The old theatre of Pittsburg occupied the site of the present one, on

Fifth Street. It was an unpretending structure, rudely built of boards,

and of moderate proportions, but sufficient, nevertheless, to satisfy

the taste and secure the comfort of the few who dared to face

consequences and lend patronage to an establishment under the ban of the

Scotch-Irish Calvinists. Entering upon duty at the "Old Drury" of the

"Birmingham of America," Rice prepared to take advantage of his

opportunity. There was a negro in attendance at Griffith's Hotel, on

Wood Street, named Cuff,--an exquisite specimen of his sort,--who won a

precarious subsistence by letting his open mouth as a mark for boys to

pitch pennies into, at three paces, and by carrying the trunks of

passengers from the steamboats to the hotels. Cuff was precisely the

subject for Rice's purpose. Slight persuasion induced him to accompany

the actor to the theatre, where he was led through the private entrance,

and quietly ensconced behind the scenes. After the play, Rice, having

shaded his own countenance to the "contraband" hue, ordered Cuff to

disrobe, and proceeded to invest himself in the cast-off apparel. When

the arrangements were complete, the bell rang, and Rice, habited in an

old coat forlornly dilapidated, with a pair of shoes composed equally of

patches and places for patches on his feet, and wearing a coarse straw

hat in a melancholy condition of rent and collapse over a dense black

wig of matted moss, waddled into view. The extraordinary apparition

produced an instant effect. The crash of peanuts ceased in the pit, and

through the circles passed a murmur and a bustle of liveliest

expectation. The orchestra opened with a short prelude, and to its

accompaniment Rice began to sing, delivering the first line by way of

introductory recitative:--

"O, Jim Crow's come to town, as you all must know,

An' he wheel about, he turn about, he do jis so,

An' ebery time he wheel about he jump Jim Crow."

The effect was electric. Such a thunder of applause as followed was

never heard before within the shell of that old theatre. With each

succeeding couplet and refrain the uproar was renewed, until presently,

when the performer, gathering courage from the favorable temper of his

audience, ventured to improvise matter for his distiches from familiarly

known local incidents, the demonstrations were deafening.

Now it happened that Cuff, who meanwhile was crouching in dishabille

under concealment of a projecting _flat_ behind the performer, by some

means received intelligence, at this point, of the near approach of a

steamer to the Monongahela Wharf. Between himself and others of his

color in the same line of business, and especially as regarded a certain

formidable competitor called Ginger, there existed an active rivalry in

the baggage-carrying business. For Cuff to allow Ginger the advantage of

an undisputed descent upon the luggage of the approaching vessel would

be not only to forfeit all "considerations" from the passengers, but, by

proving him a laggard in his calling, to cast a damaging blemish upon

his reputation. Liberally as he might lend himself to a friend, it could

not be done at that sacrifice. After a minute or two of fidgety waiting

for the song to end, Cuff's patience could endure no longer, and,

cautiously hazarding a glimpse of his profile beyond the edge of the

flat, he called in a hurried whisper: "Massa Rice, Massa Rice, must

have my clo'se! Massa Griffif wants me,--steamboat's comin'!"

The appeal was fruitless. Massa Rice did not hear it, for a happy hit at

an unpopular city functionary had set the audience in a roar in which

all other sounds were lost. Waiting some moments longer, the restless

Cuff, thrusting his visage from under cover into full three-quarter view

this time, again charged upon the singer in the same words, but with

more emphatic voice: "Massa Rice, Massa Rice, must have my clo'se! Massa

Griffif wants me,--_steamboat's comin'!_"

A still more successful couplet brought a still more tempestuous

response, and the invocation of the baggage-carrier was unheard and

unheeded. Driven to desperation, and forgetful in the emergency of every

sense of propriety, Cuff, in ludicrous undress as he was, started from

his place, rushed upon the stage, and, laying his hand upon the

performer's shoulder, called out excitedly: "Massa Rice, Massa Rice, gi'

me nigga's hat,--nigga's coat,--nigga's shoes,--gi' me nigga's t'ings!

Massa Griffif wants 'im,--STEAMBOAT'S COMIN'!!"

The incident was the touch, in the mirthful experience of that night,

that passed endurance. Pit and circles were one scene of such convulsive

merriment that it was impossible to proceed in the performance; and the

extinguishment of the footlights, the fall of the curtain, and the

throwing wide of the doors for exit, indicated that the entertainment

was ended.

Such were the circumstances--authentic in every particular--under which

the first work of the distinct art of Negro Minstrelsy was presented.

Next day found the song of Jim Crow, in one style of delivery or

another, on everybody's tongue. Clerks hummed it serving customers at

shop counters, artisans thundered it at their toils to the time-beat of

sledge and of tilt-hammer, boys whistled it on the streets, ladies

warbled it in parlors, and house-maids repeated it to the clink of

crockery in kitchens. Rice made up his mind to profit further by its

popularity: he determined to publish it. Mr. W. C. Peters, afterwards of

Cincinnati, and well known as a composer and publisher, was at that time

a music-dealer on Market Street in Pittsburg. Rice, ignorant himself of

the simplest elements of musical science, waited upon Mr. Peters, and

solicited his co-operation in the preparation of his song for the press.

Some difficulty was experienced before Rice could be induced to consent

to the correction of certain trifling informalities, rhythmical mainly,

in his melody; but, yielding finally, the air as it now stands, with a

pianoforte accompaniment by Mr. Peters, was put upon paper. The

manuscript was put into the hands of Mr. John Newton, who reproduced it

on stone with an elaborately embellished title-page, including a

portrait of the subject of the song, precisely as it has been copied

through succeeding editions to the present time. It was the first

specimen of lithography ever executed in Pittsburg.

Jim Crow was repeated nightly throughout the season at the theatre; and

when that was ended, Scale's Long Room, at the corner of Third and

Market streets, was engaged for rehearsals exclusively in the Ethiopian

line. "Clar de Kitchen" soon appeared as a companion piece, followed

speedily by "Lucy Long," "Sich a Gittin' up Stairs," "Long-Tail Blue,"

and so on, until quite a _repertoire_ was at command from which to

select for an evening's entertainment.

Rice remained in Pittsburg some two years. He then visited Philadelphia,

Boston, and New York, whence he sailed for England, where he met with

high favor in his novel character, married, and remained for some time.

He then returned to New York, and shortly afterwards died.

With Rice's retirement his art seems to have dropped into disuse as a

feature of theatrical entertainment, and thenceforward, for many years,

to have survived only in the performances of circuses and menageries.

Between acts the _extravaganzaist_ in cork and wool would appear, and to

the song of "Coal-Black Rose," or "Jim along Joe," or "Sittin' on a

Rail," command, with the clown and monkey, full share of admiration in

the arena. At first he performed _solus_, and to the accompaniment of

the "show" band; but the school was progressive; couples presently

appeared, and, dispensing with the aid of foreign instruments, delivered

their melodies to the more appropriate music of the banjo. To the banjo,

in a short time, were added the bones. The art had now outgrown its

infancy, and, disdaining a subordinate existence, boldly seceded from

the society of harlequin and the tumblers, and met the world as an

independent institution. Singers organized themselves into quartet

bands; added a fiddle and tambourine to their instruments--perhaps we

should say implements--of music; introduced the hoe-down and the

conundrum to fill up the intervals of performance; rented halls, and,

peregrinating from city to city and from town to town, went on and

prospered.

One of the earliest companies of this sort was organized and sustained

under the leadership of Nelson Kneass, who, while skilful in his

manipulations of the banjo, was quite an accomplished pianist besides,

as well as a favorite ballad-singer. He had some pretensions as a

composer, but has left his name identified with no work of any interest.

His company met with such success in Pittsburg, that its visits were

repeated from season to season, until about the year 1845, when Mr.

Murphy, the leading caricaturist, determining to resume the business in

private life which he had laid aside on going upon the stage, the

company was disbanded.

Up to this period, if negro minstrelsy had made some progress, it was

not marked by much improvement. Its charm lay essentially in its

simplicity, and to give it full development, retaining unimpaired

meanwhile such original excellences as Nature in Sambo shapes and

inspires, was the task of the time. But the task fell into bungling

hands. The intuitive utterance of the art was misapprehended or

perverted altogether. Its naive misconceits were construed into coarse

blunders; its pleasing incongruities were resolved into meaningless

jargon. Gibberish became the staple of its composition. Slang phrases

and crude jests, all odds and ends of vulgar sentiment, without regard

to the idiosyncrasies of the negro, were caught up, jumbled together

into rhyme, and, rendered into the lingo presumed to be genuine, were

ready for the stage. The wit of the performance was made to consist in

quibble and equivoke, and in the misuse of language, after the fashion,

but without the refinement, of Mrs. Partington. The character of the

music underwent a change. Original airs were composed from time to time,

but the songs were more generally adaptations of tunes in vogue among

Hard-Shell Baptists in Tennessee and at Methodist camp-meetings in

Kentucky, and of backwoods melodies, such as had been invented for

native ballads by "settlement" masters and brought into general

circulation by stage-drivers, wagoners, cattle--drovers, and other such

itinerants of earlier days. Music of the concert-room was also drafted

into the service, and selections from the inferior operas, with the

necessary mutilations of the text, of course; so that the whole school

of negro minstrelsy threatened a lapse, when its course of decline was

suddenly and effectually arrested.

A certain Mr. Andrews, dealer in confections, cakes, and ices, being

stirred by a spirit of enterprise, rented, in the year 1845, a

second-floor hall on Wood Street, Pittsburgh supplied it with seats and

small tables, advertised largely, employed cheap attractions,--living

statues, songs, dances, &c.,--a stage, hired a piano, and, upon the

dissolution of his band, engaged the services of Nelson Kneass as

musician and manager. Admittance was free, the ten-cent ticket required

at the door being received at its cost value within towards the payment

of whatever might be called for at the tables. To keep alive the

interest of the enterprise, premiums were offered, from time to time, of

a bracelet for the best conundrum, a ring with a ruby setting for the

best comic song, and a golden chain for the best sentimental song. The

most and perhaps only really valuable reward--a genuine and very pretty

silver cup, exhibited night after night, beforehand--was promised to the

author of the best original negro song, to be presented before a certain

date, and to be decided upon by a committee designated for the purpose

by the audience at that time.

Quite a large array of competitors entered the lists; but the contest

would be hardly worthy of mention, save as it was the occasion of the

first appearance of him who was to prove the reformer of his art, and to

a sketch of whose career the foregoing pages are chiefly preliminary.

Stephen Collins Foster was born in Alleghany, Pennsylvania, on the 4th

of July, 1826. He was the youngest child of his father, William B.

Foster,--originally a merchant of Pittsburg, and afterwards Mayor of his

native city, member of the State Legislature, and a Federal officer

under President Buchanan, with whom he was closely connected by

marriage. The evidences of a musical capacity of no common order were

apparent in Stephen at an early period. Going into a shop, one day, when

about seven years old, he picked up a flageolet, the first he had ever

seen, and comprehending, after an experiment or two, the order of the

scale on the instrument, was able in a few minutes, uninstructed, to

play any of the simple tunes within the octave with which he was

acquainted. A Thespian society, composed of boys in their higher teens,

was organized in Alleghany, into which Stephen, although but in his

ninth year, was admitted, and of which, from his agreeable rendering of

the favorite airs of the day, he soon became the leading attraction.

At thirteen years of age, he made his first attempt at composition,

producing for a public occasion at the seminary in Athens, Ohio, where

he was a student at the time, the "Tioga Waltz," which, although quite a

pretty affair, he never thought worthy of preservation. In the same

year, shortly afterwards, he composed music to the song commencing,

"Sadly to mine heart appealing," now embraced in the list of his

publications, but not brought out until many years later.

Stephen was a boy of delicate constitution, not addicted to the active

sports or any of the more vigorous habits of boys of his age. His only

companions were a few intimate friends, and, thus secluded, his

character naturally took a sensitive, meditative cast, and his growing

disrelish for severer tasks was confirmed. As has been intimated, he

entered as a pupil at Athens; but as the course of instruction in that

institution was not in harmony with his tastes, he soon withdrew,

applying himself afterwards to the study of the French and German

languages (a ready fluency in both of which he finally acquired), and

especially to the art dearer than all other studies. A recluse, owning

and soliciting no guidance but that of his text-book, in the quiet of

the woods, or, if that were inaccessible, the retirement of his chamber,

he devoted himself to this art.

At the age of sixteen he composed and published the song, "Open thy

Lattice, Love," which was admired, but did not meet with extraordinary

success. In the year following he went to Cincinnati, entering the

counting-room of his brother, and discharging the duties of his place

with faithfulness and ability. His spare hours were still devoted,

however, to his favorite pursuit, although his productions were chiefly

preserved in manuscript, and kept for the private entertainment of his

friends. He continued with his brother nearly three years.

At the time Mr. Andrews of Pittsburg offered a silver cup for the best

original negro song, Mr. Morrison Foster sent to his brother Stephen a

copy of the advertisement announcing the fact, with a letter urging him

to become a competitor for the prize. These saloon entertainments

occupied a neutral ground, upon which eschewers of theatrical delights

could meet with the abetters of play-house amusements,--a consideration

of ruling importance in Pittsburg, where so many of the sterling

population carry with them to this day, by legitimate inheritance, the

stanch old Cameronian fidelity to Presbyterian creed and practice.

Morrison, believing that these concerts would afford an excellent

opportunity for the genius of his brother to appeal to the public,

persisted in urging him to compete for the prize, until Stephen, who at

first expressed a dislike to appear under such circumstances, finally

yielded, and in due time forwarded a melody entitled, "'Way down South,

whar de Corn grows." When the eventful night came, the various pieces in

competition were rendered to the audience by Nelson Kneass to his own

accompaniment on the piano. The audience expressed by their applause a

decided preference for Stephen's melody; but the committee appointed to

sit in judgment decided in favor of some one else, himself and his song

never heard of afterwards, and the author of "'Way down South" forfeited

the cup. But Mr. Kneass appreciated the merit of the composition, and

promptly, next morning, made application at the proper office for a

copyright in his own name as author, when Mr. Morrison Foster, happening

in at the moment, interposed, and frustrated the discreditable

intention.

This experiment of Foster's, if it fell short of the expectation of his

friends, served, notwithstanding, a profitable purpose, for it led him

to a critical investigation of the school of music to which it belonged.

This school had been--was yet--unquestionably popular. To what, then,

was it indebted for its captivating points? It was to its truth to

Nature in her simplest and most childlike mood.

Settled as to theory, Foster applied himself to the task of its

exemplification. Two attempts were made while he yet remained in

Cincinnati, the pencil-drafts of which, however, were laid aside for the

time being in his portfolio. His shrinking nature held timidly back at

the thought of a venture before the public; and so the case stood until

he reappeared in Pittsburg.

The Presidential campaign of 1844 was distinguished by political

song-singing. Clubs for that purpose were organized in all the cities

and towns and hamlets,--clubs for the platform, clubs for the street,

clubs for the parlor, Whig clubs, Democratic clubs. Ballads innumerable

to airs indefinite, new and old, filled the land,--Irish ballads, German

ballads, Yankee ballads, and, preferred over all, negro ballads. So

enthusiastic grew the popular feeling in this direction, that, when the

November crisis was come and gone, the peculiar institution would not

succumb to the limitation, but lived on. Partisan temper faded out; the

fires of strife died down, but clubs sat perseveringly in their places,

and in sounds, if not in sentiment, attuned to the old melodies, kept up

the practice of the mad and merry time.

Among other organizations that thus lingered on was one, composed of

half a dozen young men, since grown into graver habits, with

Foster--home again, and a link once more in the circle of his

intimates--at its head. The negro airs were still the favorites; but the

collection, from frequent repetition, at length began to grow stale. One

night, as a revival measure for the club, and as an opportunity for

himself, Foster hinted that, with their permission, he would offer for

trial an effort of his own. Accordingly he set to work; and at their

next meeting laid before them a song entitled "Louisiana Belle." The

piece elicited unanimous applause. Its success in the club-room opened

to it a wider field, each member acting as an agent of dissemination

outside, so that in the course of a few nights the song was sung in

almost every parlor in Pittsburgh. Foster then brought to light his

portfolio specimens, since universally known as "Uncle Ned," and "O

Susanna!" The favor with which these latter were received surpassed even

that rewarding the "Louisiana Belle." Although limited to the one slow

process of communication,--from mouth to ear,--their fame spread far and

wide, until from the drawing-rooms of Cincinnati they were introduced

into its concert-halls, and there became known to Mr. W. C. Peters, who

at once addressed letters requesting copies for publication. These were

cheerfully furnished by the author. He did not look for remuneration.

For "Uncle Ned," which first appeared (in 1847), he received none; "O

Susanna!" soon followed, and "imagine my delight," he writes, "in

receiving one hundred dollars in cash! Though this song was not

successful," he continues, "yet the two fifty-dollar bills I received

for it had the effect of starting me on my present vocation of

song-writer." In pursuance of this decision, he entered into

arrangements with new publishers, chiefly with Firth, Pond, & Co. of New

York, set himself to work, and began to pour out his productions with

astonishing rapidity.

Out of the list, embracing about one hundred and fifty of his songs, the

most flatteringly received among his negro melodies were those already

enumerated, followed by "Nelly was a Lady," in 1849; "My Old Kentucky

Home," and "Camptown Races," in 1850; "Old Folks at Home," in 1851;

"Massa's in the Cold Ground," in 1852; "O Boys, carry me 'long," in

1853; "Hard Times come again no more," in 1854; "'Way down South," and

"O Lemuel," in 1858; "Old Black Joe," in 1860; and (noticeable only as

his last in that line) "Don't bet your Money on the Shanghai," in 1861.

In all these compositions Foster adheres scrupulously to his theory

adopted at the outset. His verses are distinguished by a _naivete_

characteristic and appropriate, but consistent at the same time with

common sense. Enough of the negro dialect is retained to preserve

distinction, but not to offend. The sentiment is given in plain phrase

and under homely illustration; but it is a sentiment nevertheless. The

melodies are of twin birth literally with the verses, for Foster thought

in tune as he traced in rhyme, and traced in rhyme as he thought in

tune. Of easy modulation, severely simple in their structure, his airs

have yet the graceful proportions, animated with the fervor,

unostentatious but all-subduing, of certain of the old hymns (not the

chorals) derived from our fathers of a hundred years ago.

That he had struck upon the true way to the common heart, the successes

attending his efforts surely demonstrate. His songs had an unparalleled

circulation. The commissions accruing to the author on the sales of "Old

Folks" alone amounted to fifteen thousand dollars. For permission to

have his name printed on its title-page, as an advertising scheme, Mr.

Christy paid five hundred dollars. Applications were unceasing from the

various publishers of the country for some share, at least, of his

patronage, and upon terms that might have seduced almost any one else;

but the publishers with whom he originally engaged had won his esteem,

and Foster adhered to them faithfully. Artists of the highest

distinction favored him with their friendship; and Herz, Sivori, Ole

Bull, Thalberg, were alike ready to approve his genius, and to testify

that approval in the choice of his melodies as themes about which to

weave their witcheries of embellishment. Complimentary letters from men

of literary note poured in upon him; among others, one full of generous

encouragement from Washington Irving, dearly prized and carefully

treasured to the day of Foster's death. Similar missives reached him

from across the seas,--from strangers and from travellers in lands far

remote; and he learned that, while "O Susanna!" was the familiar song of

the cottager of the Clyde, "Uncle Ned" was known to the dweller in tents

among the Pyramids.

Of his sentimental songs, "Ah, may the Red Rose live alway!" "Maggie by

my Side," "Jennie with the Light-Brown Hair," "Willie, we have missed

you," "I see her still in my Dreams," "Wilt thou be gone, Love" (a duet,

the words adapted from a well-known scene in Romeo and Juliet), and

"Come where my Love lies dreaming" (quartet), are among the leading

favorites. "I see her still in my Dreams" appeared in 1861, shortly

after the death of his mother, and is a tribute to the memory of her to

whom he was devotedly attached. The verses to most of these airs--to all

the successful ones--were of his own composition. Indeed, he could

seldom satisfy himself in his "settings" of the stanzas of others. If

the metrical and symmetrical features of the lines in hand chanced to

disagree with his conception of the motion and proportion befitting in a

musical interpretation; if the sentiment were one that failed, whether

from lack of appreciation or of sympathy on his part, to command

absolute approval; or if the terms employed were not of a precise thread

and tension,--if they were wanting, however minutely, in _vibratory_

qualities,--of commensurate extent would be the failure attending the

translation.

The last three years of his life Mr. Foster passed in New York. During

all that time, his efforts, with perhaps one exception, were limited to

the production of songs of a pensive character. The loss of his mother

seems to have left an ineffaceable impression of melancholy upon his

mind, and inspired such songs as "I dream of my Mother," "I'll be Home

To-morrow," "Leave me with my Mother," and "Bury me in the Morning." He

died, after a brief illness, on the 13th of January, 1864. His remains

reached Pittsburg on the 20th, and were conveyed to Trinity Church,

where on the day following, in the presence of a large assembly,

appropriate and impressive ceremonies took place, the choral services

being sustained by a company of his former friends and associates. His

body was then carried to the Alleghany Cemetery, and, to the music of

"Old Folks at Home," finally committed to the grave.

Mr. Foster was married, on the 22d of July, 1850, to Miss Jane D.

McDowell of Pittsburg, who, with her daughter and only child, Marian,

twelve years of age at the date of his death, still survives him. He was

of rather less than medium height, of slight frame, with parts well

proportioned, and showing to advantage in repose, although not entirely

so in action. His shoulders were marked by a slight droop,--the result

of a habit of walking with his eyes fixed upon the ground a pace or two

in advance of his feet. He nearly always when he ventured out, which was

not often, walked alone. Arrived at the street-crossings, he would

frequently pause, raise himself, cast a glance at the surroundings, and

if he saw an acquaintance nod to him in token of recognition, and then,

relapsing into the old posture, resume his way. At such times,--indeed,

at any time,--while he did not repel, he took no pains to invite

society. He was entertaining in conversation, although a certain

hesitancy, from want of words and not from any organic defect, gave a

broken style to his speech. For his study he selected a room in the

topmost story of his house, farthest removed from the street, and was

careful to have the floor of the apartment, and the avenues of approach

to it, thickly carpeted, to exclude as effectually as possible all

noises, inside as well as outside of his own premises. The furniture of

this room consisted of a chair, a lounge, a table, a music-rack, and a

piano. From the sanctum so chosen, seldom opened to others, and never

allowed upon any pretence to be disarranged, came his choicest

compositions. His disposition was naturally amiable, although, from the

tax imposed by close application to study upon his nervous system, he

was liable to fits of fretfulness and scepticism that, only occasional

and transient as they were, told nevertheless with disturbing effect

upon his temper. In the same unfortunate direction was the tendency of a

habit grown insidiously upon him,--a habit against the damning control

of which (as no one better than the writer of this article knows) he

wrestled with an earnestness indescribable, resorting to all the

remedial expedients which professional skill or his own experience could

suggest, but never entirely delivering himself from its inexorable

mastery.

In the true estimate of genius, its achievements only approximate the

highest standard of excellence as they are representative, or

illustrative, of important truth. They are only great as they are good.

If Mr. Foster's art embodied no higher idea than the vulgar notion of

the negro as a man-monkey,--a thing of tricks and antics,--a funny

specimen of superior gorilla,--then it might have proved a tolerable

catch-penny affair, and commanded an admiration among boys of various

growths until its novelty wore off. But the art in his hands teemed with

a nobler significance. It dealt, in its simplicity, with universal

sympathies, and taught us all to feel with the slaves the lowly joys and

sorrows it celebrated.

May the time be far in the future ere lips fail to move to its music, or

hearts to respond to its influence, and may we who owe him so much

preserve gratefully the memory of the master, STEPHEN COLLINS FOSTER.

THE FEAST OF HARVEST.

The fair Earth smiled and turned herself and woke,

And to the Sun with nuptial greeting said:--

"I had a dream, wherein it seemed men broke

A sovran league, and long years fought and bled,

Till down my sweet sides ran my children's gore,

And all my beautiful garments were made red,

And all my fertile fields were thicket-grown,

Nor could thy dear light reach me through the air;

At last a voice cried, 'Let them strive no more!'

Then music breathed, and lo! from my despair

I wake to joy,--yet would not joy alone!

"For, hark! I hear a murmur on the meads,--

Where as of old my children seek my face,--

The low of kine, the peaceful tramp of steeds,

Blithe shouts of men in many a pastoral place,

The noise of tilth through all my goodliest land;

And happy laughter of a dusky race

Whose brethren lift them from their ancient toil,

Saying: 'The year of jubilee has come;

Gather the gifts of Earth with equal hand;

Henceforth ye too may share the birthright soil,

The corn, the wine, and all the harvest-home.'

"O, my dear lord, my radiant bridegroom, look!

Behold their joy who sorrowed in my dreams,--

The sword a share, the spear a pruning-hook;

Lo, I awake, and turn me toward thy beams

Even as a bride again! O, shed thy light

Upon my fruitful places in full streams!

Let there be yield for every living thing;

The land is fallow,--let there be increase

After the darkness of the sterile night;

Ay, let us twain a festival of Peace

Prepare, and hither all my nations bring!"

The fair Earth spake: the glad Sun speeded forth,

Hearing her matron words, and backward drave

To frozen caves the icy Wind of the North,--

And bade the South Wind from the tropic wave

Bring watery vapors over river and plain,--

And bade the East Wind cross her path, and lave

The lowlands, emptying there her laden mist,--

And bade the Wind of the West, the best wind, blow

After the early and the latter rain,--

And beamed himself, and oft the sweet Earth kissed,

While her swift servitors sped to and fro.

Forthwith the troop that, at the beck of Earth,

Foster her children, brought a glorious store

Of viands, food of immemorial worth,

Her earliest gifts, her tenderest evermore.

First came the Silvery Spirit, whose marshalled files

Climb up the glades in billowy breakers hoar,

Nodding their crests,--and at his side there sped

The Golden Spirit, whose yellow harvests trail

Across the continents and fringe the isles,

And freight men's argosies where'er they sail:

O, what a wealth of sheaves he there outspread!

Came the dear Spirit whom Earth doth love the best,

Fragrant of clover-bloom and new-mown hay,

Beneath whose mantle weary ones find rest,

On whose green skirts the little children play:

She bore the food our patient cattle crave.

Next, robed in silk, with tassels scattering spray,

Followed the generous Spirit of the Maize,--

And many a kindred shape of high renown

Bore in the clustering grape, the fruits that wave

On orchard branches or in gardens blaze,

And those the wind-shook forest hurtles down.

Even thus they laid a great and marvellous feast,

And Earth her children summoned joyously,

Throughout that goodliest land wherein had ceased

The vision of battle, and with glad hands free

These took their fill, and plenteous measures poured,

Beside, for those who dwelt beyond the sea;

Praise, like an incense, upward rose to Heaven

For that full harvest,--and the autumnal Sun

Stayed long above,--and ever at the board,

Peace, white-robed angel, held the high seat given,

And War far off withdrew his visage dun.

A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER.

It is the misfortune of American biography that it must needs be more or

less provincial, and that, contrary to what might have been predicted,

this quality in it predominates in proportion as the country grows

larger. Wanting any great and acknowledged centre of national life and

thought, our expansion has hitherto been rather aggregation than growth;

reputations must be hammered out thin to cover so wide a surface, and

the substance of most hardly holds out to the boundaries of a single

State. Our very history wants unity, and down to the Revolution the

attention is wearied and confused by having to divide itself among

thirteen parallel threads, instead of being concentred on a single clew.

A sense of remoteness and seclusion comes over us as we read, and we

cannot help asking ourselves, "Were _not_ these things done in a

corner?" Notoriety may be achieved in a narrow sphere, but fame demands

for its evidence a more distant and prolonged reverberation. To the

world at large we were but a short column of figures in the corner of a

blue-book, New England exporting so much salt-fish, timber, and Medford

rum, Virginia so many hogshead of tobacco, and buying with the proceeds

a certain amount of English manufactures. The story of our early

colonization had a certain moral interest, to be sure, but was

altogether inferior in picturesque fascination to that of Mexico or

Peru. The lives of our worthies, like that of our nation, are bare of

those foregone and far-reaching associations with names, the

divining-rods of fancy, which the soldiers and civilians of the Old

World get for nothing by the mere accident of birth. Their historians

and biographers have succeeded to the good-will, as well as to the

long-established stand, of the shop of glory. Time is, after all, the

greatest of poets, and the sons of Memory stand a better chance of being

the heirs of Fame. The philosophic poet may find a proud solace in

saying,

"Avia Pieridum peragro loca nullius ante

Trita solo";

but all the while he has the splendid centuries of Greece and Rome

behind him, and can begin his poem with invoking a goddess from whom

legend derived the planter of his race. His eyes looked out on a

landscape saturated with glorious recollections; he had seen Caesar, and

heard Cicero. But who shall conjure with Saugus or Cato Four

Corners,--with Israel Putnam or Return Jonathan Meigs? We have been

transplanted, and for us the long hierarchical succession of history is

broken. The Past has not laid its venerable hands upon us in

consecration, conveying to us that mysterious influence whose force is

in its continuity. We are to Europe as the Church of England to her of

Rome. The latter old lady may be the Scarlet Woman, or the Beast with

ten horns, if you will, but hers are all the heirlooms, hers that vast

spiritual estate of tradition, nowhere yet everywhere, whose revenues

are none the less fruitful for being levied on the imagination. We may

claim that England's history is also ours, but it is a _de jure_, and

not a _de facto_ property that we have in it,--something that may be

proved indeed, yet is a merely intellectual satisfaction, and does not

savor of the realty. Have we not seen the mockery crown and sceptre of

the exiled Stuarts in St. Peter's? the medal struck so lately as 1784

with its legend, HEN IX MAG BRIT ET HIB REX, whose contractions but

faintly typify the scantness of the fact?

As the novelist complains that our society wants that sharp contrast of

character and costume which comes of caste, so in the narrative of our

historians we miss what may be called background and perspective, as if

the events and the actors in them failed of that cumulative interest

which only a long historical entail can give. Relatively, the crusade of

Sir William Pepperell was of more consequence than that of St. Louis,

and yet forgive us, injured shade of the second American baronet, if we

find the narrative of Joinville more interesting than your despatches to

Governor Shirley. Relatively, the insurrection of that Daniel whose

Irish patronymic Shea was euphonized into Shays, as a set-off for the

debasing of French _chaise_ into _shay_, was more dangerous than that of

Charles Edward; but for some reason or other (as vice sometimes has the

advantage of virtue) the latter is more enticing to the imagination, and

the least authentic relic of it in song or story has a relish denied to

the painful industry of Minot. Our events seem to fall short of that

colossal proportion which befits the monumental style. Look grave as we

will, there is something ludicrous in Counsellor Keane's pig being the

pivot of a revolution. We are of yesterday, and it is to no purpose that

our political augurs divine from the flight of our eagles that

to-morrow shall be ours, and flatter us with an all-hail hereafter.

Things do really gain in greatness by being acted on a great and

cosmopolitan stage, because there is inspiration in the thronged

audience, and the nearer match that puts men on their mettle. Webster

was more largely endowed by nature than Fox, and Fisher Ames not much

below Burke as a talker; but what a difference in the intellectual

training, in the literary culture and associations, in the whole social

outfit, of the men who were their antagonists and companions! It should

seem that, if it be collision with other minds and with events that

strikes or draws the fire from a man, then the quality of those might

have something to do with the quality of the fire,--whether it shall be

culinary or electric. We have never known the varied stimulus, the

inexorable criticism, the many-sided opportunity of a great metropolis,

the inspiring reinforcement of an undivided national consciousness. In

everything but trade we have missed the invigoration of foreign rivalry.

We may prove that we are this and that and the other,--our

Fourth-of-July orators have proved it time and again,--the census has

proved it; but the Muses are women, and have no great fancy for

statistics, though easily silenced by them. We are great, we are rich,

we are all kinds of good things; but did it never occur to you that

somehow we are not interesting, except as a phenomenon? It may safely be

affirmed that for one cultivated man in this country who studies

American, there are fifty who study European history, ancient or modern.

Till within a year or two we have been as distant and obscure to the

eyes of Europe as Ecuador to our own. Every day brings us nearer,

enables us to see the Old World more clearly, and by inevitable

comparison to judge ourselves with some closer approach to our real

value. This has its advantage so long as our culture is, as for a long

time it must be, European; for we shall be little better than apes and

parrots till we are forced to measure our muscle with the trained and

practised champions of that elder civilization. We have at length

established our claim to the noblesse of the sword, the first step still

of every nation that would make its entry into the best society of

history. To maintain ourselves there, we must achieve an equality in the

more exclusive circle of culture, and to that end must submit ourselves

to the European standard of intellectual weights and measures. That we

have made the hitherto biggest gun might excite apprehension (were there

a dearth of iron), but can never exact respect. That our pianos and

patent reapers have won medals does but confirm us in our mechanic and

material measure of merit. We must contribute something more than mere

contrivances for the saving of labor, which we have been only too ready

to misapply in the domain of thought and the higher kinds of invention.

In those Olympic games where nations contend for truly immortal wreaths,

it may well be questioned whether a mowing-machine would stand much

chance in the chariot-races,--whether a piano, though made by a

chevalier, could compete successfully for the prize of music.

We shall have to be content for a good while yet with our provincialism,

and must strive to make the best of it. In it lies the germ of

nationality, and that is, after all, the prime condition of all

thorough-bred greatness of character. To this choicest fruit of a

healthy life, well rooted in native soil, and drawing prosperous prices

thence, nationality gives the keenest flavor. Mr. Lincoln was an

original man, and in so far a great man; yet it was the Americanism of

his every thought, word, and act which not only made his influence

equally at home in East and West, but drew the eyes of the outside

world, and was the pedestal that lifted him where he could be seen by

them. Lincoln showed that native force may transcend local boundaries,

but the growth of such nationality is hindered and hampered by our

division into so many half-independent communities, each with its

objects of county ambition, and its public men great to the borders of

their district. In this way our standard of greatness is insensibly

debased. To receive any national appointment, a man must have gone

through precisely the worst training for it; he must have so far

narrowed and belittled himself with State politics as to be acceptable

at home. In this way a man may become chairman of the Committee on

Foreign Affairs, because he knows how to pack a caucus in Catawampus

County, or sent ambassador to Barataria, because he has drunk bad

whiskey with every voter in Wildcat City. Should we ever attain to a

conscious nationality, it will have the advantage of lessening the

number of our great men, and widening our appreciation to the larger

scale of the two or three that are left,--if there should be so many.

Meanwhile we offer a premium to the production of great men in a small

way, by inviting each State to set up the statues of two of its

immortals in the Capitol. What a niggardly percentage! Already we are

embarrassed, not to find the two, but to choose among the crowd of

candidates. Well, seventy-odd heroes in about as many years is pretty

well for a young nation. We do not envy most of them their eternal

martyrdom in marble, their pillory of indiscrimination. We fancy even

native tourists pausing before the greater part of the effigies, and,

after reading the names, asking desperately, "Who was _he_?" Nay, if

they should say, "Who the devil was _he_?" it were a pardonable

invocation, for none so fit as the Prince of Darkness to act as

_cicerone_ among such palpable obscurities. We recall the court-yard of

the Uffizj at Florence. That also is not free of parish celebrities; but

Dante, Galileo, Michael Angelo, Macchiavelli,--shall the inventor of the

sewing-machine, even with the button-holing improvement, let us say,

match with these, or with far lesser than these? Perhaps he was more

practically useful than any one of these, or all of them together, but

the soul is sensible of a sad difference somewhere. These also were

citizens of a provincial capital; so were the greater part of Plutarch's

heroes. Did they have a better chance than we moderns,--than we

Americans? At any rate they have the start of us, and we must confess

that

"By bed and table they lord it o'er us,

Our elder brothers, but one in blood."

Yes, one in blood; that is the hardest part of it. Is our provincialism

then in some great measure due to our absorption in the practical, as we

politely call it, meaning the material,--to our habit of estimating

greatness by the square mile and the hundredweight? Even during our war,

in the midst of that almost unrivalled stress of soul, were not our

speakers and newspapers so enslaved to the vulgar habit as to boast ten

times of the thousands of square miles it covered with armed men, for

once that they alluded to the motive that gave it all its meaning and

its splendor? Perhaps it was as well that they did not exploit that

passion of patriotism as an advertisement in the style of Barnum or

Perham. "I scale one hundred and eighty pounds, but when I'm mad I weigh

two ton," said the Kentuckian, with a true notion of moral avoirdupois.

That ideal kind of weight is wonderfully increased by a national

feeling, whereby one man is conscious that thirty millions of men go

into the balance with him. The Roman in ancient, and the Englishman in

modern times, have been most conscious of this representative solidity,

and wherever one of them went there stood Rome or England in his shoes.

We have made some advance in the right direction. Our civil war, by the

breadth of its proportions and the implacability of its demands, forced

us to admit a truer valuation, and gave us, in our own despite, great

soldiers and sailors, allowed for such by all the world. The harder

problems it has left behind may in time compel us to have great

statesmen, with views capable of reaching beyond the next election. The

criticism of Europe alone can rescue us from the provincialism of an

over or false estimate of ourselves. Let us be thankful, and not angry,

that we must accept it as our touchstone. Our stamp has so often been

impressed upon base metal, that we cannot expect it to be taken on

trust, but we may be sure that true gold will be equally persuasive the

world over. Real manhood and honest achievement are nowhere provincial,

but enter the select society of all time on an even footing.

Spanish America might be a good glass for us to look into. Those

Catharine-wheel republics, always in revolution while the powder lasts,

and sure to burn the fingers of whoever attempts intervention, have also

their great men, as placidly ignored by us as our own by jealous Europe.

The following passage from the life of Don Simon Bolivar might allay

many _motus animorum_, if rightly pondered. Bolivar, then a youth, was

travelling in Italy, and his biographer tells us that "near Castiglione

he was present at the grand review made by Napoleon of the columns

defiling into the plain large enough to contain sixty thousand men. The

throne was situated on an eminence that overlooked the plain, and

Napoleon on several occasions looked through a glass at Bolivar and his

companions, who were at the base of the hill. The hero Caesar could not

imagine that he beheld the liberator of the world of Columbus!" And

small blame to him, one would say. We are not, then, it seems, the only

foundling of Columbus, as we are so apt to take for granted. The great

Genoese did not, as we supposed, draw that first star-guided furrow

across the vague of waters with a single eye to the future greatness of

the United States. And have we not sometimes, like the enthusiastic

biographer, fancied the Old World staring through all its telescopes at

us, and wondered that it did not recognize in us what we were fully

persuaded we were _going_ to be and do?

Our American life is dreadfully barren of those elements of the social

picturesque which give piquancy to anecdote. And without anecdote, what

is biography, of even history, which is only biography on a larger

scale? Clio, though she take airs on herself, and pretend to be

"philosophy teaching by example," is, after all, but a gossip who has

borrowed Fame's speaking-trumpet, and should be figured with a teacup

instead of a scroll in her hand. How much has she not owed of late to

the tittle-tattle of her gillflirt sister Thalia? In what gutters has

not Macaulay raked for the brilliant bits with which he has put together

his admirable mosaic picture of England under the last two Stuarts? Even

Mommsen himself, who dislikes Plutarch's method as much as Montaigne

loved it, cannot get or give a lively notion of ancient Rome, without

running to the comic poets and the anecdote-mongers. He gives us the

very beef-tea of history, nourishing and even palatable enough,

excellently portable for a memory that, must carry her own packs, and

can afford little luggage; but for our own part, we prefer a full,

old-fashioned meal, with its side-dishes of spicy gossip, and its last

relish, the Stilton of scandal, so it be not too high. One volume of

contemporary memoirs, stuffed though it be with lies, (for lies to be

good for anything must have a potential probability, must even be true

so far as their moral and social setting is concerned,) will throw more

light into the dark backward of time than the gravest Camden or Thuanus.

If St. Simon is not accurate, is he any the less essentially _true_? No

history gives us so clear an understanding of the moral condition of

average men after the restoration of the Stuarts as the unconscious

blabbings of the Puritan tailor's son, with his two consciences, as it

were,--an inward, still sensitive in spots, though mostly toughened to

India-rubber, and good rather for rubbing out old scores than retaining

them, and an outward, alert, and termagantly effective in Mrs. Pepys.

But we can have no St. Simons or Pepyses till we have a Paris or London

to delocalize our gossip and give it historic breadth. All our capitals

are fractional, merely greater or smaller gatherings of men, centres of

business rather than of action or influence. Each contains so many

souls, but is not, as the word "capital" implies, the true head of a

community and seat of its common soul.

Has not life itself perhaps become a little more prosaic than it once

was? As the clearing away of the woods scants the streams, may not our

civilization have dried up some feeders that helped to swell the current

of individual and personal force? We have sometimes thought that the

stricter definition and consequent seclusion from each other of the

different callings in modern times, as it narrowed the chance of

developing and giving variety to character, lessened also the interest

of biography. Formerly arts and arms were not divided by so impassable a

barrier as now. There was hardly such a thing as a _pekin_. Caesar gets

up from writing his Latin Grammar to conquer Gaul, change the course of

history, and make so many things possible,--among the rest our English

language and Shakespeare. Horace had been a colonel; and from AEschylus,

who fought at Marathon, to Ben Jonson, who trailed a pike in the Low

Countries, the list of martial civilians is a long one. A man's

education seems more complete who has smelt hostile powder from a less

aesthetic distance than Goethe. It raises our confidence in Sir Kenelm

Digby as a physicist, that he is able to illustrate some theory of

acoustics in his Treatise of Bodies by instancing the effect of his guns

in a sea-fight off Scanderoon. One would expect the proportions of

character to be enlarged by such variety and contrast of experience.

Perhaps it will by and by appear that our own civil war has done

something for us in this way. Colonel Higginson comes down from his

pulpit to draw on his jackboots, and thenceforth rides in our

imagination alongside of John Bunyan and Bishop Compton. To have stored

moral capital enough to meet the drafts of Death at sight, must be an

unmatched tonic. We saw our light-hearted youth come back with the

modest gravity of age, as if they had learned to throw out pickets

against a surprise of any weak point in their temperament. Perhaps that

American shiftiness, so often complained of, may not be so bad a thing,

if, by bringing men acquainted with every humor of fortune and human

nature, it puts them in fuller possession of themselves.

But with whatever drawbacks in special circumstances, the main interest

of biography must always lie in the amount of character or essential

manhood which the subject of it reveals to us, and events are of import

only as means to that end. It is true that lofty and far-seen exigencies

may give greater opportunity to some men, whose energy is more sharply

spurred by the shout of a multitude than by the grudging _Well done!_ of

conscience. Some theorists have too hastily assumed that, as the power

of public opinion increases, the force of private character, or what we

call originality, is absorbed into and diluted by it. But we think

Horace was right in putting tyrant and mob on a level as the trainers

and tests of a man's solid quality. The amount of resistance of which

one is capable to whatever lies outside the conscience, is of more

consequence than all other faculties together; and democracy, perhaps,

tries this by pressure in more directions, and with a more continuous

strain, than any other form of society. In Josiah Quincy we have an

example of character trained and shaped, under the nearest approach to a

pure democracy the world has ever seen, to a firmness, unity, and

self-centred poise that recall the finer types of antiquity, in whom the

public and private man was so wholly of a piece that they were truly

everywhere at home, for the same sincerity of nature that dignified the

hearth carried also a charm of homeliness into the forum. The phrase "a

great public character," once common, seems to be going out of fashion,

perhaps because there are fewer examples of the thing. It fits Josiah

Quincy exactly. Active in civic and academic duties till beyond the

ordinary period of man, at fourscore and ten his pen, voice, and

venerable presence were still efficient in public affairs. A score of

years after the energies of even vigorous men are declining or spent,

his mind and character made themselves felt as in their prime. A true

pillar of house and state, he stood unflinchingly upright under whatever

burden might be laid upon him. The French Revolutionists aped what was

itself but a parody of the elder republic, with their hair _a la_ Brutus

and their pedantic moralities _a la_ Cato Minor, but this man

unconsciously was the antique Roman they laboriously went about to be.

Others have filled places more conspicuous, few have made the place they

filled so conspicuous by an exact and disinterested performance of duty.

In the biography of Mr. Quincy by his son, there is something of the

provincialism of which we have spoken as inherent in most American works

of the kind. His was a Boston life in the strictest sense. But

provincialism is relative, and where it has a flavor of its own, as in

Scotland, it is often agreeable in proportion to its very intensity. The

Massachusetts in which Mr. Quincy's habits of thought were acquired was

a very different Massachusetts from that in which we of later

generations have been bred. Till after he had passed middle life, Boston

was more truly a capital than any other city in America, before or

since, except possibly Charleston. The acknowledged head of New England,

with a population of wellnigh purely English descent, mostly derived

from the earlier emigration, with ancestral traditions and inspiring

memories of its own, it had made its name familiar in both worlds, and

was both historically and politically more important than at any later

period. The Revolution had not interrupted, but rather given a freer

current to the tendencies of its past. Both by its history and position,

the town had what the French call a solidarity, an almost personal

consciousness, rare anywhere, rare especially in America, and more than

ever since our enormous importation of fellow-citizens to whom America

means merely shop, or meat three times a day. Boston has been called the

"American Athens." AEsthetically, the comparison is ludicrous, but

politically it was more reasonable. Its population was homogeneous, and

there were leading families; while the form of government by

town-meeting, and the facility of social and civic intercourse, gave

great influence to popular personal qualities and opportunity to new

men. A wide commerce, while it had insensibly softened the asperities of

Puritanism and imported enough foreign refinement to humanize not enough

foreign luxury to corrupt, had not essentially qualified the native tone

of the town. Retired sea-captains (true brothers of Chaucer's Shipman),

whose exploits had kindled the imagination of Burke, added a not

unpleasant savor of salt to society. They belonged to the old school of

Gilbert, Hawkins, Frobisher, and Drake, parcel-soldiers all of them, who

had commanded armed ships and had tales to tell of gallant fights with

privateers or pirates, truest representatives of those Vikings who, if

trade in lumber or peltry was dull, would make themselves Dukes of

Dublin or Earls of Orkney. If trade pinches the mind, commerce

liberalizes it; and Boston was also advantaged with the neighborhood of

the country's oldest College, which maintained the wholesome traditions

of culture,--where Homer and Horace are familiar there is a certain

amount of cosmopolitanism,--and would not allow bigotry to become

despotism. Manners were more self-respectful, and therefore more

respectful of others, and personal sensitiveness was fenced with more of

that ceremonial with which society armed itself when it surrendered the

ruder protection of the sword. We had not then seen a Governor in his

chamber at the State-House with his hat on, a cigar in his mouth, and

his feet upon the stove. Domestic service, in spite of the proverb, was

not seldom an inheritance, nor was household peace dependent on the whim

of a foreign armed neutrality in the kitchen. Servant and master were of

one stock; there was decent authority and becoming respect; the

tradition of the Old World lingered after its superstition had passed

away. There was an aristocracy such as is healthful in a well-ordered

community, founded on public service, and hereditary so long as the

virtue which was its patent was not escheated. The clergy, no longer

hedged by the reverence exacted by sacerdotal caste, were more than

repaid by the consideration willingly paid to superior culture. What

changes, many of them for the better, some of them surely for the worse,

and all of them inevitable, did not Josiah Quincy see in that wellnigh

secular life which linked the war of independence to the war of

nationality! We seemed to see a type of them the other day in a colored

man standing with an air of comfortable self-possession while his boots

were brushed by a youth of catholic neutral tint, but whom nature had

planned for white. The same eyes that had looked on Gage's red-coats,

saw Colonel Shaw's negro regiment march out of Boston in the national

blue. Seldom has a life, itself actively associated with public affairs,

spanned so wide a chasm for the imagination. Oglethorpe's offers a

parallel,--the aide-de-camp of Prince Eugene calling on John Adams,

American Ambassador to England. Most long lives resemble those threads

of gossamer, the nearest approach to nothing unmeaningly prolonged,

scarce visible pathway of some worm from his cradle to his grave; but

Quincy's was strung with seventy active years, each one a rounded bead

of usefulness and service.

Mr. Quincy was a Bostonian of the purest type. Since the settlement of

the town, there had been a colonel of the Boston regiment in every

generation of his family. He lived to see a grandson brevetted with the

same title for gallantry in the field. Only child of one among the most

eminent advocates of the Revolution, and who but for his untimely death

would have been a leading actor in it, his earliest recollections

belonged to the heroic period in the history of his native town. With

that history his life was thenceforth intimately united by offices of

public trust, as Representative in Congress, State Senator, Mayor, and

President of the University, to a period beyond the ordinary span of

mortals. Even after he had passed ninety, he would not claim to be

_emeritus_, but came forward to brace his townsmen with a courage and

warm them with a fire younger than their own. The legend of Colonel

Goffe at Deerfield became a reality to the eyes of this generation. The

New England breed is running out, we are told! This was in all ways a

beautiful and fortunate life,--fortunate in the goods of this

world,--fortunate, above all, in the force of character which makes

fortune secondary and subservient. We are fond in this country of what

are called self-made men (as if real success could ever be other); and

this is all very well, provided they make something worth having of

themselves. Otherwise it is not so well, and the examples of such are at

best but stuff for the Alnaschar dreams of a false democracy. The gist

of the matter is not where a man starts from, but where he comes out. We

are glad to have the biography of one who, beginning as a gentleman,

kept himself such to the end,--who, with no necessity of labor, left

behind him an amount of thoroughly done work such as few have

accomplished with the mighty help of hunger. Some kind of pace may be

got out of the veriest jade by the near prospect of oats; but the

thorough-bred has the spur in his blood.

Mr. Edmund Quincy has told the story of his father's life with the skill

and good taste that might have been expected from the author of

"Wensley." Considering natural partialities, he has shown a discretion

of which we are oftener reminded by missing than by meeting it. He has

given extracts enough from speeches to show their bearing and

quality,--from letters, to recall bygone modes of thought and indicate

many-sided friendly relations with good and eminent men; above all, he

has lost no opportunity to illustrate that life of the past, near in

date, yet alien in manners, whose current glides so imperceptibly from

one generation into another that we fail to mark the shiftings of its

bed or the change in its nature wrought by the affluents that discharge

into it on all sides,--here a stream bred in the hills to sweeten, there

the sewerage of some great city to corrupt. We cannot but lament that

Mr. Quincy did not earlier begin to keep a diary. "Miss not the

discourses of the elders," though put now in the Apocrypha, is a wise

precept, but incomplete unless we add, "Nor cease from recording

whatsoever thing thou hast gathered therefrom,"--so ready is Oblivion

with her fatal shears. The somewhat greasy heap of a literary

rag-and-bone-picker, like Athenaeus, is turned to gold by time. Even the

_Virgilium vide tantum_ of Dryden about Milton, and of Pope again about

Dryden, is worth having, and gives a pleasant fillip to the fancy. There

is much of this quality in Mr. Edmund Quincy's book, enough to make us

wish there were more. We get a glimpse of President Washington, in 1795,

who reminded Mr. Quincy "of the gentlemen who used to come to Boston in

those days to attend the General Court from Hampden or Franklin County,

in the western part of the State. A little stiff in his person, not a

little formal in his manners, not particularly at ease in the presence

of strangers. He had the air of a country-gentleman not accustomed to

mix much in society, perfectly polite, but not easy in his address and

conversation, and not graceful in his gait and movements." Our figures

of Washington have been so long equestrian, that it is pleasant to meet

him dismounted for once. In the same way we get a card of invitation to

a dinner of sixty covers at John Hancock's, and see the rather

light-weighted great man wheeled round the room (for he had adopted

Lord Chatham's convenient trick of the gout) to converse with his

guests. In another place we are presented, with Mr. Merry, the English

Minister, to Jefferson, whom we find in an unofficial costume of studied

slovenliness, intended as a snub to haughty Albion. Slippers down at the

heel and a dirty shirt become weapons of diplomacy and threaten more

serious war. Thus many a door into the past, long irrevocably shut upon

us, is set ajar, and we of the younger generation on the landing catch

peeps of distinguished men, and bits of their table-talk. We drive in

from Mr. Lyman's beautiful seat at Waltham (unique at that day in its

stately swans and half-shy, half-familiar deer) with John Adams, who

tells us that Dr. Priestley looked on the French monarchy as the tenth

horn of the Beast in Revelations,--a horn that has set more sober wits

dancing than that of Huon of Bordeaux. Those were days, we are inclined

to think, of more solid and elegant hospitality than our own,--the

elegance of manners, at once more courtly and more frugal, of men who

had better uses for wealth than merely to display it. Dinners have more

courses now, and, like the Gascon in the old story, who could not see

the town for the houses, we miss the real dinner in the multiplicity of

its details. We might seek long before we found so good cheer, so good

company, or so good talk as our fathers had at Lieutenant-Governor

Winthrop's or Senator Cabot's.

We shall not do Mr. Edmund Quincy the wrong of picking out in advance

all the plums in his volume, leaving to the reader only the less savory

mixture that held them together,--a kind of filling unavoidable in books

of this kind, and too apt to be what boys at boarding-school call

_stick-jaw_, but of which there is no more than could not be helped

here, and that light and palatable. But here and there is a passage

where we cannot refrain, for there is a smack of Jack Horner in all of

us, and a reviewer were nothing without it. Josiah Quincy was born in

1772. His father, returning from a mission to England, died in sight of

the dear New England shore three years later. His young widow was worthy

of him, and of the son whose character she was to have so large a share

in forming. There is something very touching and beautiful in this

little picture of her which Mr. Quincy drew in his extreme old age.

"My mother imbibed, as was usual with the women of the period, the

spirit of the times. Patriotism was not then a profession, but an

energetic principle beating in the heart and active in the life. The

death of my father, under circumstances now the subject of history, had

overwhelmed her with grief. She viewed him as a victim in the cause of

freedom, and cultivated his memory with veneration, regarding him as a

martyr, falling, as did his friend Warren, in the defence of the

liberties of his country. These circumstances gave a pathos and

vehemence to her grief, which, after the first violence of passion had

subsided, sought consolation in earnest and solicitous fulfilment of

duty to the representative of his memory and of their mutual affections.

Love and reverence for the memory of his father was early impressed on

the mind of her son, and worn into his heart by her sadness and tears.

She cultivated the memory of my father in my heart and affections, even

in my earliest childhood, by reading to me passages from the poets, and

obliging me to learn by heart and repeat such as were best adapted to

her own circumstances and feelings. Among others, the whole leave-taking

of Hector and Andromache, in the sixth book of Pope's Homer, was one of

her favorite lessons, which she made me learn and frequently repeat. Her

imagination, probably, found consolation in the repetition of lines

which brought to mind and seemed to typify her own great bereavement.

'And think'st thou not how wretched we shall be,--

A widow I, a helpless orphan he?'

These lines, and the whole tenor of Andromache's address and

circumstances, she identified with her own sufferings, which seemed

relieved by the tears my repetition of them drew from her."

Pope's Homer is not Homer, perhaps; but how many noble natures have felt

its elation, how many bruised spirits the solace of its bracing, if

monotonous melody! To us there is something inexpressibly tender in this

instinct of the widowed mother to find consolation in the idealization

of her grief by mingling it with those sorrows which genius has turned

into the perennial delight of mankind. This was a kind of sentiment that

was healthy for her boy, refining without unnerving, and associating his

father's memory with a noble company unassailable by time. It was

through this lady, whose image looks down on us out of the past, so full

of sweetness and refinement, that Mr. Quincy became of kin with Mr.

Wendell Phillips, so justly eminent as a speaker. There is something

nearer than cater-cousinship in a certain impetuous audacity of temper

common to them both.

When six years old, Mr. Quincy was sent to Phillips Academy at Andover,

where he remained till he entered college. His form-fellow here was a

man of thirty, who had been a surgeon in the Continental Army, and whose

character and adventures might almost seem borrowed from a romance of

Smollett. Under Principal Pearson, the lad, though a near relative of

the founder of the school, seems to have endured all that severity of

the old _a posteriori_ method of teaching which still smarted in

Tusser's memory when he sang,

"From Paul's I went, to Eton sent,

To learn straightways the Latin phrase,

Where fifty-three stripes given to me

At once I had."

The young victim of the wisdom of Solomon was boarded with the parish

minister, in whose kindness he found a lenitive for the scholastic

discipline he underwent. This gentleman had been a soldier in the

Colonial service, and Mr. Quincy afterwards gave as a reason for his

mildness, that, "while a sergeant at Castle William, he had seen

something of mankind." This, no doubt, would be a better preparative for

successful dealing with the young than is generally thought. However,

the birch was then the only classic tree, and every round in the ladder

of learning was made of its inspiring wood. Dr. Pearson, perhaps,

thought he was only doing justice to his pupil's claims of kindred by

giving him a larger share of the educational advantages which the

neighboring forest afforded. The vividness with which this system is

always remembered by those who have been subjected to it would seem to

show that it really enlivened the attention, and thereby invigorated the

memory, nay, might even raise some question as to what part of the

person is chosen by the mother of the Muses for her residence. With an

appetite for the classics quickened by "Cheever's Accidence," and such

other preliminary whets as were then in vogue, young Quincy entered

college, where he spent the usual four years, and was graduated with the

highest honors of his class. The amount of Latin and Greek imparted to

the students of that day was not very great. They were carried through

Horace, Sallust, and the _De Oratoribus_ of Cicero, and read portions of

Livy, Xenophon, and Homer. Yet the chief end of classical studies was

perhaps as often reached then as now, in giving young men a love for

something apart from and above the more vulgar associations of life. Mr.

Quincy, at least, retained to the last a fondness for certain Latin

authors. While he was President of the College, he told a gentleman,

from whom we received the story, that, "if he were imprisoned, and

allowed to choose one book for his amusement, that one should be

Horace."

In 1797, Mr. Quincy was married to Miss Eliza Susan Morton of New York,

a union which lasted in unbroken happiness for more than fifty years.

His case might be cited among the leading ones in support of the old

poet's axiom, that

"He never loved, that loved not at first sight";

for he saw, wooed, and won in a week. In later life he tried in a most

amusing way to account for this rashness, and to find reasons of

settled gravity for the happy inspiration of his heart. He cites the

evidence of Judge Sedgwick, of Mr. and Mrs. Oliver Wolcott, of the Rev.

Dr. Smith, and others, to the wisdom of his choice. But it does not

appear that he consulted them beforehand. If love were not too cunning

for that, what would become of the charming idyl, renewed in all its

wonder and freshness for every generation? Let us be thankful that in

every man's life there is a holiday of romance, an illumination of the

senses by the soul, that makes him a poet while it lasts. Mr. Quincy

caught the enchantment through his ears, a song of Burns heard from the

next room conveying the infection,--a fact still inexplicable to him

after lifelong meditation thereon, as he "was not very impressible by

music"! To us there is something very characteristic in this rapid

energy of Mr. Quincy, something very delightful in his naive account of

the affair. It needs the magic of no Dr. Heidegger to make these dried

roses, that drop from between the leaves of a volume shut for seventy

years, bloom again in all their sweetness. Mr. Edmund Quincy tells us

his mother was "not handsome"; but those who remember the gracious

dignity of her old age will hardly agree with him. She must always have

had that highest kind of beauty which grows more beautiful with years,

and keeps the eyes young, as if with a sort of partial connivance of

Time.

We do not propose to follow Mr. Quincy closely through his whole public

life, which, beginning with his thirty-second, ended with his

seventy-third year. He entered Congress as the representative of a party

privately the most respectable, publicly the least sagacious, among all

those which under different names have divided the country. The

Federalists were the only proper tones our politics have ever produced,

whose conservatism truly represented an idea, and not a mere selfish

interest,--men who honestly distrusted democracy, and stood up for

experience, or the tradition which they believed for such, against

empiricism. During his Congressional career, the government was little

more than an _attache_ of the French legation, and the opposition to

which he belonged a helpless _revenant_ from the dead and buried

Colonial past. There are some questions whose interest dies the moment

they are settled; others, into which a moral element enters that hinders

them from being settled, though they may be decided. It is hard to

revive any enthusiasm about the _Embargo_, though it once could inspire

the boyish Muse of Bryant, or in the impressment quarrel, though the

Trent difficulty for a time rekindled its old animosities. The stars in

their courses fought against Mr. Quincy's party, which was not in

sympathy with the instincts of the people, groping about for some

principle of nationality, and finding a substitute for it in hatred of

England. But there are several things which still make his career in

Congress interesting to us, because they illustrate the personal

character of the man. He prepared himself honestly for his duties, by a

thorough study of whatever could make him efficient in them. It was not

enough that he could make a good speech; he wished also to have

something to say. In Congress, as everywhere else, _quod voluit valde

voluit_; and he threw a fervor into the most temporary topic, as if his

eternal salvation depended upon it. He had not merely, as the French

say, the courage of his opinions, but his opinions became principles,

and gave him that gallantry of fanaticism which made him always ready to

head a forlorn hope,--the more ready, perhaps, that it was a forlorn

hope. This is not the humor of a statesman,--no, unless he holds a

position like that of Pitt, and can charge a whole people with his own

enthusiasm, and then we call it genius. Mr. Quincy had the moral

firmness which enabled him to decline a duel without any loss of

personal _prestige_. His opposition to the Louisiana purchase

illustrates that Roman quality in him to which we have alluded. He

would not conclude the purchase till each of the old thirteen States had

signified its assent. He was reluctant to endow a Sabine city with the

privilege of Roman citizenship. It is worth nothing, that while in

Congress, and afterwards in the State Senate, many of his phrases became

the catchwords of party politics. He always dared to say what others

deemed it more prudent only to think, and whatever he said he

intensified with the whole ardor of his temperament. It is this which

makes Mr. Quincy's speeches good reading still, even when the topics

they discussed were ephemeral. In one respect he is distinguished from

the politicians, and must rank with the far-seeing statesmen of his

time. He early foresaw and denounced the political danger with which the

slave power threatened the Union. His fears, it is true, were aroused

for the balance of power between the old States, rather than by any

moral sensitiveness, which would, indeed, have been an anachronism at

that time. But the Civil War justified his prescience.

It was as Mayor of his native city that his remarkable qualities as an

administrator were first called into requisition and adequately

displayed. He organized the city government, and put it in working

order. To him we owe many reforms in police, in the management of the

poor, and other kindred matters,--much in the way of cure, still more,

in that of prevention. The place demanded a man of courage and firmness,

and found those qualities almost superabundantly in him. His virtues

lost him his office, as such virtues are only too apt to do in peaceful

times, where they are felt more as a restraint than a protection. His

address on laying down the mayoralty is very characteristic. We quote

the concluding sentences:--

"And now, gentlemen, standing as I do in this relation for the last time

in your presence and that of my fellow-citizens, about to surrender

forever a station full of difficulty, of labor and temptation, in which

I have been called to very arduous duties, affecting the rights,

property, and at times the liberty of others; concerning which the

perfect line of rectitude--though desired--was not always to be clearly

discerned; in which great interests have been placed within my control,

under circumstances in which it would have been easy to advance private

ends and sinister projects;--under these circumstances, I inquire, as I

have a right to inquire,--for in the recent contest insinuations have

been cast against my integrity,--in this long management of your

affairs, whatever errors have been committed,--and doubtless there have

been many,--have you found in me anything selfish, anything personal,

anything mercenary? In the simple language of an ancient seer, I say,

'Behold, here I am; witness against me. Whom have I defrauded? Whom have

I oppressed? At whose hands have I received any bribe?'

"Six years ago, when I had the honor first to address the City Council,

in anticipation of the event which has now occurred, the following

expressions were used: 'In administering the police, in executing the

laws, in protecting the rights and promoting the prosperity of the city,

its first officer will be necessarily beset and assailed by individual

interests, by rival projects, by personal influences, by party passions.

The more firm and inflexible he is in maintaining the rights and in

pursuing the interests of the city, the greater is the probability of

his becoming obnoxious to the censure of all whom he causes to be

prosecuted or punished, of all whose passions he thwarts, of all whose

interests he opposes.'

"The day and the event have come. I retire--as in that first address I

told my fellow-citizens, 'If, in conformity with the experience of other

republics, faithful exertions should be followed by loss of favor and

confidence,' I should retire--'rejoicing, not, indeed, with a public and

patriotic, but with a private and individual joy'; for I shall retire

with a consciousness weighed against which all _human suffrages_ are but

as the light dust of the balance."

Of his mayoralty we have another anecdote quite Roman in color. He was

in the habit of riding early in the morning through the various streets

that he might look into everything with his own eyes. He was once

arrested on a malicious charge of violating the city ordinance against

fast driving. He might have resisted, but he appeared in court and paid

the fine, because it would serve as a good example "that no citizen was

above the law."

Hardly had Mr. Quincy given up the government of the city, when he was

called to that of the College. It is here that his stately figure is

associated most intimately and warmly with the recollections of the

greater number who hold his memory dear. Almost everybody looks back

regretfully to the days of some Consul Plancus. Never were eyes so

bright, never had wine so much wit and good-fellowship in it, never were

we ourselves so capable of the various great things we have never done.

Nor is it merely the sunset of life that casts such a ravishing light on

the past, and makes the western windows of those homes of fancy we have

left forever tremble with a sentiment of such sweet regret. We set great

store by what we had, and cannot have again, however indifferent in

itself, and what is past is infinitely past. This is especially true of

college life, when we first assume the titles without the

responsibilities of manhood, and the President of our year is apt to

become our Plancus very early. Popular or not while in office, an

ex-president is always sure of enthusiastic cheers at every college

festival. Mr. Quincy had many qualities calculated to win favor with the

young,--that one above all which is sure to do it, indomitable pluck.

With him the dignity was in the man, not in the office. He had some of

those little oddities, too, which afford amusement without contempt, and

which rather tend to heighten than diminish personal attachment to

superiors in station. His punctuality at prayers, and in dropping asleep

there, his forgetfulness of names, his singular inability to make even

the shortest offhand speech to the students,--all the more singular in a

practised orator,--his occasional absorption of mind, leading him to

hand you his sand-box instead of the leave of absence he had just dried

with it,--the old-fashioned courtesy of his, "Sir, your servant," as he

bowed you out of his study,--all tended to make him popular. He had also

a little of what is somewhat contradictorily called dry humor, not

without influence in his relations with the students. In taking leave of

the graduating class, he was in the habit of paying them whatever honest

compliment he could. Who, of a certain year which shall be nameless,

will ever forget the gravity with which he assured them that they were

"the _best-dressed_ class that had passed through college during his

administration"? How sincerely kind he was, how considerate of youthful

levity, will always be gratefully remembered by whoever had occasion to

experience it. A visitor not long before his death found him burning

some memoranda of college peccadilloes, lest they should ever rise up in

judgment against the men eminent in Church and State who had been guilty

of them. One great element of his popularity with the students was his

_esprit de corps_. However strict in discipline, he was always on _our_

side as respected the outside world. Of his efficiency, no higher

testimony could be asked than that of his successor, Dr. Walker. Here

also many reforms date from his time. He had that happiest combination

for a wise vigor in the conduct of affairs,--he was a conservative with

an open mind.

One would be apt to think that, in the various offices which Mr. Quincy

successively filled, he would have found enough to do. But his

indefatigable activity overflowed. Even as a man of letters, he occupies

no inconsiderable place. His "History of Harvard College" is a valuable

and entertaining treatment of a subject not wanting in natural dryness.

His "Municipal History of Boston" his "History of the Boston Athenaeum,"

and his "Life of Colonel Shaw" have permanent interest and value. All

these were works demanding no little labor and research, and the

thoroughness of their workmanship makes them remarkable as the

by-productions of a busy man. Having consented, when more than eighty,

to write a memoir of John Quincy Adams, to be published in the

"Proceedings" of the Massachusetts Historical Society, he was obliged to

excuse himself. On account of his age? Not at all, but because the work

had grown to be a volume under his weariless hand. _Ohne Hast ohne

Rast_, was as true of him as of Goethe. We find the explanation of his

accomplishing so much in a rule of life which he gave, when President,

to a young man employed as his secretary, and who was a little

behindhand with his work: "When you have a number of duties to perform,

always do the most disagreeable one first." No advice could have been

more in character.

Perhaps the most beautiful part of Mr. Quincy's life was his old age.

What in most men is decay, was in him but beneficent prolongation and

adjournment. His interest in affairs unabated, his judgment undimmed,

his fire unchilled, his last years were indeed "lovely as a Lapland

night." Till within a year or two of its fall, there were no signs of

dilapidation in that stately edifice. Singularly felicitous was Mr.

Winthrop's application to him of Wordsworth's verses:--

"The monumental pomp of age

Was in that goodly personage."

Everything that Macbeth foreboded the want of, he had in deserved

abundance,--the love, the honor, the obedience, the troops of friends.

His equanimity was beautiful. He loved life, as men of large vitality

always do, but he did not fear to lose life by changing the scene of it.

Visiting him in his ninetieth year with a friend, he said to us, among

other things: "I have no desire to die, but also no reluctance. Indeed,

I have a considerable curiosity about the other world. I have never been

to Europe, you know." Even in his extreme senescence there was an April

mood somewhere in his nature "that put a spirit of youth in everything."

He seemed to feel that he could draw against an unlimited credit of

years. When eighty-two, he said smilingly to a young man just returned

from a foreign tour, "Well, well, I mean to go myself when I am old

enough to profit by it." We have seen many old men whose lives were mere

waste and desolation, who made longevity disreputable by their untimely

persistence in it; but in Mr. Quincy's length of years there was nothing

that was not venerable. To him it was fulfilment, not deprivation; the

days were marked to the last for what they brought, not for what they

took away.

The memory of what Mr. Quincy did will be lost in the crowd of newer

activities; it is the memory of what he was that is precious to us.

_Bonum virum facile crederes, magnum libenter._ If John Winthrop be the

highest type of the men who shaped New England, we can find no better

one of those whom New England has shaped than Josiah Quincy. It is a

figure that we can contemplate with more than satisfaction,--a figure of

admirable example in a democracy as that of a model citizen. His courage

and high-mindedness were personal to him; let us believe that his

integrity, his industry, his love of letters, his devotion to duty, go

in some sort to the credit of the society which gave him birth and

formed his character. In one respect he is especially interesting to us,

as belonging to a class of men of whom he was the last representative,

and whose like we shall never see again. Born and bred in an age of

greater social distinctions than ours, he was an aristocrat in a sense

that is good even in a republic. He had the sense of a certain personal

dignity _inherent_ in him, and which could not be alienated by any whim

of the popular will. There is no stouter buckler than this for

independence of spirit, no surer guaranty of that courtesy which, in its

consideration of others, is but paying a debt of self-respect. During

his presidency, Mr. Quincy was once riding to Cambridge in a crowded

omnibus. A colored woman got in, and could nowhere find a seat. The

President instantly gave her his own, and stood the rest of the way, a

silent rebuke of the general rudeness. He was a man of quality in the

true sense,--of quality not hereditary, but personal. Position might be

taken from him, but _he_ remained where he was. In what he valued most,

his sense of personal worth, the world's opinion could neither help nor

hinder. We do not mean that this was conscious in him; if it had been,

it would have been a weakness. It was an instinct, and acted with the

force and promptitude proper to such. Let us hope that the scramble of

democracy will give us something as good; anything of so classic dignity

we shall not look to see again.

Josiah Quincy was no seeker of office; from first to last he and it were

drawn together by the mutual attraction of need and fitness, and it

clung to him as most men cling to it. The people often make blunders in

their choice; they are apt to mistake presence of speech for presence of

mind; they love so to help a man rise from the ranks, that they will

spoil a good demagogue to make a bad general; a great many faults may be

laid at their door, but they are not fairly to be charged with

fickleness. They are constant to whoever is constant to his real self,

to the best manhood that is in him, and not to the mere selfishness, the

_antica lupa_ so cunning to hide herself in the sheep's fleece even from

ourselves. It is true, the contemporary world is apt to be the gull of

brilliant parts, and the maker of a lucky poem or picture or statue,

the winner of a lucky battle, gets perhaps more than is due to the solid

result of his triumph. It is time that fit honor should be paid also to

him who shows a genius for public usefulness, for the achievement of

character, who shapes his life to a certain classic proportion, and

comes off conqueror on those inward fields where something more than

mere talent is demanded for victory. The memory of such men should be

cherished as the most precious inheritance which one generation can

bequeath to the next. However it might be with popular favor, public

respect followed Mr. Quincy unwaveringly for seventy years, and it was

because he had never forfeited his own. In this, it appears to us, lies

the lesson of his life, and his claim upon our grateful recollection. It

is this which makes him an example, while the careers of so many of our

prominent men are only useful for warning. As regards history, his

greatness was narrowly provincial; but if the measure of deeds be the

spirit in which they are done, that fidelity to instant duty, which,

according to Herbert, makes an action fine, then his length of years

should be very precious to us for its lesson. Talleyrand, whose life may

be compared with his for the strange vicissitude which it witnessed,

carried with him out of the world the respect of no man, least of all

his own; and how many of our own public men have we seen whose old age

but accumulated a disregard which they would gladly have exchanged for

oblivion! In Quincy the public fidelity was loyal to the private, and

the withdrawal of his old age was into a sanctuary,--a diminution of

publicity with addition of influence.

"Conclude we, then, felicity consists

Not in exterior fortunes....

Sacred felicity doth ne'er extend

Beyond itself....

The swelling of an outward fortune can

Create a prosperous, not a happy man."

THE CONSPIRACY AT WASHINGTON.

The people of the United States now have the mortification of standing

before the world in the attitude of a swindled democracy. Their

collective will is crossed by the will of one individual, whose only

title to such autocracy is in the fact that he has cheated and betrayed

those who elected him. There might be some little compensation for this

outrage, if the man himself possessed any of those commanding qualities

of mind and disposition which ordinarily distinguish usurpers; but it is

the peculiarity of Mr. Johnson that the indignation excited by his

claims is only equalled by the contempt excited by his character. He is

despised even by those he benefits, and his nominal supporters feel

ashamed of the trickster and apostate, while condescending to reap the

advantages of his faithlessness. No party in the South or in the North

thinks of selecting him as its candidate, for the vices and weaknesses

which make an excellent accomplice and tool are not those which any

party would consider desirable in a leader. Whatever office-seekers,

partisans, traitors, and public enemies may find in Mr. Johnson, it is

certain that they find in him nothing to respect. He is cursed with that

form of moral disease which sometimes renders a man ridiculous,

sometimes infamous, but which never renders him respectable,--namely,

vanity of will. Other men may be vain of their talents and

accomplishments, but he is vain of the personal pronoun itself, utterly

regardless of what it covers and includes. Reason, conscience,

understanding, have no impersonality to him. When he uses the words, he

uses them as synonymes of his determinations, or as decorative terms

into which it pleases him to translate the rough vernacular of his

wilfulness and caprices. The "Constitution," also, a word constantly

profaned by his lips, is not so much, as he uses it, the Constitution of

the United States as the moral and mental constitution of Andrew

Johnson, which, in his view, is the one primary fact to which all other

facts must be subordinate. His gross inconsistencies of opinion and

policy, his shameless betrayal of his party, his incapacity to hold

himself to his word, his hatred of a cause the moment its defenders

cease to flatter him, his habit of administering laws he has vetoed, on

the principle that they do not mean what he vetoed them for meaning, his

delight in little tricks of low cunning,--in short, all the immoral and

unreasonable acts of his administration have their central source in a

passionate sense of self-importance, inflaming a mind of extremely

limited capacity.

Such a person, whose mere presence in the executive chair of a

constitutional country is itself "a high crime and misdemeanor," is of

course the natural prey of demagogues, and he now appears to be

surrounded by demagogues of the most desperate class. His advisers are

conspirators, and they have so wrought on his vulgar and malignant

nature that the question of his impeachment has now come to be merged in

the more momentous question whether he will submit to be impeached.

Constitutionally, there is no limit to the power of Congress in this

respect but that which Congress may itself impose. The power is plain,

and there can be no revision of the judgment of the Senate by any other

power in the government. But Mr. Johnson thinks, or says he thinks, that

Congress itself, as at present constituted, is unconstitutional. He

believes, or says he believes, that the defeated Rebel States whose

representatives Congress now excludes are as much States in the Union,

and as much entitled to representation, as New York or Ohio. As he

specially represents the defeated Rebel States, it is hardly to be

supposed that he will consent to be punished for crimes committed in

their behalf by a Congress from which their representatives are

excluded; and it is also to be presumed that the measures he is now

taking to obstruct the operation of the laws of Congress relating to

reconstruction are but preliminary to a design to resist Congress

itself.

The madness of such a scheme leads judicious people to disbelieve in its

possibility; but in respect to Mr. Johnson it has been found that the

only way to prevent the occurrence of mischief is to diffuse extensively

among the people the suspicion that it is meditated. Judicious and

dispassionate persons are often poor judges of what men of fierce

passions and distempered minds will do; for they unconsciously attribute

to such men some of their own ideas of honesty, propriety, and regard

for the public welfare. The legislators whom Louis Napoleon outwitted

were overthrown, because, bad as their opinion of him was, it was not so

bad as events proved it ought to have been. In the case of Mr. Johnson,

there is not the same excuse for misconception, since his cunning is

utterly divorced from sagacity, and he has not the intelligence to

conceal what his impulses prompt him to attempt. The kind of man he is

would seem to be obvious to the most superficial observer; the natural

inference is, therefore, that he will act after his kind; but this is an

inference which dispassionate statesmen have hesitated fully to draw.

They have been continually surprised at acts which they should have

foreseen. They were surprised that, during the months he was left to his

own devices and to the counsels of Southern politicians, he matured his

policy of reconstruction. They were surprised that he would not abandon

his policy rather than break with the Republican party. They were

surprised when they learned that he meditated a _coup d'etat_ on the

assembling of the Fortieth Congress. They were surprised when they found

that no law could be made which would bind him according to its intent.

They were surprised when, as soon as Congress adjourned, he began to

take measures which can have no other intelligible purpose than that of

making him master of Congress when it reassembles. And to crown all,

though it has been apparent since February, 1866, that he was the enemy

of the country, they have still had technical reasons for retaining him

as the proper executive of its laws.

It would then seem that, in dealing with such a man as Andrew Johnson,

it is the part of wisdom to suspect the worst. Without any special

knowledge of the treasonable intrigue now going on in Washington, it is

still possible to fathom the President's designs, and to understand the

resources on which he relies. In the first place, his conceit makes him

believe that he is the first man in the nation, and that he is not only

adored at the South, but popular at the North. The slightest sign of

reaction in Northern and Western elections he considers a testimony to

his individual merit, and an indorsement of his policy. In case he

refuses to recognize the present Congress, turns its members by military

power out of their seats, and appeals for support to the white

population of the Rebel as well as Loyal States, he will count on being

sustained by the nation. The Democratic party agrees with him as far as

regards the constitutionality of the laws which he will, in the name of

the Constitution, be compelled to disregard in order to get possession

of the military power of the country; and he thinks that party will

support him in resuming those functions as commander-in-chief of which

he has been deprived by a "usurping" Congress. The army and navy, with

all Republican officers removed, including, of course, General Grant and

Admiral Farragut, he thinks will obey his orders. The South, he

supposes, will rally round him to a man. The thoroughly Rebel military

organization in Maryland, controlled by a Governor after his own heart,

will interpose obstacles to the passage of troops from the Northern

States to Washington. The Democrats in those States will do all they

can to prevent troops from being sent. Before there could be any

efficient military organization in the Loyal States brought to bear on

his dictatorship, he expects to have a Congress of "the whole nation"

around him, of which at least a majority will be defeated Rebels and

Copperheads. The whole thing is to be done in the name of the

Constitution; and the Proclamation he has issued to all officers of the

United States, civil and military, telling them to obey the Constitution

(i. e. Mr. Johnson), may be considered the first step in the development

of the scheme.

It is needless to say that such a scheme could only find hospitable

reception in the head of a spiteful, inflated, and unprincipled egotist,

for such an egotist Mr. Johnson assuredly is. It is needless to say that

it would break down through the refusal of General Grant to give up his

command, and through the refusal of the great body of the army to obey

the President; for the danger is not so much the success of the attempt

as the convulsion which, the mere attempt would occasion. That the

danger is a serious one, provided the October and November elections

show a considerable Republican loss, is evident from a consideration of

the President's position. He has already gone far enough in his course

to exasperate Congress, and unite its Republican members, conservative

and radical, in favor of his impeachment. Without going over the long

list of delinquencies and usurpations which would justify that measure,

it is sufficient to name the recent Proclamation of Amnesty as an act

which promises to secure it. That Proclamation is a plain violation of

the Constitution as the Constitution is understood by Congress; and it

is upon the Congressional interpretation of the Constitution that, in

the matter of impeachment, the President must stand or fall. Congress,

by giving the power of granting amnesty to Mr. Lincoln, evidently

conceived that it was not a power given to him by the Constitution; by

taking it away from Mr. Johnson, it as evidently conceived that it

could not be exercised by him except by usurpation. In usurping this

power, Mr. Johnson must have known that his act belonged, in the opinion

of Congress, to the class of "high crimes and misdemeanors," for the

commission of which the Constitution expressly provides that Presidents

may be impeached; and he must also have known that Congress, in judging

of his infractions of the Constitution, would be bound neither by his

individual opinion of his constitutional powers nor by the opinion of

the Supreme Court, but was at perfect liberty to act on its own

interpretation of his constitutional duty. It is not therefore to be

supposed that he intended to limit his defiance of Congress to the mere

issuing of the Amnesty Proclamation, especially as the principle on

which that Proclamation was issued would cover his refusal to carry out

the whole Congressional plan of reconstruction. His conviction or

assertion that Congress has no right to withhold from him the power to

pardon defeated rebels and public enemies by the wholesale, is certainly

not greater or more emphatic than his conviction or assertion that, in

its plan of reconstruction, Congress has granted to subordinates powers

which constitutionally belong to him. If he can exalt his will over

Congress in the one case, there is no reason why he should not do it in

the other.

Indeed, in the Proclamation of Amnesty, Mr. Johnson practically claims

that his power to grant pardons extends to a dispensing power over the

laws. But it is evident that the Constitution, in giving the President

the power to pardon criminals, does not give him the power to dispense

with the laws against crime. At one period, Mr. Johnson seems to have

done this in respect to the crime of counterfeiting, by his repeated

pardons extended to convicted counterfeiters.--Still there is a broad

line of distinction between the abuse of this power to pardon criminals

after conviction, and the assumption of power to restore to whole

classes of traitors and public enemies their forfeited rights of

citizenship. By the pardon of murderers and counterfeiters, the

President cannot much increase the number of his political supporters;

by the pardon of traitors and public enemies, he may build up a party to

support him in his struggle against the legislative department of the

government. The reasons which have induced Mr. Johnson to dispense with

the laws against treason are political reasons, and bear no relation to

his prerogative of mercy. Nobody pretends that he pardoned

counterfeiters because they were his political partisans; everybody

knows he pardons traitors and public enemies in order to gain their

influence and votes. A public enemy himself, and leagued with public

enemies, he has the impudence to claim that he is constitutionally

capable of perverting his power to pardon into a power to gain political

support in his schemes against the loyal nation.

But it is not probable that the President will limit his usurpations to

a measure whose chief significance consists in its preliminary

character. Before Congress meets in November, he will doubtless have

followed it up by others which will make his impeachment a matter of

certainty. The only method of preventing him from resisting impeachment

by force, is an awakening of the people to the fact that the final

battle against reviving rebellion is yet to be fought at the polls. Any

apathy or divisions among Republicans in the State elections in October

and November, resulting in a decrease of their vote, will embolden Mr.

Johnson to venture his meditated _coup d'etat_. He never will submit to

be impeached and removed from office unless Congress is sustained by a

majority of the people so great as to frighten him into submission.

Elated by a little victory, he can only be depressed by a ruinous

defeat; and such a defeat it is the solemn duty of the people to prepare

for him. Even into his conceited brain must be driven the idea that his

contemplated enterprise is hopeless, and that, in attempting to commit

the greatest of political crimes, he would succeed only in committing

the most enormous of political blunders.

Still, it is not to be concealed that there are circumstances in the

present political condition of the country which may give the President

just that degree of apparent popular support which is all he needs to

stimulate him into open rebellion against the laws. It is, of course,

his duty to recognize the people of the United States in their

representatives in the Fortieth Congress; but, on the other hand, it is

the character of his mind to regard the people as multiplied duplicates

of himself, and a mob yelling for "Andy" under his windows is to him

more representative of the people than the delegates of twenty States.

In the autumn elections only two Representatives to Congress will be

chosen; the political strife will relate generally to local questions

and candidates; and it is to be feared that the Republicans will not be

sufficiently alive to the fact, that divisions on local questions and

candidates will be considered at Washington as significant of a change

in the public mind on the great national question which it is the

business of the Fortieth Congress to settle. That Congress needs the

moral support of a great Republican vote _now_, and will obtain it

provided the people are roused to a conviction of its necessity. But a

large and influential portion of the Republican party is composed of

business men, whose occupations disconnect them from politics except in

important exigencies, and who can with difficulty be made to believe

that politics is a part of their business, as long as the safety of

their business is not threatened by civil disorders. They think the

reconstruction question is practically settled, and when you speak to

them of plots such as are now hatching in Washington, and which seem as

preposterous as the story of a sensational novel, their incredulity

confirms them in the notion that it is safe to allow things to take

their course. Their very good sense makes them blind to the designs of

such a Bobadil-Cromwell as Andrew Johnson. The great body of the

Republican party, indeed, shows at present a little of the exhaustion

which is apt to follow a series of victories, and exhibits altogether

too much of the confidence which so often attends an incompleted

triumph.

The Democratic party, on the contrary, is all alive, and is preparing

for one last desperate attempt to recover its old position in the

nation. Its leaders fear that, if the Congressional plan of

reconstruction be carried out, it will result in republicanizing the

Southern States. This would be the political extinction of their party.

In fighting against that plan, they are, therefore, fighting for life,

and are accordingly more than usually profligate in the character of the

stimulants they address to whatever meanness, baseness, dishonesty,

lawlessness, and ignorance there may be in the nation. Taxation presses

hard on the people, and they have not hesitated to propose repudiation

of the public debt as the means of relief. The argument is addressed to

ignorance and passion, for Mirabeau hit the reason of the case when he

defined repudiation as taxation in its most cruel and iniquitous form.

But the method of repudiation which the Democratic leaders propose to

follow is of all methods the worst and most calamitous. They would make

the dollar a mere form of expression by the issue of an additional

billion or two of greenbacks, and then "pay off" the debt in the

currency they had done all they could to render worthless. In other

words they would not only swindle the public creditor, but wreck all

values. A party which advocates such a scheme as this, to save it from

the death it deserves, would have no hesitation in risking a civil

convulsion for the same purpose. Indeed, the reopening of the civil war

would not produce half the misery which would be created by the adoption

of their project to dilute the currency.

Now, if by apathy on the part of Republicans and audacity on the part

of Democrats the autumn elections result unfavorably, it will then be

universally seen how true was Senator Sumner's remark made in January

last, that "Andrew Johnson, who came to supreme power by a bloody

accident, has become the successor of Jefferson Davis in the spirit by

which he is governed, and in the mischief he is inflicting on the

country"; that "the President of the Rebellion is revived in the

President of the United States." What this man now proposes to do has

been impressively stated by Senator Thayer of Nebraska, in a public

address at Cincinnati: "I declare," he said, "upon my responsibility as

a Senator of the United States, that to-day Andrew Johnson meditates and

designs forcible resistance to the authority of Congress. I make this

statement deliberately, having received it from an unquestioned and

unquestionable authority." It would seem that this authority could be

none other than the authority of the Acting Secretary of War and General

of the Army of the United States, who, reticent as he is, does not

pretend to withhold his opinion that the country is in imminent peril,

and in peril from the action of the President. But it is by some

considered a sufficient reply to such statements, that, if Mr. Johnson

should overturn the legislative department of the government, there

would be an uprising of the people which would soon sweep him and his

supporters from the face of the earth. This may be very true, but we

should prefer a less Mexican manner of ascertaining public sentiment.

Without leaving their peaceful occupations, the people can do by their

votes all that it is proposed they shall do by their muskets. It is

hardly necessary that a million or half a million of men should go to

Washington to speak their mind to Mr. Johnson, when a ballot-box close

at hand will save them the expense and trouble. It will, indeed, be

infinitely disgraceful to the nation if Mr. Johnson dares to put his

purpose into act, for his courage to violate his own duty will come from

the neglect of the people to perform theirs. Let the great uprising of

the citizens of the Republic be at the polls this autumn, and there will

be no need of a fight in the winter. The House of Representatives, which

has the sole power of impeachment, will in all probability impeach the

President. The Senate, which has the sole power to try impeachments,

will in all probability find him guilty, by the requisite two thirds of

its members, of the charges preferred by the House. And he himself,

cowed by the popular verdict against his contemplated crime, and

hopeless of escaping from the punishment of past delinquencies by a new

act of treason, will submit to be removed from the office he has too

long been allowed to dishonor.

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_The New Life of_ DANTE ALIGHIERI. Translated by CHARLES ELIOT

NORTON. Boston: Ticknor and Fields.

In "The New Life" Dante tells how first he met Beatrice and loved her;

but how he feigned that it was another lady he loved, making a defence

of her and others still that his real passion might not be known; how

Beatrice would not salute him, believing him false and inconstant with

these ladies, her friends; how being at a banquet where she was, he was

so visibly stricken with love that some of the ladies derided him; how

Beatrice's father died, and how Dante himself fell ill; how Beatrice

quitted the city, and soon after the world; and how Dante was so

grateful to another lady who pitied his affliction that his heart turned

toward her in love, but he restrained it, and remained true to Beatrice

forever. Part of this is told as the experience of children in years,

Dante being nine at the time he first sees his love, and she of "a very

youthful age"; but the narrative then extends over the course of sixteen

years. The incidents of the slight history furnish occasion for sonnets

and canzonets, which often repeat the facts and sentiments of the prose,

and which are again elaborately expounded.

Such is "The New Life,"--a medley of passionate feeling, of vaguest

narrative, of scholastic pedantry. It is readily conceivable that to

transfer such a work to another tongue with verbal truth, and without

lapse from the peculiar spirit of the original, is a labor of great and

unusual difficulty. The slightest awkwardness in the translation of

these mystical passages of prose and rhyme connected by a thread of fact

so fragile and so subtle that we must seem to have done it violence in

touching it, would be almost fatal to the reader's enjoyment, or even

patience. Their version demands deep knowledge, not only of the language

in which they first took form, but of all the civil and intellectual

conditions of the time and country in which they were produced, as well

as the utmost fidelity, and exquisite delicacy of taste. It appears to

us that Mr. Norton has met these requirements, and executed his task

with signal grace and success.

The translator of the "Vita Nuova" has not departed from the principle

which Mr. Longfellow's translation of the "Commedia" is to render sole

in the version of poetry. Indeed, there was a greater need, if possible,

of literalness in rendering the less than the greater work, while the

temptations to "improvement" and modification of the original must have

been even more constant. Yet there is a very notable difference between

Mr. Longfellow's literality and Mr. Norton's, which strikes at first

glance, and which goes to prove that within his proper limits the

literal translator can always find room for the play of individual

feeling. Mr. Longfellow seems to have developed to its utmost the Latin

element in our poetical diction, and to have found in words of a kindred

stock the best interpretation of the Italian, while Mr. Norton

instinctively chooses for the rendering of Dante's tenderness and

simplicity a diction almost as purely Saxon as that of the Bible. This

gives the prose of "The New Life" with all its proper archaic quality;

and those who read the following sonnet can well believe that it is not

unjust to the beauty of the verse:--

"So gentle and so modest doth appear

My lady when she giveth her salute,

That every tongue becometh, trembling, mute;

Nor do the eyes to look upon her dare.

Although she hears her praises, she doth go

Benignly vested with humility;

And like a thing come down, she seems to be,

From heaven to earth, a miracle to show.

So pleaseth she whoever cometh nigh,

She gives the heart a sweetness through the eyes,

Which none can understand who doth not prove.

And from her countenance there seems to move

A spirit sweet, and in Love's very guise,

Who to the soul is ever saying, Sigh!"

Mr. Norton has in all cases kept to the metres of the original, but in

most of the canzonets has sacrificed rhyme to literality,--a sacrifice

which we are inclined to regret, chiefly because the translator has

elsewhere shown that the closest fidelity need not involve the loss of

any charm of the original. "We have not room here to make any general

comparison of Mr. Norton's version with the Italian, but we cannot deny

ourselves the pleasure of giving the following sonnet, so exquisite in

both tongues, for the better proof of what we say in praise of the

translator:--

"Negli occhi porta la mia donna Amore;

Per che si fa gentil ciocch' ella mira:

Ove ella passa, ogni uom ver lei si gira,

E cui saluta fa tremar to core.

Sicche bassando 'l viso tutto smuore,

Ed ogni suo difetto allor sospira:

Fugge dinanzi a lei superbia ed ira.

Aiutatenmi, donne, a farle onore.

Ogni dolcezza, ogni pensiero umile

Nasce nel core, a chi parlar la sente,

Onde e laudato chi prima la vide.

Quel, ch' ella par, quando un poco sorride,

Non si puo dicer, ne tenerc a mente;

Si e nuovo miracolo, e gentile."

* * * *

"Within her eyes my lady beareth Love,

So that whom she regards as gentle made;

All toward her turn, where'er her path is laid,

And whom she greets, his heart doth trembling move;

So that with face cast down, all pale to view,

For every fault of his he then doth sigh;

Anger and pride away before her fly:--

Assist me, dames, to pay her honor due.

All sweetness truly, every humble thought,

The heart of him who hears her speak doth hold;

Whence he is blessed who hath her seen erewhile.

What seems she when a little she doth smile

Cannot be kept in mind, cannot be told,

Such strange and gentle miracle is wrought."

The poems are of course rendered with varying degrees of felicity, and

this we think one of the happiest versions; though few in their

literality lack that ease and naturalness of movement supposed to be the

gift solely of those wonder-workers who render the "spirit" of an

author, while disdaining a "slavish fidelity" to his words,--who as

painters would portray a man's expression without troubling themselves

to reproduce his features.

It appears to us that generally the sonnets are translated better than

the canzonets, and that where Mr. Norton has found the rhyme quite

indispensable, he has all the more successfully performed his task. In

the prose there is naturally less inequality, and here, where excellence

is quite as important as in the verse, the translator's work is

irreproachable. His vigilant taste seems never to have failed him in the

choice of words which should keep at once all the dignity and all the

quaintness of the original, while they faithfully reported its sense.

The essays appended to the translation assemble from Italian and English

writings all the criticism that is necessary to the enjoyment of "The

New Life," and include many valuable and interesting comments by the

translator upon the work itself, and the spirit of the age and country

in which it was written.

The notes, which, like the essays, are pervaded by Mr. Norton's graceful

and conscientious scholarship, are not less useful and attractive.

We do not know that we can better express our very high estimate of the

work as a whole, than by saying that it is the fit companion of Mr.

Longfellow's unmatched version of the "Divina Commedia," with which it

is likewise uniform in faultless mechanical execution.

_The Bulls and the Jonathans; comprising John Bull and Brother

Jonathan, and John Bull in America._ By JAMES K. PAULDING.

Edited by WILLIAM I. PAULDING. New York: Charles Scribner and

Company.

"John Bull and Brother Jonathan" is an allegory, conveying in a strain

of fatiguing drollery the history of the relations between Great Britain

and the United States previous to the war of 1812, and reflecting the

popular feeling with regard to some of the English tourists who overran

us after the conclusion of peace. In this ponderous travesty John Bull

of Bullock is England, and Brother Jonathan the United States; Napoleon

figures as Beau Napperty, Louis XVI. as Louis Baboon, and France as

Frogmore. It could not have been a hard thing to write in its day, and

we suppose that it must once have amused people, though it is not easy

to understand bow they could ever have read it through.

"John Bull in America" is a satire, again, upon the book-making

tourists, and the ideas of our country generally accepted from them in

England. It is in the form of a narrative, and probably does not

exaggerate the stories told of us by Captain Ashe, Mr. Richard

Parkinson, Farmer Faux, Captain Hamilton, Captain Hall, and a tribe of

now-forgotten travellers, who wrote of adventure in the United States

when, as Mr. Dickens intimates, one of the readiest means of literary

success in England was to visit the Americans and abuse them in a book.

Mr. Paulding's parody gives the idea that their lies were rather dull

and foolish, and that the parodist's work was not so entirely a

diversion as one might think. He wrote for a generation now passing

away, and it is all but impossible for us to enter into the feeling that

animated him and his readers. For this reason, perhaps, we fail to enjoy

his book, though we are not entirely persuaded that we should have found

it humorous when it first appeared.

_The Life and Death of Jason._ A Poem. By WILLIAM MORRIS.

Boston: Roberts Brothers.

Whether the reader shall enjoy and admire this poem or not, depends

almost solely upon the idea with which he comes to its perusal. If he

expects to find it a work of genius, with an authentic and absolute

claim upon his interest, he will be disappointed. If he is prepared to

see in it a labor of the most patient and wonderful ingenuity, to behold

the miracle of an Englishman of our day writing exactly in the spirit of

the heroic ages, with no thought or feeling suggested by the experience

of the last two thousand years, it will fully answer his expectations.

The work is so far Greek as to read in many parts like Chapman's

translation of the Odyssey; though it must be confessed that Homer is,

if not a better Pagan, at least a greater poet than Mr. Morris. Indeed,

it appears to us that Mr. Morris's success is almost wholly in the

reflected sentiment and color of his work, and it seems, therefore, to

have no positive value, and to add nothing to the variety of letters or

intellectual life. It is a kind of performance in which failure is

intolerably offensive, and triumph more to be wondered at than praised.

For to be more or less than Greek in it is to be ridiculous, and to be

just Greek is to be what has already perfectly and sufficiently been. If

one wished to breathe the atmosphere of Greek poetry, with its sensuous

love of beauty and of life, its pathetic acceptance of events as fate,

its warped and unbalanced conscience, its abhorrence of death, and its

conception of a future sad as annihilation, we had already the Greek

poets; and does it profit us that Mr. Morris can produce just their

effects and nothing more in us?

We are glad to acknowledge his transcendent talent, and we have felt in

reading his poem all the pleasure that faultless workmanship can give.

He is alert and sure in the management of his materials; his

descriptions of sentiment and nature are so clever, and his handling of

a familiar plot so excellent, that he carries you with him to the end,

and leaves you unfatigued, but sensible of no addition to your stock of

ideas and feelings.