for variety which led men into polytheism, or the

fractioning of the Deity into false and wicked gods and goddesses,

necessarily forced man to the creation of a Fate, to which Jupiter

himself was subjected, more blind, more crushing, more appalling to the

imagination (because while retaining his entire individuality, man was

yet forced to submit to its irrational and pitiless decrees) than was

even the hopeless fatalism consequent upon the pantheistic absorption of

the East.

What a step from the vague yet crushing, abstract yet deadening dreaming

of a fearful and misinterpreted infinite; from the cruel rigors of an

unreasoning and implacable fate--to that full revelation that the

Infinite is a _personal_ God, cognizant of the human, gifting it with a

free will to choose good or evil, and united with it in mercy and love

through the mystic life and still more mystic death of the Divine

Redeemer!

In sculpture, the thirst for the infinite is manifest in the various

statues of the gods which it has given us; in painting, an art more

closely related to Christianity, in the numberless figures of angels and

heads of cherubs, in the countless pictures upon holy subjects with

which it has presented us. The marble speaks, the canvas glows with

human aspirations toward the infinite.

It is certainly a very significant fact, too, that there must be a point

of escape in every picture, a window to let in the light, a glimpse of

the sky: an idea of _distance_ must in some way be given, or the

painting will oppress us like a prison. No amount of beauty in a nearer

form will make us content to remain with it, so long as we are shut down

to it alone, nor is any form so cold but that we may look upon it with

kindness, so that it rise against the infinite light of hope beyond.

Gaze into Vernet's pictures: always sunrises or sunsets, calms or

tempests, nights of moonlight, misty horizons in which it is quite

impossible to distinguish the limiting lines--the infinite is always

suggested in them: hence their hold upon the popular imagination.

It is really wonderful in how many ways this feeling appeals to us; it

seems to be the background of our whole finite being. Saint Pierre says:

'The reason of the pleasure we experience in the sight of an

immense tree, springs from the feeling of the infinite which is

excited in us by its pyramidal form. The decrease in the different

tiers of its branches; the infinitesimal gradations in its shades

of green, always lighter at the extremity of the tree than in the

rest of its foliage--give it an elevation apparently without limit.

We experience the same sensations in the horizontal lines of

landscapes, where we see row after row of hills unrolling one

behind the other, until the last appears to melt into the blue of

the distant heavens. Nature seems to love to produce the same

effect upon extended plains or rolling prairies through the means

of the mists and vapors so frequently rising from the bosoms of

lakes and rivers. Sometimes these mists hang like curtains along

the skirts of isolated forests, sometimes they rise like armed

columns, and move in serried ranks along the beds of rivers;

sometimes they are gray, gloomy, and motionless, sometimes moving

with startling rapidity; their sombre hues changing into glowing

rose, or penetrated and permeated with the glittering and golden

light of the sun. Under all these shifting aspects they open for us

perspective after perspective of the infinite into the infinite

itself.'

Indeed nature seems never wearied in her varied suggestions of the

infinite. Ruskin says, Is not the pleasure we receive from the effects

of calm and luminous distance at the hour of sunset and sunrise among

the most memorable and singular of which we are conscious; and is not

all that is dazzling in color, perfect in form, gladdening in

expression, of evanescent and shallow appealing when compared with the

still small voice of the level twilight behind purple hills, or the

scarlet arch of dawn over the dark and troublous edged sea? Almost all

poets and painters have depicted sunrises and sunsets; every heart

responds--there must then be something in them of a peculiar character,

which must be one of the primal and most earnest motives of beauty to

human sensation. Do they show us finer characters of form than can be

developed by the broader daylight? Not so--for their power is almost

independent of the forms they assume or display; it matters little

whether the bright clouds be simple or manifold, whether the mountain

line be subdued or majestic; the fairer forms of earthly things are by

them subdued and disguised, the round and muscular growth of the forest

trunks is sunk into skeleton lines of quiet shade, the purple clefts of

the hillside are labyrinthed in the darkness, the orbed spring and

whirling wave of the torrent have given place to a white, ghastly,

interrupted gleaming. Have they more perfection or fulness of color? Not

so--for their effect is often deeper when their hues are dim than when

they are blazoned with crimson and pale gold; and assuredly in the blue

of the rainy sky, in the many tints of morning flowers, in the sunlight

on summer foliage and field, there are more sources of mere sensuous

color-pleasure than in the single streak of the wan and dying light of

sunset. It is not then by nobler form, it is not by positiveness of hue,

it is not by intensity of light, that this strange distant apace

possesses its attractive power. But there is one thing which it has or

suggests, which no other object of sight suggests in an equal degree,

and that is--infinity. It is of all visible things the least material,

the least finite, the farthest withdrawn from the earth prison-house,

the most typical of the nature of God, the most suggestive of the glory

of His dwelling place. For the sky of the night, though we may know it

is boundless, is dark; it is a studded vault, a roof that shuts us in

and down; but the transparent distance of sunrise and sunset has no

limit; we feel its infinity as we rejoice in its purity of light. That

this has been deeply felt by artists, is evident in their works.

'And can the sun so rise,

So bright, so rolling back the clouds into

Vapors more lovely than the unclouded sky,

With golden pinnacles and snowy mountains,

And billows purpler than the ocean's, making

In heaven a glorious mockery of the earth,

So like, we almost deem it permanent,

So fleeting, we can scarcely call it aught

Beyond a vision, 'tis so transiently

Scattered along the eternal vault; and yet

It dwells upon the soul, and soothes the soul,

And blends itself into the soul, until

Sunset and sunrise form the haunted epoch

Of sorrow and of love; which they who mark not

Know not the realm where these twin genii

(Who chasten and who purify our hearts,

So that we would not change their sweet rebukes

For all the boisterous joys that ever shook

The air with clamor) build the palaces

Where their fond votaries repose and breathe

Briefly;--but in that brief cool calm inhale

Enough of heaven to enable them to bear

The rest of common, heavy, human hours,

And dream them through in placid sufferance.'

BYRON.

No work of art in which this expression of infinity is possible, can be

very elevated without it; and in proportion to its presence it will

exalt and render impressive themes in themselves tame and trivial. If we

will but think of it, it is very strange in how many unexpected places

we shall find it lurking: for example, the painter of portraits is

unhappy without his conventional _white_ stroke under the sleeve or

beside the armchair; the painter of interiors feels like a caged bird

unless he can throw a window open or set a door ajar; the landscapist

dare not lose himself in the forest without a gleam of light under its

farthest branches, nor ventures out in the rain unless he may somewhere

pierce to a better promise in the distance, or cling to some closing gap

of variable blue above--escape from the finite--hope--infinity--by

whatever conventionalism sought--the _desire_ is the same in all.

Our ideas of beauty are intuitive, and it is only in a dim way that we

read the types, the powers for whose _immediate_ cognition we lost in

the fall; but it is certain that a _curve_ of any kind is far more

agreeable to us than a right line; may not the reason of this fact be:

every curve divides itself infinitely by its changes of direction?

What curvature is to lines, gradation is to shade and color; it is their

infinity--dividing them into an infinite number of degrees.

Such examples might be indefinitely multiplied, but having placed the

_key_ in the hands of the reader, we leave him to unlock the treasure

houses of suggestive thought, which he will find profusely lying in his

daily paths. This key will not only open for him many of the rarest

caskets in which art stores her gems, but will also unclose some of the

ineffable wonders of God's mystically tender creation. 'My son, give me

thy heart!' is written in God's own hand on everything He hath made.

'To me, the meanest flower that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.'

The absence of that mental vision which unites the visible to the

invisible is not only ruinous to the art of the present age, but also to

its faith, and, consequently, to its happiness. Thousands, feeling

themselves in a narrow world while they unceasingly long for the

infinite, rush into rash and wicked suicide, that they may thus escape

from the contradictions and complicated pangs of the finite. The rays of

light from the everlasting sun of wisdom and love are indeed forever

falling round us, but we no longer bear the prism of faith which would

decompose them for us, giving them such direction as they fall upon the

symbolic, the relative, that we might read in their three-fold splendor

the symbolized, the Absolute. The human soul was created for the

enjoyment of God, and, consequently, touches the infinite at every

point, and the health and well being of the spirit are far more

concerned in its exploration than in any of the vaunted discoveries

which it is at present making for the comfort of the body in the

material world.

As the limits of the horizon are constantly enlarging before the eyes of

one who ascends a mountain, so does the moral world, of which the

physical is but the symbol, unroll its immense perspectives of light and

love before the gaze of the rapt seeker of truth.

'Deep love lieth under

These secrets of time;

They fade in the light of

Their meaning sublime.'

The infinite is the vast background from which all life projects; upon

whose unity the immense variety of the world is sketched. As understood

or sought by the finite, it is the central fire, the burning heart of

art; it is the _last_ line in all our horizons; the _last_ shade in all

our colors; the _last_ note in all our concerts; the alpha and omega of

all true genius. It aspires in the last sigh of the mortal as he

lingeringly leaves its dim manifestations upon earth: it lightens in the

first smile of the immortal as its full fruition greets him in the

presence of his God!

'I am alpha and omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the

end. To him that thirsteth, I will give of the water of life freely.'

MRS. RABOTHEM'S PARTY.

AN EPISODE FROM FASHIONABLE LIFE.

There dwelleth in sumptuous state and in Gotham

A merchant of character surnamed Rabothem.

His wife, once a letterless rustic in Needham,

Now leadeth the circles of great Upper-Threedom.[12]

There's nothing surprising in such a transition;

For many a creature, of humbler position

In the scale of creation, can shift its condition.

For instance, the wriggling, despised pollywog

In time may become a respectable frog;

Then, perched on a stump, he may croak his disdain

At former companions, who never can gain

His present distinguished, sublime elevation,

So greatly above their inferior station.

And so, too, a worm, though the meanest of things,

Becomes a most beautiful creature with wings,

That bear it for many a sunshiny hour

Through redolent meadows, from flower to flower.

And surely if changes like these may occur,

Ye men who have reason, how could ye demur

At change in superior orders of nature?

And least in a species so sure to create your

Felicity (if it is not the reverse:

In such an event she is rather a curse).

No one, that possesses a spark of the human,

Would think of opposing the progress of woman;

But all would be happy when one of her kind

A sphere more refined and exalted should find--

Should gracefully 'merge from a chrysalis state,

To bask in the light of a loftier fate.

But (those hateful digressions, I heartily loathe 'em)

I was telling you something of Mrs. Rabothem.

She's a mouthpiece of Fashion. Whatever she wears,

The closest and carefullest scrutiny bears;

And, backed by her husband's munificent pile,

Whatever she does is accomplished in style.

A wonderful party was given one season

By this excellent dame, for the excellent reason

That wonderful parties were greatly in vogue,

And a man was accounted as worse than a rogue

Whose wife did not follow the prevalent fashion,

And make what is commonly known as 'a dash' in

The choicest society found in the city.

(That the choice is not better is more than a pity.)

The writer, who happened to be a relation

To Mrs. Rabothem, though lower in station,

Was blest in receiving a kind invitation--

A delicate note, with a delicate scent on,

Whose accurate, well-chosen sentences went on,

In gentlest of terms, to 'solicit the favor,'

Et cetera, and so on. She couldn't, to save her,

Have been any more condescending; and so

I gratefully reached the decision to go.

And yet my decision was quite a concession,

As I'll have to explain by another digression,

In which, at the cost of some time and chirography,

I'll give you a taste of an autobiography.

And in its beginning, 'tis proper to state

That, somehow, it chanced to be part of my fate

To be born far remote from the populous town,

And therefore, perhaps, I've a spice of the clown.

Be this as it may, I acquired a taste

For joys which, though simple, are equally chaste.

In rural employments expended, my years

Knew not the unnatural pleasures, nor fears,

Which fall to the fortune of one who is bred

Where men on unwholesome excitements are fed,

And horrible vices their poisons distil;

Where Peace, from her home on the verdure-crowned hill,

The whispering grove, or the tapestried mead,

With the bright troop of blessings that follow her lead,

Comes seldom to gladden the wearisome hours,

And raise to new vigor the languishing powers,

But when I arrived at the age of discretion

(I find I must hasten my rambling digression),

With the popular error my mind was deluded

That life is not life from the city excluded;

So I followed the bent of my new inclination,

With the liveliest hopes of improving my station.

'Twas easy deciding, and easy to do it;

'Tis easy, when thinking it over, to rue it.

To Gotham the writer with joy was transported,

Where people in lots, either mixed or assorted,

Are found in abundance, 'kept always on hand,'

Of every conceivable texture and brand;

Exposed at the mart and awaiting their sale,

Like the cotton that lies in the corpulent bale.

A thousand of such may be bought in a trice--

Some dearly, and some at a moderate price.

I mingled among them; I met them on 'Change,

And elsewhere, and surely it isn't so strange

If sometimes, contracting to buy or to sell,

I _should_ be contracting their habits as well.

But, though the temptations about me were rife,

I kept from the perils of 'fash'nable life,'

So that, at the time when my story begins,

I never had placed in the list of my sins

(Though often invited, declining each call)

The crime of attending a party or ball.

For, early in life, I was taught to believe

That pleasures are pitfalls prepared to deceive

By wily old Satan (who constantly tries

To catch you by throwing his dust in your eyes,

Thus, blinding his victim, securing his prize);

That the dance is a maelstrom, where sinners are whirled

Around a few times, and then suddenly hurled

From daylight to darkness, from pleasure to woe,

From terrestrial regions, to regions--below:

But now was afforded a fine opportunity

For taking some pleasure with perfect impunity;--

Ostensibly pleasing a worthy relation,

But really seeking a gratification.

I went, and, arriving at nine of the clock,

I found that the guests were _beginning_ to flock.

I could but conclude--though 'twas early, they said--

That when folks go to parties they should go--to bed.

Ere long the magnificent parlors were thronged

By radiant beauties and gents, who belonged

To the circles composed of the lofty _élite_,

Whose presumption or pride 'twere not easy to beat.

'Twas a splendid, a gorgeous, a 'glorious' sight

To be viewed in that parlor on that winter night.

There were beaux, who the finest of broadcloth were dressed in--

Invested in vestments they always invest in--

And belles, who assisted to fill up the scene

With roods upon roods of their huge crinoline.

Such flounces! they seemed to my wondering eyes

Like Alps upon Alps that in majesty rise.

The costliest jewels and handsomest laces

Imparted their charms to embellish their graces.

And the men seemed to float through the mazes of girls,

Like sharks in an ocean of mermaids and pearls.

But soon, as the evening began to advance,

A movement was made to engage in a dance;

And, being invited to join in a set,

With a young demoiselle whom I never had met,

I took a position to dance with the rest,

And soon I was doing the thing with a zest.

For an hour the divinest sensations were mine;

But then my enjoyment commenced to decline.

In halting to rest, I but wearied the more,

So I finally 'vowed that the dance was a bore.

Exhausted at length, I collapsed in a chair,

And studied the various characters there.

Together they formed a remarkable show;

For further particulars _vide_ below.

There was Trickster, a merchant of physical leanness,

Distinguished alike for his means and his meanness;

And Sharper, a lawyer, with manners as courtly,

And practice as large, as his person was portly.

There was Aderman Michaels, the head of his faction,

Who had learned, it was whispered, the rule of subtraction,

And practised it often in 'grinding his axes,'

Which helped to account for the rise in the taxes.

And there was a man with a rubicund nose,

As bright as the bud of an opening rose,

Disclosing a liking to 'live and be merry,'

With a strong fellow feeling for brandy and sherry.

And then there was one with elongated face,

Who seemed to have made a mistake in the place.

Not a jest, nor a pleasure, was known to beguile

His lugubrious countenance into a smile;

But he moved through the dance, from beginning to end,

Like a man on his way to the grave of a friend.

Again, there was Simpkins, a clerk and a fop,

Who sported a very luxuriant crop

Of whiskers, cut clearly for 'cutting a dash,'

And flanked by a stylishly twisted mustache,

Adorning the uppermost part of the gash

In his meaningless face, like a regular hedge

Of russety foliage skirting the edge

Of a cavern, containing a prominent ledge

Of rocky projections, above and below

(Though the charge was not 'cast in his teeth,' as I know).

Arrayed, with intent to astonish the vision,

In garments whose 'set' was the pink of precision;--

His chain was of workmanship costly and cunning,

And the stone on his bosom was really stunning.

The taste of which no one could doubt his possession,

Had found in his waistcoat a fitting expression;

Nor less in his neck tie, 'a neat institution,'

And collar, which threatened to do execution.

A marvel, indeed--from the soles of his boots

To the hair, that was scented and greased to its roots--

A something for silly young damsels to scan,

And sighingly say--'What a love of a man!'

And then there was one sentimental young man,

Got up on a rather irregular plan

Of features and form, with a wandering air,

A collar Byronic, and very long hair.

'Twas whispered about--'He's a genius and poet;

And as for myself, I was happy to know it,

For a package of genuine mental precocity

Is certainly always a great curiosity,

And worthy the cost and the toil of a visit--

Like Barnum's astonishing creature--'What is it?'

(A good advertisement for Phineas, that is,

And kind of the author to put it in gratis:

I hope he'll observe my benign disposition,

And send for the season a card of admission.)

Of course there was that unavoidable myth,

Who is everywhere known by the _nomen_ of Smith--

For there never was aught in the way of sensation,

From a horrible crime to a great celebration,

But that somehow, before they had time to get through with it

Mr. Smith has had something or other to do with it.

Now Smith was a sensible sort of a fellow,

With a beard that in color was nearest a yellow,

And a visage denoting his faith in the creed

That man is a creature intended to feed.

Another one still we must certainly mention--

'Tis Mr. McFudgins, who claims our attention.

In mould of plebeian he never was cast

(His caste was of gentlemen, wealthy and 'fast').

Not noted for morals, nor even sobriety,

He always had moved in the 'highest society.'

I had seen him so 'high' as to hiccough and stutter,

And once I had noticed him low in the gutter;

Yet he was a 'very respectable' man;

And into whatever excesses he ran,

His riches and impudence safely would carry him,

And plenty of ladies were dying to marry him.

The ladies assembled were wondrously fine

(Young Sentimentality called them 'divine').

So graceful and pleasing, I could but confess

Not one of the galaxy wanted address

(For dress was abundant, nor lacking in taste,

Though the waist was reduced, there was plenty of waste).

My attention was called to a dashing young widow,

Whose husband, when living, knew not what he _did_ owe;

For he helped her attempt to keep up with the fashion,

Which hurried him on to a terrible crash in

His business, which tended to shorten his life

And the means that were left to his sorrowing wife.

She, taken in charge by a wealthy relation,

Still lived in the style that befitted her station;

Displaying her charms with astonishing care,

In hopes of enticing a man to her snare,

Who, struck by her beauty, might hasten to court her,

Then marry, and afterward finely support her.

Of many, whose fortunes were said to be ample,

Miss Lily De Lusian may serve as a sample:

She'd a smatter of French, and a languishing air,

While of sense she possessed but a limited share.

She played the piano remarkably well,

And by all of her friends was considered a belle.

And perhaps it was so, for she certainly 'told,'

In the set where she moved, on account of her gold.

And then there was old Mr. Spriggins's daughter,

Who wondered that no one in marriage had sought her

(A trivial bait would have easily caught her);

And now she had reached the mysterious age

When maidens are far less attractive than sage.

By staying so long, she had come to be staid,

And appeared to be doomed to be always a maid.

The generous hostess was all in her glory--

A fact it is fair to infer _a priori_--

The costly apparel in which she paraded

Was the best to be found in the store where she traded

(The splendid establishment kept by a peer

And the ninth of a man, as is ever so clear,

If you only will notice the names on their palace--

A fact that is stated with nothing of malice;

For a Lord and a Taylor no doubt you will find

A match for two men of the average kind).

She moved through the rooms with a beautiful dignity,

Conversing with all with the greatest benignity;

Convincing her guests of a flow of geniality,

As great as the stream of her large hospitality.

Her dutiful husband was close at her side;

And, though in his house, it could scarce be denied,

He wasn't 'at home,' in the splutter and jargon,

As much as in driving an excellent bargain.

He suited his wife pretty well, for, at times,

She found he was useful to furnish 'the dimes.'

The most of his value she found in his pocket,

And now he was playing the Stick to the Rocket.

But while I was noting the forms and the faces

Of those who were present--their faults and their graces--

Reposing my arm on a volume of Tupper,

I was startled to hear the announcement of 'SUPPER.'

Rejoiced at the news of a change in the bill,

I sprang from my seat with an excellent will,

Presented my arm to a feminine guest,

And marched to a neighboring room with the rest.

O Ceres and Bacchus! would I were but able

To picture e'en faintly the scene on the table!

There was every conceivable thing, beyond question,

That could tickle the palate and ruin digestion.

Of course there were oysters in various styles,

And sandwiches ranged in appropriate piles;

And turkey was present in lavish abundance,

And of lobster there seemed to be quite a redundance.

The cakes on the board were amazingly nice--

The largest encased in their saccharine ice,

While some, that with nuts or with fruit were embellished,

Expectant appeared to be tasted and relished.

The light was reflected in many a gleam

From mountains of jelly and towers of cream,

With castles of Russes (I'd scorn to enlarge)

Which, like Yorktown, were taken without any charge.

And then there were several baskets of fruit--

Of such as were held in the highest repute--

With nuts, that in reckless profusion were stacked,

And (like most of the jokes) had already been cracked.

The liquors were all of the costliest brands

(They had all been obtained at 'respectable stands');

And as quickly were bottles deprived of champagne,

As ever were clouds of their treasures of rain.

Some lauded the Heidsick, while others concurred

In the settled opinion that 'Mumm' was the word.

The sires and the matrons, the lads and the lasses,

Were pledging each other and clicking their glasses;

And several gentlemen present were fain

Their goblets of stronger potations to drain:

On trifles they certainly never could bandy,

So great was their liking for excellent brandy.

For those who might happen to be in the throng

Whose nerves should be weak, or their principles strong,

A due preparation was graciously made

In the shape of a bowl of the best lemonade.

They ate and they drank, and they laughed and they chattered,

They simpered, and bantered, and lavishly flattered,

Till, finally, weary of such an employment,

They left for the scene of their former enjoyment.

And now, I had hoped there would be a variety,

For dancing, I thought, had been done to satiety;

But, as soon as the party reëntered the room,

My hopes were consigned to a terrible doom;

For I saw, to my horror, a body of dancers,

Who were clearly intent on performing 'The Lancers.'

Terpsichore ruled with unlimited sway,

While, moment by moment, the night wore away.

To me, 'twas an agony sadly prolonged,

To stay in that parlor, so heated and thronged,

And witness the sickening, senseless parade,

Which people, who claimed to be sensible, made.

I stood it as long as I could, and as well,

And struggled my rising emotions to quell,

But hotter my blood momentarily grew,

Till objects about me were changing their hue,

And, just as my brain was beginning to totter,

I rushed from the room for some air and some water.

Returning refreshed, my composure resumed,

I awaited the end, like a criminal doomed.

With one demoiselle I essayed to converse,

Whose sense I discovered was not worth a--purse.

Disgusted with one so insipidly brainless,

I turned from a task that was tedious and gainless,

Adapted myself to my strange situation,

And buried my mind in profound cogitation.

O Fashion, thou tyrant! adored as a god,

By such as obey thy imperious nod--

How mortals their 'sweet independence' resign,

When all that is precious they bring to thy shrine!

Thy altar they grace with the fruit of their lives,

Themselves and their fortunes, till nothing survives

To prove to the world that they ever were free;--

Their souls and their bodies they offer to thee.

And thou! how unworthy thou art of their trust!

Thou givest them nought but a damnable lust

Of silly, deceitful, contemptible show--

A lust that is stronger as older they grow.

For this they surrender their faith and their truth,

The artless, ingenuous goodness of youth,

The strength that belongs to maturity's years:

Exchanging their peace for the paltriest fears,

Lest something, they happen to do or to say,

Should not be considered exactly _au fait_;

Or lest their attempts should be wholly surpassed

By others who claim to belong to their _caste_.

Thy fiat, O Fashion, their questions decides;

Thy wisdom all needed direction provides

For spending their time in genteel dissipations,

For cutting their garments, and--poorer relations.

Controlled by thy will, they select their society;

Thou art their instructor in manners and piety.

And thus they obey the decrees of a power,

To which, in a servile allegiance, they cower--

A power that binds them in thraldom, and then

Makes puppets of women and puppies of men.

Reflections like these were absorbing my mind,

As I sat on the sofa, or partly reclined,

While promiscuous edibles recently 'bolted,'

In assiduous dancing were carelessly jolted.

The people about me my senses would strike,

In spite of the facts, as extremely alike;--

In physical aspect dyspeptic or bilious,

In manners affected, or quite supercilious,

In mind, rather flippant--of false education--

In heart, scarcely worthy of recommendation.

There was clearly a lack of the highest ability,

With a splendid array of the 'purest gentility.'

Of course I was not in condition to judge,

And some would pronounce an emphatical 'fudge'

At such an opinion as mine, and would scout it,

Insisting that I 'could know nothing about it.'

To which the narrator would humbly submit--

He has written what seemed to his mind as a fit

And truthful recountment of all that he saw,

Without a regard for the general law

For stuccoing statements, to give them, forsooth,

A pleasanter face than is worn by the truth.

The end came at last. I was glad, I avow;--

As glad--well, as glad as the reader is now,

When he knows that I'll shortly be making my bow.

The company left, and I marched in the van,

A wiser, though hardly a happier, man.

Of course there are 'morals' attached to my poem,

Though it may be a difficult matter to show 'em.

Well, first (let me see, now), the foolishest passion

Of mortals is that for obeying the fashion.

It has been, and now is, a curse to humanity,

A sinful, ridiculous species of vanity,

The very quintessence of perfect inanity,

And is likely to lead to a 'moral insanity.'

A second we'll have, and I think that will do--

(You will probably not recollect more than two):

If you have any taste for the honest and hearty,

Don't go to a GRAND METROPOLITAN PARTY.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 12: See account of the 'Prince's Ball,' given in New York,

some time during the last century.]

DIARY OF FRANCES KRASINSKA;

OR, LIFE IN POLAND DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

PREFACE.

The following work is from the pen of Clementina Tauska, probably the

most celebrated among the female writers of Poland. Her talents and

judgment were so highly appreciated by her native country, that she was

appointed to the superintendence of all the Polish schools for young

ladies, as also to that of the large establishment at Warsaw devoted to

the education of governesses.

The Diary of Frances Krasinska paints in the most lively manner the

usages, manners, and customs of Poland during the eighteenth century,

and possesses the charm of childlike _naiveté_, united to acute

observation and deep feeling. The authoress has seized upon all that is

peculiar and picturesque surrounding the heroine, and has laid bare

before us a woman's heart in all its strength and weakness, its love and

ambition, its joys and sorrows.

Frances Krasinska, the daughter of a noble house, was allied in various

ways during her life to many distinguished personages, whose names fill

a considerable space in the contemporaneous annals of Poland. Remarkable

for her beauty and intellect, she excited a passionate admiration in the

bosom of Charles, duke of Courland, prince royal, and son of the king of

Poland, Augustus III, elector of Saxony. This attachment, with its

consequences, awakened a lively interest, not only among the Poles, but

also in the various foreign courts.

The castle of Maleszow, where Frances was born, was situated in the

ancient palatinate of Sandomir, now that of Cracow. It is said to have

been a very splendid mansion, and may still be remembered by a few aged

persons, the actual building being no longer in existence. The journal

commences at Maleszow, and continues through the most eventful period of

the heroine's life, principally in and near Warsaw.

TRANSLATOR.

[We are happy to be able to offer to the readers of THE CONTINENTAL, an

excellent translation of this characteristic work, especially noteworthy

at the present time, when Poland is once more engaged in a struggle for

independence, and occupies so important a position in the political

adjustment of the civilized world.--EDS. CONTINENTAL.]

DIARY

CASTLE OF MALESZOW, Monday, _January 1st, 1759_.

Last Christmas day, only a week ago, my father commanded a large volume

to be brought him, in which he inscribed with his own hand various

public and private acts; the book is a medley of speeches, public

documents, letters, poetry, bonmots, etc., all arranged in order

according to their dates. This custom prevails among nearly all the

Polish nobility. My father showed us these records, and even read some

of them aloud to us. I can write quite well in both French and Polish,

and as I am not at all averse to the use of my pen, I think I might keep

a journal; I have been told that many of the women in France do so, and

why should I not follow their example?

I have bound together quite a large volume of blank sheets, which I will

fill with my thoughts as they arise, with minute accounts of all that

concerns me or my family, without omitting public matters. My father, a

grave and serious man, regards little else than the latter; but I, a

very ignorant young girl, may be permitted to follow the dictates of my

fancy, and the capricious guidance of my imagination; at least there

shall be neither pretension nor affectation.

To-day brings a new year, and is truly an excellent time for commencing

my journal. In this castle there will be no want of leisure. We have

already said our morning prayers, and I will finish my spiritual reading

during vespers. It has just struck ten, and I am dressed for the day,

including the arrangement of my hair. I have consequently two spare

hours before dinner. I will note down to-day my reflections upon myself:

I will speak of my family, of our house, of the republic, and will in

future detail all that may happen to any or all of us.

I was born in 1743, and am consequently sixteen years old; I received at

my baptism the name of Frances. I am quite tall; I have often been told

that I am handsome, and in truth my mirror reveals the fact that I am by

no means ill looking. My mother says, however, that 'one must give

thanks to God for such a gift, and beware of pride; for it is His

goodness, and not our merit.' My eyes and hair are black, my complexion

fair and well colored; but still I am not satisfied: I would like to be

much taller. It is true that my figure is slight and well formed, but I

have seen women of a loftier stature than myself, and I must envy them a

little, as all tell me I have attained my full height.

I belong to a very noble and ancient family, the Corvini Krasinski. God

grant that I may never sully so glorious a name by any unworthy action;

my desire is to render it still more illustrious, and I am sometimes

sorry that I am not a man, for I should then have been capable of

performing great and brilliant deeds.

My father and mother are so fully persuaded of the excellence of their

origin, that our neighbors, as well as ourselves, all know the genealogy

of our ancestors by heart. I confess, to my shame, that I am much more

conversant with it than with the succession of our kings.

But what will be the final fate of my journal? Will it live or die? Why

should it not survive through many ages, as so many letters and memoirs

written in France have done? Oh, I must pay great attention to my

studies! What a pity I have not the talent of Madame de Sevigné, or of

Madame de Motteville! Perhaps I could write my journal better in French

... But no--that would be unworthy of a Polish girl; a native of Poland,

I must write in my national tongue. It is true that French is generally

used among all our nobility, but then that is a fashion, which, like

all other fashions, may soon pass away, and I should not like to leave

such a blot upon my memory.

If these pages should escape the rats and the rage for curl papers, and

fall into the hands of any one willing to read them through, I hope the

reader will pardon my ignorance, and kindly remember that I write

without method, and am totally uninstructed in all the rules prescribed

for the keeping of a journal. I am but just sixteen, and the great

little matters now occupying so much of my attention, may in the future

seem futile and unworthy of having excited so much interest. What will a

sensible, sober-minded reader think of all the strange fancies passing

through my brain, and the wild dreams of my imagination? But let us now

return to the genealogy of my family.

[Here follows the chronological enumeration of the Krasinski family,

which we omit, as its interest is purely local, and can hence be neither

amusing nor instructive to readers not of Polish origin. The Diary thus

continues:]

Stanislaus Krasinski, starost of Nowemiasto, of Prasnysz, and of Uyscié,

is my father; and Angelica Humiecka, daughter of the celebrated palatine

of Podolia, my mother: but this branch of the Krasinskis will be extinct

at their death, for to my great sorrow I have no brother. We are four,

and all girls, Barbara, myself, Sophia, and Mary. The members of our

little court often tell me I am the prettiest, but that I do not

believe. We have received the education befitting our position as young

and noble ladies, in short, as starostines.

We are all well grown, and have been taught to hold ourselves as

straight as reeds; we are in excellent health, fair, fresh, and rosy. We

have a governess, who is charged with the care of us; we call her

madame; and when she has laced us, our waists might be spanned, as the

saying is, between one's four fingers.

Madame has taught us to courtesy easily and gracefully, and to behave

ourselves properly in the saloon; we seat ourselves on the edge of our

chairs, with our eyes fixed upon the ground, and our arms modestly

crossed.

Every one believes that we are quite ignorant, and cannot count beyond

three; they fancy, too, that we do not know how to walk, and are always

as quiet as mummies. What would they say could they see us running and

jumping in the fine summer mornings? Ah! then we make up for all this

tedious restraint; we are so joyful when our parents permit us to walk

in the woods: then we leave our frizzed hair, stays, and our high-heeled

shoes all behind us, and run about in our morning dresses like crazy

girls; we climb the mountains, and poor madame, who thinks it her duty

to follow us, soon loses her breath, halts with weary limbs, and can

neither run after us, nor call us back.

My two younger sisters and myself have never been far from our own

castle. Our longest journeys have been a visit to our aunt, the

palatiness Malachowska, who lives at Konskié, and to the village of

Piotrkowicé, which belongs to us.

When my father returned from Italy, he founded a pretty chapel in that

village in imitation of the church of Our Lady of Loretto. He has also

founded another chapel at Lissow, our parish, depending upon Maleszow.

My knowledge of the world is hence very limited. But my elder sister has

been more favored; she has journeyed to the ends of the earth; she has

been twice to Opole, visiting an aunt, the princess Lubomirska,

palatiness of Lublin; my father is most tenderly attached to his sister,

and respects her as if she were his mother.

Barbara passed a year in Warsaw at the seminary of the ladies of the

Holy Sacrament, and she is consequently much more learned than we. She

can courtesy to perfection, and holds herself so straight that it is a

real pleasure to see her; her carriage is admirable. I know that my

parents intend placing me at some seminary, and I expect every day to

see the carriage which is to bear me to Warsaw or Cracow drive up to the

door. I shall be sorry to leave the castle, I am so happy here; but my

sister Barbara found her sojourn in the convent very pleasant, and so

doubtless would I. Meanwhile I must perfect myself in French. It is

indispensable for a lady of quality, and I must also complete my

knowledge of the minuet and of music. I should at least see a great

city, and have something to remember.

As I have never had an opportunity of judging by comparison, it is

impossible for me to decide whether our castle of Maleszow be really

handsome or not; I know that it pleases me very much, but many persons

say it has a melancholy air. It is certainly large and commodious, being

four stories high, and having four towers. A ditch filled with running

water surrounds it, which ditch is crossed by a drawbridge. The

neighboring country is mountainous and well wooded.

My parents complain that their dwelling is not large enough, but then

our household is so very numerous. I said that our castle had four

floors, and each floor is thus divided: first a hall, then six rooms,

and four cabinets in the four towers. We do not all live upon the same

floor; on the first we dine, on the second we play and amuse ourselves

with the other young ladies belonging to our household, and on the

third, we have our own apartments. My parents, being no longer young,

find it irksome to go up and down stairs, but to me it is delightful,

especially before I have my stays on. I mount the balustrades, begin to

slide, and in a moment reach the bottom, without having touched a single

step.

We always have a great many visitors, and I believe that if the castle

of Maleszow were three times its present size, it would still be

crowded; even now it is so gay, animated, and lively, that our neighbors

call it the little Paris. During the winter our guests are still more

numerous; our cavalry captain does not then think it worth the trouble

to lift the drawbridge: the new arrivals pour in from morning until

night--visitors are continually coming and going. The orchestra

belonging to our castle chapel plays unceasingly, and we dance as much

as we can; it is a real pleasure to see us.

In summer we have other pastimes; we take long walks, and play various

games in the vestibule of the castle, which is very lofty, reaching to

the roof of the house, and lighted from above. It is delightfully cool

during the warmest days.

I do not believe there are many mansions in Poland surpassing ours in

magnificence. Our little court is composed of courtiers (dworzanin) and

of the household suite (platny); in other words, of many persons having

various employments in the castle: the first (the courtiers) are the

most esteemed, because they serve for the honor alone, while the others

(the suite) receive salaries; but as they are all gentlemen, they all

wear a sabre at their sides. Some few, however, are of very low

extraction, but my father says that 'a noble on his own territory (and

remember that this territory sometimes consists of but a very few square

feet) is the equal of a palatine.'

No one objects to this, however, as the suites of the great lords are

thus nobly augmented, and they can control so many additional votes in

the dietines; a circumstance of no little importance. The chief duty of

the courtiers consists in awaiting their lord's appearance in his public

apartments, where, suitably attired, they stand ready to serve him and

execute any orders he may choose to give them; but if the lord have no

command for them, they are expected to maintain the conversation as

wittily and agreeably as they can, or to play cards. They must also

accompany him in his walks, rides, drives, and visits, defend him on all

difficult occasions, always give him their votes at the dietines, and

finally, entertain him and all who belong to him whenever an opportunity

may offer.

Our little Matthias performs this last duty to perfection; he is indeed

a singular person! I have been told that all courts had formerly an

attendant of this description, and that they could not do without one.

Matthias is supposed to be stupid and devoid of reason, but he judges of

everything with an accuracy and precision that is truly wonderful; his

bonmots are inimitable. None of the courtiers have so many privileges as

he has, for he alone may speak the truth without adornment or softening.

The courtiers call him the fool, but we call him our little Matthias; he

certainly does not deserve the nickname he has received.

We have, besides, six young ladies of noble families, who live in the

castle, and are under madame's charge. Then there are two dwarfs; one is

at least forty years old, and is about the size of a child of four: he

is dressed in the Turkish fashion. The other is eighteen, and has a

charming figure: he wears the costume of a Cossack. My father often

permits him to mount upon the dining table during dinner, and he walks

among the plates and dishes as if he were in a garden.

I think I mentioned that the courtiers had no salaries; nearly all of

them belong to rich, or at least to independent families. They acquire

fine manners at our court, and their training serves as a passport to

all civil and military employments. They receive food for their horses,

and two florins a week for their grooms. They have also a servant to

wait upon them; this domestic is usually dressed in the Hungarian or

Cossack costume. Nothing amuses me more than to watch their faces while

they stand behind their masters' chairs; their eyes are fixed upon the

plates during the whole of the dinner hour; surely not an unnatural

proceeding, as their sole nourishment consists in what is left upon

their masters' plates. Our little Matthias is never tired of ridiculing

them, and makes us nearly die with laughter.

The major part of our household, however, receive salaries, and do not

sit at the table with us, except the chaplain, the physician, and the

secretary. The steward and butler are on their feet all the time we are

dining; they walk about and watch if the table be properly served; they

pour out the wine for the master of the castle and for the visitors. The

courtiers are served with wine only on Sundays and festival days. The

purveyor, the treasurer, the master of the horse, and the arm offerer

(renkodajny), whose business it is to offer his arm to the master or

mistress of the castle every time either one desires to go out, all dine

at the steward's table. The courtiers who dine at our table certainly

enjoy much honor, but little profit; they are served from the same

dishes as we, but do not eat the same things. The cook arranges the

roast meat in the form of a pyramid; at the top he places the game and

the poultry, while below are the pork and the beef, the coarse food of

the courtiers, to whom the dishes are not carried until after we have

been served, and thus the end of the table where they sit is called the

gray end.

When the dishes are first served, they are so enormous that one would

think there must be a large portion for every one; but they disappear so

rapidly that some poor courtiers have scarcely enough to give a flavor

to their bread. There are some who eat in the most incredible fashion,

and who devour all before the others have had a chance to help

themselves. On ordinary occasions, our dinner consists of four dishes;

but on Sundays and holidays, when we have visitors, from seven to

twelve dishes are placed upon the table. The young ladies, our

companions, dine with us.

The salaried courtiers are very well paid; they receive from three to

four hundred florins every year; but then my father requires that they

shall be well dressed, especially when there is a reception at the

castle. He rewards them largely when he is pleased with their services.

If one among them distinguishes himself by his zeal or his strict

attention to his duties, my father recompenses him on his name day,

either in money or in stuffs taken from his own wardrobe.

The salaried dependents are subject to the jurisdiction of the steward,

who has the right of reprimanding and punishing them. The chamberlains

are also under his command; they are gentlemen, and serve during three

years. Their term of service begins between the ages of fifteen and

twenty. When they have been guilty of any fault, the steward awards them

so many lashes with a leathern strap. A carpet is first stretched over

the floor, for the bare ground is only suitable for servants who are not

noble, and the culprit is then chastised. The steward is very severe,

and says that were he more lenient, it would be impossible to maintain

discipline or pursue a proper and efficient method of education;

severity being necessary to restrain youth within the bounds of reason.

My father has told us that there is not a single room in the castle at

Maleszow in which he has not received correction. This is doubtless the

cause of his being so very good now....

We have a dozen chamberlains in our service; one of them, Michael

Chronowski, will have finished his novitiate on Twelfth day, and the

occasion will be celebrated by certain ceremonies. It is the

chamberlains' duty to be always suitably dressed; they can enter our

apartments; they accompany us on foot or on horseback when we ride out,

and are always ready to carry our letters of invitation or our presents,

whenever we have any to send.

As for the other servants in the castle, I cannot even enumerate them; I

do not know the number of musicians, cooks, guards, Cossacks, and

waiting men and women. I can only say that five tables are spread every

day, and that two distributors (szafarz) are occupied from morning until

night in giving out all that is necessary for the kitchen. My mother is

often present at the distribution of the eatables; she carries with her

the keys of the closets in which are the spices, cordials, and

sweetmeats. Every morning the steward presents the bill of fare to my

parents, who approve or change it as they find it well or ill.

Our every-day life is regulated as follows: We rise in summer at six

o'clock, and in winter at seven. My three sisters and myself sleep in

the third story, in a large room with madame. Each of us has an iron bed

with curtains. Barbara, as the eldest, has two pillows and an eiderdown

coverlet; the rest of us have only one pillow and a woollen counterpane.

After having made a hurried toilet, we say our prayers in French, and

then begin our lessons. Our tutor formerly taught us to read, write, and

count in Polish, and the chaplain taught us our catechism; but Barbara

and I are now entirely under madame's direction; our two younger

sisters, however, still receive lessons from the tutor.

At eight we visit our parents, to wish them good morning, and take our

breakfast. In winter we eat soup made with beer, and in summer we drink

milk; on fast days we have a very good panada. After breakfast we all go

and hear mass in the chapel. Our chapel is very pretty. When the service

is ended, the chaplain says the morning prayers aloud in Latin; the

whole court repeat them; but to tell the truth, I have as yet neglected

to ask the meaning of them, and some day I must do it.

We then return to our apartment and recommence our studies. Madame makes

us write, under her dictation, lines from Malherbe, the French poet.

We have a pianoforte, and a German, who directs our orchestra, gives us

lessons; he receives three hundred florins every year. Barbara plays

quite well. After the music lesson, the hair dresser comes to arrange

our hair; he always begins with the eldest. When he has unfortunately

heard of some new fashion, we rarely escape without shedding some blood.

My hair is longer and thicker than that of my sisters, and when I sit on

the stool it sweeps the floor; the barber consequently tries all his

experiments upon my head. The present fashion pleases me exceedingly: it

is a kind of very elegant _negligé_, one portion of the hair is gathered

upon the top of the head and falls down in rich curls; the rest is in

plaits, which hang about the neck and over the shoulders. The barber

uses a half pound of powder every time he dresses my hair.

We employ two hours in making our toilette; but in order that the time

may not be entirely lost, we learn French proverbs by rote, or madame

reads aloud a new work, which is very moral and quite amusing: 'The

Child's Magazine,' by Madame de Beaumont. I cannot express how charming

I find these tales, narrated by a governess to her pupils. At noon the

Angelus is rung, and we go down to dinner, which usually lasts about two

hours; then, the weather permitting, we take a walk. When we return, we

employ ourselves with our needle, and are now engaged on a piece of

embroidery for the church at Piotrowicé. When the daylight fails us, wax

tapers are lighted, and our work is pursued without intermission. We sup

at seven in all seasons, and after supper we have leisure to do as we

please. We converse or play cards. Our little Matthias makes such

comical faces when he fails in getting the card he wishes! He certainly

has the gift of always making me laugh.

The chamberlain is sent to Warsaw once every week, and brings the

letters and papers; the chaplain reads them aloud to us, and to certain

news I pay the most particular attention. My father often reads to us

out of the old chronicles, but I must confess I am much more entertained

by the books written in French. Madame, who does not know a word of

Polish, always reads to us in French, and we thus become accustomed to

the sound of the language. My father only reads to us one evening in the

week. When the carnival comes, farewell to all reading; all then think

of nothing but of playing, dancing, and amusement. The festivals in

Warsaw must be much more splendid than those at our castle. Oh! how I

long to see the magnificent array of a great court!...

But I hear the midday bell, and must say my Angelus, smooth my hair, and

go down to dinner. I will write to-morrow all that I had no time to say

to-day.

Tuesday, _January 2d_.

I was too much occupied yesterday with merely private affairs, and now I

must dilate a little upon public matters. I should be unworthy of the

Polish name, if the interests of our dear country did not occupy my

thoughts in preference to all other subjects. I hear much conversation

upon politics, and I am very attentive to all that is said; since I have

commenced to write my journal, I find my desire to follow closely the

course of events much increased.

Augustus III, elector of Saxony, reigns at the present time over Poland

and Lithuania. He was crowned by the archbishop of Cracow on the

seventeenth of this month, twenty-five years ago. The party opposed to

his election wished to raise Stanislaus Leszczynski to the throne, but

Augustus was so powerfully supported that he triumphed over his

competitor. The virtuous Leszczynski, possessing neither money nor

soldiers, was forced to return to his good people in Lorraine, who are

very happy under his beneficent rule. It is said that the queen, who had

so strongly encouraged the king in the struggles through which he won

his throne, was truly worthy of being queen of the Poles, for she really

loved them. Mary Josephine always hated intrigue; she was mild,

charitable, and pious; she was indulgent toward her husband and

children, but most severely stern toward herself in all matters of

morals. She was in truth a model of all feminine virtues. She died in

Dresden, about two years ago. She had had fourteen children, eleven of

whom are still living, seven daughters, and four sons. I remember well

the sorrow which her death caused the Poles. Funeral services were

celebrated for her in every church in the kingdom. In our church at

Piotrowicé there was a mass at which all the poor assisted, and they

wept bitter tears while praying for their queen.

It is said that the king is of an easy temper, and leaves all to his

minister Bruhl, the minister really ruling both Poland and Saxony. The

last-mentioned country is at the present moment exposed to great

miseries. Prussia, which is in fact but a new-born state, makes the

whole of Europe tremble. A great man rules her fate. The elector of

Brandenburg raised himself to the throne in 1701 by the power of his own

will. Our republic has not yet recognized his new title as king, and now

the elector's successor is able to confer crowns upon the heads of other

states. He resists Austria, Saxony, Muscovy, and by means of forces

raised within his little kingdom, daily extends his possessions. All say

that his political capacity and knowledge of the military art are

extraordinary; besides which, he is quite learned, a philosopher, and a

great character. Many think that Poland should be ruled by a man of the

stamp of Frederic the Great, but as we are not his subjects, and as his

present position is contrary to our interests, strong fears are

entertained that he may in the future become the cause of our ruin. God

grant that Prussia, which is really but a fraction of Poland, do not one

day swallow her up!...

The men occupied in public affairs scarcely venture to speak above their

breath when they bewail the critical position of their beloved country.

One circumstance especially seems to deprive us of all hope for the

future, and that is, the apparent gradual extinction of those lofty

virtues of the olden time which formerly contributed so much to the

glory and prosperity of our country. Selfish interests seem now to have

destroyed them nearly all; the wants of the common mother are entirely

forgotten, no one thinks now except of his own personal benefit--the

general cause is nothing. The diets assemble and disperse without having

accomplished anything. The voice of Konarski and of his honorable

friends is heard in vain; they preach in a desert; the vile passions of

the wicked weigh heavily in the balance of our destinies. However, all

means of safety are not yet lost: the throne of Poland is elective; the

reigning monarch is aged; if his successor should be endowed with a

great character, if his virtues accord with the elevation of his

station, he may yet save the republic and restore it to its ancient

preponderance among nations. Our frontiers are still unbroken, and I

place all my hope in the mercy of God.

All good men and true patriots desire a king capable of commanding the

Poles. Several candidates have already been proposed, but the two who

seem to have the fairest prospects of success are Stanislaus

Poniatowski, son of the castellan of Cracow, and Charles, prince royal,

son of the reigning king. Poniatowski's father was the favorite of

Charles XII, and was much beloved by the princess Czartoryska. I cannot

tell though why my heart leans so strongly toward prince Charles.

Poniatowski is a Pole, but the other is said to possess many noble

qualities. I will here add all that I have heard and thought upon the

subject of these two candidates.

Stanislaus Poniatowski is young and very handsome, affable, and

fascinating; he has travelled much, his manners have all the elegance of

the French, and he is generally pleasing to women. He loves science and

learned men; he was more than four years in St. Petersburg in the

capacity of secretary to the embassy. Some time has elapsed since his

recall, and he is in high favor at court; hence the probability of his

future elevation.

Charles, the prince royal, is twenty-six years of age; he is the king's

third son, and is beloved by all who approach him. His figure is said to

be noble, and his face most pleasing in expression; his manners are

mild, and he is very accessible; he wins all hearts to love him. He has

lived in Poland since his infancy, and hence loves the people, and

speaks their language wonderfully well. Educated at the court of our

republic, he is neither proud nor humble, but maintains a happy medium

with every one. The king, recognizing all these qualities in his son,

sent him to many foreign courts, beginning with that of St. Petersburg.

Relying upon the aid of Muscovy, he desired that his son should make his

first essay in arms under that power; besides which, he had other ends

in view. He hoped that Charles would be made duke of Courland, a duchy

tributary to Poland. In 1737 the czarina Anna appointed the count de

Biren governor of Courland, but some years later he fell into disgrace,

and was sent to Siberia with his family. The dukedom was consequently

vacant during several years.

Our king, who had the right so to do, conferred the dignity upon his

son, but the sanction of the court of St. Petersburg was required, and

no one could have been more likely to obtain what he desired than the

prince royal himself, for the fascination of his manners had become

proverbial. He accordingly went to St. Petersburg, remaining on his way

some time at Mittau, the capital of Courland, where he succeeded in

winning the esteem and affection of the inhabitants of the duchy. The

czarina soon after confirmed the nomination of the prince royal. Her

consent was formally announced to the king of Poland during the past

year, at the time of the session of the diet. But according to the fatal

custom which so often rends our councils, that assemblage was dissolved

by a nuncio from Wolhynia named Podhorski, and the affair in which

Courland was so deeply interested was not discussed.

It then became necessary to refer it to the senate, where it occasioned

many fierce debates. The prince Czartoryski especially endeavored to

embroil the question by maintaining that the king had no right to

dispose of the duchy without the consent of the diet; that Biren could

not be degraded from the dignity conferred upon him without having been

properly tried, judged, and condemned; and finally, that the nomination

of the prince royal could only be provisional, or valid during the

lifetime of the czarina. These foolish clamors were rendered powerless

by an imposing majority; one hundred and twenty-eight white balls,

against five black ones, decided in favor of Prince Charles. The diploma

has already been presented to him by the grand chancellor of the crown,

and the ceremony of investiture takes place to-day. The rejoicings in

Warsaw must be truly magnificent, and I am quite sure that all are

delighted.

It is said that the king has grown ten years younger since the happy

termination of this affair. I cannot judge of the importance of these

events to the general welfare of the republic, but I am enchanted with

the good fortune of Prince Charles. I ask myself continually why this

matter interests me so deeply. The destiny of my country may soon depend

upon the prince, and I believe him called to avert the storm which seems

ready to burst upon Poland. I believe that he will give us better laws

and a good government. The dukedom of Courland will serve him as a

stepping stone to the throne. I am truly grieved from the bottom of my

heart that I cannot now be in Warsaw, where I should see such brilliant

fêtes, a splendid court, and Prince Charles. ... But since that is

impossible, I must content myself with drinking his health to-day at our

table.

THE LADIES' LOYAL LEAGUE