In the summer of 1840 the Doctor received a letter from Maverick which

overwhelmed him with consternation; and its revelations, we doubt not,

will, prove as great a surprise to our readers.

"My good friend Johns," he wrote, "I owe you a debt of gratitude which I

can never repay; you have shown such fatherly interest in my dear

child,--you have so guided and guarded her,--you have so abundantly

filled the place which, though it was my duty, I had never the

worthiness to fill, that I have no words to thank you. And now you have

crowned all by giving her that serene trust"----

"Not I! not I!" says the Doctor to himself,--"only God's mercy,--God's

infinite mercy!"--and he continues, "that serene trust in Heaven which

will support her under all trials. Poor child, she will need it all!"

"And that this man," pursues the Doctor meditatively, "who thinks so

wisely, should be given over still to the things of this world!"

"I hear still further,--from what sources it will be unnecessary for me

now to explain,--that a close intimacy has grown up latterly between

your son Reuben and my dear Adele, and that this intimacy has provoked

village rumors of the possibility of some nearer tie. These rumors may

be, perhaps, wholly untrue; I hope to Heaven they are, and my informant

may have exaggerated only chance reports. But the knowledge of them,

vague as they are, has stimulated me to a task which I ought far sooner

to have accomplished, and which, as a man of honor, I can no longer

defer. I know that you think lightly of any promptings to duty which

spring only from a sense of honor; and before you shall have finished my

letter I fear that you will be tempted to deny me any claim to the

title. Indeed, it has been the fear of forfeiting altogether your regard

that has kept me thus far silent, and has caused me to delay, from year

to year, that full explanation which I can no longer with any propriety

or justice withhold.

"I go back to the time when I first paid you a visit at your parsonage.

I never shall forget the cheery joyousness of that little family scene

at your fireside, the winning modesty and womanliness of your lost

Rachel, and the serenity and peace that lay about your household. It was

to me, fresh from the vices of Europe, like some charming Christian

idyl, in whose atmosphere I felt myself not only an alien, but a profane

intruder; for, at that very time, I was bound by one of those criminal

_liaisons_ to which so many strangers on the Continent are victims. Your

household and your conversation prompted a hope and a struggle for

better things. But, my dear Johns, the struggle was against a whole

atmosphere of vice. And it was only when I had broken free of

entanglement, that I learned, with a dreary pang, that I was the father

of a child,--my poor, dear Adele!"

The Doctor crumpled the letter in his hand, and smote upon his

forehead. Never, in his whole life, had he known such strange revulsion

of feeling. With returning calmness he smooths the letter upon his desk,

and continues:--

"I expect your condemnation, of course; yet listen to my story

throughout. That child I might have left to the tender mercies of the

world, might have ignored it, and possibly forgotten its existence. Many

a man, with fewer stains on his conscience than I have, would have done

this, and met the world and old friends cheerily. But then the memory of

you and of your teachings somehow kindled in me what I counted a

worthier purpose. I vowed that the child should, if possible, lead a

guileless life, and should no way suffer, so far as human efforts could

prevent, for the sins of the parents. The mother assented, with what I

counted a guilty willingness, to my design, and I placed her secretly

under the charge of the old godmother of whom Adele must often have

spoken.

"But I was no way content that she should grow up under French

influences, and to the future knowledge (inevitable in these scenes) of

the ignominy of her birth. And if that knowledge were ever to come, I

could think of no associations more fitted to make her character stanch

to bear it than those that belong to the rigid and self-denying virtues

which are taught in a New England parish. Is it strange that I recurred

at once to your kindness, Johns? Is it strange that I threw the poor

child upon your charity?

"It is true, I used deceit,--true that I did not frankly reveal the

truth; but See how much was stake! I knew in what odium such trespasses

were held in the serenity of your little towns; I knew, that, if you,

with Spartan courage, should propose acceptance of the office, your

family would reject it. I knew that your love of truth would be

incapable of the concealments or subterfuges which might be needed to

protect the poor child from the tongue of scandal. In short, I was not

willing to take the risk of a repulse. 'Such deceit as there may be,' I

said, 'is my own. My friend Johns can never impute it as a sin to

Adele.' I am sure you will not now. Again, I felt that I was using

deceit (if you will allow me to say it) in a good cause, and that you

yourself, when once the shock of discovery should be past, could never

reprimand yourself for your faithful teachings to an erring child, but

must count her, in your secret heart, only another of the wandering

lambs which it was your duty and pleasure to lead into the true fold.

Had she come to you avowedly as the child of sin, with all the father's

and mother's guilt reeking upon her innocent head, could you have

secured to her, my dear Johns, that care and consideration and devotion

which have at last ripened her Christian character, and made her proof

against slander?"

Here the Doctor threw down the letter again, and paced up and down the

room.

"The child of sin! the child of sin! Who could have thought it? Yet does

not Maverick reason true? Does not Beelzebub at time reason true? Adaly!

my poor, poor Adaly!"

"It seemed to me," the letter continued, "that there might possibly be

no need that either you or my poor child should ever know the whole

truth in this matter; and I pray (with your leave) that it maybe kept

from her even now. You will understand, perhaps, from what I have said,

why my visits have been more rare than a fatherly feeling would seem to

demand: to tell truth, I have feared the familiar questionings of her

prattling girlhood. Mature years shrink from perilous inquiry, I think,

with an instinct which does not belong to the freshness of youth.

"But from your ears, in view of the rumors that have come to my hearing,

I could not keep the knowledge longer. I cannot, dear Johns, read your

heart, and say whether or not you will revolt at the idea of any

possible family tie between your son and my poor Adele. But whatever

aspect such possibility may present to your mind, I can regard it only

with horror. If I have deceived you, the deceit shall reach no such

harm as this. Whatever your Christian forgiveness or your love for Adele

(and I know she is capable of winning your love) may suggest, I can

never consent that any stain should be carried upon your family record

by any instrumentality of mine. I must beg, therefore, that, if the

rumor be true, you use all practicable means, even to the use of your

parental authority, in discountenancing and forbidding such intimacy. If

necessary to this end, and Reuben be still resident at the parsonage, I

pray you to place Adele with Mrs. Brindlock, or other proper person,

until such time as I am able to come and take her once more under my own

protection.

"If you were a more worldly man, my dear Johns, I should hope to win

your heartier cooperation in my views by telling you that recent

business misfortunes have placed my whole estate in peril, so that it is

extremely doubtful if Adele will have any ultimate moneyed dependence

beyond the pittance which I have placed in trust for her in your hands.

Should it be necessary, in furtherance of the objects I have named, to

make communication of the disclosures in this letter to your son or to

Miss Johns, you have my full liberty to do so. Farther than this, I

trust you may not find it necessary to make known the facts so harmful

to the prospects and peace of my innocent child.

"I have thus made a clean breast to you, my dear Johns, and await your

scorching condemnation. But let not any portion of it, I pray, be

visited upon poor Adele. I know with what wrathful eyes you, from your

New England standpoint, are accustomed to look upon such wickedness; and

I know, too, that you are sometimes disposed to 'visit the sins of the

fathers upon the children'; but I beg that your anathemas may all rest

where they belong, upon my head, and that you will spare the motherless

girl you have taught to love you."

Up and down the study the Doctor paced, with a feverish, restless step,

which in all the history of the parsonage had never been heard in it

before.

"Such untruth!" is his exclamation. "Yet no, there has been no positive

untruth; the deception he admits."

But the great fact comes back upon his thought, that the child of sin

and shame is with him. All his old distrust and hatred of the French are

revived on the instant; the stain of their iniquities is thrust upon his

serene and quiet household. And yet what a sweet face, what a confiding

nature God has given to this creature conceived in sin! In his

simplicity, the good Doctor would have fancied that some mark of Cain

should be fixed on the poor child.

Again, the Doctor had somewhere in his heart a little of the old family

pride. The spinster had ministered to it, coyly indeed by word, but

always by manner and conduct. How it would have shocked the stout Major,

or his good mother, even, to know that he had thus fondled and fostered

the vagrant offspring of iniquity upon his hearth! A still larger and

worthier pride the Doctor cherished in his own dignity,--so long the

honored pastor of Ashfield,--so long the esteemed guide of this people

in paths of piety.

What if it should appear, that, during almost the entire period of his

holy ministrations, he had, as would seem, colluded with an old

acquaintance of his youth--a brazen reprobate--to shield him from the

shame of his own misdeeds, and to cover with the mantle of

respectability and with all the pastoral dignities this French-speaking

child, who, under God, was the seal of the father's iniquities?

As he paced back and forth, there was a timid knock at the door; and in

a moment more, Adele, blooming with health, and radiant with hope, stood

before him. Her face had never beamed with a more wondrous frankness and

sweetness.

BOOKS FOR OUR CHILDREN

The war is over, yet our fight is not through; and we always, in this

life of ours, and especially in this new country and eventful age, have

trouble enough to keep our eyes open when they ought to sleep, and our

hands busy when they have earned the right to rest. Several knotty

questions already begin to try us sorely, although we are confident that

the knots can be untied by skillful fingers without calling upon the

sword to cut them. We shall settle the Reconstruction problem, the

Negro, the Debt, John Bull and Louis Napoleon, all in due time, and

without war. But there is a question to be settled which comes nearer

home to each family, and which distances all others in magnitude and

interest:--What shall we do with our children? how train and teach them

in body and mind, by schools and books, by play and work, for that

marvellous American life that is now opening to us its new and eventful

chapter in the history of man? The Slaveholders' Rebellion is put down;

but how shall we deal with the never-ceasing revolt of the new

generation against the old? and how keep our Young America under the

thumb of his father and mother without breaking his spirit or blighting

his destiny? Our brave old flag has swept the waters of all Secession

craft, and our iron-clad Monitors do not flinch in fear of the model

fleets of France and England mustered at Cherbourg. But what standard

rules over our children and youth? and what Monitors are keeping watch

over our countless schools and playgrounds? Our people have risen to a

new and mighty sense of our national life, and the thousands of

Americans who are now returning from Europe say that the tide there has

wholly turned in our favor, and Americans are too proud to boast of

their country, and are quite safe in leaving her to speak for herself.

But how are we recruiting the ranks of the nation from the fresh blood

and spirits, the new impulses and passions of childhood? And how does

our legion of juvenile infantry compare with the young legions of

England, France, Germany, Russia, or Italy? These are grave questions,

not to be approached without misgiving, yet not by any means with

mistrust, much less with despair. We of course do not propose to try to

answer all or any of them now, but must be content with throwing out a

few plain thoughts upon the kind of intellectual food we are giving our

children, and especially upon the kind of juvenile literature that we

ought to encourage. We do not claim for the American child any exemption

from the common lot, nor make him out to be above or below the human

nature to which he belongs, in common with the children of the Old

World. He is a chip of the old block; and that old block is from the old

trunk that has been growing for ages, is a great deal older than the

father or mother, as old as mankind; and each new comer into the field

bears with him some traces or remains of all the traits and dispositions

and liabilities that have appeared in the ancestors and become the

heritage of the race. Not only the is the American child of the same

nature as his European contemporary, but he is born into very much of

the same life, the same general circumstances of climate, scenery,

morals, and religion, and surely into much of the same nursery talk and

juvenile amusement, not excepting books. "Mother Goose" has a nursery

catholicity wherever the English language is spoken, that is denied to

any other book; and fruitful as America has been and is in children's

books, we have not yet apparently added a single one to the first rank

of juvenile classics, and have distanced AEsop, Bunyan, De Foe,

Edgeworth, and the old fairy story-tellers, as little as we have

distanced Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, and Goethe in

the higher imagination.

It may be that the children's books that have been most characteristic

of our native authors have been in important respects a mistake, and the

"Quarterly Review," not without reason, assailed them some years ago in

two articles of considerable sagacity and much patient study. But we

have outgrown them now, and see the error that afflicted them. We have

ceased to think it the part of wisdom to cross the first instincts of

children, and to insist upon making of them little moralists,

metaphysicians, and philosophers, when great Nature determines that

their first education shall be in the senses and muscles, the affections

and fancy, rather than in the critical judgment, logical understanding,

or analytic reason. Peter Parley--Heaven rest his soul!--has gone to his

repose, and much of his philosophizing and moralizing is buried deeper

than his dust; yet Peter himself lives, and will live, in the graphic

histories, anecdotes, sketches of life and Nature, and the rich

treasures of pictorial illustration, that have blessed the eyes and

ears, the hearts and imaginations of our children. He was wisest when he

least thought of being wise, and weakest when he tried to be strong. We

are not likely to repeat his mistakes, and our best new juvenile

literature is too loyal to the old standards and to common-sense to

undertake to make a precocious reasoning monster of the dear little

child whom God is asking us to help onward in the unfolding of his

senses and the observation of the world and its scenes and people.

We must be willing to own that our America is a child of the ages, and

to give our children a full share of their birthright as heirs of the

juvenile treasures of all nations. Judaea must still give her sacred

stories, that charm youth as much, as they edify maturity; Arabia loses

nothing of the enchantment of her marvellous tales in the clear light of

this nineteenth century, but makes her dreams dearer, as science and

business insist that we shall not dream at all; the old classic times

shall still teach us in the fables of AEsop, and the romantic ages shall

be with us in the legends of fairies and elves, dwarfs and giants,

saints and angels, that are constantly coming up with faces new or old;

the Protestant Reformation shall speak to our little folks in the lives

of the martyrs and in "Pilgrim's Progress"; the age of modern adventure

shall never tire in "Robinson Crusoe"; the new secular era of ethical

schooling shall not lose its power so long as Maria Edgeworth finds a

printer; nor will the didactic school of writers of juvenile religious

books die out so long as Hannah More stands by our Sunday schools and

Tract Societies, and keeps their piety and ethics from swamping

themselves wholly in dogmatism and dulness.

Yet whilst we are thus to acknowledge and use the old treasures, we are

none the less bound to have a juvenile literature of our own; and

because we are possessed by the truly catholic spirit that appreciates

all good things, we are more likely to have a full and fair growth from

the good seed that takes root in our own nurseries. What that new growth

shall be we do not presume to predict, for it cannot be fully known

until it comes up and speaks for itself; yet it is not presumption to

undertake to say what are the essential conditions of its rise and the

probable traits of its character. It must grow out of our civilized

Christian mind under the peculiar circumstances and dispositions of our

children, according to the great laws of God, as they bear upon our

sensibilities, tastes, faculties, and associations. It is already

showing unmistakable signs of its quality, and none the less so,

although we must allow that its best specimens are fugitive stories,

stray poems, and magazine pieces, rather than any conspicuous

master-works of literature that rival the old standards.

The American child is undoubtedly in some respects peculiar alike in

temperament, disposition, and surroundings. He is somewhat delicate and

sensitive in organization, and not as tough and thick-skinned, surely,

as his English cousins. He grows up in the midst of excitement, with an

average amount of privilege and prosperity unknown heretofore to the

mass of children in any community. Our children are generally supplied

with pocket-money to an extent unknown in the good old times; and the

books that circulate among them at holiday seasons, and are sometimes

found in school and Sunday libraries, often have a richness and beauty

that were never seen fifty years ago on the parlor tables or shelves of

parents. Reading begins very early among us; and the universal hurry of

the American mind crowds children forward, and tempts them in pleasure,

as in study and work, to rebel at the usual limitations of years, and

push infancy prematurely into childhood, childhood into youth, and youth

into maturity. The spirit of competition shows its head unseasonably,

and there is a precocious fever of ambition among those who are taught

almost in the cradle to feel that here the race for the highest prizes

is open to all, and the emulation of the school is the forerunner of the

rivalry of business, society, and politics. Our heads are apt to be much

older than our shoulders, and English critics of our juvenile literature

say that much of it seems written for the market and counting-room

rather than for the nursery and play-ground. Yet we are not disposed to

quarrel with the American child, or put him down at the feet of the pet

children of Europe. He is a precious little creature, with rare

susceptibilities and powers, whose very perils indicate high aptitudes,

and whose great exposures should move us to temper not a little our pity

for his failings with admiration for his excellence. Our boys and girls

have done nobly, and the nation which they have now become may well

prove its greatness by new wisdom and care for the boys and girls who

are yet to grow up men and women and become the nation that is to be.

There are vital questions that meet us at the very outset of the

discussion:--What are children? and what is the difference between them

and grown people? and what should be the difference in the reading

provided for the two? Some persons seem to think and speak of children

as a distinct order of beings, and not as a part of mankind. The simple

truth is, that they are men and women in _nature_, but not in

_development_. All that is _actual_ in the mature mind is _potential_ in

them, and there is no theory more absurd than that which affirms that

the adult powers and dispositions are wholly factitious, and education

makes us what we are, instead of simply bringing out what is born in us.

The great human mind is in the little child as well as in the

gray-headed sage; but it has not come forth into activity and

consciousness. The most complete culture, instead of obliterating

diversities of natural talent and tendency, does but develop them more

effectually; and our great masters and schools are more memorable for

the strongly pronounced minds and wills that go forth from them than for

any monotony of mediocre scholars or uniformity of paragons of genius.

True culture brings out the common human mind in all, and the rare gifts

that are in the few, and vindicates the force of Nature by the

perfection of its art. Our juvenile literature should proceed upon this

idea, and treat its little readers as representatives of the great human

mind on its way to its full rights and powers and quite true to its high

birthright, as far as it puts forth its prerogative.

What error, then, can be greater than to take it for granted that

children have no mind, because they have not had time and means to bring

out their whole mind? As far as it goes, is not their mind the great

human intelligence? and even in its lispings and stumblings, does it not

give hints and promises of the majestic powers that are on the way to

development? Children are, indeed, treated and written about, sometimes,

as if they were _little fools_, and any baby-talk or twaddle were good

enough for them; but we are inclined to believe that they are in the

main _great fools_ who make this mistake, and so sadly libel God's

handiwork. In fact, it is probably safe to say, that, so far as their

mind works, it works with more intensity and quickness than the adult

mind; for they are fresh and unworn, and they put their whole life into

the first play of their faculties. They do not know many things, indeed,

and require constant instruction; but their _intelligence_ is by no

means as defective as their _knowledge_, but is as sharp and unwearied

as their insatiate appetite for food. Talk nonsense to children,

forsooth! Rather talk it to anybody else,--far rather to the pedants and

worldlings who have fooled away their common-sense by burying thought

under book-dust, or by hiding nature under shams and artifices. Children

not only want the true thing said to them, but want to have it said in a

true and fitting way; and no language pleases them so much as the pure,

simple speech which the good old Bible uses, and which all our great

masters of style follow. Any one who has seen the quizzical expression

of a score or two of bright little children in listening to some old or

young proser, who is undertaking to palm off upon them his platitudes

for wisdom and his baby-talk for simplicity, cannot remain long in doubt

as to which party leans most towards the fool.

There is, indeed, great difference between tween the mind of children

and of adults, and literature should respect and provide for this

difference,--although it is true that the best books please and edify

both, and the nursery and parlour can meet in pretty full fellowship

over "AEsop's Fables," "Robinson Crusoe," and "Pilgrim's Progress," if

not over the "Vicar of Wakefield" and Edgeworth's "Popular Tales." The

great distinction between juvenile and adult literature is a very

obvious and natural one. Not to discuss now the absence of business

cares and ambition, children, in their normal, healthful state, know

nothing of love as a passion, whilst it is the conspicuous feature of

adult society, and the motive of all romances for readers of advanced

years, and especially for all who have just passed into the charmed

borders of adult life. I do not say, indeed, that children are to know

nothing of love, or that it should be shut out of their habitual

reading; for love is a part of human life, and is organized into manners

and institutions, and sanctioned and exalted by religion. As a fact, and

as sustaining great practical relations, love is to be treated freely in

juvenile literature, but not as a passion. Every boy and girl who reads

the Prayer-Book, and hears every-day talk, and sees what is going on in

the world, knows that men and women marry, and young people fall in love

and are engaged. This is all well, and children's stories may tell

freely whatever illustrates the home usages and social customs of the

people; but the more the love senses and passions are left to sleep in

their sacred and innocent reserve within their mystic cells, so much the

better for the child whilst a child, and so much the better for the

youth when no more a child, and Nature betrays her great secret, and the

charming hallucinations of romance open their fascinations and call for

the sober counsels of wisdom and kindness.

But if love, as a passion, does not belong to our juvenile literature,

its place is fully supplied by a power quite as active and

marvellous,--the mighty genius of play. Try to read a three-volume novel

of love and flirtation to a set of well-trained, healthfully organized

children, or try them with a single chapter that describes the raptures

or the jealousies, and gives the letters and dialogues, of the enamored

couple, who are destined, through much tribulation, to end their griefs

at the altar, not of sacrifice, but of union, and you will find your

auditors ready to go to sleep or to run away. The girls may, indeed,

brighten up, if a famous dress or set of jewels, a great party or grand

wedding, is described; and the boys may open their eyes, if the story

turns upon a smart horse-race or a plucky fight. Children, in their

normal state, do not enter into the romance of the passion, nor should

they be trained to it. They may be bred in all courtesy and refinement

without it; and the girls and boys may be true to their sex, and have

all the gentle manners that should come from proper companionship. The

boys will not want a certain chivalry in the schoolroom, play-ground,

and parlor, and the girls will learn from instinct as well as discipline

the delicacy that is their charm and shield. Nothing can be worse than

to ply them with love-stories, or throw them into the false society that

fosters morbid sentiments and impulses, and gives them the passions

without the judgment and control of men and women. Kind Providence, in

the gift of play, has mercifully averted this danger, and brought our

children into a companionship that needs no precocious passion to give

it charm.

How wonderful it is, this instinct for play, and how worthy of our

careful and serious study! It is the key to the whole philosophy of

juvenile literature: for we take it for granted that books for children

belong to the easy play, rather than to the hard work of life; and that

they are an utter failure, if they do not win their way by their own

charms. Here, in fact, we distinguish between juvenile literature and

school-books. School-books are for children, indeed, but not for them

alone, but for the teacher also, and they are to be as interesting as

possible; yet they are not for play, but for work, and it is best to be

quite honest at the outset, and let the little people know that study is

work and not play, and that their usual gift-books are not for study

mainly, but for entertainment. In this way, study is the more patient

and comforting, and reading more free and refreshing. Children make the

distinction very shrewdly, and are quite willing to pore carefully over

their school-lessons, but are very impatient of lessons that are sugared

over with pleasantry, and detect the pedagogue under the mask of the

playmate. They are willing to have their pills sugared over, but do not

like to have them called sugar-plums.

Playfulness does not require the sacrifice of good sense or sound

principle or serious purpose, but subjects them to certain conditions;

and there is no form in which exalted characters or sacred truths are

brought home more effectually to the hearts both of young and old than

in the stones and dramas that make life speak for itself, and play

themselves into the affections and fancy. It does require that the laws

of attention and emotion, the unities and the varieties of aesthetic art,

shall be observed; and as soon as the book is dull, and offers no

sparkling waters nor fair flowers nor tempting fruits to lure the

flagging reader over its intervals of dusty road or sandy waste, it is a

failure, and not what it pretends to be. With children, play demands

more the _varieties_ than the _unities_ of Art; and their first

education deals with those spontaneous sensibilities and impulses that

insist upon being played upon freely, with little regard to exact

method. Those sports are most pleasing to young children, especially,

that touch the greatest number of the keys of sensation and will, and

make them answer to the pulse of Nature and companionship. One may learn

a deal of philosophy from the most popular nursery rhymes; and Mother

Goose, good old soul, who has sung many of those strange old verses to

children for a thousand years, if the antiquaries are not mistaken,

proves to us that the way to please little ears and eyes is by

presenting a variety of images in the easiest succession, without any

attempt at intellectual method or logical unity. Her style is that of

the kaleidoscope, and she turns words and pictures over as rapidly, and

with as little method, as that instrument shows in its handling of

colors. As the child's development advances, the varieties need more of

the unities, and the favorite sports rise into more method and sequence,

nearer the rule of actual life: marbles give way to cricket, and

blindman's bluff yields to chess. For a long time, however, anything

like severe intellectual unity of plan is irksome, and even the toys

that require careful thought and embody extraordinary workmanship are

less agreeable than the rude playthings that can be knocked about at

will, and made to take any shape or use that the changing mood or fancy

may decree. The rag baby is more popular with the little girl than the

mechanical doll; and a tin pot, with a stick to drum upon it, pleases

little master more than the elegant music-box. As long as the child's

mind is in a chaos of unsorted sensations and impulses, he does not like

plays that are so utterly in advance of his position as to present a

perfect order that calls up Kosmos within him before its time. There is

a good Providence in this necessity, and Nature is servant of God in her

attempt to touch and voice the separate keys of the great organ, before

she tunes them together to the great harmonies and symphonies that are

to be performed. She is busy with each key first by itself; and there is

something winning, as well as healthful, in that intensity which

attaches to the sensations and impulses of children in this their first

education. They are finding themselves and the universe at once; and the

marvellous zest with which they see and feel and hear and handle

whatever comes within their reach is a kind of rapturous wedding of the

senses to the world of Nature and life, and a prelude to that more

interior and spiritual union that is to be.

Our best books for children must not forget this great fact, and they

must present great variety of impression and images in such sequence and

unity as the young reader's mind can easily appreciate and enjoy. The

great juvenile classics are rich illustrations of this law, and they

have a "variety" as "infinite" as Cleopatra's, whilst they aim at a

purpose far more true and persistent than hers, and do not end with a

broken life and a serpent's sting. They are invariably _sensuous_ in

their imagery, but not _sensual_; and the great masters of the nursery

well know that the senses are not made to be earth-born drudges of the

flesh, but godly ministers of the spirit, and their true office is to

open the gates of the whole world of truth and goodness and beauty. All

who know the ways of true children will understand the distinction

between _sensual_ and _sensuous_ impression. Hold up before a true child

a ripe, red apple, or a bunch of purple grapes, and how the eye sparkles

and the hand reaches forth! But the desire expressed is half aspiration

and half appetite, and the dainty rises into ideal beauty under this

dear little aspirant's gaze, and is seen in a light quite other than

that which falls on a gourmand's table, after he is gorged with viands

and wine, and ends his gross banquet with a dessert of fruit which his

stupid and uncertain eye can hardly distinguish. The child is

_sensuous_, the gourmand is _sensual_. We should give the benefit of

this distinction to all of our authors who abound in graphic description

and encourage pictorial illustration. The senses should be skilfully

appealed to, and the higher spheres of the reason, conscience, and

affections may thus be effectually reached. Pictures, whether in words

or lines or colors, are symbols; and the child's mind is a rare master

of all the true symbolism of Nature and Art. There is no end to the

range of susceptibility in children to impressions from this source; and

all the chords of feeling and impulse, pathos and humor, seem waiting

and eager to be played upon. Instead of needing to be laboriously

schooled to pass from one emotion or mental state to another, they go by

alternations as easy as the changing feet that pass from a walk to a run

and back again, as if change were the necessity of Nature, not the work

of the striving will.

Our books for children should study this great law, and be free to go

"from grave to gay, from gentle to severe," as is the habit of all high

literature. They should not be afraid to let the child have a good

hearty laugh before or after telling him that he should study or should

pray. It is odd to see the rapid transitions through which very

well-behaved children will go in an instant; and I have known a child

who has been romping in a complete gale of innocent roguery to burst

into tears, if not duly called to the table in time to hear grace said,

and, after clucking with the hens, crying as if heart-broken over a dead

bird. I went last spring with a friend to witness a great religious

festival at a distinguished ecclesiastical community,--the festival of

Corpus Christi, with its gorgeous procession. We were admitted through

the private entrance, and saw the altar-boys in the entry waiting in

caps and robes to lead off the pageant. They were in high spirits, and

pulling and nudging each other like boys of the usual mould. Soon they

appeared in church with folded hands, chanting the "Lauda Sion" before

the uplifted Host as demurely as if they had walked down from the

pictures of seraphs on the walls. "What little hypocrites!" the

Philistines at once cry; "what a trick, thus to affect to be pious,

after those pranks of mischief!" I say, No such thing; and although not

personally given to Corpus-Christi ceremonials as a devotee, I interpret

such transitions as I would interpret the conduct of my own children who

came from a frolic on the lawn or a game of croquet to a Scripture

lesson or the household worship. Let us be true to human nature, and

give every genuine faculty and impulse fair play. Our American

literature can afford to be more generous to children than it has been,

and let them gambol on the play-ground none the less from keeping the

library open for grave reading, and the chapel not closed in ghostly

gloom.

Our books for children must be truthful as well as interesting; and we

are quite strong in the belief that they should be true to all our just

American ideas. It cannot be expected, indeed, that our story-tellers,

poets, and biographers for the young will desert their pleasant arts,

and inflict upon their readers prosy essays upon American law, society,

reform, and progress. What we should expect and demand is, that our

children should be brought up to regard American principles as matters

of course; and their books should take these principles for granted, and

illustrate them with all possible interest and power. They should be

trained in the belief that here the opportunities for education, labor,

enterprise, freedom, influence, and prosperity are to be thrown open to

all; and the highest encouragement should be given to every one to seek

the chief good. We are not afraid to say that our children's books

should be thoroughly republican, or, in the best sense of the word,

democratic, and should aim to give respect to the genuine man more than

to his accidents, and to rank character above circumstance. They should

rebuke the ready American failings, the haste to be rich, the passion of

ostentation, the rage for extravagance, the habit of exaggeration, the

impatience under moderate means, the fever for excitement, and the great

disposition to subordinate the true quality of life to the quantity of

appliances of living. They should especially assail the failing to which

our children are tempted,--the morbid excitement, precocious

sensibility, and airs and ambition to which they are prone. Some of our

best juvenile books, especially some of our best magazine writers, do

great service in this way; and it has seemed to use that we may well

learn wisdom from the juvenile literature of France in this matter, and

translate with profit many of those excellent books for children which

do not for a moment countenance the idea that they are to have any

hot-bed forcing, or have their senses and fancy turn upon the passions

and cares that belong to mature years. Christendom has no cause for

gratitude to France for its adult romantic literature; and it is an

offence to American as to English homes for its free notions of married

life. But the French literature for the young is quite another matter,

and may teach purity and wisdom to the parents who allow their sons and

daughters to ape the ways and often the follies of men and women, and

spoil the flower and fruit of maturity by forcing open the tender bud of

childhood and youth.

We may take quite as serious lessons against the wrong of schooling the

young in precocious care and calculation, and setting a bounty upon the

too ready covetousness of our people. We spend freely, indeed, as well

as accumulate eagerly; but there is a fearful over-estimate of wealth

amongst us, in the absence of other obvious grounds of distinction; and

the evil is nurtured sometimes from childhood. Such books as "The Rich

Poor Man and the Poor Rich Man" do vast good; and it is very important

that our sons and daughters should have a loving, helpful, cheerful,

devout childhood, a true age of gold, to look back upon and ever to

remember, without the taint of Mammon-worship that multiplies care,

blasts prosperity with inordinate desires, and curses adversity by

making it out to be the loss of the supreme good, and little short of

hell. It is well to take very high ground with them, and train them to

know and enjoy the supreme treasures that are open to them all, to make

them observers and lovers of Nature and Art, and to take it for granted

that the best gifts of God and humanity are freely offered to every true

life. Our magnificent country should be held before them as their

rightful heritage, and its flowers, plants, trees, minerals, animals,

lakes, rivers, seas, mountains, should be made a part of every child's

property. What observers of Nature, in its uses and beauty, bright

children are, and how much may be made of their aptness by good books

and magazines! I confess, for my own part, that I never saw and enjoyed

Nature truly until I learned to see it through a bright child's eyes.

Good Providence gave us our little farm and our little May at about the

same time; and the child has been the priestess of our domain, and has

made spring of our autumn, May of our September. She noticed first only

bright colors and moving objects and striking sounds; but with what zest

she noticed them, and jogged our dull eyes and ears! Then she observed

the finer traits of the place, and learned to call each flower and tree,

and even each weed, by name, and to join the birds and chickens in their

glee. She gathered bright weeds as freely as garden-flowers, and, with

larger wisdom than she knew, came shouting and laughing with a lapful of

treasures, in which the golden-rod or wild aster, the violet or

buttercup, the dandelion or honeysuckle, were as much prized as the pink

or larkspur, the rose or lily. Darling seer, how much wiser and better

might we be, if we had as open eye for loveliness and worth within and

without the inclosures of our pride and our pets! I called the first

rustic arbor that I built by her name; and May's Bower, on its base of

rock, with solid steps cut in the granite by a faithful hand, and with a

sight of the distant sea through its clustering vines, is to us a good

symbol of childhood, as observer, interpreter, and lover of Nature. When

I see in a handsome book or magazine for children any adequate sketch of

natural scenes and objects, I am grateful for it as a benefaction to

children, and a help to them in their playful yearning to read that

elder alphabet of God.

How much power there is in the elements of the beautiful that so abound

in the universe, and what capacity in children for enjoying them,

especially in our American children, may we not say! The constitution of

Americans is in some respects delicate, and shows great susceptibility

in early life, and capability of aesthetic culture. Our children are

vastly wiser and happier by being taught to distinguish beauty from

tinsel pretence, and to see the difference between the fine and

superfine. The whole land groans in ignorance of this distinction; and

the most extravagant outlay for children and adults is made for dress

and furniture, toys and ornaments, that are an abomination to true

taste. We may begin the reform at the beginning, and apply the ideas of

the truly beautiful in the books and magazines that we put before our

children. We can make Preraphaelites of them of the right kind, by

training their eye, not to love bald scenes and ghostly figures, but to

appreciate natural form, feature, and color, and composition, and so

possess their senses and fancy with the materials and impressions of

loveliness, that, when the constructive reason or the ideal imagination

begins to work, it will work wisely and well, and not only dream fair

visions and speak and write fair words, but carve true shapes, and plan

noble grounds, and rear goodly edifices for dwelling, or for study, art,

humanity, or religion. The child that learns to see the beautiful has

the key of a blessed gate to God's great temple, and can find everywhere

an entrance to the shrine. What a new and higher Puritanism will come,

when we learn to apply pure taste to common affairs, and carry out all

the laws of truth and beauty, as the old saints carried out the letter

of the Bible! The day is coming, and is partly come. Do not many

New-Yorkers look upon the Central Park as being, with its waters and

flowers and music for all, as good a commentary on the Sermon on the

Mount as any in the Astor Library? and does not solid Boston regard its

great organ as a part of that great interpretation of the Divine Mind

which Cotton and Winthrop sought only in the sacred book? Give us a

thirty years' fair training of our children in schools and reading,

galleries and music-halls, gardens and fields, and our America, the

youngest among the great nations, will yield to none the palm of

strength or of beauty; and as she sits the queen, not the captive, in

her noble domain, her children, who have learned grace under her

teaching, shall rise up and call her blessed.

In claiming thus for our children's books this embodiment of wholesome

truth in beautiful forms, we are not favoring any feeble

_dilettanteism_, or sacrificing practical strength to pleasant fancy.

Nay, quite the contrary; for it is certain that truth has power,

especially with the young, only when it is so embodied as to show itself

in the life, and to speak and act for itself. We believe in dynamic

reading for children; and we now make a distinct and decided point of

this, quite positive, as we are, that books are a curse, if they merely

excite the sensibilities and stimulate the nerves and brain, and bring

on sedentary languor, and do not stir the muscles, and quicken the will,

and set the hand and foot to work and play under the promptings of a

cheerful heart. Undoubtedly many children read too much, and spindle

legs and narrow chests and dropsical heads are the sad retribution upon

the excess. But the best books are good tonics, and as refreshing and

strengthening as the sunshine and the sea-water, the singing-circle, and

the play-ground. Let us encourage this tonic quality in our juvenile

literature, and favor as much of sound muscular morality and religion as

stories of adventure, sketches of sports, hints of exercise and health,

with all manner of winning illustrations, can give. It is well that Dio

Lewis is now on a mission to our Young Folks, and after exhorting

adults, and especially the clergy, to repent of their manifold sins

against the body, he is now carrying the gospel of health to children;

and I have been quite amused at having him quoted against my own

physical transgressions, by his most attentive reader, the youngest

member of the family. The cure should not stop there; but the tonic

force should knock at every door of the mental and moral faculties, and

touch every chord of latent power. A fresh, free, dauntless will should

breathe through every page, and be the invigorating air of our juvenile

literature, and be as essential to its strength as truth is to its light

and beauty to its color. The great social, civil, and religious forces

that move the nation should be brought to bear upon the young, not by

learned essays or by ambitious philosophizing, but by living

portraitures and taking life-sketches, stirring songs and ballads. A

good home story can express as much of the law and economy of the

household as a chapter of Paley or Wayland. Our girls and boys will feel

the great pulse-beat of patriotism and loyalty more free, by following

the brave old flag through perils to final peace, in graphic sketches of

our history, from Washington's times to Lincoln's, from the days of

Greene and Putnam to those of Sherman and Grant, than from any learned

lectures on the Constitution, or abridgments of Kent and Story. Those

more universal and spiritual forces that bind us to our race and to God

are surely not to be ignored in books for children, difficult as it is

to present them adequately; and the absence of a national church makes

religion so various in its ideas and forms as not to offer that ready

and common symbolism that makes the cross as expressive as the flag to

some nations, and binds the home and country to the altar. But our best

writers are finding the way to touch the chords of supreme religion in

the young, and the nation is fast developing a faith and worship that

meet the wants of youthful feeling and fancy better than catechisms and

lectures. Our children have a much more genial church nurture now than

their parents had, and the worship in their chapels is sometimes more

impressive than that in the churches. I confess to great regret that we,

who are now in our prime, had so little joy and action in connection

with our early religious impressions, and wish better things for our

children, and delight to see the signs of amendment. Our best books are

helping it on, and bringing poetry and art, as well as good sense and

devout faith, to the rescue of our boys and girls from the prosy

pedantry that forgets that the religion of the Bible itself did not

begin in the dry letter, but was a rich and various life with Nature and

among men, before it was made into a book.

All moving forces, whether domestic, social, civil, or religious, reach

children most effectually through personal influence; and not only do

they imitate the examples, but they seem to imbibe or breathe in the

spirit of their associates and teachers. Hence the importance of having

our best people write for children, and give them the precious ministry

of all their high qualities of mind and heart. The little readers may

not take in the whole of the influence consciously at once, but they are

more receptive than they know, and take in the grace of refined manner

and pure culture, even as they take diseases, without being aware of the

fact at the time. Is it not well to treat them in their relation to

human life as God treats them in their relation to the universe? He puts

before them the broad earth and the glorious heavens from the first, and

He does not strike off a toy edition of Nature to come down to little

eyes and ears. Children look upon the whole universe at once, and their

first impressions store up truths that years may interpret, but cannot

exhaust. Why not throw open the best minds, and their earth and heaven

of earthly sense and starry wisdom, with equal generosity to the young,

and put them into communication with the best writers and thinkers of

the land? They will not take the whole sense and spirit of the talk or

story in at once, but they will have a certain impression or germinal

seed of it within; and even before they can interpret or explain what

they have learned, they will feel and enjoy and apply most of its

meaning and power. Especially do they take in more than they know of the

higher manifestations of moral and spiritual life; and a good story of a

true soul, or an earnest sermon or devout prayer, goes deeper into their

minds and hearts than they can understand, and they may have a great

deal of religion before they know a word of theology.

In view of this assimilating force of example and personal character, it

is cheering to note the number of our first-class writers who are giving

their pens and studies to our children. The authors who figure on the

list of contributors to our leading juvenile magazine need not hide

their heads before any staff of contributors to any periodical in the

country; and they do not seem to lose their wisdom or their wit in

getting down from their stately heights to chat and romp with the boys

and girls who come thronging to meet them. It is a good sign for our

American letters; and I am not ashamed to say, that, after reading some

of the numbers of that monthly, and talking over the remainder with a

bright child of six, and as bright a girl of eighteen, I felt somewhat

envious of the position of those writers, and wondered whether I could

write anything that the rising millions of American children would be

eager to read. Who might not be envious of the distinction, and which of

our poets may not be proud to walk in the steps of Whittier, and sing

loving words for the nursery and play-ground, after ringing the

liberty-bell and sounding the bugle-call of liberty through the nation?

We close these cursory thoughts by presenting one idea that seems to us

of the highest importance, although it may strike others as far-fetched

or fanciful. It refers to the start that our children are to take in

life, or, rather, to the ground from which they are to start. Their

destiny depends, of course, upon what they make of themselves in their

career; but does it not also depend upon their starting-ground, and is

there not something dreary in the frequent remark that we can make

anything of ourselves, and the implication that we are nothing at all at

the outset? The old civilization reversed this and the great question

was not, What shall a man make of himself? but, What is his _status_?

and his family or national birthright was more urged than his individual

enterprise. Now I am not fighting against our American individualism, or

expecting to establish a new national caste; yet may I not hint that it

would be well, if our children were brought up in such sense of their

native privilege, worth, and respectability as to start upon a solid

ground of loyalty and reliance, and to go forth into the world with the

feeling, that, whilst they have much to win, they have also much to

hold? I would not have them bred in Jewish exclusiveness or pride; yet

even that is better than no sense of birthright at all. How striking and

suggestive is that trait in the life of one of the most benevolent and

liberal-minded of our American Israelites, who, when his leg was broken,

and his physician advised amputation, stoutly refused to submit to the

knife, and said that he would rather die first, since he was of the

tribe of Levi, and none of that tribe were allowed to enter the

sanctuary with mutilated limbs! A plucky son of Abraham indeed; and his

pluck would be worthy of our imitation, if we insisted on such a

_status_ of manly integrity as to refuse to do any wrong to our manhood,

on the ground of its destroying our position and selling our birthright.

We do need certainly some deeper sense of our personal and national

worth at the outset: and our children should be trained to look upon

themselves as heirs of the ages, children of Providence, and bound to

keep the priceless trust confided to them. A cheerful home should love

them before they can return the love, a great nation guard over

themselves, and a broad and exalted and genial and helpful church should

be mother to them before they know how to interpret her care; and the

golden light of the first home should shine upon them as but the faint,

earthly gleam of that uncreated light that kindles every rational

intelligence, and sends it into the world, as if, "trailing clouds of

glory," we came "from God who is our home." We ask our writers for

children to throw this cheerful radiance upon the outset of their

pilgrimage, and relieve the sore pressure of care, and the anxious

burden of never ceasing responsibility, and the force of incessant

temptation, by the great and blessed conviction that we start from the

supreme good, and, if we go away from it, we not only come short of a

precious prize, but we forfeit a sacred birthright. All the ages,

nations, leaders, sages, heroes, apostles, have endowed us and our

children with a priceless heritage; and we are not to start in life as

if we were a set of beggars, aliens, slaves, or heathen. Rome has

thought to bless and enrich our America by putting the land under the

watch of the immaculate and supernatural Mother. I will not stop now to

fight against Rome, but will be content to say that our children have

from God a peculiar guardianship from the natural mother who bore them,

and from that natural humanity which is the daughter of God and the

recipient of all natural and supernatural graces. Mystical as this

thought may seem, when stated in general terms, every genuine American

poem and story is full of its meaning; and our best juvenile literature

is making it our household faith and love. We shall see good days, when

our children start from the true home feeling, and a sacred memory joins

hands with a brave and cheerful hope. Our good old mothers thought so;

and our books are good as they repeat their wisdom and renew their love.

We might weary our readers, if we tried to say what is in our minds of

the American mother in history, and the ideal mother that should charm

our books and pictures; but no more now.

DIOS TE DE.[1]

In the green and shadowy woodpath,

Where the Fly-bird's[2] golden hue,

Like a shower of broken fire,

Lights the forests of Peru,

'Mid primeval sward and tree,

Lives the bird, DIOS TE DE.

There the Indian hunter roaming

Softly through the massive shade,

By the Laurel and Cinchona

And the thick-leaved Balsam made,

Halts beneath the canopy

At the sounds, DIOS TE DE.

And the bow unbent reposes,

And the poisoned arrows rest,

And a gush of solemn feeling

Thrills with awe the savage breast,

While the bird unharmed and free

Rocks and sings, DIOS TE DE.

If the name of God thus dropping

From the preacher of the wild,

In the solitude of Nature,

Wraps with awe the forest child,--

What a meaning deep have we

In the bird, DIOS TE DE!

FOOTNOTES:

[1] "May God give thee."

[2] _Trochilas Chrysurus._

MODE OF CATCHING JELLY-FISHES.

Not the least attractive feature in the study of these animals is the

mode of catching them. We will suppose it to be a warm, still morning at

Nahant, in the last week of August, with a breath of autumn in the haze,

that softens the outlines of the opposite shore, and makes the horizon

line a little dim. It is about eleven o'clock, for few of the

Jelly-Fishes are early risers; they like the warm sun, and at an earlier

hour they are not to be found very near the surface. The sea is white

and glassy, with a slight swell, but no ripple, and seems almost

motionless as we put off in a dory from the beach near Saunders's Ledge.

We are provided with two buckets: one for the larger Jelly-Fishes, the

Zygodactyla, Aurelia, etc.; the other for the smaller fry, such as the

various kinds of Ctenophorae, the Tima, Melicertum, etc. Besides these,

we have two nets and glass bowls, in which to take up the more fragile

creatures that cannot bear rough handling. A bump or two on the stones

before we are fairly launched, a shove of the oar to keep the boat well

out from the rocks along which we skirt for a moment, and now we are

off. We pull around the point to our left and turn toward the ledge,

filling our buckets as we go. Now we are crossing the shallows that make

the channel between the inner and outer rocks of Saunders's Ledge. Look

down: how clear the water is, and how lovely the sea-weeds above which

we are floating! dark brown and purple fronds of the Ulvae, and the long

blades of the Laminaria with mossy green tufts between. As we issue from

this narrow passage we must be on the watch, for the tide is rising, and

may come laden with treasures, as it sweeps through it. A sudden cry

from the oarsman at the bow, not of rocks or breakers ahead, but of "A

new Jelly-Fish astern!" The quick eye of the naturalist of the party

pronounces it unknown to zoologists, undescribed by any scientific pen.

Now what excitement! "Out with the net!--we have passed him! he has gone

down! no, there he is again! back us a bit." Here he is floating close

by us; now he is within the circle of the net, but he is too delicate to

be caught safely in that way; while one of us moves the net gently

about, to keep him within the space inclosed by it, another slips the

glass bowl under him, lifts it quickly, and there is a general

exclamation of triumph and delight;--we have him! And now we look more

closely. Yes, decidedly he is a novelty as well as a beauty (_Ptychogena

lactea_, A. Ag.). Those white mossy tufts for ovaries are unlike

anything we have found before, and not represented in any published

figures of Jelly-Fishes. We float about here for a while, hoping to find

more of the same kind, but no others make their appearance, and we keep

on our way to East Point, where there is a capital fishing-ground for

Medusae of all sorts. Here two currents meet, and the Jelly-Fishes are

stranded, as it were, along the line of juncture, able to move neither

one way nor the other. At this spot the sea actually swarms with life:

one cannot dip the net into the water without bringing up Pleurobrachia,

Bolina, Idyia, Melicertum, etc., while the larger Zygodactyla and

Aurelia float about the boat in numbers. These large Jelly-Fishes

produce a singular effect as one sees them at some depth beneath the

water; the Aureliae, especially, with their large disks, look like pale

phantoms wandering about far below the surface; but they constantly

float upward, and if not too far out of reach, one may bring them up by

stirring the water under them with the end of the oar.

When we passed an hour or so floating about just beyond East Point, and

have nearly filled our buckets with Jelly-Fishes of all sizes and

descriptions, we turn and row homeward. The buckets look very pretty as

they stand in the bottom of the boat with the sunshine lighting up their

living contents. The Idyia glitters and sparkles with ever-changing

hues; the Pleurobrachiae dart about, trailing their long, graceful

tentacles after them; the golden Melicerta are kept in constant motion

by their quick, sudden contractions; and the delicate, transparent Tima

floats among them all, not the less beautiful because so colorless.

There is an unfortunate Idyia, who, by some mistake, has got into the

wrong bucket, with the larger Jelly-Fish, where a Zygodactyla has

entangled it among his tentacles and is quietly breakfasting upon it.

[Illustration: Ptychogena lactea.]

During our row the tide has been rising, and as we near the channel of

Saunders's Ledge, it is running through more strongly than before, and

at the entrance of the shallows a pleasant surprise is prepared for us:

no less than half a dozen of our new friends, (the Ptychogena, as he has

been baptized,) come to look for their lost companion perhaps, await us

there, and are presently added to our spoils. We reach the shore heavily

laden with the fruits of our morning's excursion.

The most interesting part of the work for the naturalist is still to

come. On our return to the Laboratory, the contents of the buckets are

poured into separate glass bowls and jars; holding them up against the

light, we can see which are our best and rarest specimens; these we dip

out in glass cups and place by themselves. If any small specimens are

swimming about at the bottom of the jar, and refuse to come within our

reach, there is a very simple mode of catching them. Dip a glass tube

into the water, keeping the upper end closed with your finger, and sink

it till the lower end is just above the animal you want to entrap; then

lift your finger, and as the air rushes out the water rushes in,

bringing with it the little creature you are trying to catch. When the

specimens are well assorted, the microscope is taken out, and the rest

of the day is spent in studying the new Jelly-Fishes, recording the

results, making notes, drawings, etc.

Still more attractive than the rows by day are the night expeditions in

search of Jelly-Fishes. For this object we must choose a quiet night;

for they will not come to the surface if the water is troubled. Nature

has her culminating hours, and she brings us now and then a day or night

on which she seems to have lavished all her treasures. It was on such a

rare evening, at the close of the summer of 1862, that we rowed over

the same course by Saunders's Ledge and East Point described above. The

August moon was at her full, the sky was without a cloud, and we floated

on a silver sea; pale streamers of the aurora quivered in the north, and

notwithstanding the brilliancy of the moon, they, too, cast their faint

reflection in the ocean. We rowed quietly along past the Ledge, past

Castle Rock, the still surface of the water unbroken, except by the dip

of the oars and the ripple of the boat, till we reached the line off

East Point, where the Jelly-Fishes are always most abundant, if they are

to be found at all. Now dip the net into the water. What genie under the

sea has wrought this wonderful change? Our dirty, torn old net is

suddenly turned to a web of gold, and as we lift it from the water,

heavy rills of molten metal seem to flow down its sides and collect in a

glowing mass at the bottom. The truth is, the Jelly-Fishes, so sparkling

and brilliant in the sunshine, have a still lovelier light of their own

at night; they give out a greenish golden light, as brilliant as that of

the brightest glow-worm, and on a calm summer night, at the spawning

season, when they come to the surface in swarms, if you do but dip your

hand into the water, it breaks into sparkling drops beneath your touch.

There are no more beautiful phosphorescent animals in the sea than the

Medusae. It would seem that the expression, "rills of molten metal,"

could hardly apply to anything so impalpable as a Jelly-Fish, but,

although so delicate in structure, their gelatinous disks give them a

weight and substance; and at night, when their transparency is not

perceived, and their whole mass is aglow with phosphorescent light, they

truly have an appearance of solidity which is most striking, when they

are lifted out of the water and flow down the sides of the net.

The various kinds present very different aspects. Wherever the larger

Aureliae and Zygodactylae float to the surface, they bring with them a dim

spreading halo of light, the smaller Ctenophorae become little shining

spheres, while a thousand lesser creatures add their tiny lamps to the

illumination of the ocean: for this so-called phosphorescence of the sea

is by no means due to the Jelly-Fishes alone, but is also produced by

many other animals, differing in the color as well as the intensity of

their light; and it is a curious fact that they seem to take possession

of the field by turns. You may row over the same course which a few

nights since glowed with a greenish golden light wherever the surface of

the water was disturbed, and though equally brilliant, the

phosphorescence has now a pure white light. On such an evening, be quite

sure, that, when you empty your buckets on your return and examine their

contents, you will find that the larger part of your treasures are small

Crustacea (little shrimps). Of course there will be other phosphorescent

creatures, Jelly-Fishes, etc., among them, but the predominant color is

given by these little Crustacea. On another evening the light will have

a bluish tint, and then the phosphorescence is principally due to the

Dysmorphosa.

Notwithstanding the beauty of a moonlight row, if you would see the

phosphorescence to greatest advantage, you must choose a dark night,

when the motion of your boat sets the sea on fire around you, and a long

undulating wave of light rolls off from your oar as you lift it from the

water. On a brilliant evening this effect is lost in a great degree, and

it is not until you dip your net fairly under the moonlit surface of the

sea that you are aware how full of life it is. Occasionally one is

tempted out by the brilliancy of the phosphorescence, when the clouds

are so thick, that water, sky, and land become one indiscriminate mass

of black, and the line of rocks can be discerned only by the vivid flash

of greenish golden light, when the breakers dash against them. At such

times there is something wild and weird in the whole scene, which at

once fascinates and appalls the imagination; one seems to be rocking

above a volcano, for the surface around is intensely black, except

where fitful flashes or broad waves of light break from the water under

the motion of the boat or the stroke of the oars. It was on a night like

this, when the phosphorescence was unusually brilliant, and the sea as

black as ink, the surf breaking heavily and girdling the rocky shore

with a wall of fire, that our collector was so fortunate as to find in

the rich harvest he brought home the entirely new and exceedingly pretty

little floating Hydroid, described under the name of Nanomia. It was in

its very infancy, a mere bubble, not yet possessed of the various

appendages which eventually make up its complex structure; but it was

nevertheless very important to have seen it in this early stage of its

existence, since, when a few full-grown specimens were found in the

autumn, which lived for some days in confinement and quietly allowed

their portraits to be taken, it was easy to connect the adult animal

with its younger phase of life, and thus make a complete history.

Marine phosphorescence is no new topic, and we have dwelt too long,

perhaps, upon a phenomenon that every voyager has seen, and many have

described; but its effect is very different, when seen from the deck of

a vessel, from its appearance as one floats through its midst,

distinguishing the very creatures that produce it; and any account of

the Medusae which did not include this most characteristic feature would

be incomplete.

ADELAIDE ANNE PROCTER.

In the spring of the year 1853, I observed, as conductor of the weekly

journal, "Household Words," a short poem among the proffered

contributions, very different, as I thought, from the shoal of verses

perpetually setting through the office of such a periodical, and

possessing much more merit. Its authoress was quite unknown to me. She

was one Miss Mary Berwick, whom I had never heard of; and she was to be

addressed by letter, if addressed at all, at a circulating-library in

the western district of London. Through this channel, Miss Berwick was

informed that her poem was accepted, and was invited to send another.

She complied, and became a regular and frequent contributor. Many

letters passed between the journal and Miss Berwick, but Miss Berwick

herself was never seen.

How we came gradually to establish at the office of "Household Words"

that we knew all about Miss Berwick, I have never discovered. But we

settled somehow, to our complete satisfaction, that she was governess in

a family; that she went to Italy in that capacity, and returned; and

that she had long been in the same family. We really knew nothing

whatever of her, except that she was remarkably business-like, punctual,

self-reliant, and reliable; so I suppose we insensibly invented the

rest. For myself, my mother was not a more real personage to me than

Miss Berwick the governess became.

This went on until December, 1854, when the Christmas number, entitled

"The Seven Poor Travellers," was sent to press. Happening to be going to

dine that day with an old and dear friend, distinguished in literature

as "Barry Cornwall," I took with me an early proof of that number, and

remarked, as I laid it on the drawing-room table, that it contained a

very pretty poem, written by a certain Miss Berwick. Next day brought me

the disclosure that I had so spoken of the poem to the mother of its

writer, in its writer's presence; that I had no such correspondent in

existence as Miss Berwick; and that the name had been assumed by Barry

Cornwall's eldest daughter, Miss Adelaide Anne Procter.

The anecdote I have here noted down, besides serving to explain why the

parents of the late Miss Procter have looked to me for these poor words

of remembrance of their lamented child, strikingly illustrates the

honesty, independence, and quiet dignity of the lady's character. I had

known her when she was very young; I had been honored with her father's

friendship when I was myself a young aspirant; and she had said at home,

"If I send him, in my own name, verses that he does not honestly like,

either it will be very painful to him to return them, or he will print

them for papa's sake, and not for their own. So I have made up my mind

to take my chance fairly with the unknown volunteers."

Perhaps it requires an editor's experience of the profoundly

unreasonable grounds on which he is often urged to accept unsuitable

articles--such as having been to school with the writer's husband's

brother-in-law, or having lent an alpenstock in Switzerland to the

writer's wife's nephew, when that interesting stranger had broken his

own--fully to appreciate the delicacy and the self-respect of this

resolution.

Some verses by Miss Procter had been published in the "Book of Beauty,"

ten years before she became Miss Berwick. With the exception of two

poems in the "Cornhill Magazine," two in "Good Words," and others in a

little book called "A Chaplet of Verses," (issued in 1862 for the

benefit of a Night Refuge,) her published writings first appeared in

"Household Words" or "All the Year Round."

Miss Procter was born in Bedford Square, London, on the 30th of October,

1825. Her love of poetry was conspicuous at so early an age, that I have

before me a tiny album, made of small note-paper, into which her

favorite passages were copied for her by her mother's hand before she

herself could write. It looks as if she had carried it about, as another

little girl might have carried a doll. She soon displayed a remarkable

memory and great quickness of apprehension. When she was quite a young

child, she learned with facility several of the problems of Euclid. As

she grew older, she acquired the French, Italian, and German languages,

became a clever piano-forte player, and showed a true taste and

sentiment in drawing. But as soon as she had completely vanquished the

difficulties of any one branch of study, it was her way to lose interest

in it and pass to another. While her mental resources were being

trained, it was not at all suspected in her family that she had any gift

of authorship, or any ambition to become a writer. Her father had no

idea of her having ever attempted to turn a rhyme, until her first

little poem saw the light in print.

When she attained to womanhood, she had read an extraordinary number of

books, and throughout her life she was always largely adding to the

number. In 1853 she went to Turin and its neighborhood, on a visit to

her aunt, a Roman Catholic lady. As Miss Procter had herself professed

the Roman Catholic faith two years before, she entered with the greater

ardor on the study of the Piedmontese dialect, and the observation of

the habits and manners of the peasantry. In the former she soon became a

proficient; and on the latter head, I extract from her familiar letters,

written home to England at the time, two pleasant pieces of description.

A BETROTHAL.

"We have been to a ball, of which I must give you a description. Last

Tuesday we had just done dinner at about seven, and stepped out into the

balcony to look at the remains of the sunset behind the mountains, when

we heard very distinctly a band of music, which rather excited my

astonishment, as a solitary organ is the utmost that toils up here. I

went out of the room for a few minutes, and on my returning, Emily

said,--

"'Oh! that band is playing at the farmer's near here. The daughter is

_fiancee_ to-day, and they have a ball.'

"I said,--

"'I wish I was going!'

"'Well,' replied she, 'the farmer's wife did call to invite us.'

"'Then I shall certainly go,' I exclaimed.

"I applied to Madame B., who said she would like it very much, and we

had better go, children and all. Some of the servants were already gone.

We rushed away to put on some shawls, and put off any shred of black we

might have about us, (as the people would have been quite annoyed, if we

had appeared on such an occasion with any black,) and we started. When

we reached the farmer's, which is a stone's throw above our house, we

were received with great enthusiasm; the only drawback being, that no

one spoke French, and we did not yet speak Piedmontese. We were placed

on a bench against the wall, and the people went on dancing. The room

was a large whitewashed kitchen, (I suppose,) with several large

pictures in black frames, and very smoky. I distinguished the 'Martyrdom

of Saint Sebastian,' and the others appeared equally lively and

appropriate subjects. Whether they were Old Masters or not, and if so,

by whom, I could not ascertain. The band were seated opposite us. Five

men, with wind instruments, part of the band of the National Guard, to

which the farmer's sons belong. They played really admirably, and I

began to be afraid that some idea of our dignity would prevent my

getting a partner; so, by Madame B.'s advice, I went up to the bride,

and offered to dance with her. Such a handsome young woman! Like one of

Uwins's pictures. Very dark, with a quantity of black hair, and on an

immense scale. The children were already dancing, as well as the maids.

After we came to an end of our dance, which was what they call a

Polka-Mazourka, I saw the bride trying to screw up the courage of

_fiance_ to ask me to dance, which, after a little hesitation, he did.

And admirably he danced, as indeed they all did,--in excellent time, and

with a little more spirit than one sees in a ball-room. In fact, they

were very like one's ordinary partners, except that they wore ear-rings

and were in their shirt-sleeves, and truth compels me to state that they

decidedly smelt of garlic. Some of them had been smoking, but threw away

their cigars when we came in. The only thing that did not look cheerful

was, that the room was only lighted by two or three oil-lamps, and that

there seemed to be no preparation for refreshments. Madame B., seeing

this, whispered to her maid, who disengaged herself from her partner,

and ran off to the house; she and the kitchen-maid presently returning

with a large tray covered with all kinds of cakes, (of which we are

great consumers and always have a stock,) and a large hamper full of

bottles of wine, with coffee and sugar. This seemed all very acceptable.

The _fiancee_ was requested to distribute the eatables, and a bucket of

water being produced to wash the glasses in, the wine disappeared very

quickly,--as fast as they could open the bottles. But elated, I suppose,

by this, the floor was sprinkled with water, and the musicians played a

Monferrino, which is a Piedmontese dance. Madame B. danced with the

farmer's son, and Emily with another distinguished member of the

company. It was very fatiguing,--something like a Scotch reel. My

partner was a little man, like Pierrot, and very proud of his dancing.

He cut in the air and twisted about, until I was out of breath, though

my attempts to imitate him were feeble in the extreme. At last, after

seven or eight dances, I was obliged to sit down. We stayed till nine,

and I was so dead beat with the heat that I could hardly crawl about the

house, and in an agony with the cramp, it is so long since I have

danced."

A MARRIAGE.

"The wedding of the farmer's daughter has taken place. We had hoped it

would have been in the little chapel of our house; but it seems some

special permission was necessary, and they applied for it too late.

They all said, 'This is the Constitution. There would have been no

difficulty before!'--the lower classes making the poor Constitution the

scapegoat for everything they don't like. So, as it was impossible for

us to climb up to the church where the wedding was to be, we contented

ourselves with seeing the procession pass. It was not a very large one;

for, it requiring some activity to go up, all the old people remained at

home. It is not the etiquette for the bride's mother to go, and no

unmarried woman can go to a wedding,--I suppose for fear of its making

her discontented with her own position. The procession stopped at our

door, for the bride to receive our congratulations. She was dressed in a

shot silk, with a yellow handkerchief, and rows of a large gold chain.

In the afternoon they sent to request us to go there. On our arrival, we

found them dancing out-of-doors, and a most melancholy affair it was.

All the bride's sisters were not to be recognized, they had cried so.

The mother sat in the house, and could not appear; and the bride was

sobbing so, she could hardly stand. The most melancholy spectacle of

all, to my mind, was, that the bridegroom was decidedly tipsy. He seemed

rather affronted at all the distress. We danced a Monferrino,--I with

the bridegroom, and the bride crying the whole time. The company did

their utmost to enliven her, by firing pistols, but without success; and

at last they began a series of yells, which reminded me of a set of

savages. But even this delicate method of consolation failed, and the

wishing good-bye began. It was altogether so melancholy an affair, that

Madame B. dropped a few tears, and I was very near it,--particularly

when the poor mother came out to see the last of her daughter, who was

finally dragged off between her brother and uncle, with the last

explosion of pistols. As she lives quite near, makes an excellent match,

and is one of nine children, it really was a most desirable marriage, in

spite of all the show of distress. Albert was so discomfited by it that

he forgot to kiss the bride, as he had intended to, and therefore went

to call upon her yesterday, and found her very smiling in her new house,

and supplied the omission. The cook came home from the wedding declaring

she was cured of any wish to marry; but I would not recommend any man to

act upon that threat, and make her an offer. In a couple of days we had

some rolls of the bride's first baking, which they call Madonna's. The

musicians, it seems, were in the same state as the bridegroom; for, in

escorting her home, they all fell down in the mud. My wrath against the

bridegroom is somewhat calmed by finding that it is considered bad luck,

if he does not get tipsy at his wedding."

* * * * *

Those readers of Miss Procter's poems who should suppose from their tone

that her mind was of a gloomy or despondent cast would be curiously

mistaken. She was exceedingly humorous, and had a great delight in

humor. Cheerfulness was habitual with her; she was very ready at a sally

or a reply; and in her laugh (as I remember well) there was an unusual

vivacity, enjoyment, and sense of drollery. She was perfectly

unconstrained and unaffected; as modestly silent about her productions

as she was generous with their pecuniary results. She was a friend who

inspired the strongest attachments; she was a finely sympathetic woman,

with a great accordant heart and a sterling noble nature. No claim can

be set up for her, thank God, to the possession of any of the

conventional poetical qualities. She never, by any means, held the

opinion that she was among the greatest of human beings; she never

suspected the existence of a conspiracy on the part of mankind against

her; she never recognized in her best friends her worst enemies; she

never cultivated the luxury of being misunderstood and unappreciated;

she would far rather have died without seeing a line of her composition

in print than that I should have maundered about her here as "the Poet"

or "the Poetess."

With the recollection of Miss Procter, as a mere child and as a woman,

fresh upon me, it is natural that I should linger on my way to the close

of this brief record, avoiding its end. But even as the close came upon

her, so must it come here, and cannot be staved off.

Always impelled by an intense conviction that her life must not be

dreamed away, and that her indulgence in her favorite pursuits must be

balanced by action in the real world around her, she was indefatigable

in her endeavors to do some good. Naturally enthusiastic, and

conscientiously impressed with a deep sense of her Christian duty to her

neighbor, she devoted herself to a variety of benevolent objects. Now it

was the visitation of the sick that had possession of her; now it was

the sheltering of the houseless; now it was the elementary teaching of

the densely ignorant; now it was the raising up of those who had

wandered and got trodden under foot; now it was the wider employment of

her own sex in the general business of life; now it was all these things

at once. Perfectly unselfish, swift to sympathize, and eager to relieve,

she wrought at such designs with a flushed earnestness that disregarded

season, weather, time of day or night, food, rest. Under such a hurry of

the spirits, and such incessant occupation, the strongest constitution

will commonly go down; hers, neither of the strongest nor the weakest,

yielded to the burden, and began to sink.

To have saved her life then, by taking action on the warning that shone

in her eyes and sounded in her voice, would have been impossible,

without changing her nature. As long as the power of moving about in the

old way was left to her, she must exercise it, or be killed by the

restraint. And so the time came when she could move about no longer, and

took to her bed.

All the restlessness gone then, and all the sweet patience of her

natural disposition purified by the resignation of her soul, she lay

upon her bed through the whole round of changes of the seasons. She lay

upon her bed through fifteen months. In all that time her old

cheerfulness never quitted her. In all that time not an impatient or a

querulous minute can be remembered.

At length, at midnight on the 2d of February, 1864, she turned down a

leaf of a little book she was reading, and shut it up.

The ministering hand that had copied the verses into the tiny album was

soon around her neck; and she quietly asked, as the clock was on the

stroke of one,--

"Do you think I am dying, mama?"

"I think you are very, very ill to-night, my dear."

"Send for my sister. My feet are so cold! Lift me up."

Her sister entering as they raised her, she said, "It has come at last!"

and, with a bright and happy smile, looked upward, and departed.

Well had she written,--

"Why shouldst thou fear the beautiful angel, Death,

Who waits thee at the portals of the skies,

Ready to kiss away thy struggling breath,

Ready with gentle hand to close thine eyes?

Oh, what were life, if life were all? Thine eyes

Are blinded by their tears, or thou wouldst see

Thy treasures wait thee in the far-off skies,

And Death, thy friend, will give them all to thee."

BEYOND.

From her own fair dominions,

Long since, with shorn pinions,

My spirit was banished:

But above her still hover, in vigils and dreams,

Ethereal visitants, voices, and gleams,

That forever remind her

Of something behind her

Long vanished.

Through the listening night,

With mysterious flight,

Pass those winged intimations:

Like stars shot from heaven, their still voices fall to me;

Far and departing, they signal and call to me,

Strangely beseeching me,

Chiding, yet teaching me

Patience.

Then at times, oh! at times,

To their luminous climes

I pursue as a swallow!

To the river of Peace, and its solacing shades,

To the haunts of my lost ones, in heavenly glades,

With strong aspirations

Their pinions' vibrations

I follow.

O heart, be thou patient!

Though here I am stationed

A season in durance,

The chain of the world I will cheerfully wear;

For, spanning my soul like a rainbow, I bear,

With the yoke of my lowly

Condition, a holy

Assurance,--

That never in vain

Does the spirit maintain

Her eternal allegiance:

Through suffering and yearning, like Infancy learning

Its lesson, we linger; then skyward returning,

On plumes fully grown

We depart to our own

Native regions!

CLEMENCY AND COMMON SENSE.

A CURIOSITY OF LITERATURE; WITH A MORAL.

_Instabile est regnum quod non elementia firmat.

Incidis in Scyllam, cupiens vitare Charybdim._

Here are two famous verses, both often quoted, and one a commonplace of

literature. That they have passed into proverbs attests their merit both

in substance and in form. Something more than truth is needed for a

proverb. And so also something more than form is needed. Both must

concur. The truth must be expressed in such a form as to satisfy the

requirements of art.

Most persons whose attention has not been turned especially to such

things, if asked where these verses are to be found, would say at once

that it was in one of the familiar poets of school-boy days. Both have a

sound as of something that has been heard in childhood. The latter is

very Virgilian in its tone and movement. More than once I have heard it

insisted that it was by Virgil. But nobody has been able to find it

there, although the opposite dangers are well represented in the voyage

of AEneas:[3]--

"Dextrum Scylla latus, laevum implacata Charybdis Obsidet."

Thinking of the historical proverb, I am reminded of the eminent

character who first showed it to me in the heroic poem where it appears.

I refer to the late Dr. Maltby, Bishop of Durham, who had been a

favorite pupil of Dr. Parr, and was unquestionably one of the best

scholars in England. His amenity was equal to his scholarship. I was his

guest at Auckland Castle early in the autumn of 1838. Conversation

turned much upon books and the curiosities of study. One morning after

breakfast the learned Bishop came to me with a small volume in his hand,

printed in the Italian character, and remarking, "You seem to be

interested in such things," he pointed to this much-quoted verse. It was

in a Latin poem called "Alexandreis, sive Gesta Alexandri Magni," by

Philippus Gualterus, a mediaeval poet of France.

Of course the fable of Scylla and Charybdis is ancient; but this verse

cannot be traced to antiquity. For the fable Homer is our highest

authority, and he represents the Sirens as playing their part to tempt

the victim.

These opposite terrors belong to mythology and to geography.

Mythologically, they were two voracious monsters, dwelling opposite to

each other,--Charybdis on the coast of Sicily, and Scylla on the coast

of Italy. Geographically, they were dangers to the navigator in the

narrow strait between Sicily and Italy. Charybdis was a whirlpool, in

which ships were often sucked to destruction; Scylla was a rock, on

which ships were often dashed to pieces.