CHAPTER II.

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THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY:

DEVOTED TO

LITERATURE AND NATIONAL POLICY.

VOL. V.--APRIL, 1864.--No. IV.

SIR CHARLES LYELL ON THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN.[1]

When Thomas Chalmers, sixty years ago, lecturing at St. Andrews,

ventured to announce his conviction that 'the writings of Moses do not

fix the antiquity of the globe,' he startled and alarmed, to no small

degree, the orthodoxy of the day. It was a statement far in advance of

the religious thinking of the time. That massive breadth and

comprehensiveness of intellect which soon placed him, _facile princeps_,

at the head of the clergy of Scotland, joined with a candor, and

ingenuous honesty, which made him admired and beloved by all, could not

fail to perceive, and would not hesitate to acknowledge, the force of

the evidence then for some time slowly but steadily and surely

accumulating from the investigations and discoveries of geological

science, which has forced back the origin of the earth to a vast and

undated antiquity. But nothing could have been farther from the

imagination of the great majority of evangelical, unscientific clergymen

of his day. They held that the writings of Moses fixed the antiquity of

the globe as surely as they fixed anything else. And it required no

little boldness in the lecturer to announce a doctrine which was likely

to raise about his ears the hue and cry of heresy. But fortunately for

the rising Boanerges of the Scottish pulpit, whatever questions might

arise in philology and criticism as to the meaning of the writings of

Moses, the evidence adduced in behalf of _the fact_ of the earth's

antiquity was of such a nature that it could not be resisted, and he not

only escaped a prosecution for heresy, but lived to see the doctrine he

had broached almost universally accepted by the religious world.

If now some divine of acknowledged power and position in any branch of

the Christian Church were to put forth the statement that 'the writings

of Moses do not fix the antiquity of man,' he would startle the ear of

orthodoxy quite as much, but no more than did Chalmers in the early

years of the present century. And if he would fare more hardly than the

Scottish divine, and fall under the ban of church censure, which is not

unlikely, it would be because the evidence for the fact is still

inchoate and resistible by the force of established opinion. But it is

quite within the range of possible things that before the close of the

present century two things may happen: first, that the evidence for a

high antiquity of the human race may accumulate to such an extent as to

carry with it involuntarily the consent of mankind; and second, that the

sacred writings may be found to adjust themselves as easily to this new

finding in the sphere of induction, as they have already done, in the

general mind of the Church, to the doctrine of the great age of the

earth. The two statements are indeed very much akin in several respects.

They both traverse the accepted meaning of the sacred writings at the

time of their announcement. Both are considered, when first promulged,

as irreconcilable with the plain teaching and consequent inspiration of

the Scriptures. Both rest solely, as to their evidence, in the sphere of

inductive science, and are determinable wholly by the finding of facts

accumulated and compared by the processes of inductive reasoning. And

both, if thus established, are destined to be accepted by the general

mind of the age, without actual harm to the real interests of

civilization and religion. No _fact_, which is a fact and not an

illusion, can do harm to any of the vital interests of mankind. No truth

can stand in hopeless antagonism to any other truth. To suppose

otherwise would be to resolve the moral government of God into a

hopeless enigma, or enthrone a perpetual and hostile dualism, resigning

the universe to the rival and contending sway of Ormuzd and Ahriman.

Before proceeding to the merits of Sir Charles Lyell's discussion, we

wish to glance at some preliminary matters touching the great debate now

pending between science and theology. We wish to review the posture and

temper of the parties; and particularly to refer to the tone and spirit

of the religious press and the pulpit, respecting the alleged

discoveries and claims of science, and their bearing upon the religious

opinion of the time.

Moreover, in passing, the present writer begs permission to say that he

speaks from the orthodox side of this question; he hails from the

orthodox camp; he wears the clerical vesture of the Scottish worthies;

and is affiliated theologically with Knox and Chalmers, with Edwards and

Alexander, with the New York _Observer_ and the Princeton _Review_. This

much we beg to say, that what follows in these pages may be fully

understood.

No one who has been attending to the subject with any degree of interest

can have failed to observe that science, in her investigations upon the

grand and momentous themes which have absorbed her attention in these

latter years, has exhibited, and does still exhibit, a steady and

well-defined purpose, and has pursued it with a singularly calm, sober,

unimpassioned, yet resolute temper. Its posture is firm, steady,

self-poised, conscious of rectitude, and anticipative of veritable and

valuable results. Its spirit, though eager, is quiet; though

enthusiastic, is cautious; though ardent, is sceptical; though flushed

with success, is trained to the discipline of disappointment. Its object

is to interrogate nature. It stands at the shrine and awaits the

response of the oracle. It would fain interpret and make intelligible

the wondrous hieroglyphics of this universe, and specially the mystic

characters traced by the long-revolving ages upon the stony tablets of

this planet Earth. It has in the first instance no creed to support, no

dogmas to verify, no meaning to foist upon nature; its sole and single

query is, What does nature teach? What _is_ fact? What _is_ truth? What

_has_ occurred in the past annals of this planet? What _is_ the actual

and true history of its bygone ages, and of the dwellers therein? These

are its questions, addressed to nature by such methods as experience has

taught will reach her ear, and it does not hesitate to take nature's

answer. It does not shrink, and quake, and grow pale lest the response

should overturn some ancient notion. It does not dread to hear the

response, lest morals or religion should be thereby imperilled. It

boldly and resolutely takes the teaching of nature, whatever it may be.

Its conviction is that truth never can be anything else than truth; that

fact can never be anything else than fact; and that no two truths or two

facts in God's universe can be in hopeless and irreconcilable

contradiction.

In this spirit the genuine sons of science have exhibited, what has

seemed to some, a heartless indifference whether their discoveries or

theories harmonized with the Scriptures or not, or affected the received

opinions of Christendom on subjects pertaining to religion or morals.

They have been sublimely unconcerned as to results in any such

direction. They have investigated, examined, compared, collated, with

long-continued and patient toil, to gather from the buried past the

actual story of its departed cycles; they have not been troubled lest

they should impinge on the creeds of the religious world, or compel

important modifications in the lectures of learned Professors. This was

no care of theirs. They discovered facts, they did not make them.

Now with all due respect for the opinions and feelings of religious

people, we hesitate not to affirm that this spirit is the only true one

in scientific men. Conceding, as we must, the supremacy of facts in

their own sphere, and granting that, as mundane and human affairs now

stand, the evidence of the senses, purged from fraud and illusion, must

be held to be conclusive, we cheerfully award to scientific men the

largest liberty to pursue their inquiries in matters of fact, utterly

regardless of the havoc which may be thereby wrought among the

traditional, beliefs of men. In no other way can science be true to

herself. She is the child of induction. She can acknowledge no authority

but what has been enthroned by inductive reasoning; and were she to

adjust her conclusions, and garble her facts, to suit the faiths,

beliefs, prejudices, or traditions of men, she would thereby falsify her

inmost life, and stultify herself before the world. And in this

connection we may premise that we regard as worthy of all commendation

the straightforward and unembarrassed manner in which Sir Charles Lyell

pursues his inquiries into the geological evidences of the antiquity of

man. He could not have been unaware that he was striking a ponderous

blow at one of the main traditions of Christendom; nay, that if

successful in establishing his conclusions, he must revolutionize, to a

large extent, the religious thinking of the civilization amid which he

moves; and yet he moves steadily and quietly forward, calm as Marius

amid the ruins of Carthage, not stopping to consider what Biblical men

will do with his facts; never more than touching upon their religious

bearings; intent only on ascertaining what the facts are, and what they

teach. This, we say, is the spirit and temper of the true

philosopher--this betokens the genuine son of science. As well might we

demand of Watt, or Fulton, or Davy, or Brewster, or Faraday, in pursuing

their inquiries into the nature and laws of steam, electricity,

galvanism, or light, to be careful that their discoveries impinge not on

the teachings of religion or the creed of orthodoxy, as to demand of

Lyell to investigate the antiquity of man in humble deference to the

well-established belief of the whole Christian world that he has no such

antiquity. Not a bitter thing is said in the whole book against any

traditional belief; the Scriptures are scarcely more than alluded to; he

seems scarcely conscious that he is attempting to establish conclusions

at variance with the cherished creeds of vast multitudes of men. To some

this may seem the callousness of infidelity; to us it seems the sublime

composure of science. To him, the fact in the case is everything; and he

is content to leave it to work its own results.

What now, on the other hand, have been the spirit and temper of the

religious press and the pulpit touching the progress of science, and

especially its encroachments upon the ancient landmarks of traditional

belief? We are sorry to be compelled to say that, with some honorable

exceptions, the spirit manifested by religious journals and clergymen

generally, has not been worthy of unqualified admiration. In many

instances they have shown a dogged determination to hear nothing on the

subject. Assuming, with absolute confidence, not only that the

Scriptures are what the Church claims them to be, but that their

interpretation of them is infallible, they have affected to ignore all

the findings of science, and to treat them, in their bearing on Biblical

interpretation, as profane intermeddling with divine things. They seem

to imagine that their safety consists in not seeing danger, like the

ostrich hiding its head in the sand, and supposing that thereby its

whole body is protected. In other instances, while professing a

willingness to hear--to seek truth--to not be afraid of the light--to

boast of science even as the handmaid of religion--they have shown a

disposition to decry the alleged discoveries of science, to ridicule its

supposed facts, to make light of a whole concatenation of evidence, to

prate of the uncertainties and vacillations of science, to sneer at

'sciolists,' or 'mere men of science,' to warn against the 'babblings of

science' and 'philosophy falsely so called,' and meantime they have

betrayed a nervous sensitiveness with regard to certain alleged

discoveries and facts coming to the popular ear. They affect to sneer at

the 'wise week' of the meeting of the British Association for the

Advancement of Science, and to turn the proceedings of that body into

ridicule, by caricaturing the importance attached to some minor organ of

the human or animal frame, in the determination of specific identity or

difference. While absolutely ignorant of the true state of the case as

it stands in the scientific world, they thunder from the pulpit in the

ears of their people--a position where they are safe from

reply--crudities and monstrosities of science at which the humblest

member of the aforesaid Association would smile. In other instances,

with a most unfortunate or misguided zeal, they would fain compel

Christian faith to override and traverse all those great laws of

evidence which regulate human belief in other matters. They do not

dispute the facts of science when clearly established--they will concede

to them an existence as facts in their own sphere--but they hold the

Scriptures, as being inspired and infallible, to be transcendent and

paramount, and not to be affected by any possible combination of facts.

That is to say, if the Scriptures teach the unity of the race, or the

universality of the deluge, or the modern origin of man--and if they

understand them to teach these things, they do teach them for them--they

hold that no amount of evidence which science may adduce can be of any

avail, even though it might amount to absolute certainty, did not the

Scriptures stand in the way. You may believe the facts of science, if

you choose, but the Scriptures must be believed to the contrary

notwithstanding. If science does not agree with the Scriptures, so much

the worse for science--that is its own affair. This is the sentiment,

distinctly uttered not long since by a learned American Professor.

Consistently with this view, they maintain that the Scriptures are to be

held as an _authority_ in scientific matters; that science must order

its conclusions in accordance with them; and that any facts are to be

distrusted which conflict with the declarations of the Bible. They would

thus place the Scriptures and nature in a posture of antagonism; and

require Christian faith to trample upon and triumph over the evidence

of the senses, as it is required to triumph over the world, the flesh,

and the devil. What must be thought of an otherwise educated body of men

who would willingly reduce the faith of the Christian world to such a

posture as that?

Furthermore, in the general spirit and temper of the religious press

with reference to science and scientific men, there is much to criticize

and condemn. It is often snappish, petulant, ill-humored, unfair, and

sometimes malicious in the extreme. Such opprobrious terms as

infidelity, irreligion, rationalizing tendencies, naturalism, contempt

for the Scriptures, etc., are freely used. Scientific men are called

infidel pretenders, and are charged with a secret conspiracy to

overthrow the faith of the Christian world. A respectable religious

weekly paper in this country, in noticing Sir Charles Lyell's work,

while carefully withholding from its readers the slightest notion of the

array of evidence adduced in the book, is prompt to inform them that the

learned author shows his want of respect for the Word of God. Another,

in noticing the account of the last hours of Mr. Buckle, is almost ready

to exult in the fact that in the wreck and prostration of his great

powers he whined out piteously: 'I am going mad!' and intimates that his

mental sufferings are to be attributed to the judicial visitation of

God, inflicted as a punishment for the employment of those powers in the

service of infidelity. An able, though generally absurd quarterly

journal, in reviewing Hugh Miller's 'Testimony of the Rocks,' finds in

some of his gorgeous speculations premonitions of that mental aberration

which ended his life, and does not hesitate to attribute the final

catastrophe to the overworking of his powers in the service of

pretentious and unsanctified science. Noble and true-hearted son of the

Church though he was, and though laboring with herculean strength to set

the Bible and science in harmony, he has not escaped the envenomed

shafts of a portion of the religious press. By some he has been openly

branded as a traitor in the camp.

Now this unseemly heat and this unbecoming spirit and temper may be

cloaked under a zeal for religion. It may be said that we are to

'contend earnestly for the faith.' We answer, verily, but never with the

weapons of malice and wickedness. This mode of treating science, if

persisted in, must end only in chagrin and defeat to the parties

employing it, for the simple reason that it does violence to reason,

nature, and all the laws of man's being. Science cannot be turned aside

in her strenuous and ever-successful progress by any such impediments

thrown in her way. The clear, calm, cogent facts and inferences of the

philosopher cannot be met successfully by the half-suppressed shriek of

the mere Biblicist. And it must be at once perceived that any such

treatment of science, any such half-concealed fear of the progress of

science, any such unfair and spiteful bearing toward scientific men,

argues a secret distrust of the system or doctrine which is assumed to

be held and professedly defended. These petulant and much disturbed

editors and divines must be really afraid that the ground is being

undermined beneath their feet. If a man _really believes_ the

inspiration and infallibility of the Scriptures, he may feel perfectly

at ease as to any facts present or past in the wide universe. But if he

is not so sure of them, and wishes, for some personal or interested

motive, to believe them, he will be easily disturbed by anything which

seems to militate against them. If the Scriptures are true, they can

never be shown to be false--if they are not true, we ought not to wish

to believe them.

The spirit and temper above indicated are wholly out of harmony with the

general spirit of Protestant Christianity. It has ever been the boast of

Protestantism that it seeks the light, that it seeks discussion, that

it asserts the right of private judgment, that it courts investigation,

and is willing to expose all its claims to the broad light of day. It

claims to be an everlasting protest against priestly tyranny, and

monkish authority, and abject spiritual servitude in the laity. Strange,

if in this new phase of its history it should fail to be true to itself!

After the Christian world came generally to accept the statement of

Chalmers that the writings of Moses do not fix the antiquity of the

world, and before science had begun to moot seriously the questions of

the unity of the race, the universality of the Noahian deluge, and the

antiquity of man, it was the custom of clergymen generally to reëcho the

true Protestant strain. They claimed science. They expected much of her.

They wished full and free discussion in order that still stronger

ramparts might be erected around the citadel of their faith. Why should

the tone be changed now? In the year 1840, the Rev. Albert Barnes, of

Philadelphia, who has long occupied a highly respectable and influential

position among the clerical body in this country, in an address on the

'Progress and Tendencies of Science,' delivered before the literary

societies of one of the colleges of Pennsylvania, gave utterance to the

following noble sentiments:

'It has cost much to overcome this'--that is, the panic fears of

Christian people at the amazing progress and discoveries of

science--'and to restore confidence to the Christian world that the

researches of science will never permanently clash with the

doctrines of revelation. But the Christian world has come to that;

and science is to receive no more obstruction henceforth from any

alarm that its discoveries will contravene the revealed truth of

God. No future Galileo is to be imprisoned because he can look

farther into the works of nature than other men; and the point

which we have gained now, is that no obstruction is to be thrown in

the way of science by any dread that any scientific truth will

infringe on any theological system. The great truth has gone forth

at last, not to be recalled, that the astronomer may point his

glass to the heavens as long and as patiently as he pleases,

without apprehending opposition from the Christian world; the

chemist may subject all objects to the action of the crucible and

the blowpipe, 'with none to molest him or make him afraid;' the

geologist may penetrate to any part of the earth--may dig as deep

as he pleases, and no one may be alarmed.'

This exhibits true Christian courage and confidence, and has the genuine

Protestant ring. It is based, however, on the supposition that no

possible conflict can arise between science and his understanding of the

Scriptures, and it is doubtful whether the same equanimity could be

maintained even in the author's mind if the 'progress and tendencies of

science' should take an unexpected direction. Thus, in the same address,

he says:

'One fact is remarkable. The geologist proves that the world has

stood many thousands of years, and we cannot deny it. He points to

fossil remains, and tells us of orders of animals that lived many

years before the Mosaic period of the creation of man. The Bible

tells us that MAN was created about six thousand years

ago. Now, the material fact is, that amid all the fossil remains of

the geologist, and all the records of past times, there is no proof

that _man_ has lived longer than that period; but there is abundant

proof to the contrary. Amid all on which the geologist relies to

demonstrate the existence of animals prior to the Mosaic account of

the creation, he has not presented us with _one human bone_, or

with one indication of the existence of man.'

This is one of the facts, among others, upon which 'the friends of

science and revelation have equal cause to congratulate themselves and

each other.' But what if the fact should change? What if not only one,

but many fossil human bones should be found? How is a divine, who has

already said that the _Bible teaches_ the modern origin of man, to

avoid panic fears? Science is cumulative in its evidences, and it is

somewhat hazardous to undertake to say, at any point, that the _ultima

thule_ of discovery has been reached.

We reiterate now, in the conclusion of these preliminary matters, the

sentiment of Mr. Barnes that science must be free and untrammelled. No

matter what discoveries may be made, what traditions overturned, what

faiths unsettled, science must have a free rein and an open course. It

must be so; unless we return to mediæval darkness and despotism.

Science, to be science at all, must establish its conclusions by its own

methods, and its methods must be intact and supreme, no matter what

facts they force upon the belief of mankind. It cannot accept any

extraneous authority. It cannot admit any foregone conclusions. It

cannot accept the statements, for instance, of the first chapter of

Genesis as astronomical, meteorological, geological, or ethnological

_facts_, as the able but absurd Review before referred to would insist.

It must verify its own facts. It cannot heed the caveat of any number or

body of clergymen, or orthodox weekly newspapers, who might come forward

and say, respecting the unity of the race, or the antiquity of man:

'Gentlemen, that question is settled. It is put beyond the purview of

your science. An absolute and infallible authority has determined it. To

moot it is profane.' Any such attempt would be both preposterous and

useless. The age will defend the freedom of science; and let all

reasonable and right-thinking men take comfort in the conviction that in

the long run the conclusions reached will be right, in accordance with

fact, in accordance with truth, and that no permanent interest of

religion or morals can suffer.

But we beg pardon for holding the reader so long by the button, while

Sir Charles Lyell and his book have been kept in the background. These

thoughts have been upon our mind for many months, and we have felt

impelled to give utterance to them here.

The publication of this work we regard as an eventful matter in the

history of modern thought. The time could not have been far distant when

what we may call the geological history of man on this planet, must have

come before the popular mind; and it is certainly a matter of

congratulation that one of the most venerable, indefatigable, cautious,

and successful investigators of modern times has undertaken the task of

giving to the public a full and labored _résumé_ of the evidence which

has accumulated on the subject. Not unfrequently are the bigotry and

prejudice of well-meaning religious people intensified by the imprudent

zeal of the Hotspurs of science. True science can always afford to bide

its time, and make haste slowly.

Respecting the work itself, we begin by saying that the theme proposed

is a perfectly legitimate one for science. It is entirely pertinent to

science to undertake to search for the hidden traces of man's former

history, if there be any. It is no dreamland or cloudland which it

proposes to explore. It is no Quixotic adventure which it has gotten up

to astonish and alarm the vulgar. If our human ancestors have lived

fifty or one hundred thousand years longer on this planet than was

generally supposed, it is quite likely they have left some traces behind

them. And if so, it is perfectly legitimate for science to gather,

collate, and interpret those traces. And from what we know of her past

achievements, we may assure ourselves that if man has had such a

pre-historic existence, science will most undoubtedly prove it. She has

proved beyond all sane contradiction the great age of the earth. She has

proved in like manner the vast extent of the universe in space. She has

proved the existence of manifold forms of animal life on this planet for

countless ages before the incoming of man, according to the popular

chronology. She has proved, approximately, the order and succession of

animal life as it arose, and the forms it assumed as the long cycles of

ages rolled on. All these were legitimate themes for science; and all of

them were opposed to the popular belief at the time--as much so as is

the antiquity of man now. And further, we say that the mere suspicion

that any such thing may be--the mere surmise of any such fact--the

merest inkling which scientific men may get of a secret yet hidden

beneath the veil, and waiting to be revealed--is a sufficient

justification of those _tentative_ efforts of science which often result

in the attainment of some grand discovery. Let no timid religionist

charge upon scientific men that they are conspiring with malice prepense

to undermine the popular creeds and overthrow the Bible. This is sheer

nonsense. They follow where nature beckons them. If man has had a high

antiquity on this earth, science will find it out and prove it beyond a

doubt. If he has not had such antiquity, science will discover that too,

and prove it. All we have to do is to let science have her way.

Another remark which we make here, is respecting the power which a

_single fact_ may have in this investigation. It is not often that great

questions in history, or social polity, or jurisprudence are determined

by a single fact. The great results of history, economics, and law are

effected by the converging power of many facts. So also in science. Its

great results are determined by the accumulated power of multitudinous

facts. Its final categories are fixed by abundant certainties and

manifold inductions. And yet it may sometimes occur that a single fact

may be of such a nature that there is no escaping the conclusion which

it forces upon the mind. It may concentrate in itself all the elements

of certainty usually obtained from many sources. It may be determinative

in its very nature, and admit of scepticism only at the expense of

rationality. A single human grave, with its entombed skeleton,

discovered in some uninhabited waste, where it was never known the foot

of man had trod, would prove conclusively that human footsteps had once

trod there. The discovery of a single weapon of the quality and temper

of the Damascus blade amid the ruins of a buried city, would prove as

fully as would the discovery of a thousand that the people of that age

of the world understood the methods of working steel. One canoe found

moored to the bank of the Delaware, the Schuylkill, or the Susquehanna,

when the white man began to penetrate this continent, would have been

sufficient to prove that the aborigines understood, to that extent, the

art of navigation. So in science, one fossil of a different species from

any found heretofore in a certain deposit is sufficient to add another

to the forms of life represented by that deposit. One fossil found lower

in the geological scale than life was supposed to have begun on this

planet, is sufficient to prove that it had a still earlier beginning. So

with regard to contemporary forms of life, one fact may be sufficient to

warrant or compel a conclusion. Hugh Miller cites the instance of fossil

dung being found as proving to the anti-geologists that these fossils

were once real living creatures, and not mere freaks of nature. The

instance might not be thought conclusive, for if the Author of nature

saw fit to amuse himself by making the semblances of huge iguanodons,

elephants, and hippopotami, in the solid rocks, it might readily be

supposed that He would extend His amusement to the making of fossil

dung.[2] But now, if in the fossil entrails of the cave hyena the bones

of a hare should be found, it would prove conclusively to any but an

anti-geologist, that the hare lived contemporaneously with the hyena.

These remarks are not thrown in by way of apology for the paucity of

facts adduced by Sir Charles Lyell to prove the antiquity of man, but

merely to illustrate the force which it is possible, in certain

circumstances, for a single fact to have. Thus, for instance, the Scotch

fir is not now, nor ever has been in historic times, a native of the

Danish isles, yet it has been indigenous there in the human period, for

Steenstrup has taken out with his own hands a flint implement from

beneath one the buried trunks of that species in the Danish peat bogs.

Again, if an implement of human workmanship is found in close proximity

to the leg of a bear, or the horn of a reindeer, of extinct species, in

an ancient cavern, and all covered by a floor of stalagmite, we see not

how the conclusion is to be avoided that they were introduced into the

cave before the stalagmite was formed; and in that case the inference

that they were contemporaneous, or nearly so, may well be left to take

care of itself. The attempt has been made to treat with levity the whole

subject of the antiquity of man because of the numerical meagreness of

the facts adduced in support of it. But as to this, it need only be

observed that as a new theme for investigation, its facts must

necessarily be meagre, as must be the facts of any science in its

inchoate condition, and that they are steadily growing in volume, so

that it is not safe to venture a final verdict against it on that score.

The facts in support of the globular form of the earth, or the

Copernican theory of the heavens, or the great age of the earth, were at

one time meagre--they are not so now. Sir Charles Lyell is a pioneer

explorer in a new and mysterious realm: the time may come when, amid the

abundance of the treasure gathered from it, the scanty hoard which he

opens to his reader may seem meagre enough.

Nevertheless, Sir Charles Lyell is fully a believer in the doctrine of

the high antiquity of man. His book is not merely a debating-club

discussion of the pros and cons, the probabilities for and against the

doctrine, but rather the earnest pleading of the advocate fully

persuaded that the truth is on his side. Not that it displays any

forensic heat;--it is calm, cautious, dispassionate; but it has the air

of one governed by conviction, and he often assumes the entire truth of

his conclusions with the quiet _nonchalance_ of a man seemingly

unconscious that what he regards as matters of established certainty

will be viewed by the great majority of his fellow beings as startling

novelties.

The main stream of the geological evidence of the antiquity of man tends

to one point, viz., _that man coexisted with the extinct animals_. There

are collateral branches of proof, but this is the main channel. The

remains of man and of man's works and the remains of extinct races of

animals lie side by side, and claim from the geologist the same meed of

antiquity. This is the burden of the book before us. We offer the reader

a brief outline of this evidence. In doing so, we will follow the order

of Sir Charles Lyell's work, and merely state the leading facts which

geological investigations have brought to light.

In the Danish islands there are deposits of peat from ten to thirty feet

thick, formed in the hollows or depressions of the northern drift or

bowlder formation. These beds of peat have been examined to the bottom,

and they reveal the history of vegetation in those localities, and the

contemporaneous history of human progress. Beginning at the top, the

explorer finds the first layers to contain principally the trunks of the

beech tree, along with implements and tools of wood and iron. Below

these is a deposit of oak trunks, with implements mainly of bronze.

Farther down still he finds the trunks of the _Pinus sylvestris_, or

Scotch fir, together with implements of stone. This clearly indicates

that in the lapse of centuries the pine was supplanted by the oak, and

the oak by the beech, and that man advanced contemporaneously from the

knowledge and use of stone implements to those of bronze and iron. Now

the known fact is that in the time of the Romans, as now, the Danish

isles were covered by magnificent beech forests, and that eighteen

centuries have done little or nothing toward changing the character of

the vegetation. How many centuries must have elapsed to enable the oak

to supplant the pine, and the beech to supplant the oak, can only be

vaguely conjectured. Yet the evidence is clear that man lived in those

old pine forests--leaving his implements of stone behind him, as he did

his tools of bronze and iron in the succeeding periods. Along the coast

of Denmark, also, are found shell mounds mixed with flint knives,

hatchets, etc., but never any tools of bronze or iron, showing that the

rude hunters and fishers who fed on the oyster, cockle, and other

mollusks, lived in the period of the Scotch fir, or, as it has been

called, the 'age of stone.'

In many of the Swiss lakes are found ancient piles driven into the

bottom, on which were once erected huts or villages, the lacustrine

abodes of man. This use of them is proved by the abundance of flint

implements and fragments of rude pottery, together with bones of

animals, which have been dredged up from among the piles. The implements

found belong to the 'age of stone,' or the period of the Scotch fir in

Denmark, and the bones of animals are all, with one exception, those of

living species.

Passing over the fossil human remains and works of art of the 'recent'

period, as found in the delta and alluvial plain of the Nile, in the

ancient mounds of the valley of the Ohio, in the mounds of Santos in

Brazil, in the delta of the Mississippi, in which, at the depth of

sixteen feet from the surface, under four buried forests, superimposed

one upon the other, was found, a few years ago, a human skeleton,

estimated by Dr. B. Dowler to have been buried at least fifty thousand

years--in the coral reefs of Florida, in which fossil human remains were

found, estimated by Professor Agassiz to have an antiquity of ten

thousand years--in the recent deposits of seas and lakes, in the central

district of Scotland, which bears clear traces of an upheaval since the

human period, and in the raised beaches of Norway and Sweden--passing

over these for want of space for minute detail, we go back to the

post-pliocene period, and find the bones of man and works of art in

juxtaposition with the fossil remains of extinct mammalia.

In the cavern of Bize, in the south of France, and in the caves of

Engis, Engihoul, Chokier, and Goffontaine, near Liége, human bones and

teeth, together with fragments of rude pottery, have been found

enveloped in the same mud and breccia, and cemented by stalagmite, in

which are found also the land shells of living species and the bones of

mammalia, some of extinct, and others of recent species. The chemical

condition of all the bones was found to be the same. Quite a full

account is given of the researches of MM. Journal and Christol in the

Bize cavern, and of Dr. Schmerling in the Liége caverns, and every

effort made, apparently, by the author, to weigh candidly and honestly

the evidence for and against the contemporaneous existence and

deposition of the human and mammalian remains. And while he admits that

at one time he was strongly inclined to suspect that they were not

coeval[3], yet he has been compelled by subsequent evidence, especially

in view of the fact that he has had convincing proofs in later years

that the remains of the mammoth and many other extinct species, very

common in caves, occur also in undisturbed alluvium, imbedded in such a

manner with works of art as to leave no room for doubt that man and the

extinct animals coexisted, to reconsider his former opinion, and to

assign to the proofs derived from caves of the high antiquity of man a

much more positive and emphatic character.

In chapter fifth we have a minute and interesting account of such fossil

human skulls and skeletons as have been found in caves and ancient

tumuli, and a careful endeavor made to estimate their approximate age.

In 1857, in a cave situated in that part of the valley of the Düssel,

near Düsseldorf, which is called the Neanderthal, a skull and skeleton

were found, buried beneath five feet of loam, which were pronounced by

Professor Huxley and others to be clearly human, though indicating small

cerebral development and uncommon strength of corporeal frame. In the

Engis caves, near Liége, portions of six or seven human skeletons were

found, imbedded in the same matrix with the remains of the elephant,

rhinoceros, bear, hyena, and other extinct quadrupeds. In an ancient

tumulus near Borrely, in Denmark, a human skull was discovered which was

adjudged by its surroundings to belong to the 'stone period' of Denmark,

or the era of the Scotch fir. The careful anatomical examination and

comparison to which these skulls have been subjected, have led to

important discussions, not only as to their age, but also as to their

relation to existing races.

Next comes an extended account of the flint implements and other works

of art, found so abundantly in juxtaposition with the bones of extinct

mammalia, in various localities--in a cave at Brixham, near Torquay, in

Devonshire; in the alluvium of the Thames valley; in the gravel of the

valley of the Ouse, near Bedford; in a fresh-water deposit at Hoxne in

Suffolk; in the valley of the Lach at Icklingham; in a cavern in

Somersetshire; in the caves of Gomer in Glamorganshire, in South Wales;

and especially in the gravel beds of Abbeville and Amiens, in France,

and various localities of the valley of the Somme. As to these flint

implements, they are chiefly knives, hatchets, and instruments of that

sort, and they have been found in such large numbers, and such diverse

localities, and so uniformly in close proximity with the remains of the

same species of extinct mammalia, that the evidence derived from them

is, to say the least, of a very weighty character, and in the opinion of

Sir Charles Lyell clearly establishes the fact that _Elephas

primigenius_, _Elephas antiquus_, _Rhinoceros tichorrhinus_, _Ursus

speloeus_, and other extinct species of the post-pliocene alluvium,

_coexisted with man_.

Attempts have been made to throw doubt upon these implements, first upon

their nature, and next upon their genuineness; but we think no one who

weighs the evidence candidly and carefully, can award to these doubts

the merit of respectability. That they are works of art and not native

forms, is, we think, as fully established as human observation can

establish anything; and though frauds have been recently detected, it

would be no more absurd to attribute the whole phenomena of fossil

remains to fraudulent manufacture, than to refer to the same source the

whole series of flint implements. In many cases the flint tools were

taken out of their position by the hands of scientific men themselves,

and in others the excavations were made under their immediate

supervision. M. Gandry, in giving an account of his researches at St.

Acheul, in 1859, to the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris, says: 'The

great point was not to leave the workmen for a single instant.'

But the most remarkable, not to say startling revelations of the whole

book, are those pertaining to the discovery of an ancient place of

sepulture at Auvignac, in the south of France. Here we seem to be

brought, as it were, face to face with the denizens of the departed

ages, and to have them start up from their ancient tombs to tell the

story of their death and sepulture. We enter this old burial place with

feelings of more strange and solemn awe than we could have in threading

the catacombs of Rome. An obscure village at the foot of the Pyrenees

reveals in its precincts a more astounding history than all the

monuments and mausoleums of the 'eternal' city.

In the year 1852, a laborer named Bonnemaison, employed in repairing

roads, observed that rabbits, when hotly pursued by the sportsman, ran

into a hole which they had burrowed in a talus of small fragments of

limestone and earthy matter lodged in a depression on the face of a

steep escarpment of nummulitic limestone which forms the bank of a small

brook near the town of Auvignac. On reaching as far into the opening as

the length of his arm, he drew out to his surprise one of the long bones

of the human skeleton; and his curiosity being excited, and having a

suspicion that the hole communicated with a subterranean cavity, he

commenced digging a trench through the middle of the talus, and in a few

hours found himself opposite a heavy slab of rock, placed vertically

against the entrance. Having removed this, he discovered on the other

side of it an arched cavity, seven or eight feet in its greatest height,

ten in width, and seven in horizontal depth. It was almost filled with

bones, among which were two entire skulls, which he recognized at once

as human. The people of Auvignac flocked in astonishment to the spot,

and Dr. Amiel, the mayor, having first ascertained as a medical man and

anatomist that the relics contained the bones of seventeen human

skeletons of both sexes and all ages, ordered them all to be reinterred

in the parish cemetery.

In 1860, M. Lartet, a distinguished French savan, examined thoroughly

the remaining contents of the cavern and its surroundings and

approaches. He found, on removing the talus which filled up the

depression on the face of the rock, a level terrace leading to the mouth

of the cave. On this terrace was a layer of charcoal and ashes, eight

inches thick, containing fragments of broken, burnt, and gnawed bones of

_extinct and recent mammalia_, in all some nineteen species, and some

seventy or eighty individuals. Also in the same deposit were

hearthstones, and works of art, flint knives, projectiles, sling-stones,

and chips. Many of the bones of the extinct herbivora were streaked, as

if the flesh had been scraped off them by a flint instrument, and others

were split open, as if for the purpose of extracting the marrow. Inside

the grotto were two or three feet of made earth mixed with human and a

few animal bones of extinct and recent species. None of them, however,

burnt or gnawed; and numerous small flat plates of a white shelly

substance made of some species of cockle, perforated in the middle as if

for the purpose of being strung into a bracelet; also some mementos and

memorials of the chase and the sepulture. Did no opposing traditions

stand in the way, we are quite sure the evidence elicited from this

examination would at once fix its character as a burial place, of an

antiquity coeval with the existence of the great extinct mammalia of the

post-pliocene period. It, however, contains some features of special

interest. In the words of Sir Charles Lyell:

'The Auvignac cave adds no new species to the list of extinct

quadrupeds, which we have elsewhere, and by independent evidence,

ascertained to have once flourished contemporaneously with man. But

if the fossil memorials have been correctly interpreted--if we have

here before us at the northern base of the Pyrenees a sepulchral

vault with skeletons of human beings, consigned by friends and

relatives to their last resting place--if we have also at the

portal of the tomb the relics of funeral feasts, and within it

indications of viands destined for the use of the departed on their

way to the land of spirits; while among the funeral gifts are

weapons wherewith in other fields to chase the gigantic deer, the

cave lion, the cave bear, and woolly rhinoceros--we have at last

succeeded in tracing back the sacred rites of burial, and, more

interesting still, a belief in a future state, to times long

anterior to those of history and tradition. Rude and superstitious

as may have been the savage of that remote era, he still deserved,

by cherishing the hopes of a hereafter, the epithet of 'noble,'

which Dryden gave to what he seems to have pictured to himself as

the primitive condition of our race:

'As Nature first made man,

When wild in woods the noble savage ran.'

The remainder of the book, so far as it relates to the evidences of

man's antiquity, is mainly occupied with the consideration of the

glacial period, in its relation to the indications of man's first

appearance in Europe. It bears evidence throughout of the hand of a

master. The gigantic phenomena and wonderful agencies of that marvellous

period in geological history--its vast icefields and glaciers, with

their movements, drifts, and denudations--its coast ice and glacial

lakes and rivers--the risings and sinkings of level of islands and

continents, are all considered and discussed in a thoroughly intelligent

and scholarly manner. And here, also, amid the debris of this

far-distant and inhospitable era, has man left the traces of his

existence, as indubitably, according to Sir Charles Lyell, as the great

icebergs themselves. Not only is it proven that man coexisted with the

extinct animals, but also that he coexisted with the extinct glaciers.

We have not space, however, to follow out in detail this evidence.

The last five chapters of the book are devoted to the discussion of

certain subjects of vital interest and great moment just now in the

scientific world--the theories of progression, development,

transmutation, and variation of species. It seems, however, to be the

intention of the author to give us, not so much his own views as a

general résumé or outline of the tendencies and conclusions of the

scientific world upon these subjects. This he does with his usual

fulness, candor, and impartiality; and the reader at the same time

gathers from him that he is strongly inclined to accept the doctrine of

the origin of species by 'variation and natural selection,' and to

accord vast periods of time for the workings of that law of development

and transmutation which he believes to pervade all mundane affairs.

Considerable space is devoted to the consideration of man's place in

nature, and especially to the discussions arising out of the comparison

of the human and simian brain; and while the author fully admits the

vast gulf placed between man and the animal creation below him--a gulf

which science cannot bridge--by virtue of the moral and religious nature

of man, yet he pointedly protests against confounding distinct orders of

ideas, and insists that man as a physical being is clearly of the same

order as the gorilla and ape; and he does not shrink from accepting the

possibility that they all may have sprung by successive stages or

'leaps' from the same primordial form. His concluding words are, that

'so far from having a materialistic tendency, the supposed introduction

into the earth at successive periods of life--sensation, instinct, the

intelligence of the higher mammalia, bordering on reason--and lastly the

improvable reason of man himself, presents us with a picture of the

ever-increasing dominion of mind over matter.'

To our mind one thing is certain. The whole scientific world is drifting

slowly, but steadily and surely, to the verification and

acceptance--with certain and in some cases important modifications--of

the development hypothesis of Maillet, Lamarck, La Place, Owen, and the

author of the 'Vestiges[4] of Creation.' The movement reminds one of

the motion of one of the great Greenland glaciers, so slow, quiet,

almost imperceptible, yet inexorable as fate--heedless of all obstacles.

As in the case of all great, genuine revolutionary or formative ideas,

it is curious to watch the incidents of its career--to note the alarm,

indignation, scorn, and holy horror occasioned by its first

announcement--to observe these subsiding gradually into patient

endurance and permissive sufferance, and these again giving place to a

certain curiosity and wakeful interest, culminating at last in downright

advocacy and championship.

We are inclined to think that great injustice has been done the

development theory in the name of morals and religion. There has been no

end to the railing against it on the part of clergymen, Biblical

interpreters, theological Professors, and orthodox editors. It was held

to put infinite dishonor upon the Creator, not only to suppose that He

should take many millions of years to make a world, but that He should

employ the same lengthened period to make man, instead of speaking him

into existence by a word. It was held to put infinite dishonor upon the

Scriptures to suppose that they should be understood in any but the most

literal sense. And it was held to put infinite dishonor upon man to

suppose that he was kith and kin with the monkey--bone of the bone and

flesh of the flesh of the unreasoning quadrupeds, over which in his

god-like royalty he was to sway his imperial sceptre--and this, too, by

a class of teachers who could never have enough of thundering in the

ears of men their degradation, their lost, debased, insensate, and

damnable condition, worse than that of beasts or devils.

Now, with all deference, we beg to say that this development theory does

not strike us as so fraught with dishonor, either to the powers in

heaven or the beings upon earth. It has for many years impressed us with

its grandeur as an intellectual conception. We doubt whether anything so

grand has dawned upon the mind of modern civilization since the days of

Sir Isaac Newton. And we cannot see what dishonor it can work to either

God or man--especially if it be proved to be true. We regard it, so far

as there is truth in it, as one of those great germinant seed-thoughts,

which at long intervals are dropped into the soil of the human mind;

and though the mind of the age, in its first impulses of joy, may play

wild gambols with it, it is destined in the end to mould and control the

thinking of the civilized world. But apart from its truth or falsity, in

whole or in part, regarded simply _as an intellection_, it strikes us as

one of the grandest of modern times. Spreading itself over almost

illimitable space, grasping back through almost illimitable time,

claiming for itself the boundless multiplicity of type, and form, and

life, and law of the organic world, and unfolding to the wondering gaze

the vast prophetic possibilities of the future, it possesses all the

attributes of grandeur, magnificence, sublimity, and mystery. If it is a

phantasm, it is more gorgeous than the most splendid creations of

poetry. If it is a mirage, it is more beautiful than any that ever

bewildered the vision of enchanted traveller. If it is an _ignis

fatuus_, it is more potent than any ever raised by the spell of the

sorcerer. But whether phantasm, mirage, _ignis fatuus_, or sober but

grand reality, will assuredly be found out by science before another

half century. And the ultimate finding of science, whatever it may be,

must and will be believed.

It is, of course, not to be expected that the evidence thus adduced by

Sir Charles Lyell in behalf of the antiquity of man, will be accepted as

conclusive by the religious and thinking world in general without a

thorough sifting and an earnest struggle. It is too novel and

revolutionary in its tendencies. And indeed it ought to be subjected to

the severest ordeal of fact and reason. It is in this way alone that the

golden grains of truth are separated from the dross of crude conjecture

and hasty generalization. We are not prepared ourselves to say that the

evidence itself is final and conclusive. We have sketched it for the

purpose of giving the distinguished author a full hearing, and affording

the reader an opportunity to judge for himself. We await the logical

sequences of time, knowing full well that the laws which regulate the

progress of science are as stable and infallible as the laws which

control the motions of the solar and planetary systems. One thing,

however, we may be excused for saying: All the attempts we have seen to

parry the force of this evidence, and to account for the acknowledged

phenomena and facts within the schedule of the received chronology,

strike us as singularly and painfully feeble. One suggestion is that the

bodies of the extinct mammalia may have been preserved in ice until the

recent period, and their bones deposited contemporaneously with those of

modern species and man. Another is that the geologists may be vastly

mistaken as to the date of the extinction of species, and that in fact

the mastodon, mammoth, and other species found in juxtaposition with

human remains and works of art, have probably survived until a very

recent period. Without entering into detail on these points, we would

venture the prediction that when weighed in the balance they will be

found utterly wanting. One type of discussion will survive, if it

survive at all, as a most curious fossil of the layers of modern

thought. It is that represented by the book referred to in a note on a

former page, by Mr. Davies. Believing that all mineral fossils were

never living animals at all, but the types simply of animals that were

to be, stamped instantaneously upon the rocks as prophetic symbols of a

work of creation to be afterward accomplished, he is prepared to hear

without surprise that man should some day be found as a fossil. We refer

to it as a most curious mental product. If it is not unanswerable, we

presume it will at least remain unanswered.

What now, in conclusion, is to be the effect of this new development of

science on the received and traditionary thinking of the time? What

readjustments will be necessary in case the doctrine of the antiquity of

man comes by and by to take its place, in the creed of science,

alongside of the doctrine of the great age of the earth? Can it be made

to harmonize with what is now known as orthodox and evangelical

Christianity?

That it cannot be made to harmonize with that sort of orthodoxy which

asserts that 'the Bible teaches' that man began to exist upon the earth

about six thousand years ago, we need hardly aver. Eminent theologians

may say, 'if science does not agree with the Scriptures, so much the

worse for science,' but we opine that the minds which will be able to

stand upon this platform in the face of overwhelming evidence will be

few and far between. But it must be remembered that the Scriptures have

adjusted themselves, in the popular and orthodox mind, to several things

which were once considered opposed to their teachings. The Copernican

theory of the solar system was once regarded and treated as a palpable

and dangerous heresy; yet now-a-days the boldest literalist would not

venture to insist that the Bible teaches a system opposed to that.

Within living memory, it is well known that the doctrine of the recent

creation of the earth was regarded as indubitably a part of the teaching

of the first chapter of Genesis, yet it is now fully conceded in high

orthodox quarters that the opposite doctrine does no violence to the

letter or spirit of the Mosaic writings. Here the adjustment has been of

the interpretation to the fact. It is up to this time largely believed

that the Bible teaches the doctrine of a general deluge, yet Hugh Miller

could advocate, with all the elegance of his superb intellect, and all

the power of his unanswerable science, the opposite doctrine of a

partial or limited deluge, without being outlawed for heresy in the Free

Church of Scotland. It is now held almost universally that the doctrine

of the unity of the race is essential to Christianity; and we, for

ourselves, cannot see that it is otherwise than essential to a properly

organic Christianity, and yet we begin to see a blinking in certain

quarters toward the opposite view;--and we may mention that the curious

book of Mr. Davies before mentioned, which is written in the special

interest of the most literal orthodoxy, advocating the doctrine of

immediate creation in six literal days, and other equally indigestible

matters, insists on the doctrine of _diversity of origin_ in the human

race, because it is taught in the Scriptures! And he does not fail to

find proof texts. He rightly avers that several important assumptions

are needed in order to extract the doctrine of unity from the Mosaic

record.

We have not adduced these instances of the variations of orthodoxy for

the purpose of intimating that the Bible is a nose of wax, which can be

twisted into any shape without injury--that it is a book which can be

made to mean anything or nothing, as the circumstances of the case may

require--but that it has a vital elasticity and power of adjustment to

all veritable findings of the human mind in every sphere; as indeed it

must have, if it is in any important respect such a communication to

mankind as it is claimed to be. Whatever may be said of the

infallibility of the Scriptures, it is certain that interpretation is

not infallible--a distinction that is not always kept in mind by those

zealous defenders of the faith who are ready to make the inspiration of

the Scriptures stand or fall with a given interpretation of a particular

passage.

But can the doctrine of man's antiquity be made to harmonize with the

essentials of Christianity and the inspiration of the Scriptures? If

Christianity be a religion for man, as the present writer believes, we

answer emphatically in the affirmative. Not the smallest feature that is

essential to make Christianity a religion for man, if it be such, will

be imperilled by this or any other well-established doctrine of

science. But precisely how much modification of existing opinion, how

much sepulture of traditionary relics, how much clearing away of rubbish

will be indispensable, it is now not easy to say. It is certain that it

must be conceded that we have as yet attained to no infallible

chronology. And it is equally certain that a larger amount of allegory

must be infused into the first chapters of Genesis than would have been

digestible by the theologians of the last generation, if we would ever

have theology and science stand upon the same plane. The question in the

child's catechism, '_Who was the first man?_' will by and by be easier

asked than answered. If, moreover, the narrative in Genesis refers to

some imaginary being supposed to have existed upon the earth about six

thousand years ago, it seems clear that this being cannot be regarded as

the 'federal head' of the human race, from whom 'all mankind have

descended by ordinary generation.' And we strongly suspect that a very

large amount of theological machinery will need to be readjusted; and

amid many pangs and with much tribulation will not a few canons of

orthodoxy pass away to the region of fossil forms.

In conclusion, we take leave of this work of Sir Charles Lyell with the

conviction that however obnoxious it may be to orthodox editors and

superannuated doctors of divinity, it is destined to stimulate greatly

scientific inquiry and active thought. It is impossible that when such a

mine has been sprung, and promises to yield such tangible results, it

should suddenly cease to work, because the note of alarm is raised by

affrighted theologians. We predict for science in this department a rich

and rapid progress of discovery. And we are profoundly gratified that

the subject has been broken to the popular mind in such a cautious and

unexceptionable manner as to the tone and spirit of the work--the author

holding with philosophic steadfastness to the subject matter in hand,

and, in the true scientific spirit, eschewing all side issues, and

exhibiting throughout a candor, impartiality, and honesty, worthy the

well-earned fame of this Nestor of geologists.

ÆNONE:

A TALE OF SLAVE LIFE IN ROME.

CHAPTER III.

The thoughts of Ænone followed her into sleep, and colored her dreams

with pleasant memories of the past; and when the morning sun, pouring

its beams through the window, awakened her, there was a momentary

struggle before she could throw off the fancies of the night and realize

that she was no longer in her cottage home. But distinct perception soon

returned as she glanced around her and recognized the paintings which

adorned her chamber, and the marble goddess still holding forth a

welcoming hand, as though in greeting for the return of another day.

Throwing open the window, she sat down for a moment to enjoy the soft

breeze, which, laden with perfume, came gambolling fresh from the Alban

Hills. The window at which she placed herself looked out upon a central

courtyard, formed by the intersection of the main body of the palace at

right angles with the two wings. This court was paved from one side to

the other with marble flags of different shades, excepting in the

middle, where played the fountain--a circular basin of water, upon a

rock, in the centre of which two bronze satyrs struggled for a tortoise,

from whose mouth the supplying stream poured forth. From the end of each

wing of the palace the line of the sides was continued by a straight

stone wall of considerable height, leading across the whole breadth of

the Cælian Hill to the slope of its farther side, and enclosing an area

thickly planted with such flowers, shrubbery, and trees as the taste of

the period considered most essential to a well-appointed garden.

For the moment the central court was almost deserted, the only

appearance of life being a little Nubian slave, who sat upon the edge of

the fountain, and lazily played with a tame stork. But all at once Ænone

heard mingled voices, and distinguished among them the tones of her

husband--deeper than the others, and marked with that quicker and more

decided accent acquired by a long course of undisputed authority. At

first the sounds seemed stationary, as though the speakers were tarrying

in one place for discussion; but in a moment they approached nearer, and

the disputants stood in full sight upon a balcony which ran around the

interior wall of the palace and overhung the sides of the court.

Foremost and tallest of the group stood Sergius Vanno, recognizable at

once by his athletic and graceful figure, reflective face, commanding

eye, bright with intelligence, and his agreeable, refined, and

attractive presence, as the leading spirit of the group. At his side

leaned the poet Emilius, whose weak and slender figure and mild, girlish

expression would hardly appear to sustain the reputation he enjoyed of

devoting half his time to the invention and elaboration of new forms of

profligacy, and thereby carrying his exploits into realms of vice

hitherto undiscovered even in that age of unbridled indulgence. Behind

these stood three others--a captain of the prætorian guard, a tribune of

the law, and a comedian of the school of Plautus--each probably carrying

the palm of excellence in his especial calling, and all of them

doubtless endowed with superior capacities as boon companions in a

night-long revel. They had evidently but just left the banqueting hall,

and bore indications of having passed a somewhat unquiet night, though

in different degrees; for while the captain and comedian still staggered

confusedly and displayed haggard faces and disordered dresses, the

superior tact, constitutional strength, or recuperative powers of the

others enabled them to maintain such a demeanor of proper sobriety, that

but for a slight flush and the companionship in which they were placed,

their late excesses might have passed unnoticed.

'It was the choice of all the slaves, both male and female, I tell you,'

said the comedian, evidently resuming an unfinished dispute. 'The choice

of all the slaves, Sergius.'

'Hear you now this man!' exclaimed Sergius, turning toward his friend

Emilius with a quiet smile. 'Thrice already have I told him the truth of

the matter, and still he persists; well knowing that, if now he can

scarcely sustain himself from falling over into the area below, he

certainly could not, three hours ago, have been able to tell what play

he made, or whether he made any play at all. Nay, Bassus, it was only of

the male slaves that I spoke.'

'Yet listen to me,' insisted the comedian, placing his hand upon the

other's shoulder and leaning heavily upon him, 'You do not deny that we

gamed?'

'Of a surety I do not.'

'Nor that I won money of you?'

'Ten sestertia. I acknowledge it.'

'Nay, twenty sestertia, was it not?'

'Twenty sestertia be it, then. What matters the amount, when I paid you

upon the moment, and you now have the sum, whatever it may be, in your

own purse?'

'True, true,' rejoined the other, nodding his head with an air of sage

gravity; 'whatever it was, of a certainty I now have it. And then,

Sergius, you offered against the ten--no, the twenty sestertia--to play

the choice of all your new slaves.'

'Of my new male slaves, certainly.'

'No, of the slaves both male and female. I will tell you how it is that

I so especially recollect. It was because I had heard from our lawgiver

here about the beautiful Samian girl you have borne home among your

share of the spoils. You did not think, perhaps, that I knew of her; but

when I offered to throw the dice, I held her in my mind. And then, when

I had won, and told you that I would select her, you said--'

'Exactly what I had said to you before, that you could take your choice

from the male slaves,' interrupted the other impatiently. 'And I have

brought you directly hither to make your selection, for fear that when

you became sober you would forget the matter altogether, and thereby

cheat yourself out of a fairly won prize. Am I not right, comrades? Was

not the play as I have stated it?'

'Neither more nor less,' the poet answered; and the tribune and the

prætorian captain spoke to the same effect. The comedian still looked

unconvinced, and, for the moment, gazed inquiringly from one to the

other, in the hope that some newer recollection would come to the mind

of either of them and lead to a recantation. But in that desire he was

disappointed, and at last he reluctantly gave up the contest, not daring

to protract it longer for fear of provoking a quarrel, and thereby being

thrust out of the society to which he was aware his social talents,

counteracting his low birth and calling, were his sole passport. And

after all, though he had too carelessly made his wager, he had won

twenty sestertia and a male slave, and that was something.

'Well, be it so,' he assented, with a sigh. 'A male slave, since you say

it. I had supposed I had spoken more particularly, but it seems that my

poor brain was careless and at fault. Only bring the slaves hither

quickly, that I may choose and go home, for I must play Castorex this

morning, and this head of mine seems likely to split.'

'Let it split, then,' retorted Sergius with a laugh. 'It may save our

cracking it some day with a goblet. Ho, there, Drumo!'

He was not obliged to call a second time, for, at the first ring of his

voice, the obedient armor bearer emerged from one of the lower entrances

into the court. He also, as well as his master, had been convivially

celebrating his return, and now bore the evidences of his frolic in a

sad combination of inflamed features, tangled hair, and disordered

clothing.

'What ho, master?' he cried, stretching his huge limbs in a yawn and

looking up. 'Am I wanted?'

'You have been drinking,' said Sergius; 'go to the fountain basin there

and cleanse yourself. If there were fish in it, I would feel half

inclined to cast you in to feed them. After that, come back to me.'

The giant grinned, knowing that his master placed too high a value upon

him ever to make a dinner of him for the carp, though he might now and

then inflict a stripe or two in anger upon his broad shoulders. Then

kneeling down at the fountain, he quickly splashed the water into his

face and eyes, ran one finger from his forehead to the crown of his head

in order to part his disordered locks, pulled away a loose straw from

behind his neck, gave his tumbled tunic one jerk to straighten it, and,

with the air of a person who had made an elaborate toilet, and could

afford to be well satisfied with the result, presented himself for

inspection.

'So! Were my new slaves sent in last night?'

The armor bearer nodded.

'The whole allotment?'

'I suppose so, master. Fifty there should have been, the lictor said,

when he brought them, but one had died, and they had thrown him into the

Tiber to the fishes. Ho, ho, master, we shall all go one day to feed the

fishes or the dogs or the worms, both you and I alike.'

'Silence, you hound!' said Sergius, more by way of habit than because he

really minded a familiarity to which he had gradually grown accustomed.

'The others came a little before midnight, and I locked them up below,'

the Gaul added, pointing to a low range of buildings at the foot of the

garden. 'They are a well-looking lot, master, but among them all you

will not find one to take my place; so, for this time, I am safe, and

can yet say and do what I please. Ho, ho! And here is the list of them

which the messenger brought.'

'Never mind the list. It is doubtless all correct,' said Sergius, waving

the papyrus aside. 'Go, now, and bring the slaves hither.'

The man nodded, and taking a large key from a nail over his head,

disappeared down the garden walk, and in a few moments returned, driving

before him the whole body of captives which had fallen to the share of

his master. As he had reported, they were of good quality, the best of

the prisoners of war having naturally been reserved for the commander of

the expedition. The men were mostly stout and athletic, while the women

were of healthy and properly agreeable appearance. Of the whole number

there were none who seemed to be at all sickly or ill favored; while the

only one who exhibited any signs of deformity was a dwarf, whose

withered and twisted figure imparted to him that peculiar grotesque and

ape-like appearance which, at that period, was certain to commend him to

the taste of wealthy purchasers, and render him of more value than a man

of correct proportions. Moreover, as a general thing, the captives

seemed more cheerful than they had been the day before, having had the

advantage of several hours' rest and of better food than had fallen to

their lot at any time during the journey. There were a few who

manifested sorrow at having been separated from relatives or friends

with whom they had succeeded in travelling to the very gates of the

city; and some others, as yet unbroken to misfortune, maintained a

rebellious and intractable demeanor. But the majority had already made

up their minds that slavery was henceforth their inevitable fate, and

that their highest future happiness must be looked for in its

alleviation rather than in its abolition; and they now appeared to take

pleasure in the thought that their fortune had led them to a wealthy

household, where they would probably experience kind treatment and have

easy tasks allotted to them.

Now, having reached the paved court, the captives rested and awaited the

inspection of their owner--some sitting upon the marble border of the

fountain, some standing by in groups, and through a sort of sympathy

holding each others' hands, as though that would give protection. A few

gazed moodily upon the ground; and one or two, oppressed with sorrow or

nervous apprehension, quietly wept. But the greater portion, impressed

with a dim consciousness that their future lot might depend upon their

present conduct and appearance, endeavored to assume an air of pleased

satisfaction, and thereby possibly win the favorable notice of the group

which stood surveying them from the balcony, or at the least the

friendly compassion of the older slaves of the household, who began to

pour forth from the different doors upon the ground floor of the palace,

and join unbidden in the inspection. Most of these, in the early days of

their captivity, had stood up in the centre of similar gaping and

curious crowds, and now in their turn they sated their curiosity upon

the new comers. A few, remembering their own sorrows of those former

times, seemed compassionate; others manifested careless indifference;

some wondered whether enough of the present reinforcement would be

retained to materially lighten their own labors; and others, who had

been known to fail in attention to their peculiar departments of

industry, trembled lest their places might now be supplied by the new

comers, and themselves be again driven off to market. Whatever their

thoughts and feelings, however, no one ventured to approach too near or

speak aloud, excepting the armor bearer, who, as the privileged slave of

the household as well as the marshal of the occasion, moved hither and

thither among the captives, encouraging some with rude jokes, shoving

others back or forward into suitable positions, and generally

endeavoring to set forth the merits of the whole mass in as favorable a

light as possible.

'Now stand forward where the noble imperator and his friends can see

you,' was his command to a well-featured, strong-limbed Rhodian. 'Do you

think to better your lot by slinking out of sight among the women, and

so perhaps be sent off unnoticed to the market, and there be purchased

for hard labor in the quarry pits? Who knows but that if my master sees

you, he may make a gladiator of you; and then you can fight before

emperors and consuls.'

'What care I for your master?' retorted the man. 'Let him give me back

my wife and my child, whom I yesterday had, and who now are gone.'

The armor bearer shrugged his shoulders.

'Is that all?' he said. 'Wives are plenty in this city of Rome. When I

first came from Gaul, I too had a wife, and, like you, lost her. What

then? I suppose that she is happy, wherever she may be; and I--I have

not allowed myself to be lonely since. But neither did I let myself

slink behind, when I stood in the market; but I pressed forward and

struck upon my chest, and called to the highborn and the rich to look

upon me, and see how a man could be made, and what he could be good for.

And here am I now, a slave, indeed--that cannot be helped--but for all

that, a ruler over the other slaves, and my master's favorite and

companion. By the immortal gods! there is more manliness in yonder

dwarf, with his open face, than in you, with your whimpering and your

tears. I will call him forward to teach you a lesson how to act.'

At the first beck the dwarf pressed forward with a smile, alternately

stretching up to make the most of his diminutive proportions, and then

bowing low to crave the good will of the spectators. His appearance

brought him instant commendation; and more particularly did the

prætorian captain break forth into expressions of appreciation.

'A proper dwarf! a most excellent dwarf! Smaller and more ugly by a

quarter than one which I have known to be sold for forty sestertia! And

see, Bassus, how he bows and rubs his hands and shows his teeth at

yourself. He has perhaps been the buffoon in a Grecian theatre, and in

you now recognizes a brother in the art. Take him, therefore, for your

choice. At the very least, he will be of value to carry your bag of

plays before you, and he may even help you act.'

The comedian forced a sickly smile upon his features, not daring to

quarrel with his companion, yet not insensible to the sneering tone with

which he was addressed. He had, at the first, been struck with the

dwarf, and half inclined to choose him. But now the mocking speech

deterred him.

'You are disposed to be merry,' he said; 'nor do you reason well. It is

not an ape that an actor wants to carry his plays. There are enough such

to listen to them. I will leave the dwarf, therefore, for you to

purchase. Perhaps, after all, there may be a place found for him

somewhere in your own household. I will make another selection for

myself.'

And descending from the piazza, he moved in among the captives for the

purpose of entering upon a more careful inspection. Eager as he was at

all times to make the best of a bargain, he was the more especially

anxious now; for the contemptuous tones of his companions rankled in his

heart, and he felt that the more he evinced a capacity to benefit

himself, the more he would be likely to disappoint them. Passing

deliberately about the slaves, therefore, he scrutinized each face and

form before him with the most exact attention; carefully lifting the

eyelid of one, and examining the teeth of another--now pressing his

knuckles into an expanded chest, then twisting a muscular arm--causing

some to stoop, and others to bend back--and generally practising all

those arts and expedients which a professional slave dealer would employ

to guard himself against imposition. Nor was it until the lapse of many

minutes that he settled upon his prize.

'I will take this man,' he said, dragging the Rhodian forth by the

shoulder. 'He shall be my slave.'

'It is well; take him,' responded Sergius, in his most courtly tone. And

for the moment or two, during which his companions yet tarried, he

maintained a demeanor so studied and controlled that it would have

required a keen glance to detect in his face his bitter sense of

disappointment at the selection which the comedian had made.

CHAPTER IV.

As Sergius turned and entered the house, those who had seen him saluted

as the favorite of the emperor and the idol of the crowd, and thence had

believed unbounded happiness must be his never-varying lot, would have

been astonished to know how many things there were which rankled

painfully in his heart, and, for the moment, made him discontented and

fretful.

Thoroughly jealous in respect to his military fame, he was suspicious

that the cheers of the crowd upon his ovation had been elicited more by

the perfection of the pageantry than by a proper appreciation of his own

merits; while it was certain that the Senate, though meeting him with

the customary congratulations, had delivered them with more form than

enthusiasm. And though the emperor had given audience, he had bestowed

no new honors upon him. To these disappointments was added the unhappy,

self-accusing consciousness of having failed in duty to his own dignity,

by having passed the night in wild revelry and among companions, many of

whom were beneath him in every quality except their talent for ribald

jesting and buffoonery. Moreover, though reputed wealthy, he was at

present pressed for money, and had added to his embarrassments by losing

at the gaming table during the past night more than he could well afford

to part with; while, to add to all other vexations, the comedian Bassus

had not only increased the loss by selecting the most valuable slave,

but had performed the action in a cool and calculating manner, which was

particularly exasperating.

'The low buffoon!' Sergius muttered to himself. 'Who would have thought

that, half drunken as he was, he would have had the wit to select a

slave worth double the sum which had been staked against him, and one

whom I had obtained with such trouble, and for my own purposes? Can it

be that he pretended his intoxication the more easily to outwit me? I

had no fear, but believed that he would be sure to select some slim

youth who could be taught to play the flute before him or act as

cupbearer. What demon put it into his head so suddenly to look for bone

and muscle rather than for girlish graces?'

This last suspicion of having been made the victim of artful

dissimulation added fuel to his vexation, more especially as, turning

his head and glancing into the courtyard, he saw the comedian slipping

through a side passage, and the Rhodian obediently following at his

heels. This filled up the measure of Sergius's wrath. To his excited

fancy the actor bore upon his face an insultingly satisfied smirk of

triumph, while the Rhodian appeared larger and stronger than ever. With

an exclamation of unavailing anger, Sergius pushed open the door, and

stood in the presence of his wife.

It was into the dining hall that he had plunged. Upon a small table was

placed the wine and bread and fruits which formed the customary morning

meal among the richer Romans; and beside the table stood Ænone, in an

attitude in which hope and fear and surprise and disappointment were

equally blended.

Clad in the manner which she knew had always best pleased his fancy,

wearing the adornments which, as his gifts, he would most naturally

prefer to see upon her, with her curling locks parted as in former days

he had liked her to dress them, even striving to impart to her features

the peculiar radiant expression which, in other times, had most won his

heart--she had impatiently awaited his approach, with a vague fear

whispering poisonous surmises to her soul, but yet with a joyful and

hopeful assurance of good predominating over all. As soon as these

friends of his had departed--she had said to herself--he would no longer

delay coming to her. He would meet her with extended arms and the same

joyous welcome as of old. He would utter kind and pleasant words

expressive of his happiness, and would fold her to his heart. There

would she nestle and forget her foolish fears and suspicions of the past

night, and would only remember that she was loved. As, however, she now

saw the frown upon his face, her heart and courage failed her; and in

proportion as she had previously fortified her mind with hopeful

confidence, a terrible reaction of apprehension overcame her. Could it

be that the angry look was for her, and that it could be justified by

any word that she had ever spoken or any duty that she had neglected?

With one hand lightly resting upon the table, her right foot thrown

forward in impulsive readiness to spring into his extended arms, but her

whole form drooping and shrinking with dismay, her face pale, and the

smile which she had called upon it now faintly and painfully flickering

in a deathlike manner about her whitened lips, as it glided from her

control and began to give place to an utter and undisguised fear, she

stood awaiting his first word or action.

'Ha, Ænone!'

'My lord--'

Then remembering what was due to her upon their first meeting, he

smoothed the frown from off his face, held out his arms, and tenderly

embraced her, uttering kind and loving words. It was the same gesture

with which he had parted from her when, six months before, the state had

called upon him to arouse from the ease and tranquility of his wedded

life and do new service upon the field. Those were the same gentle and

affectionate words which he had been wont to utter. And yet to her

quickened apprehension, urged on by some secret instinct, it seemed as

though the soul of the tender greeting was gone, leaving but the mere

form behind. Could it be that during those few months of absence he had

learned to think less dearly of her? At the thought, the last faint

gleams of the flickering smile died away from her face; while he,

unobservant of her distress, and still goaded by the remembrance of his

losses, released her from his embrace and threw himself heavily down

upon the nearest lounge.

'I am thirsty,' he said. 'Give me some drink.'

She poured some wine into a goblet, and timidly presented it to his

lips. The liquid, cooled with snow from the mountains, was refreshing to

his palate, and he drank it to the last drop. As he parted with the

goblet--rather tossing it away than setting it down--he noticed how she

stood before him with whitened face and frightened features, and with

the attitude of a shrinking slave rather than of a wife joyous to be of

service. His heart smote him for his negligent greeting, and he rose up

from the lounge and placed his arm about her.

'Not with you, Ænone, am I vexed,' he said, partly comprehending the

cause of her emotion. And drawing her nearer, he commenced toying with

her waving locks, telling her how for months he had been longing to meet

her, and how her looks more than ever delighted him, and otherwise

uttering such pleasant and reassuring words as soonest came into his

mind. As she began to perceive that it was not for any fault of hers

that he had displayed anger, her face gradually lost its expression of

dread. But still she could not fail to notice that the words which he

spoke were not such as are commonly prompted by a true and

unpremeditated affection; but were rather the labored and soulless

result of a mere good-natured desire to make atonement for a neglect,

and were uttered in all the careless spirit with which one tries to

soothe an improperly aggrieved child; and the old smile but feebly

played upon her features, struggle with it as earnestly as she would.

'Nay, not at your sweet face is my anger excited, Ænone,' he said; 'but

at that scurvy dog, Bassus. He should himself be a slave and the

companion of slaves, were his true station meted out to him.'

'He with whom you passed the night?' suggested Ænone.

'Ay, he was one of us,' Sergius answered, taking a position nearer the

table, and commencing to pick off a crumb of bread as the incentive to a

more extended repast. 'He was with us, as there always will be some rude

and unmannerly intruder in every company; but there were also others,

the associates of Emilius. There was Sotus, the Egyptian, a learned

astronomer, and Cyope, the renowned Greek dramatist, and Spoletius, who

is now writing a history of the empire, and, if what he says is true,

has already brought his work down to the time of the Emperor Nero--'

'And will carry it on until he reaches the present day! And will then,

in their proper place, tell about your achievements, my lord!' exclaimed

Ænone, a flush of expectation glowing upon her face, as she thought that

here were her conjectures of the preceding evening about to be realized.

'Ay!' responded Sergius; 'I presume that he will speak of me and of what

you dignify as my achievements, foolishly fond child; and therefore it

was meet that I should not neglect the opportunity of being in his

presence, in order that he might speak well of me rather than the

reverse. Otherwise, you well know that I would have preferred to let

revelling have the go-by, and to have come at once to gather you to my

heart. But we men, whom the world calls celebrated, must be watchful,

and learn to resign pleasure to duty, and guard our fame, or else it may

go out like a wasted lamp, and leave it in the darkness of oblivion. We

cannot spare our time to give free scope to our love, as though we were

poor and unknown.'

Ænone reproached herself for her suspicions. Surely she had done wrong

in distrusting him for the coldness of his greeting. He may have meant

nothing but love and kindness, and have been weighed down by cares and

anxieties which she could not comprehend. Had he not said that something

had made him angry? He, the great imperator, to have been ruffled by the

conduct of a low comedian, whose company his interest obliged him to

tolerate! She would yet be patient and wait.

'And not only Spoletius, the historian, but also others, poets and

philosophers, whose good will it is proper to secure, and whose

conversation would be improving to the gods themselves,' continued

Sergius, almost blushing as he remembered how little philosophy had been

spoken during the past night, excepting that shallow doctrine which

inculcates full enjoyment of the passing pleasure of the world, lest

death might come and too suddenly end them; and how little poetry had

been recited, except as roared forth in the form of bacchanalian

choruses. 'And even this Bassus it were worth my while to condescend to,

lest the notion might seize him to satirize me upon the public stage.

And it was to conciliate him that I lost to him twenty sestertia and a

well-favored slave. May it not be that I paid too high a price for his

friendship, and hence have a right to be angry?'

'But let my lord reflect that he has many slaves--more than he well can

find use for; and that, therefore, one less may not be of great

consequence to him.'

'Nay, but such a slave!' responded Sergius; 'tall, almost, as my armor

bearer, and strong as an elephant! A man who was worth to me all those

others, thrice over, for the use to which I could have put him. The rest

will doubtless be of good account in their way. Some of them will go and

dig in my quarries, and a few will be exposed in the market, and will

bring their proper price. But this Rhodian--listen! You know that in a

few weeks the new amphitheatre of our emperor will be opened with grand

spectacles lasting many days. At my audience with him last evening he

spoke thereupon, and of the wild beasts he had sent for to give dignity

to the occasion; but of this anon. You know that for months all Rome has

been preparing for that time?'

Ænone nodded assent. Even had she desired, she could not have remained

ignorant that the great colossus of all amphitheatres was approaching

completion, since, from her window, she could look down the Appian Way

and watch every stone being laid, while, in all societies, the magnitude

and magnificence of the approaching games were the theme of universal

conversation.

'Well,' continued Sergius, 'months ago--I hardly remember how many--I

wagered with the proconsul Sardesus that I would furnish for the games

the superior gladiator of the two. Fifteen purses of a hundred sestertia

each; a large sum, but the larger the better, since I had my armor

bearer in my mind, and felt certain to win. But since then I have become

attached to this Drumo. The dog has twice saved my life, and hence has

become too precious to be risked; for though he would most likely win

the day, yet a chance thrust might destroy him at the end. I therefore

looked around for a substitute, and found him--this Rhodian slave. Day

after day I marked him in the opposite ranks, fighting against us, and I

gave orders to capture him alive. Twice we thought we had secured him,

and as often did he break away, killing many of our men. But at last the

commander of one of my cohorts obtained possession of his wife and five

children, and sent him word that each day, until he delivered himself

up, one of them should be put to death.'

'Surely that thing was not done?' exclaimed Ænone, horror struck.

'As I live, it was not ordered by me, nor did I learn of the scheme

until it was too late to arrest it,' responded Sergius; 'else would I

have forbidden it. But what would you expect? War has its practices, and

mercy is not exactly one of them. And cruelties will happen, do what we

may. Whatever transpired, therefore, was the work of the commander of my

first cohort, to whom I had given directions to take the man alive, and

who knew that it must be done, and without troubling me about the

process. Perhaps you do not care to hear the rest?'

'Go on,' said Ænone, shuddering with a sickening apprehension of what

was to come.

'Well, the first day his oldest child was slain, and the body sent to

him; and the next day the second one slain, and in like manner sent to

him; and so on until but his wife and one child were left. Then he came

in and gave himself up.'

'And this brave man--fighting for his country--you have made a slave

of!' exclaimed Ænone, impetuously. 'He has been stripped of his family

one by one, and now you would place him in the arena, to be the victim

of wild beasts, or at the best, of other slaves!'

'What else would you wish? The man is of a warlike nature; and it were

better for him to bravely contend for his life in the presence of the

emperor himself, than ignominiously to wear it out in the base labor of

the quarries. And I will tell you what I meant to have done. I know

where are his wife and remaining child, with whom he yesterday entered

Rome; and if in the amphitheatre he had won the victory for me, I would

have restored them to him and given him his freedom besides. But all

that is past now. In the heat of the moment I forgot him, and suffered

this drunken dog, Bassus, to take his choice; and he has had too good an

eye for what is valuable not to select the Rhodian. Strange, indeed,

that I should have been so careless. But throughout all, I never dreamed

that his taste would lead him to do more than choose some slight-built

boy, who could assist him in his trade. Once, indeed, I feared for the

moment that he would select amiss, and take a rarely precious dwarf,

whom, both for his appearance and for his knowledge of armor, I had

reserved as a gift for your father; and when that danger was past, I

breathed freer, not calculating upon any further mischance.'

Ænone remained silent. Ready as she was at all times to give her utmost

sympathy to her husband for the slightest annoyance which he might

experience, it seemed to her now that his complaining was puerile and

unjust, so utterly had the sense of his disappointment been swallowed

up, in her thoughts, by the real and tragic woe of the Rhodian captive.

Finding day after day his dead children laid at his very door--then

separated rudely from all who were left--and in the end brought chained

into the arena, and obliged to fight to the death for the pleasure of

his conquerors, and perhaps against his own countrymen: why should such

things be? Ænone was no nerveless creature to faint at the sight of

blood. The education of all Romans of that day was adapted to a far

different result, and she could look with enjoyment upon the contests of

wild beasts, or even view without disapprobation the struggles of

gladiators trained to their work as to a profession, and, of their own

free will and with full knowledge, taking its risks upon themselves. And

yet, for all that, she could not but feel that every hour there were

being enacted around her, and as a part of the daily workings of the

social system, abuses of power, which, like the present, nothing could

justify; and she wondered whether it would last forever, or whether, on

the contrary, the outraged gods would not some day arise and pour down

upon this imperial Rome the vengeance due to the oppressed.

Sergius partially read her thoughts, and set himself to work to reverse

their current and turn it into a more cheerful channel. Drawing his seat

closer to her, he began to speak to her of more pleasant topics, telling

of the enlivening incidents of his campaign, rehearsing the exploits of

those about him, and dwelling upon the few occasions in which, by some

unusual departure from martial customs, mercy had been shown to the

weak and helpless, and captives who were not fit for slaves had not been

crucified. The gift of fascination was one of his distinguishing traits;

and when he chose, he could charm, with his winning speech, the most

obdurate and unloving. Therefore, as he now softly whispered these

narrations into Ænone's ears, mingling gentle words of endearment with

them, it was not long before she began to yield to the pleasant

influence, and was almost ready to believe that she had judged rashly,

and that everything upon earth was not so very wrong. Why, after all,

should she presume to criticize matters which did not arouse the

discontent of the wisest of men? And if the gods felt really outraged,

why did they let their thunders sleep so long? At the least, it was not

the duty of herself, a weak girl, to strive to right the world. Her only

domain must be her lord's heart--her only rule of life, his will.

Leaning upon his shoulder, and looking up into his face as she listened,

she thought upon the old times, when she had first met him, and how he

had then, as now, so successfully exerted his powers of charming, that

it had seemed as though no mere earthly love could be good enough reward

for him. Could it be that in her distrust she had been the victim of a

momentary delusion, and that he would always exert himself hereafter, as

now, to please her? Might it not be, after all, that this great

happiness, with its tender whisperings and caresses, would ever continue

unbroken, as in past times?

'But, aha!' he suddenly exclaimed, in the tone of one newly awakened to

the existence of a fact whose comparative unimportance had led to its

forgetfulness by him. 'Let not my own losses make me indifferent to your

pleasure, love, for I have not been so. For you, and you alone, I have

reserved a gift fit for the palace of the Cæsars.'

'A gift, my lord? And for me?'

'Yes; but ask me no questions now. You shall see it to-morrow. A few

hours only of mystery and waiting must yet elapse before I will bring it

to you. Until then you can enjoy a woman's pleasure and nurse your

greedy curiosity--hopeless of solving the enigma until I myself choose

to give the clew.'

THE YOUNG AUTHOR'S DREAM.

'_One more Unfortunate._'

Alone in a garret where cobwebs hang thick

Over walls that display the bare mortar and brick,

Whose windows look down on the roofs of back sheds,

From a height that would dizzy the coolest of heads,

A young author sits by a rickety stand,

In a broken-backed chair, with a pen in his hand,

And patiently toils ere the sunlight shall fade

To black the last quire of a ream of 'white laid.'

The shadows have deepened that hang on the wall;

But the Finis is written, the pen is let fall;

And, glad of a respite from labors complete,

His hands and his head press the last written sheet.

Sleep comes not alone; for the goddess of dreams

Is accustomed to visit this blacker of reams.

Like the man that sits under a monster balloon,

And soars o'er the earth halfway up to the moon,

Now stepping at once into Fancy's fair car,

He sails from the dusky old garret afar;

And, leaving the world with its practical crowds,

Such visions as these meet his gaze in the clouds:

THE DREAM.

Forty large editions

Of the 'thrilling tale;'

Forty thousand dollars,

Net proceeds of sale.

Forty smiling critics

Lavishing their praise;

Forty famous florists

Bidding for the bays.

Forty thousand maidens

Sitting up at night,

Poring o'er the volume

With intense delight.

Forty thousand letters

From the country sent,

Blurred by frequent teardrops,

Filled with sentiment.

Forty scheming mothers

Anxious for a match;

Forty blushing daughters,

Each a glorious catch.

Forty generations

Reverence his name;

Forty future ages

Fortify his fame.

THE REALITY.

Forty dunning letters

Coming every day;

Forty cents for washing,

Which he cannot pay.

Forty jokes malicious

Cracked by forty wags;

Forty pert young misses

Sneering at his rags.

Forty old companions

Wondering at his mood;

Forty friends officious

Preaching fortitude.

Forty days of sadness;

Forty nights of sorrow;

Forty dark forebodings

Hanging o'er the morrow.

Forty hempen inches

Borrowed from a friend;

Rafter at the upper,

Neck at lower, end.

Forty earthy spadefuls

On the green hillside;

Forty lines of 'local,'

Telling now he died.

THE GREAT LAKES TO ST. PAUL.

Toward the close of July, 1860, our party gathered at Canaudaigua, that

beautiful piece of Swiss overland scenery, transported to Western New

York. Its Indian name, signifying 'the chosen place,' was not inapt for

our meeting ground.

By the 31st of July we were at Cleveland, Ohio, over the Buffalo and

Lake Shore Railway and New York Central. It was a beautiful day's ride,

the most of the way skirting the lake, whose broad expanse gleamed in

the sunshine, and bore many a sail and propeller to the great havens of

its commerce. The railway borders fine towns and farms, formed by the

dense settlement of the oak openings and groves of the Western Reserve

of Ohio, which was purchased from the Holland Land Company, by a company

from Connecticut, of whom General Cleveland, who names the present city,

was the agent.

Cleveland city, with about forty thousand population, lies on Lake Erie,

at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River, which forms its harbor. It is well

built, chiefly of the light graystone of the vicinity, upon a declivity

shaded with trees, among which the buckeye hickory abounds, has many

fine dwellings, and presents a fair front to the lake view.

On the evening of the 31st July we embarked on the North Star for

Superior City. She is of first class, eleven hundred and six tons, and

bore an immense freight from the East to the remote peninsula, in

exchange for its precious minerals. The entire sail from Cleveland to

Superior is nine hundred and sixty-four miles.

As these boats are the only means of commerce and intercourse for the

dwellers on the upper lakes above Detroit, very frequent are their stops

and calls, taking and leaving much freight, consuming much time on their

way. However, our voyage was speedy: we arrived at our distant terminus,

Superior City, very early on the morning of the 5th of August, making

the running time about seventy-five hours.

Leaving Ohio, one of the earliest settled States of the Western Valley,

and organized sixty years since, our course from Cleveland stretched

northwesterly across the wide lake, passing the island scene of Perry's

splendid triumph, and thence northerly, by its river, to Detroit, a sail

of one hundred and twenty miles, arriving early on the 1st of August.

The city lies extended along its beautiful river, at one extremity

guarded by its old fort, and at the other are the extensive

copper-smelting furnaces, where the ore from the Superior mines, brought

by the steamers, flows in liquid copper. It is comparatively an ancient

town, settled as early as 1701 as a French frontier post; and some of

its land titles, always protected at each national change, with some of

its old families, derive their origin from these early French pioneers.

Our afternoon sail was up Detroit River and the St. Clair, threading our

way among its many verdant islands and rich shores graced with numerous

pretty villages. At 9 p.m. we reached Port Huron and its Canadian

opposite neighbor, Sarnia. At this point is the southern outlet of Lake

Huron, distant seventy-three miles from Detroit. Sarnia is also the

western depot of the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada, while Windsor,

facing Detroit, terminates the Canadian Great Western. From Sarnia,

passing old Fort Gratiot, over to Port Huron, the railway ferry boat,

propelled by the current only, transfers its passengers to the cars of

the Grand Trunk line, on Michigan soil, and by a short branch

intersects the Michigan Central Railroad, a few miles west of Detroit.

For over twelve hundred miles this iron road, fitly named the Grand

Trunk, transports our Western products. Entering Lake Huron, with its

innumerable islands and almost wilderness shores, our sail through it,

of two hundred and seventy-five miles in all, brought us early, on the

2d of August, off Saginaw and Thunder Bays, its western arms, with

Presque Isle, the Great Manitoulin Island, bearing north by east; and by

noon, we reached Point de Tour, at the outlet of St. Mary's River, three

hundred miles from Detroit, lying opposite to Drummond's Island.

Point de Tour has but a solitary dwelling, from whose roof rises the

light tower. Its inmates are said to have preferred this solitude to the

crowded refinement of a New England city. Shortly after, and still

coasting the western side, we stopped at Church's Landing, where an

enterprising New Englander has built his log houses in the forest, amid

the Indians, and drives an active commerce in _raspberry jam_. His trade

has prospered, and he had just completed a new and handsome dwelling.

Fourteen miles farther brought us to Saut Sainte Marie, or the rapids of

the eastern outlet of Lake Superior.

Lake Huron is at an average height of five hundred and seventy-five feet

above the sea level, and one hundred feet in depth below Lake Superior,

with a length in direct line of two hundred and seventy-five miles, from

Port Huron to Saut Sainte Marie. Georgian Bay, to the east of the Great

Manitoulin Island, is its broad eastern expansion; while, on the west,

the Straits of Mackinaw open into the vast expanse of Lake Michigan,

extending a length of four hundred and forty-six miles to Chicago. The

borders of Lake Huron are sparsely peopled. The primitive forest bends

over the lake's clear waters, and surrounds the log cabin or infant

settlement with the wigwam and canoe of the Indian half breeds, who are

still fishing and hunting round the graves of their ancestors-once the

fiercest of all the warrior races that scarce forty years ago as

sovereigns roamed its wilds.

The majestic solitudes of these lakes first received the white man in

1679, when the discoverers La Salle and Hennepin, in the vessel of sixty

tons, which they had built with their Indians at Cayuga Creek, sailed up

Niagara River, Lakes Erie, St. Clair, and Huron, to Mackinaw, and thence

through Lake Michigan to the mouth of Green Bay. Entering Lake Erie on

the 7th of August, 1691, they arrived at Green Bay on the 2d of

September following, encountering many storms and cautiously seeking

their untried way. After gathering a rich cargo of furs, the vessel, in

charge of the pilot and five men, started to return, and was heard of no

more. She doubtless perished with her crew in a gale on Lake Huron. She

carried seven cannon, was well manned and armed, adorned with carved

griffin and eagle heads, and bore the banner and religion of France amid

all the border tribes.

Surely the voyage of Columbus, discovering Hispaniola, while sailing

before and obeying the trade winds, did not surpass in real adventure

this simple expedition of those half-warrior pioneer voyageurs, Fathers

Hennepin and La Salle. The memory of their visit is yet immortal in the

local names given by them and still cherished; while the influence of

France still lingers at Detroit and many other prominent points in this

wide region, once the empire of Louis XIV.

We reached the Saut Sainte Marie about 4 P. M. of the 2d of August. Here

the River St. Mary, or the eastern outlet of Lake Superior, after a wide

course of fifty miles, gathers the multitude of its waters into a narrow

channel of less than a mile in width and length, of swift and impassable

rapids.

The grand Ship Canal, with its stone banks of about eighty feet width

and three locks, transports the largest tonnage around these rapids.

This great work was completed in 1857 by the contractors, Erastus

Corning, of New York, Fairbanks, and others, for a contract price of

seven hundred and fifty thousand acres of land, chiefly mineral, in the

State of Michigan. During our steamer's canal passage of about two

hours, we were interested by the picturesque scenery, untenanted save by

the wigwam and the bark canoe. As usual, upon the arrival of the

steamer, the long canoe, steadily held by a single boy and paddle, in a

current swift as the Niagara, shoots out into the Saut, while the

Indian, standing erect in the canoe, poising his harpoon and scrap net,

strikes or swoops in the large and delicious white fish, assured of a

capacious basketful and more, before the steamer leaves the canal.

And thus we floated onward to the bosom of great Superior.

Our course was along the St. Mary outlet, northwesterly toward White

Fish Point, on the main south shore, projecting far out into the lake.

We were hence carried miles away from sight of the famed-pictured rocks

or of any land. Tending southerly and still westward, we steamed on over

the dark waters, during a serene night, until daylight showed us the

beautiful town of Marquette. Scarce seven years old, the fruit of the

iron mining in its vicinity, it spreads its neat white cottages around

the crescent of its bay and river on an amphitheatre of hills. The rail

train destined to Bai de Noc, on Green Bay, and finished to Marquette

Mines, in all some eighteen miles, was starting upon our arrival.

Marquette, though so young, a mere group of cottages, fronting a

wilderness, from its rich mines of the best iron, has become at once a

scene of industry and large outlay of capital; while the beauty of its

position and its unrivalled climate, surpassing all others on Lake

Superior, have already made it the most attractive summer resort, as

well for the pleasure traveller as the pulmonary invalid. Its climate,

without the sea air, has a cool, silken softness, reminding one of

Newport, Rhode Island. It is more equable and certain; the summer

average is 66°, and the winter 41°; while the lake wind and evaporation

secure it from the rapid changes of the sea shores.

Marquette is the lake port and entrepot of the short range of iron

mountains which adjoin their sisters, known as the Porcupine Mountains,

in whose depths lies the famous copper ore, not unmixed with silver and

other precious deposits. This great mountain fortress extends from

Marquette to Montreal River, beyond Ontonagon, the western boundary of

the State of Michigan, in a line of about twelve to eighteen miles south

of the lake, and often approaches two thousand feet in height, lifting

its forest sides in constant view for more than two hundred miles.

Leaving Marquette and the iron range at 7 A.M., on the 3d of

August, we sailed for Portage, the first harbor in the copper mountains,

arriving about noon.

Portage is a shallow bay or mouth of the river of the same name, on the

east shore of Keewaiwonah Promontory, or, as it is commonly called,

Keweenaw Point. The mines and town of Portage lie at the mountains,

about sixteen miles inland. A few huts were the only signs of settlement

at the bay. Tugs landed the freight and passengers, and we soon left the

wooded bank for the broad expanse of the lake, turning the head of the

promontory, and at 5 P.M. reaching Copper Harbor on its

northwest shore. Here we lay till morning. The village is small, at the

base of a lower range of mineral mountains, spurs of the main chain.

The Clarke Copper Mine is within two miles of the wharf. This mine, like

many others, has had many owners. It had just gone through the

experiments of a French company, which expended its capital, as

alleged, in building fine roads, bridges, and residences for its agents,

while the mining had scarcely reached one hundred and twenty feet deep,

and then employed only six Frenchmen as its miners, whose ore product

was little over three per cent. of copper. In other hands, perhaps, it

may now yield a better reward.

We were much amused with the description given by these Frenchmen of the

mishaps of their ill-directed enterprise. Persistent as Chinese,

resembling many others of the French nation in their ignorance of our

country, language, or customs, they had passed through many droll

blunders, which rendered their narrative highly entertaining.

Copper Harbor, although so small, only then claiming about seventy legal

voters in the entire township, including the mines, was promised the

unusual treat of a political address that evening, as duly placarded,

from a gentleman, who was then candidate for Governor of Michigan, and

came in our boat. The apathy and indifference of the free and

enlightened electors of Copper Harbor were remarkable. A small, dingy

room, adjoining the only store, was the destined arena; and therein,

dimly lighted by some tallow candles, long sat the candidate--alone: a

rejected Timon, whose reflections were never published. The only

interest taken in the meeting (that came under my notice) was an anxious

inquiry by the owner of the building for his rent and expense of

candles, etc., payment of which was alleged to have been refused by the

candidate.

Singularly happy Copper Harbor! your contented equanimity is unruffled

by all the stormy strife of politicians.

Its lake front is graced by a fort, now and long since a water-cure

establishment. All these Western forts, erected many years ago, seem not

intended for offence, but rather as stockades or blockhouses of shelter

from the Indians. They are arranged as extensive tenements within,

pierced for musketry, and only in some cases with terraces for cannon.

These frontier forts, long the dwelling of the hunter or his family in

the wilderness, were guarded by the company of troops who protected the

settlers and maintained the sovereignty of our flag and nation over

these remote wilds. They are always placed in the most eligible and

commanding positions, and seem as if by design to have secured the

settlement of these points, which in all cases have become the thronged

cities or favorite towns of the ever-growing West. Thus, in Europe, the

ancient Roman fortified camps on their frontiers founded Cologne,

Chester, Vienna, Milan, Verona, and other cities, once their military

outposts against barbarism.

About 7 A. M. of the 4th August, we left Copper Harbor on our

course, and soon reached Eagle River. This is another copper-mining

settlement, straggling along its poor harbor, somewhat larger than

Copper Harbor, and more picturesque. Landing a few of our company, we

sailed to Ontonagon, the largest of these copper-mine towns (perhaps two

thousand in population), and situated upon a sand reach at the mouth of

its river, which leads to the Great Minnesota Mine, eighteen miles

distant.

Early in the clear morning of the 5th of August, we were moving up

Allouez Bay. Sounding slowly over its bar, and passing Minnesota Point

and Island, between the mouths of the Rivers St. Louis and Nemadji, we

arrived at Superior City, our destined haven.

_Superior City_, by its pretentious name, great distance, and our

expectations, had risen to much importance in our imagination, but the

actual scene presented a wide contrast. A large town--or metropolis--on

a poor harbor, without interior resources or communications, had been

hastily projected. It is called the head of ocean navigation, and the

terminus of many proposed but as yet imaginary railroads. While the

titles to all the land are still in litigation, the wilderness shades

its streets, and, saving the rare arrival of the Indian mail carrier on

snow shoes, during six months of intense cold, they are isolated from

all humanity. Its grand prospectus, some five years before, had drawn

there about three thousand people; and soon afterward, starved and

disappointed, nearly all, save perhaps five hundred, had deserted. About

two miles of streets, planked from the mud, with frame dwellings, had

been constructed, and they had already attained the first municipal

blessing--_taxes-_-to the total of $45,000, payable by this feeble

remnant of a settlement, mainly of abandoned dwellings. Should the

railroads so frequently surveyed and designed to terminate here be

really built, Superior City may see, to some extent, in future years,

somewhat of that prosperity which its projectors, blinded by their

hopes, had thought already realized.

Few positions are more picturesque. In front, the shores of Portland and

Minnesota rise in beautiful grandeur, and the bay and harbor, although

imperfect, are richly wooded and very graceful; while, all the way

thither, from La Pointe, the lake's waters, lying among the mountains,

shadowed by their heavy foliage, remind one much of the scenery of the

Lower Danube. This _ghost of a city_ had not much left of interest, and

we passed our day in arranging for the journey across the country

southward to St. Paul.

And here we found ourselves really _pioneers_. No road or transport was

alleged to exist. We persevered. Indians and trappers beset us with

their projects of tracking and portage by the St. Croix and other

rivers, requiring a camp life with strange companions of nearly a month

to accomplish the distance of only one hundred and sixty-three miles,

equivalent to that of Albany from New York. A military road direct

through the wilderness had been often surveyed, and once cut through, of

about eighty feet width, to near Sunrise City, fifty miles from St.

Paul; at which point the dense forest spreads into oak openings and

beautiful prairies. This single cutting, long overgrown in lofty pines,

with the frequent surveys and contracts, from the year 1852 to 1857, had

cost the United States Government, for this distance of about one

hundred and twelve miles, $150,000; and no actual road had ever yet been

made. Fortunately for our enterprise, we met a gentleman who had just

groped through safely on horseback. We were reassured, and engaged the

only available wagon and team--a small, frail affair, devoid of cover,

seats, or springs; and, with ample provisions, perched upon our luggage,

we rolled out of Superior City that evening, and, passing its

significantly large cemetery, we at once entered the forest. These woods

are chiefly of pine, cedar, tamarack, or hemlock, gigantic in size, a

dreary solitude, unvisited by any bird or game, save an occasional hawk

or owl. They are but the southern outposts of that forest army which

begirds Hudson's Bay, and spreads its gloomy barrier of the same trees

around the dominions of the Ice King, while it is the only forest to be

met with in all the Mississippi Valley.

The width of about eighty feet--that theoretical road for which the

United States had paid so often and so well--was seen between the

mightiest sentinel trees; but in the midst had sprung up a fresh growth,

often nearly one hundred feet high, surrounded by huge stumps, and heavy

undergrowth of the renewing forest, varied with hopeless mudholes and

swamps, and only at intervals of about twenty miles was there any

habitation.

Such was the _great military road_. Perhaps its progress equalled the

actual wants of this region; for population had not yet crowded any of

the forest borders. It was then by the adjoining townships, under State

laws, feebly commencing to be really made as a road; and frequently we

halted at the camps of these hardy sons of toil. Our first twenty-one

miles to Twin Lakes, at the best speed, with good horses, occupied eight

hours, three of which, in the middle of the night, were passed under

deluging rain accompanied by thunder and lightning of the most appalling

grandeur, thumping in the shelterless wagon over stumps and bogholes

through the dreary woods.

Twin Lakes--or the isthmus between two small lakes, in the depths of the

forest--is a solitary log house and stable. Its proprietor and our

landlord for the night's shelter was, I believe, named John Smith. With

his family he had lived there, keeping this _hotel_ for some years,

owning _several lots_ in the paper _City of Twin Lakes_, rich in the

anticipated tide of gain to flow from the crowded thoroughfare of the

great military road.

Happy man! we were the first party _on wheels_ that had yet essayed the

road. Perhaps his posterity, by patience, may win their reward.

Our rain deluge, with sheeted lightning and pealing thunder, was

ceaseless throughout the night. Its echoes amid the forest solitudes

were awful; and our fitful sleep was varied by the rain dripping between

the logs of our shelter.

However, morning came at last, bright, clear, and calm; and early we

resumed our wagon and way-picking among the familiar logs and stumps,

contesting as for life with legions of mosquitoes, sandflies, etc. And

thus we made thirty miles farther (halting at a camp for dinner) to the

_City of Chengwatana_, which is so named on the large and beautiful map

thereof, prepared in New York. It is laid out in Broadways, Fifth

Avenues, Lydig Avenue, and, I believe, Daly Square, so named from J.

Daly, of New York, with parks, colleges, etc., etc., adequate for a

million of inhabitants. This fine imaginary picture proved unavailing to

sell the land. It still remains a swamp bordering Snake River, in the

bosom of the wilderness; and its entire population was only one German

and his family--really indefinite in number of children--and two log

houses, between which he vibrated at pleasure.

Our arrival was in another violent rain, lasting far into the night; but

we considered ourselves, by this time, road and water proof. On the

river shore, by the red glare of the fire light a wigwam and some

Indians were visible; and frequently we heard their rifle shots. To our

surprise, in the morning, instead of deer, they brought in a large

basket of lake trout, each pierced through the head with a bullet when

approaching the fire light.

Morning found us early on our hard way to the famed _City of Fortuna_,

whose picture displayed a similar origin and imagination, and its

reality was even more doleful.

Fortuna City, on Kettle River, in the woods, contained three log cabins,

and no inhabitants. A boy came hither, perhaps from Superior, the day

before, to meet our party. After repelling some furious charges of the

mosquito cavalry, who displayed their vigor after long starving, we gave

up the contest, and attempted sleep.

To our log cabin had come that day several engineers, who formed a

surveying party for another railroad project, passing through this

forest from St. Paul, whence they had started a month before with an

ample wagon train. The Indians had murdered the drivers and captured the

wagons with their entire property; and in their destitution they sought

this only shelter. We took them forward with us into St. Paul, and were

greatly indebted for their intelligent society and kind attentions.

Fortuna City had one peculiar interest to us; it was the _last halt_ and

lodging in the forest. Our next day's ride--if such it may be

called--brought us to the oak openings at Folsom's, a clearing on the

southern skirt of this wilderness, and shortly after to Sunrise City.

Our forest journey to-day was varied by the utter collapse of the wagon

in a vain charge upon an obstinate stump; and perforce we walked for

miles, till reaching a camp of the road workers on the farther bank of

Grindstone River, we joyfully forded and found shelter from the noontide

heat and mosquitoes; while the German sutler, who alone remained, busied

himself in his primitive _al fresco_ cookery, which we enjoyed, and

then, exchanging to another wagon, hastened on to our destination.

The oak openings--those grand parklike expanses and rolls of land, with

stately groups of giant oaks--far surpassing all culture of man, set out

by the Creator on such a noble forest background, never looked more

majestic and beautiful. They were vocal with singing birds, and filled

with life; at their foot thronged the grouse or prairie chicken, darting

through the high flowering grasses (richer than all garden flowers) in

such numbers that but a few feet from our wheels we shot them in great

abundance.

_Sunrise City_--a village but of yesterday (public lands, for sale by

proclamation, adjoining)--is beautifully placed on Sunrise River, and

might have then contained about five hundred inhabitants, whose neat

white cottages and pleasant streets, bordering a romantic river and

bridge, made a picture not unlike the scenery of Warwickshire, England.

We reached here--fifty miles still north of St. Paul--to pass the first

night of our ride in a comfortable dwelling.

Many a fine farm, just cleared and broken, attracted us here, and hence

along the prairie road into St. Paul, where we arrived at the close of

the following day, which proved to be, as we kept no calendar, Thursday,

the 9th of August.

Our drive this last day led past numerous linked lakes, with their

borders of the tall Minnesota rice grass in flower, the home of the

canvas back, pelican, and swan. Passing through the village of Little

Canada, we rode on to Minnehaha Prairie along its gentle, verdant slope,

and lapse of shining waters of Twelve Lakes, graced with the names of

Como, Garda, etc., and adorned with many a pretty boat and sail. A few

miles further brought us to the upper terrace of beautiful St. Paul.

As pioneers of this wilderness route, we met with marked attention from

all, and passed some agreeable days at St. Paul, Fort Snelling,

Minneapolis, St. Anthony, and their numerous points of interest. Our

homeward route was by the Mississippi River to Prairie du Chien, where

old Fort Crawford, then a mere tenement, commands the confluence of the

Wisconsin River with the Father of Waters. This sail of three hundred

miles consumed forty-eight hours.

The river banks recede and advance in lake-like expanses along its

winding course, and their richly wooded heights, crowned with red

sandstone, resemble the ruined Rhine castles. The sail through Lake

Pepin, and between the States of Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin, was

varied by frequent and thriving towns and villages.

From Prairie du Chien--a picture of straggling despair--by the Milwaukie

and Prairie du Chien Railroad, and the Northwestern Railroad, two

hundred and twenty-two miles, we reached Chicago, and passed through a

crowd of beautiful towns, in a State scarce a generation since reclaimed

from the Indians. Familiar railroads transported us from Chicago to

Detroit, Niagara, Albany, and New York.

Our whole distance of travel in three weeks was thirty-four hundred and

forty-one miles. It was brief, but spiced with adventure, and over a

field of vast interest, present and future.

Our beautiful country, made one and indivisible by the great and good

Author of its existence, through its mighty natural features, has,

among its chief grandeurs, this water system of the great northern

lakes, the frontier of the ever-progressive and patriotic West and

North. In dimensions, sublimity, and beauty, by the consent of all, it

is without parallel on earth.

A volume of the purest fresh water is gathered in Lake Superior, without

visible, adequate supply, to a depth of one thousand feet, with a length

of near five hundred miles, and average breadth of one hundred and sixty

miles, on a bottom lifted six hundred feet above sea level.

This incalculable mass of water moves its limpid wave through the Saut

Sainte Marie into its twin seas, Lakes Michigan and Huron, then by St.

Clair and Detroit Rivers is poured through Lake Erie, ever gradually

descending, till, at great Niagara, 'The Thunder of the Waters,' it

tosses in fury along its rapids, leaps the cataract in glory, at a rate

of one hundred millions of tons of water the hour, and then sweeps away

into Lake Ontario, to form that northern Mississippi, the River St.

Lawrence, which, for over one thousand miles, holds on its ever

increasing and widening current, in majesty to the broad Atlantic. By

the canals at the Falls and Saut Sainte Marie, direct and continuous

ship and steam navigation for sea-going vessels from the Atlantic to

Superior City, the extreme Northwest, or Chicago on the Southwest, over

three thousand miles through the heart of the continent, is open, while

the American coast line along these great waters, exceeds thirty-two

hundred miles. Complete in itself, the source of life, health, fine

climate, fertility, wealth, and countless blessings to all its shores

and valleys, it is divided by lofty barriers from all the other chief

water systems of the United States. The Mississippi rises in the

highlands of Minnesota at Lake Itasca, more than one hundred miles west

of Lake Superior, and gathers in its course all the rivers of its

valley. Still loftier mountains separate the sources of the Hudson and

Connecticut, and the other rivers of the Atlantic slope.

Blessed with soil and climate unsurpassed, and a Government the nearest

to perfection, this region, watered by a mighty inland ocean, is already

the chief granary of the world, as well as its great mineral store,

although its railway system is not yet extended to its utmost limits;

and beyond Michigan it is scarce thirty years since the Americans gained

a settlement in its borders.

The greatness of ancient Europe, Asia, and Africa gathered along the

shores and harbors of the Mediterranean; all beyond was barbarism, bound

to the sovereigns of the Midland Sea only by terror of arms. Even to

this day, the laws and literature of those master nations are yet

dominant in all the learning and social polity of Europe. This great

northern water system is geographically the Mediterranean of the North

American continent, and Minnesota, the actual centre, is its _omphalos_.

The geographical centre of North America in the heart of Minnesota is

also the pinnacle of its watershed--the central source of the majestic

rivers whose vast basins determine the physical contour, climates,

products, commerce, industry, and political destiny of two-fifths of the

whole continent.

With such a theatre for development, the future of this great area, in

near grasp, surpasses conception. Egypt, with it endless renown,

dwindles into insignificance in comparison. The paramount supremacy of

any nation depends wholly on its utility to the rest of mankind.

The warrior nation yields in turn to a stronger foe, while all alike are

willing tributaries to the natural arbiter of commerce and source of

food supply. Wars, by the laws of Providence, attend the convulsions of

national change and growth; but all alike ever welcome the white-winged

doves of commerce as the ministers and messengers of national glory and

prosperity.

ENGLISH AND AMERICAN TAXATION.

There have been few more striking circumstances connected with the

transcendent changes which have taken place in this country during the

past three years than the steady verification, amid every change, of

those great principles of political economy which, during the past half

century, have been the practical guides of European legislation. In

fact, under the pressure of war we are slowly coming to realize our

fellowship with the communities of the Old World in the laws of social

change. Step by step the nation is now passing through all the changes

in its internal and domestic condition that took place in Great Britain

in the wars with Napoleon. Struck with the novelty and apparent

anomalies of our condition, we have been inclined to feel that it was

without parallels in history. But in that period of English history

which beheld a suspension of specie payment protracted twenty years, an

enormous expansion of the currency--the appreciation of gold--a rise in

prices unparalleled in any country--a wild spirit of speculation--and,

with all, an appearance of astonishing prosperity in the midst of a most

exhausting war, we see the reflection of our own condition, and find the

lessons by which we should be governed. We have now, for the first time,

become a people conscious of taxation. It is clear that the burdens of

the future must be still greater than anything we have yet borne in the

past. The questions as to the best modes of taxation have already begun

to call forth the anxious deliberation of the nation. The question is

asked by some if we have not already reached that limit where taxation

ceases to be a contribution from the surplus of society, and beyond

which it will become a draught on the vital, productive energies of the

country. It cannot be unprofitable, at such a time, to examine the

history of English taxation in the great periods of similar trial

through which that nation has passed.

The great rebellion marks the era of the adoption of a regular system of

taxation in Great Britain. 'From a period of immemorial antiquity,' says

Macaulay, 'it had been the practice of every English Government to

contract debts; what the Revolution introduced was the practice of

honestly paying them.'

The change is significant of the triumph of the people. It was found, on

the breaking out of the rebellion, that not even an army of Puritans

could be sustained without money. The plan of weekly assessments was at

first adopted. It was unequal and frequently oppressive. In 1643 it was

proposed, in the republican Parliament, to place a tax on the

manufacture of beer and cider. The proposition was not at first

favorably received. That solemn body had no objection to checking the

abominations of beer drinking, but it hesitated to inaugurate a species

of taxation which seemed to infringe upon some of the most cherished

rights of Englishmen. After much discussion the bill was carried, though

with the express declaration that it was compelled by the necessities of

the state, and should not be renewed. The tax was soon found too

convenient to be dispensed with. In spite of the good resolutions of

Parliament, the act was again and again renewed. As the necessities of

the state increased, the list of articles was enlarged, and the rate of

duty gradually augmented. Thus the excise was introduced to the English

people, and thus, almost before they had ceased to look upon it as an

intruder, it had acquired a foothold in the budget, from which it has

never since been possible to shake it. The burden of the excise at this

period, however, was not oppressive. During the Commonwealth and the

reign of Charles II. a tax, which has since produced to the state an

annual income of $90,000,000, did not probably average more than

£500,000. It gives us a singular picture of the simplicity of that

period that even this small sum made up one third of the whole royal

revenue for the year. The other two thirds were drawn in about equal

proportions from the customs and crown lands.

We now approach one of the most important eras in the financial history

of England. The nation was yet unaccustomed to taxation, and was weighed

down by no national debt. In the Revolution of 1688, and the events that

grew immediately out of it, we find, however, the origin of nearly every

species of tax now in use in Great Britain. In the same agitated period

we find also the beginning of the national debt. Louis XIV. espoused the

cause of James, and England entered upon a war with France. In a

conflict with the greatest monarchy of Europe, the Government soon found

itself forced to adopt a scale of national expenditure which the

preceding generation would not have conceived possible. At once, as in a

night, a harvest of strange taxes sprang up on every hand. The list of

excisable articles was increased. The tax on houses and windows, that

had been so unpopular in the preceding reign, was again introduced, and

a new appraisement was made of all the real estate in the kingdom. A

degenerate age might take exceptions to some of the other taxes now

instituted. An act was passed placing a tax upon bachelors and widowers,

fixing, at the same time, 'certain rules and duties on marriages,

births, and burials, for the term of five years, for the carrying on the

war against France with vigor.' Men were not even permitted to enjoy the

subtile luxury derived from having a title attached to the name without

taxation. Persons of the present day, wishing to know the relative value

of the titles, will be interested in the following law, passed at this

time:

Every person bearing the title of

esquire, or reputed, or owning, or

writing himself such, shall pay £5

Every gentleman, or reputed gentleman,

or owning himself such,

shall pay £1

These, however, were by no means the most burdensome forms of taxation.

A man would willingly pay for the distinction of writing himself an

esquire, who would grumble with dissatisfaction at the duty on his salt.

But to meet the increasing expense of the state, and 'carrying on the

war with vigor in France and Ireland' (the propitiating clause with

which nearly all the acts of taxation of the period close), the most

minute articles, both of necessity and luxury, were required to bear a

portion of the common burden. The nation bore its unaccustomed load with

singular patience. A license duty on hackney coaches, imposed in 1693,

called forth, however, opposition from an unexpected quarter. The

outraged wives of the hackmen assembled, and, to express their

indignation at the tax, mobbed the offending members of Parliament on

their way from the House. It should be mentioned, as showing the

intrepidity of that body, or, more probably, the great necessities of

the state, that the tax remained unchanged. In spite of all these taxes,

the greatest difficulty was experienced in procuring funds to carry on

the war. A general lack of confidence in the stability of the Government

prevented men from taking up readily the loans which the Government was

forced to call for. Various expedients were adopted to attract the

cupidity of capitalists. Among these the most successful was the custom

of receiving loans upon tontines. This was a species of annuity. Twenty

or thirty persons united in the purchase from Government of an annuity

upon the joint lives of their whole number. At the death of each his

share went to those who remained, and was distributed equally among

them. The final survivor took the whole annuity. No inducements,

however, were sufficient to overcome the popular distrust. The national

debt had already begun to accumulate. Exchequer bills sold on the street

at forty per cent. discount; while, at the same time, a wild spirit of

speculation and adventure, such as is too apt to be produced by the

unnatural excitements of a state of war, had seized upon the popular

mind, and threatened, in its reaction, to bring the whole nation to

ruin.

It was at this time of excitement and danger that the National Bank was

established. It was not at first favorably received. But the effect of

its steadying influence soon began to be felt in the whole financial

condition of the state. It even checked for a time the frenzied spirit

of stock jobbing, which was absorbing the strength of the nation, and

with which a few years later, when the whole country ran wild with the

South Sea Bubble, it was so nearly involved in a mortal struggle. Under

the influence of the Bank, the business of the nation gradually acquired

an evenness and stability which was unknown to any former age.

But while the establishment of this National Bank supplied the

Government with a ready and economical method of procuring funds, it did

not do away with the necessity of taxes. A new form of taxation was now

furnished by the Dutch. This small and ingenious people, in the defence

of their liberty, had been early forced into extraordinary expenditures,

and were in advance of every other nation in the perfection of their

system of taxation. The English Parliament had, in the preceding age,

borrowed from them the excise. They now took from the same source the

idea of stamp duties. This species of tax had been invented in a

competition for a prize offered by the Dutch Government for the

discovery of a new form of tax, which should press lightly on the

people, and, at the same time, produce a large revenue to the state.

Stamps were introduced in England in the year 1693. The nation was now

in possession of the four most important methods of taxation: customs,

excise, licenses, and stamps. The first had existed in the island from a

period of immemorial antiquity. The second was introduced by the Great

Rebellion. The third and fourth came in with the wars attendant upon the

accession of William and Mary.

Of these different forms it may be said, that the second is most

obnoxious to the people, and the third most unequal. We should add,

perhaps, to this list the land tax, which, founded on the new assessment

made by William, became from this time a regular source of revenue. In

this period, we see, was laid the foundation of the whole system of

taxation now in use in this country and in Great Britain. The hundred

years that followed produced no new species of tax. The five forms which

we have mentioned, however, were diligently cultivated. In the nine

years which immediately followed the accession of William and Mary,

about forty distinct acts of taxation were passed by Parliament. Still

it was impossible for a nation counting less than six million

inhabitants to pay the expenses of a vast and protracted war by

immediate taxation. In 1697 a debt existed of about one hundred million

dollars. This is the foundation of that national debt which, with

trifling exceptions, has been constantly increasing for more than two

centuries, and which now occupies a position of influence not second to

that of the throne itself. The importance of the Bank increased with the

growth of the debt, and the effects of their combined influence appeared

on every hand. They were the national pledges for the stability of the

Government.

Every fresh rumor of preparation on the part of the exiled Stuarts to

enter England, filled the people with alarm for the safety of the Bank.

And when, in 1745, Charles Edward landed in Scotland, and made his

romantic advance into the kingdom, an enormous run was begun on the

Bank. It was prevented from doing harm only by the patriotism of the

London merchants. In this brief rebellion the people realized the

important financial interest which each citizen had acquired in the

permanency of the existing Government and the stability of the reigning

house.

At first Parliament had proceeded in the imposition of its taxes on the

principle that a tax, to be equitable and easy, should be distributed

over a great variety of articles. It was argued that a man would pay a

small duty on a large number of things with less inconvenience and

consciousness of burden than if the same tax was levied upon a few

prominent articles. The pettiness of the tax would keep him in a kind of

deception as to the total amount he was paying, which not even the

frequency with which he was called upon to pay it would entirely remove.

This theory, together with a condition of state in which the wants of

Government were constantly increasing, produced, in the time of William

and Mary, a constant multiplication of petty taxes. In the early part of

the following reign many of these were consolidated in separate funds,

which were designated to pay specific parts of the national debt.

But the number of articles subject to taxation was not reduced. The

restlessness of the people under the numerous exactions of the excise

soon, however, suggested the necessity of a change. Government now

passed to one of those extremes which were only too common in an age

when political economy had not yet risen into a science, and legislation

was only an art of shifts and expedients. In 1736 a tax of five dollars

upon the gallon was imposed on all English-made spirits, with a

corresponding protective tariff on those of foreign manufacture. The

result of this extraordinary tax proved the folly of its originators. It

failed as a source of revenue, and, so far from removing these articles

beyond the reach of the poor, which had been one of the designs of the

bill, it was estimated that the business of smuggling was so stimulated

by the enormous bounty offered upon its labors, that the amount of

spirits consumed in the kingdom during the existence of this tax was not

sensibly diminished. After a short trial the tax was removed.

The work of reducing the list of excisable articles was nevertheless

begun, and from this time it went slowly, and, except as interrupted by

extraordinary demands upon the state, steadily forward. Stamps, however,

were governed by a different law. Its inoffensiveness, the economy of

its mode of collection, together with its ready availability, caused

this species of tax to be brought into more and more extensive use. In

fact, a constant increase of taxation in some form had become necessary

in order to meet the increasing expenses of the state. After the close

of the war in 1697, strong efforts were made to pay off the national

debt, the rising greatness of which filled all classes with alarm. No

corresponding efforts since have been rewarded with similar results. In

the brief period of peace that followed, the national debt was reduced

one fifth. Four expensive wars, following each other in rapid

succession, overwhelmed the petty labors of the sinking fund, put an end

to the work of diminution, and left the nation, at the beginning of the

war with her colonies in this country, oppressed with a debt of

$600,000,000. It came out from this struggle with $500,000,000 added to

the burden of the state. This point of time may be fixed as the close of

the second epoch. A new class of changes now begin, which have had, if

possible, a greater influence on the financial condition of England, as

it exists at the present, than those we have already described.

In 1793, notwithstanding its enormous debt, the country boldly entered

upon its great conflict with France. It is impossible to look without

admiration upon the obstinate energy displayed by the English nation

during this conflict, which lasted, with slight intermissions, for more

than twenty years, and by which the annual tax was quadrupled, and the

national debt increased beyond a chance of final extinction. In the

astonishing revolution which it wrought in the financial condition of

the state, as well as in much of the social phenomena with which it was

accompanied, this conflict strongly resembles that in which the States

of the North are engaged against the South. The first effects of the war

appeared in the tax system.

Great changes had taken place in Great Britain since the time of the

introduction of a regular system of taxation in 1688. Land was no longer

the most important source of income to the citizen. Profits from other

sources had sprung up. Commerce had discovered the riches of the Eastern

trade, and manufactures, stimulated by new inventions, had begun to

assume an importance and exert an influence which already threatened to

revolutionize the whole condition of society. Unconsciously to itself,

the nation had reached a point where any large increase in the demands

of the state must produce a new species of taxation. The war with France

supplied the impulse required. In 1797, Government attempted to meet the

extraordinary expenses of the year by tripling the tax on houses and

windows, etc. The experiment failed. It was found that these taxes,

which had been the 'towers of strength' of a preceding generation, could

no longer be relied on in the changed circumstances that had been

brought about by time.

It was in many respects one of the darkest periods in English history.

The Austrian armies, exhausted by repeated defeats, hoped only to be

able to defend themselves if attacked. Spain and the Netherlands had

joined themselves to France. Against the power of Napoleon England stood

up alone. At this critical juncture, a mutiny broke out in the English

navy. The whole fleet in the channel refused to do duty. The fleet at

the Nore, catching the spirit of revolt, also raised the red flag. The

doctrines of the French Revolution were sedulously scattered throughout

the kingdom, and in several counties of Ireland actual uprisings had

taken place. Added to these were financial difficulties. The enormous

outlays demanded for the prosecution of the war were very naturally

weakening the public confidence in the final ability of the Government

to pay the extravagant sums it was obliged to borrow. Under the

influence of the distrust thus engendered stocks fell. Three per cents.,

which had sold at 98, went down to 53. Many of the loans effected by the

Government at this time and during the war were made with a discount of

forty per cent. on the nominal value of the stock. Gold was scarce, and

rapidly rising. The pressure on the Bank for redemption was greater than

it had been since the rebellion of 1745, and threatened, unless

corrective measures were at once adopted, to bring that institution to

actual bankruptcy.

The undaunted courage and resolution of the Government, in the midst of

this accumulation of difficulties, saved the country. The writ of habeas

corpus was suspended. By an admirable mingling of firmness and

conciliation the mutiny was quelled in the navy without serious

consequences resulting to the state. To meet the financial difficulties,

an act was passed by Parliament permitting the Bank to suspend specie

payment--thus delivering the country, for a period of more than twenty

years, over to a wholly inconvertible paper currency. From these strong

measures the enemies of the country anticipated the most disastrous

results. They were, however, doomed to disappointment. Even Napoleon at

length grew weary of prophesying the bankruptcy of a nation which every

year, from this time, gave more and more effective proofs of the

stability of its finances. It was the singular fortune of Great Britain

to have at the head of its finances, at this juncture, a man, who in a

different sphere, exhibited a spirit scarcely less bold, indomitable,

and comprehensive than that of the First Consul himself. This man was

Mr. Pitt. The finances of Great Britain, even at the present day, bear

witness to the extraordinary changes instituted by this statesman. The

tax on houses, windows, etc., had failed. In 1798, Mr. Pitt, with a

characteristic fertility of invention, brought forward a bill laying a

tax on incomes. By this bill, which is the foundation of all those that

have since followed, no tax was imposed on incomes that were less than

$300; on incomes above this sum a small tax was laid, which gradually

increased until it became one tenth of all incomes over $1,000. The

income tax was designed by Mr. Pitt to be simply a war tax. According to

his plan the interest upon the national debt, which he kept funded as

far as possible, was to be provided for solely from the indirect taxes,

leaving the direct tax to meet the extraordinary expenses of the war.

The most original feature of the financial system instituted by this

statesman, however, was the sinking fund. To prevent the rapid

accumulation of the national debt, Mr. Pitt, even before the breaking

out of the war with France, had obtained from Parliament permission to

set aside six million dollars, with an addition, afterward made, of one

per cent. of all the loans made by Government, as a fund to be expended

in the purchase of Government stock. The rapid growth of this fund from

the constant compounding of interest would, he declared, be sufficient,

ultimately, to consume the entire debt of the state. The result seemed

to justify his prediction. Constantly in the market, the sinking fund

saved the state, by its timely purchases many times during the war, from

the disastrous depreciation to which the public stock was liable at

every unfavorable turn of the conflict. In 1815, so enormous had been

the financial transactions of the state that this fund amounted to about

$75,000,000.

In 1802 the income tax was discontinued; and, in the following year, was

renewed under the name of the property tax. The expenses of the state

continued to rise, and it became necessary that this tax should be

largely increased. During the last ten years of the war the property tax

required ten per cent. of all the incomes of the kingdom--with a few

exceptions--to be paid into the national treasury every year. Never

before had such a burden been laid on Englishmen. All classes groaned

under the exactions of a tax every penny of which they were made

conscious of by direct collection. In comparison with the property tax

all other burdens seemed easy. It is now clear, however, that the nation

could never have passed successfully through the great struggle in which

it was engaged without the assistance of the tax upon incomes. It stood

next in order of productiveness to the excise. In the year 1815 the

property tax produced seventy-five millions of dollars. Still the people

remembered with pleasure that the word of Parliament had been given that

it should not continue longer than the return of peace. The time was

eagerly looked forward to when that promise should be redeemed. Early in

1816 the question of the continuance of the tax came up before

Parliament. A strong party, impressed with the importance of diminishing

the national debt, advocated its continuance. Every night, for two

months, the subject was anxiously discussed. The motion for its

abolition was at last carried. The vast crowd which had assembled

without the Parliament House to await the result, caught the sound of

cheering in the chamber, and, receiving it as a signal of success, rent

the air with shouts of joy. The enthusiasm spread with the news. Bells

were rung as for a great victory, and bonfires in all parts of the

kingdom proclaimed the joy of the nation at its release from what was

regarded the moat oppressive burden of the war. Twenty-five years later

the income tax was again revived.

The national debt at the close of the war with France amounted to a

little more than $424,000,000,000. Of this, $300,000,000,000 had been

added by the war. During the last years of the contest the annual

expenditures of the state were $585,000,000. The population of the

island was at this time 13,400,000, from which $360,000,000 was annually

collected in taxes. It is important to notice the condition of the

people during this epoch. For nearly twenty years the country had been

under the uncontrolled influence of a paper currency. It had been a

period of remarkable prosperity, coupled with unparalleled changes. And

here we find many points of resemblance with the present condition of

our own country. The rapidly expanding currency, the enormous demands of

the war, and the spirit of speculation engendered by the sharp

alternations of hope and fear, and the extraordinary fluctuations of the

markets had stimulated in every branch of business a preternatural

activity. Manufactures, which the beginning of the war had found just

rising into prominence, rapidly developed in an age of financial

profusion. No such progress had ever been made in a corresponding

period. Exports were doubled. The shipping rose from one to two and a

half million tons. The whole nation exhibited the singular spectacle of

a country constantly advancing in wealth and prosperity in the midst of

one of the most exhaustive wars that the world has ever seen.

To this, however, there was apparently, at least, one exception. Prices

rose steadily from the beginning of the war. This was true not merely of

unimportant articles, or those which, by the exercise of a more severe

economy, could be in part dispensed with. The cost of the necessaries of

life doubled. Wheat rose from forty-nine shillings per quarter in 1797

to one hundred and forty shillings in 1813; while the beef which was

sold in Smithfield market, at the beginning of the war, at three

shillings per stone, constantly advanced in price, until the same

quantity in 1814 could only be bought for six shillings. Malt, coal,

wages--everything rose proportionately. Few questions have been the

subject of more discussion than the cause of this remarkable rise of

prices. Two diverse explanations have been given, each put forth by men

whose habits of thought and opportunities for observation qualify them

to speak on the subject with authority. One large party attribute the

rise of prices that took place at this period, entirely to the influence

of the suspension of specie payment by the Bank, which, as they say,

flooded the country with an inflated and depreciated paper currency, and

thus necessitated a corresponding rise in the price of the articles

given in exchange for it. So strongly does this reasoning commend itself

to the minds of those familiar with the first principles of political

economy, that it has been very generally accepted. And it is worthy of

notice that these are almost the only arguments which can be heard in

explanation of the similar rise of prices now going on in this country.

A more subtile but very important class of influences were brought to

notice by another party, under the able leadership of Mr. Tooke. By

these the rise of prices is, to a large degree, attributed to the

excited spirit of speculation produced by the war, which, as they show,

twice during this period brought the country to the brink of ruin. In

favor of this explanation it may be further said that the fall of prices

began immediately on the close of the war, and at no time was greater

than in 1817, two years before the resumption of specie payment by the

Bank. In 1819 the Bank of England resumed the payment of specie. Gold,

which had been at one time at a premium of twenty-five per cent., now

fell rapidly, and in 1821 was again at par.

It is difficult to say which has exerted the largest influence on the

finances of Great Britain--the Revolution of 1688, or the wars with

France in the beginning of this century. The first gave to England its

system of taxation, but the last developed the capabilities of that

system, and adapted it to the wants of a growing and commercial people.

The nation came out of its long conflict with taxes pressing upon nearly

every important branch of industry. In the sixteen years that followed

the war with France, taxes to the amount of nearly $200,000,000, were

taken off from the country. These changes gave opportunities for many

important reforms. While the national debt was slowly reduced, the tax

system underwent great changes. Many taxes which had checked the growth

of important branches of business were entirely removed. Efforts were

made to reduce the excise, which was always an unpopular form of

taxation. In carrying forward these changes, it was found that one

really productive tax might be made to take the place of a large number

of small duties which pressed with peculiar severity upon the people.

Government now turned longingly to that 'splendid source of revenue,' as

it was aptly called, which it had so reluctantly relinquished in 1816.

In 1842, Sir Robert Peel suddenly brought forward a plan for a new tax

upon incomes. It was at once adopted. This income tax differed, however,

in many important particulars, from the one which the Government had

been compelled to make use of in the wars with France. By it incomes

under $750 were exempt. A discrimination of very great importance was

also made, which has been the occasion since for much refined

discussion, and is founded in sound reason, but which has hitherto been

wholly overlooked in the legislation in this country. A discrimination

was made between salaries and the incomes divided from realized capital.

Taxable incomes, partaking of the nature of a salary, and upon which a

tax would have the character of a duty on capital, were required by the

provisions of this new act to pay only one half as much as those incomes

which arose from, and would be therefore added to, wealth already

acquired.

The income, or property tax, as it is now called, completes the system

of taxation which is now relied upon to supply the varying but always

enormous wants of Great Britain. Through these various sources during

the past year the English Government has collected an income of three

hundred and fifty million dollars--about the same it obtained through

the same channels from a population of thirteen million inhabitants in

the closing years of the war with Napoleon. With the same system of

taxation, our own Government has, during the past year, obtained an

income of one hundred and eleven million dollars. If we examine

particularly the sources of the English revenue at these two epochs, and

compare them with the corresponding branches of taxation with us, we

find that in the year closing in 1815, the receipts from customs

amounted to about fifty-six million dollars--a sum, it will be noticed,

considerably less than that drawn from the same source in this country

for the past year, but only about half the amount derived from customs

in Great Britain in the year ending September, 1863. From the property

tax was obtained about seventy-five million dollars--the modified form

of this tax now in use in Great Britain produces about fifty million

dollars per annum. Either of these sums is probably much larger than it

would be advisable to attempt to produce by a direct tax in this

country. Stamps, in 1815, yielded an income of thirty million dollars.

During the past year this simple and productive source of revenue

produced in Great Britain forty-five million dollars. It seems probable

that this species of tax might be extended in this country much farther

than it now is, without oppression to the people, and with a handsome

increase of the revenue.

But the excise has ever been the most productive fountain of revenue in

Great Britain. The income from this tax in that country, during the year

ending September, 1863, was eighty-four million dollars. In the year

1815, when, on account of the smaller population, the other sources of

revenue were less productive than at the present day, the excise yielded

an income of not less than a hundred and thirty-five million dollars. It

is worthy of notice that, of this income, the tax upon the various forms

of spirituous liquors supplied a large element. English spirits, which,

in the experiment of 1736, it had been found could not carry a tax of

five dollars per gallon, it was now found easily bore the more moderate

but still large tax of ten shillings sixpence sterling. Aside from this

tax was the duty on beer, cider, and malt, the last of which alone

yielded an income of thirteen million dollars annually.

* * * * *

We have lingered on these details, which to many will be dry and

uninteresting, because they supply a kind of guide to the changes which

must ultimately take place in the tax laws of this country, and because,

further, they furnish an answer to all those objections which

periodically disturb the minds of the timid and doubtfully patriotic in

our midst. But these lessons we must leave the reader to extract for

himself. We close simply with saying that, while excessive and

undiscriminating taxation is always a curse, yet taxation, properly

imposed, although severe and long continued, may be far from

disadvantageous. We have seen the English people slowly arising, through

two centuries, from a nation comparatively free from taxation and

without a national debt, to one bearing an annual tax of three hundred

and fifty million dollars, and holding absorbed in its midst a national

debt of nearly four thousand million dollars. We have seen it during

this period constantly advancing in prosperity and greatness--the

national debt adding stability to the Government, and taxation giving

caution and stability to the transactions of private life.

APHORISMS.

NO. I.

One of the most sublime of all facts beneath that of the Divine Being,

appears in the existence of an immortal soul. There it stands--once for

all, once forever. The earth might be wasted away, at the rate of a

single grain in a century, without passing the very infancy of our

spirit's life. How insignificant, in the comparison, a world like our

own, in all its temporal aspects. What the future duration of the earth

may be, we have no means of knowing; but if less than endless, it is of

little moment in the presence of the least capacious human soul.

THE LOVE LUCIFER.

CHAPTER II.

I find myself writing upon matters connected, at least, with, religion,

with the thought of saying something useful--of presenting a valuable

experience, if not a valuable congeries of new ideas. Most readers

deeply interested in religion are, by this time, demanding that I show

my colors--present my creed; otherwise they will shut themselves up from

my influence. As I write, church bells are ringing. I know that many of

those who now assemble to hang with a deathly solemnity upon the lips of

preachers--while death, hell, heaven, eternity, atonement are the

themes--will say: 'He treats lightly the most serious matters: he treads

with dancing pumps on holy ground.' Now I claim to be, above all things,

an earnest, solemn person. Yet do I verily believe that there is a

humorous side to all subjects, that is not ignored by even the loftiest

beings; and that, in a restricted sense, it may be said of all

well-balanced persons, as a philosopher has said of children: 'Because

they are in innocence, therefore they are in peace; and because they are

in peace, therefore all things are with them full of mirth.' It must be

admitted, however, that if the 'orthodox' creed is wholly correct, we

find in the Puritans and their existing imitators the only consistent

Christians. In view of the inevitable damnation of a majority of the

race, they set their faces against all mirth; would eat no pleasant

bread, and wear no beautiful raiment. I followed them to the letter,

till, the 'naked eye' not being wholly blinded, nor the ear deafened by

theologic din, I saw that nature, in all her guises and voices, was

firmly opposed to all such gloomy dogmas.

In a word, then, as to creed, I find no satisfactory platform save that

of the broadest eclecticism. The motto of the old Greek, 'Know that good

is in all,' is mine. I am aware that the danger accruing from this style

of creed is, that one often gets, in the effort at impartiality, into

the meshes of pantheism; and then your list of gods many and lords many

comprises all the chief divinities, from Brahm and Buddh to Thor; you

priding yourself the while upon the consideration shown for 'local

prejudices' by your not putting Christ at the end of the list. But,

after life-long investigation, I am not ashamed to say, in the words,

though not in the spirit of Emperor Julian, 'Galilean, thou hast

conquered;' with Augustine, 'Let my soul calm itself in Thee; I say, let

the great sea of my soul, that swelleth with waves, calm itself in

Thee;' with De Staël, 'Inconcevable énigme de la vie; que la passion, ni

la douleur, ni le génie ne peuvent découvrir, vous revelerez-vous à la

prière;' with practical Napoleon, 'I know men, and Jesus Christ was not

a man;' with a Chevalier Bunsen and a Beecher, 'Jesus Christ is my God,

without any ifs or buts.' I can assent more decidedly than does

Teuflesdröck, in the 'Everlasting Nay,' to the doctrine of regeneration.

I narrow the whole matter down to these plain facts: Of all religions,

Christianity is best calculated to elevate man's nature; and of all

Christians, they reach the highest spiritual condition who regard Christ

as utterly divine.

On this other matter that enters so largely into my narrative--the

conjugality of disembodied spirits--I cannot forbear some further

discourse before proceeding historically. The absurd idea is still

prevalent that there is no sex in heaven. Those who retain this notion,

despite the revelations of science concerning the universality of sex

throughout creation, cannot reason very candidly. When we find in the

earth positives but no negatives, light but no heat, strength but no

beauty, action but no passivity, wisdom but no love, intellection but no

intuition, reflection but no perception, science but no religion, then,

at last, may we expect to see in the heavens men but no women.

Take the conjugal element from human creatures, and you have Hamlet

without the ghost. Excepting, perhaps, the religious, it is the most

powerful, prominent, exacting part of our nature. In 'man's unregenerate

state,' at least, the love story is the most interesting book, marriage

the most interesting ceremony, true lovers' dalliance the most

interesting sight. For the beloved, one relinquishes all else--performs

the greatest prodigies. Marriage is the subject most thought of, most

talked about. Around it cluster all the other events of life. Rejoice,

then, O 'romantic' youth and maiden, now in the days of thy youth; for

this flitting romance--so soon interrupted by care and grief, by shop

and kitchen and nursery, by butcher, baker, tailor, milliner, and

cordwainer--is about the most genuine experience you will have in this

world. Therefore, say I, cultivate romance. Devour a goodly number of

the healthier novels. Weep and laugh over them--believing every word.

Amadis de Gaul, even, is a better model than Gradgrind. Adore each the

other sex--positively worship! Both are worshipful (in the 'abstract').

What healthy-minded person loves not to behold the eye-sparkle of pure

admiration between young man and maid? 'They worship, truly, they know

not what.' In bowing down to their ideal, they bow to the _real_

human--the purified man or woman of the better land. The recluse is ever

the true prophet and seer, in this as in still higher matters. Your

modest-eyed student, stealing glances of unfeigned admiration at

ordinary maidens, is not such a simpleton as some suppose. His seclusion

has cleared his vision. He sees on through the eons--sees things as they

will or may be--regards the objects of his adoration as he will in the

angelhood. Why will so many decry this admiration?--when they see that,

not till the youth passes the purely romantic age--fourteen to sixteen

or eighteen--and begins to have commonplace thoughts of the other sex,

does mischief arise.

The idea of eternal conjugality should lighten all faces with hope, and

should have a most conservative influence in society. Those who are not

very well matched, and yet are conscious that the very highest earthly

bliss comes of a right mating, are not content to pass through this life

without enjoying this bliss, if they suppose that it appertains solely

to earth. So, many of them break bounds and bonds. Let these but accept

the idea that conjugality is one of the chief features of the heavenly

life, and they can settle down steadily to the apparent duties of this

sphere, content with 'peace on earth,' since now they feel sure of

rapture in heaven--a rapture, too, mind you, of a kind with which they

are somewhat acquainted. It is all very well to anticipate the fact

which 'eye hath not seen,' etc. But men need the prospect of an eternal

joy they know of, as much as they needed that awe-inspiring Jehovah

should outwork in love-inspiring Christ. In view of this, among other

joys set before him, the extra-earnest worker, in public or private, can

more easily deprive himself of that amount of social intercourse with

the other sex which he craves. Such can suffice themselves with

occasional glances of the complementary portion of mankind; and as they

hurriedly pass seraphic faces in the street, they wave the hand of the

spirit after them, saying: 'I prithee, O thou wonder, art human or no?'

'O you sweet beautiful! 'the king's business requires haste. Providence

has set our lives so far apart we cannot hear each other speak.' But

you will be a woman, and I will be a man, forever. In paradise, I will

read wonderful things in those and other such eyes, and wonder at you

forever. _Vale! vale!_'

There is a poet claiming to be of the supernal life--especially of the

supernal conjugal--who has written 'epics' and 'lyrics,' of which I must

honestly say, as Emerson, I believe, once honestly said of some of the

writings of Swedenborg: 'I read them with an unction and an afflatus

quite indescribable.' They lift one to the empyrean like nothing else I

know of outside the Bible. There is such a saintly purity; such a

wondrous, rich, mellow joyousness; such bounding elasticity of spirit;

such an evidently irresistible gush of song in the heart; such broad

catholicity of religion, that, to some, it seems impossible that they

could have been written anywhere but under the perpetual midsummer skies

of paradise. It may show poor taste, but to me, in those regions of the

upper ether wherein Tennyson, Mrs. Browning, and Shelley grow

wing-weary, he soars on strong, free pinion. His 'imaginings,' if such

they are, of immortal life, as much surpass in plausibility and

naturalness those of Milton, Dante, and Virgil, as the acting of a

first-class theatre surpasses that seen in the old monkish 'mysteries.'

This writer, T. L. Harris, has won much recognition in both hemispheres;

would win much more if he appeared simply as a poet, and did not claim a

seer faculty, making many positive statements that cannot be verified.

He certainly comes up to Aristotle's standard, where he says: 'The

object of the poet is not to treat the True as it really happened, but

as it should have happened.'

And now the story. I left myself indulging in reveries concerning the

expected sight of my invisible charmer. The appointed hour came. I was

quite excited. I knew that the land was already full of people who

claimed to see the sights of the other world as spirits see them, and

fully expected to have my clairvoyant faculty opened. But I saw no

'sudden Ianthe;' and to this day have never seen even a kobold, a

wraith, or a döppelganger! This was doubtless fortunate; for I was

nearly driven into lunacy by the things I _heard_ before I reached the

end of this 'youthful adventure.' I should have gone 'clean daft' if the

bugaboo had been permitted to show me the sights they presently

promised.

Soon came again my collocutor with explanations.

'You were in such a state of excitement that the united efforts of more

than forty of your spirit friends were utterly unavailing for the

opening of your sight. We, too, became so excited that we lost all

control of ourselves, and could only weep to hear your mournful appeals

followed by your surrender of all claims upon me.' ... 'Do not think

that I could ever hope to bask beneath the sunshine of your smile after

having intentionally deceived you.'

Then followed much similar feminine beguilement; the faculty for which

seems to be rather increased by the Jordan bath.

It began to be a noticeable fact that their magnetic power over me was

such that they could cast me down to the borders of despair, and raise

me thence to rapture at will. Thus a few moments of such ordinary

blandishments as the following were the only apparent means of raising

my usually slow-moving spirits from a very low to a very high pitch. I

was complaining of the waste of paper, in writing words of letters three

or four inches high; did not think any law, even a law of nature,

justified the imposition of such an expenditure upon a spouse in a

separate sphere. 'She' promised to tone down the expressions of

attachment until she could talk as largely as she pleased; and to some

further suggestions, replied:

'Really, you are quite impertinent, considering the short time we have

been married.' ...

Slightly singular as it may seem to those who think that this narration

is 'all gammon,' I had gone through the usual course of acquaintanceship

with this airy nothing; was first distant and reserved; then slightly

thawed, though still horrified at the thought of having all my thoughts

read; and finally, after I felt that the invisible eyes had read, in my

memory, every page of my history, was perfectly familiar and at ease in

the presence this finite searcher of hearts.

I find, next in order, the following:

'So you wish me to _prove_ that we were married, do you? Well, when you

become a denizen of this higher, but none the less practical sphere, you

may read, if you please, where, with wonder and strange emotion, I read,

in the heavenly records of marriages.' ... [It was dated about the time

of my birth.] 'Your banter is not so agreeable as your tenderness.' ...

'You are incorrigible. It will take me many a long age to bring you to a

due sense of my importance,' etc. 'Some of my friends are beside

themselves with mirth, at my vain attempts at taming a spirit so rude.'

Then came another promise of opened vision. 'A truly solemn scene is at

hand. Spend the interval in prayer.'

But again there was something wrong about the spiritual zinc or acid,

and the electrical machinery would not work. The fair or foul deceiver

(who knows?) came up very solemn after this failure.

''Though all men forsake thee,' said Peter, 'yet will not I forsake

thee.' So now, when the highest spirits of heaven have fled in terror

and dismay, your poor darling will not forsake you. Well might I sit,

like Job's friends, seven days, ay, seventy times seven, in silent

contemplation of him who--woe is me!--fears that I am but another

Delilah, commissioned by his enemies to betray him into their hands.

What can I say? what do? Oh that I had never seen the glorious light of

the sun or the pure myriads of my happy home, rather than I should have

beheld that sight last night. How can I explain the fact that he, whom

I, at least, believe to be heaven's most supreme (string of adjectives)

favorite, is sitting here with his unutterable but unrepining sorrow

looking forth from his ... eyes.'

Just here I caught a glimpse of my divinity, and turning in wrath and

scorn to my Titania, said, mockingly:

"While I thine _amiable_ cheeks do coy!"

To this she replies: 'Do not heap additional reproaches upon me, by any

such awfully ludicrous quotations.' ... 'So you think that your Delilah

is striving to gain time by all these pious and otherwise interesting

remarks?' ... 'Nay, do not with loathing cast me from you as an an

unholy and hateful thing! for then, oh, what I should then do or be, I

cannot, dare not even think.' ... 'Again you see my woman's heart cannot

suppress its emotions toward one who still hopes that he has been

talking with ----; and who says that, for him to be convinced of

this, is to be convinced that she who has been talking with him has not

intentionally deceived him.'

She then wrought upon my feelings by portraying her sufferings, until,

in my maudlin condition, I was casting about to find how I should help

her; just as you sometimes see a drunken tramp striving to pull his

drunken pal out of a ditch.

'So, most self-forgetful, you begin to think that you ought to help me

bear my burden; as you have planned sitting there, with your little

friend encircling you in her so warm embrace. But why should I inform

you of such fact, as this last, until you are convinced that all you

have heard is not the wily utterance of seducing and hellish spirits?

Try not to entertain such awful suspicions. As to the cause of these

lamentable failures, I can only suppose that the Lord wishes to make us,

who wrongly prophesied, sensible of our inability to foretell future

events.'

Then came some bungled Scriptures about my 'mission,' which roused my

ire. My taunts drew forth this response:

'Why do you love to ridicule my tenderness, and speak so awfully to one

who has no other human source of perfect happiness?'

The day following, the solemn dodge was again resorted to. I began to

feel a sort of awe creeping over me. My affectionate friend thereupon

wrote:

'What a change a few minutes have wrought in you. Yes! yes! the morning

light is breaking. The fiery trial is complete. As I write there rests

upon your now placid brow a glorious and marvellously beautiful crown.

The cup is drained. 'To him that sat in the valley and shadow of death

light has sprung up.' And now awe seizeth me: for there standeth, as yet

a long way off, one whose form is like to that of the Son of Man. In a

very little while, now, the great event must inevitably occur. He who

stands upon the holy mount prepares to open your sight, and give you

your commission. How can we see him face to face and live! Let not a

passing suspicion of further delay disturb you. Already you begin to

feel the influence of his approach. Well may you heave a sigh--as one

who experiences a sudden and unlooked-for relief. In less than ten

minutes the Lord will appear to you. So make ready, in solemn meditation

and prayer, for the most solemn event of your or any other man's life is

at hand.'

'If the vision tarry, wait for it,' is the only scripture that seems

applicable to my visions: for still they came not. Yet some very serious

and substantial experiences now fell to my lot, which shall be the theme

of another chapter.