Not far from my place of residence are the ruins of a mill, in a narrow

ravine fringed with trees. Some forty years ago the mill was supposed

to be haunted; and horse-shoes, in consequence, were nailed over its

doors. One worthy man, whose business lay beyond the mill, was afraid

to pass it alone; and his wife, who was less fearful of supernatural

annoyance, used to accompany him. The little old white-coated miller,

who there ground corn and wheat for his neighbors, whenever he made a

particularly early visit to his mill, used to hear it in full

operation,--the water-wheel dashing bravely, and the old rickety

building clattering to the jar of the stones. Yet the moment his hand

touched the latch or his foot the threshold all was hushed save the

melancholy drip of water from the dam or the low gurgle of the small

stream eddying amidst willow roots and mossy stones in the ravine below.

This haunted mill has always reminded me of that most beautiful of

Scottish ballads, the Song of the Elfin Miller, in which fairies are

represented as grinding the poor man's grist without toil:--

"Full merrily rings the mill-stone round;

Full merrily rings the wheel;

Full merrily gushes out the grist;

Come, taste my fragrant meal.

The miller he's a warldly man,

And maun hae double fee;

So draw the sluice in the churl's dam

And let the stream gae free!"

Brainerd, who truly deserves the name of an American poet, has left

behind him a ballad on the Indian legend of the black fox which haunted

Salmon River, a tributary of the Connecticut. Its wild and picturesque

beauty causes us to regret that more of the still lingering traditions

of the red men have not been made the themes of his verse:--

THE BLACK FOX.

"How cold, how beautiful, how bright

The cloudless heaven above us shines!

But 't is a howling winter's night;

'T would freeze the very forest pines.

"The winds are up while mortals sleep;

The stars look forth while eyes are shut;

The bolted snow lies drifted deep

Around our poor and lonely hut.

"With silent step and listening ear,

With bow and arrow, dog and gun,

We'll mark his track,--his prowl we hear:

Now is our time! Come on! come on!

"O'er many a fence, through many a wood,

Following the dog's bewildered scent,

In anxious haste and earnest mood,

The white man and the Indian went.

"The gun is cocked; the bow is bent;

The dog stands with uplifted paw;

And ball and arrow both are sent,

Aimed at the prowler's very jaw.

"The ball to kill that fox is run

Not in a mould by mortals made;

The arrow which that fox should shun

Was never shaped from earthly reed.

"The Indian Druids of the wood

Know where the fatal arrows grow;

They spring not by the summer flood;

They pierce not through the winter's snow.

"Why cowers the dog, whose snuffing nose

Was never once deceived till now?

And why amidst the chilling snows

Does either hunter wipe his brow?

"For once they see his fearful den;

'T is a dark cloud that slowly moves

By night around the homes of men,

By day along the stream it loves.

"Again the dog is on the track,

The hunters chase o'er dale and hill;

They may not, though they would, look back;

They must go forward, forward still.

"Onward they go, and never turn,

Amidst a night which knows no day;

For nevermore shall morning sun

Light them upon their endless way.

"The hut is desolate; and there

The famished dog alone returns;

On the cold steps he makes his lair;

By the shut door he lays his bones.

"Now the tired sportsman leans his gun

Against the ruins on its site,

And ponders on the hunting done

By the lost wanderers of the night.

"And there the little country girls

Will stop to whisper, listen, and look,

And tell, while dressing their sunny curls,

Of the Black Fox of Salmon Brook."

The same writer has happily versified a pleasant superstition of the

valley of the Connecticut. It is supposed that shad are led from the

Gulf of Mexico to the Connecticut by a kind of Yankee bogle in the shape

of a bird.

THE SHAD SPIRIT.

"Now drop the bolt, and securely nail

The horse-shoe over the door;

'T is a wise precaution; and, if it should fail,

It never failed before.

"Know ye the shepherd that gathers his flock

Where the gales of the equinox blow

From each unknown reef and sunken rock

In the Gulf of Mexico,--

"While the monsoons growl, and the trade-winds bark,

And the watch-dogs of the surge

Pursue through the wild waves the ravenous shark

That prowls around their charge?

"To fair Connecticut's northernmost source,

O'er sand-bars, rapids, and falls,

The Shad Spirit holds his onward course

With the flocks which his whistle calls.

"Oh, how shall he know where he went before?

Will he wander around forever?

The last year's shad heads shall shine on the shore,

To light him up the river.

"And well can he tell the very time

To undertake his task

When the pork-barrel's low he sits on the chine

And drums on the empty cask.

"The wind is light, and the wave is white

With the fleece of the flock that's near;

Like the breath of the breeze he comes over the seas

And faithfully leads them here.

"And now he 's passed the bolted door

Where the rusted horse-shoe clings;

So carry the nets to the nearest shore,

And take what the Shad Spirit brings."

The comparatively innocent nature and simple poetic beauty of this class

of superstitions have doubtless often induced the moralist to hesitate

in exposing their absurdity, and, like Burns in view of his national

thistle, to:

"Turn the weeding hook aside

And spare the symbol dear."

But the age has fairly outgrown them, and they are falling away by a

natural process of exfoliation. The wonderland of childhood must

henceforth be sought within the domains of truth. The strange facts of

natural history, and the sweet mysteries of flowers and forests, and

hills and waters, will profitably take the place of the fairy lore of

the past, and poetry and romance still hold their accustomed seats in

the circle of home, without bringing with them the evil spirits of

credulity and untruth. Truth should be the first lesson of the child

and the last aspiration of manhood; for it has been well said that the

inquiry of truth, which is the lovemaking of it, the knowledge of truth,

which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the

enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature.

MAGICIANS AND WITCH FOLK.

FASCINATION, saith Henry Cornelius Agrippa, in the fiftieth chapter of

his first book on Occult Philosophy, "is a binding which comes of the

spirit of the witch through the eyes of him that is bewitched, entering

to his heart; for the eye being opened and intent upon any one, with a

strong imagination doth dart its beams, which are the vehiculum of the

spirit, into the eyes of him that is opposite to her; which tender

spirit strikes his eyes, stirs up and wounds his heart, and infects his

spirit. Whence Apuleius saith, 'Thy eyes, sliding down through my eyes

into my inmost heart, stirreth up a most vehement burning.' And when

eyes are reciprocally intent upon each other, and when rays are joined

to rays, and lights to lights, then the spirit of the one is joined to

that of the other; so are strong ligations made and vehement loves

inflamed." Taking this definition of witchcraft, we sadly fear it is

still practised to a very great extent among us. The best we can say of

it is, that the business seems latterly to have fallen into younger

hands; its victims do not appear to regard themselves as especial

objects of compassion; and neither church nor state seems inclined to

interfere with it.

As might be expected in a shrewd community like ours, attempts are not

unfrequently made to speculate in the supernatural,--to "make gain of

sooth-saying." In the autumn of last year a "wise woman" dreamed, or

somnambulized, that a large sum of money, in gold and silver coin, lay

buried in the centre of the great swamp in Poplin, New Hampshire;

whereupon an immediate search was made for the precious metal. Under

the bleak sky of November, in biting frost and sleet rain, some twenty

or more grown men, graduates of our common schools, and liable, every

mother's son of them, to be made deacons, squires, and general court

members, and such other drill officers as may be requisite in the march

of mind, might be seen delving in grim earnest, breaking the frozen

earth, uprooting swamp-maples and hemlocks, and waking, with sledge and

crowbar, unwonted echoes in a solitude which had heretofore only

answered to the woodman's axe or the scream of the wild fowl. The snows

of December put an end to their labors; but the yawning excavation still

remains, a silent but somewhat expressive commentary upon the age of

progress.

Still later, in one of our Atlantic cities, an attempt was made,

partially at least, successful, to form a company for the purpose of

digging for money in one of the desolate sand-keys of the West Indies.

It appears that some mesmerized "subject," in the course of one of those

somnambulic voyages of discovery in which the traveller, like Satan in

chaos,--

"O'er bog, o'er steep, through straight, rough, dense, or rare,

With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way,

And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies,"--

while peering curiously into the earth's mysteries, chanced to have his

eyes gladdened by the sight of a huge chest packed with Spanish coins,

the spoil, doubtless, of some rich-freighted argosy, or Carthagena

galleon, in the rare days of Queen Elizabeth's Christian buccaneers.

During the last quarter of a century, a colored woman in one of the

villages on the southern border of New Hampshire has been consulted by

hundreds of anxious inquirers into the future. Long experience in her

profession has given her something of that ready estimate of character,

that quick and keen appreciation of the capacity, habits, and wishes of

her visitors, which so remarkably distinguished the late famous Madame

Le Normand, of Paris; and if that old squalid sorceress, in her cramped

Parisian attic, redolent of garlic and bestrewn with the greasy

implements of sorry housewifery, was, as has been affirmed, consulted by

such personages as the fair Josephine Beauharnois, and the "man of

destiny," Napoleon himself, is it strange that the desire to lift the

veil of the great mystery before us should overcome in some degree our

peculiar and most republican prejudice against color, and reconcile us

to the disagreeable necessity of looking at futurity through a black

medium?

Some forty years ago, on the banks of the pleasant little creek

separating Berwick, in Maine, from Somersworth, in New Hampshire, within

sight of my mother's home, dwelt a plain, sedate member of the society

of Friends, named Bantum. He passed throughout a circle of several

miles as a conjurer and skilful adept in the art of magic. To him

resorted farmers who had lost their cattle, matrons whose household

gear, silver spoons, and table-linen had been stolen, or young maidens

whose lovers were absent; and the quiet, meek-spirited old man received

them all kindly, put on his huge iron-rimmed spectacles, opened his

"conjuring book," which my mother describes as a large clasped volume in

strange language and black-letter type, and after due reflection and

consideration gave the required answers without money and without price.

The curious old volume is still in the possession of the conjurer's

family. Apparently inconsistent as was this practice of the black art

with the simplicity and truthfulness of his religious profession, I have

not been able to learn that he was ever subjected to censure on account

of it. It may be that our modern conjurer defended himself on grounds

similar to those assumed by the celebrated knight of Nettesheim, in the

preface to his first Book of Magic: "Some," says he, "may crie oute that

I teach forbidden arts, sow the seed of heresies, offend pious ears, and

scandalize excellent wits; that I am a sorcerer, superstitious and

devilish, who indeed am a magician. To whom I answer, that a magician

doth not among learned men signifie a sorcerer or one that is

superstitious or devilish, but a wise man, a priest, a prophet, and that

the sibyls prophesied most clearly of Christ; that magicians, as wise

men, by the wonderful secrets of the world, knew Christ to be born, and

came to worship him, first of all; and that the name of magicke is

received by philosophers, commended by divines, and not unacceptable to

the Gospel."

The study of astrology and occult philosophy, to which many of the

finest minds of the Middle Ages devoted themselves without molestation

from the Church, was never practised with impunity after the

Reformation. The Puritans and Presbyterians, taking the Bible for their

rule, "suffered not a witch to live;" and, not content with burning the

books of those who "used curious arts" after the manner of the

Ephesians, they sacrificed the students themselves on the same pile.

Hence we hear little of learned and scientific wizards in New England.

One remarkable character of this kind seems, however, to have escaped

the vigilance of our modern Doctors of the Mosaic Law. Dr. Robert Child

came to this country about the year 1644, and took up his residence in

the Massachusetts colony. He was a man of wealth, and owned plantations

at Nashaway, now Lancaster, and at Saco, in Maine. He was skilful in

mineralogy and metallurgy, and seems to have spent a good deal of money

in searching for mines. He is well known as the author of the first

decided movement for liberty of conscience in Massachusetts, his name

standing at the head of the famous petition of 1646 for a modification

of the laws in respect to religious worship, and complaining in strong

terms of the disfranchisement of persons not members of the Church. A

tremendous excitement was produced by this remonstrance; clergy and

magistrates joined in denouncing it; Dr. Child and his associates were

arrested, tried for contempt of government, and heavily fined. The

Court, in passing sentence, assured the Doctor that his crime was only

equalled by that of Korah and his troop, who rebelled against Moses and

Aaron. He resolved to appeal to the Parliament of England, and made

arrangements for his departure, but was arrested, and ordered to be kept

a prisoner in his own house until the vessel in which he was to sail had

left Boston. He was afterwards imprisoned for a considerable length of

time, and on his release found means to return to England. The Doctor's

trunks were searched by the Puritan authorities while he was in prison;

but it does not appear that they detected the occult studies to which

lie was addicted, to which lucky circumstance it is doubtless owing that

the first champion of religious liberty in the New World was not hung

for a wizard.

Dr. Child was a graduate of the renowned University of Padua, and had

travelled extensively in the Old World. Probably, like Michael Scott,

he had:

"Learned the art of glammarye

In Padua, beyond the sea;"

for I find in the dedication of an English translation of a Continental

work on astrology and magic, printed in 1651 "at the sign of the Three

Bibles," that his "sublime hermeticall and theomagicall lore" is

compared to that of Hermes and Agrippa. He is complimented as a master

of the mysteries of Rome and Germany, and as one who had pursued his

investigations among the philosophers of the Old World and the Indians

of the New, "leaving no stone unturned, the turning whereof might

conduce to the discovery of what is occult."

There was still another member of the Friends' society in Vermont, of

the name of Austin, who, in answer, as he supposed, to prayer and a

long-cherished desire to benefit his afflicted fellow-creatures,

received, as he believed, a special gift of healing. For several years

applicants from nearly all parts of New England visited him with the

story of their sufferings and praying for a relief, which, it is

averred, was in many instances really obtained. Letters from the sick

who were unable to visit him, describing their diseases, were sent him;

and many are yet living who believe that they were restored miraculously

at the precise period of time when Austin was engaged in reading their

letters. One of my uncles was commissioned to convey to him a large

number of letters from sick persons in his neighborhood. He found the

old man sitting in his plain parlor in the simplest garb of his sect,--

grave, thoughtful, venerable,--a drab-coated Prince Hohenlohe. He

received the letters in silence, read them slowly, casting them one

after another upon a large pile of similar epistles in a corner of the

apartment.

Half a century ago nearly every neighborhood in New England was favored

with one or more reputed dealers in magic. Twenty years later there

were two poor old sisters who used to frighten school urchins and

"children of a larger growth" as they rode down from New Hampshire on

their gaunt skeleton horses, strung over with baskets for the

Newburyport market. They were aware of the popular notion concerning

them, and not unfrequently took advantage of it to levy a sort of black

mail upon their credulous neighbors. An attendant at the funeral of one

of these sisters, who when living was about as unsubstantial as Ossian's

ghost, through which the stars were visible, told me that her coffin was

so heavy that four stout men could barely lift it.

One, of my earliest recollections is that of an old woman, residing

about two miles from the place of my nativity, who for many years had

borne the unenviable reputation of a witch. She certainly had the look

of one,--a combination of form, voice, and features which would have

made the fortune of an English witch finder in the days of Matthew Paris

or the Sir John Podgers of Dickens, and insured her speedy conviction in

King James's High Court of Justiciary. She was accused of divers ill-

doings,--such as preventing the cream in her neighbor's churn from

becoming butter, and snuffing out candles at huskings and quilting-

parties.

"She roamed the country far and near,

Bewitched the children of the peasants,

Dried up the cows, and lamed the deer,

And sucked the eggs, and killed the pheasants."

The poor old woman was at length so sadly annoyed by her unfortunate

reputation that she took the trouble to go before a justice of the

peace, and made solemn oath that she was a Christian woman, and no

witch.

Not many years since a sad-visaged, middle-aged man might be seen in the

streets of one of our seaboard towns at times suddenly arrested in the

midst of a brisk walk and fixed motionless for some minutes in the busy

thoroughfare. No effort could induce him to stir until, in his opinion,

the spell was removed and his invisible tormentor suffered him to

proceed. He explained his singular detention as the act of a whole

family of witches whom he had unfortunately offended during a visit down

East. It was rumored that the offence consisted in breaking off a

matrimonial engagement with the youngest member of the family,--a

sorceress, perhaps, in more than one sense of the word, like that

"winsome wench and walie" in Tam O'Shanter's witch-dance at Kirk

Alloway. His only hope was that he should outlive his persecutors; and

it is said that at the very hour in which the event took place he

exultingly assured his friends that the spell was forever broken, and

that the last of the family of his tormentors was no more.

When a boy, I occasionally met, at the house of a relative in an

adjoining town, a stout, red-nosed old farmer of the neighborhood.

A fine tableau he made of a winter's evening, in the red light of a

birch-log fire, as he sat for hours watching its progress, with sleepy,

half-shut eyes, changing his position only to reach the cider-mug on the

shelf near him. Although he seldom opened his lips save to assent to

some remark of his host or to answer a direct question, yet at times,

when the cider-mug got the better of his taciturnity, he would amuse us

with interesting details of his early experiences in "the Ohio country."

There was, however, one chapter in these experiences which he usually

held in reserve, and with which "the stranger intermeddled not." He was

not willing to run the risk of hearing that which to him was a frightful

reality turned into ridicule by scoffers and unbelievers. The substance

of it, as I received it from one of his neighbors, forms as clever a

tale of witchcraft as modern times have produced.

It seems that when quite a young man he left the homestead, and,

strolling westward, worked his way from place to place until he found

himself in one of the old French settlements on the Ohio River. Here he

procured employment on the farm of a widow; and being a smart, active

fellow, and proving highly serviceable in his department, he rapidly

gained favor in the eyes of his employer. Ere long, contrary to the

advice of the neighbors, and in spite of somewhat discouraging hints

touching certain matrimonial infelicities experienced by the late

husband, he resolutely stepped into the dead man's shoes: the mistress

became the wife, and the servant was legally promoted to the head of the

household.--

For a time matters went on cosily and comfortably enough. He was now

lord of the soil; and, as he laid in his crops of corn and potatoes,

salted down his pork, and piled up his wood for winter's use, he

naturally enough congratulated himself upon his good fortune and laughed

at the sinister forebodings of his neighbors. But with the long winter

months came a change over his "love's young dream." An evil and

mysterious influence seemed to be at work in his affairs. Whatever he

did after consulting his wife or at her suggestion resulted favorably

enough; but all his own schemes and projects were unaccountably marred

and defeated. If he bought a horse, it was sure to prove spavined or

wind-broken. His cows either refused to give down their milk, or,

giving it, perversely kicked it over. A fine sow which he had bargained

for repaid his partiality by devouring, like Saturn, her own children.

By degrees a dark thought forced its way into his mind. Comparing his

repeated mischances with the ante-nuptial warnings of his neighbors, he

at last came to the melancholy conclusion that his wife was a witch.

The victim in Motherwell's ballad of the Demon Lady, or the poor fellow

in the Arabian tale who discovered that he had married a ghoul in the

guise of a young and blooming princess, was scarcely in a more sorrowful

predicament. He grew nervous and fretful. Old dismal nursery stories

and all the witch lore of boyhood came back to his memory; and he crept

to his bed like a criminal to the gallows, half afraid to fall asleep

lest his mysterious companion should take a fancy to transform him into

a horse, get him shod at the smithy, and ride him to a witch-meeting.

And, as if to make the matter worse, his wife's affection seemed to

increase just in proportion as his troubles thickened upon him. She

aggravated him with all manner of caresses and endearments. This was

the drop too much. The poor husband recoiled from her as from a waking

nightmare. His thoughts turned to New England; he longed to see once

more the old homestead, with its tall well-sweep and butternut-trees by

the roadside; and he sighed amidst the rich bottom-lands of his new home

for his father's rocky pasture, with its crop of stinted mulleins. So

one cold November day, finding himself out of sight and hearing of his

wife, he summoned courage to attempt an escape, and, resolutely turning

his back on the West, plunged into the wilderness towards the sunrise.

After a long and hard journey he reached his birthplace, and was kindly

welcomed by his old friends. Keeping a close mouth with respect to his

unlucky adventure in Ohio, he soon after married one of his schoolmates,

and, by dint of persevering industry and economy, in a few years found

himself in possession of a comfortable home.

But his evil star still lingered above the horizon. One summer evening,

on returning from the hayfield, who should meet him but his witch wife

from Ohio! She came riding up the street on her old white horse, with a

pillion behind the saddle. Accosting him in a kindly tone, yet not

without something of gentle reproach for his unhandsome desertion of

her, she informed him that she had come all the way from Ohio to take

him back again.

It was in vain that he pleaded his later engagements; it was in vain

that his new wife raised her shrillest remonstrances, not unmingled with

expressions of vehement indignation at the revelation of her husband's

real position; the witch wife was inexorable; go he must, and that

speedily. Fully impressed with a belief in her supernatural power of

compelling obedience, and perhaps dreading more than witchcraft itself

the effects of the unlucky disclosure on the temper of his New England

helpmate, he made a virtue of the necessity of the case, bade farewell

to the latter amidst a perfect hurricane of reproaches, and mounted the

white horse, with his old wife on the pillion behind him.

Of that ride Burger might have written a counterpart to his ballad:--

"Tramp, tramp, along the shore they ride,

Splash, splash, along the sea."

Two or three years had passed away, bringing no tidings of the

unfortunate husband, when he once more made his appearance in his native

village. He was not disposed to be very communicative; but for one

thing, at least, he seemed willing to express his gratitude. His Ohio

wife, having no spell against intermittent fever, had paid the debt of

nature, and had left him free; in view of which, his surviving wife,

after manifesting a due degree of resentment, consented to take him back

to her bed and board; and I could never learn that she had cause to

regret her clemency.

THE BEAUTIFUL

"A beautiful form is better than a beautiful face;

a beautiful behavior is better than a beautiful form;

it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures;

it is the finest of the fine arts."

EMERSON'S Essays, Second Series, iv., p. 162.

A FEW days since I was walking with a friend, who, unfortunately for

himself, seldom meets with anything in the world of realities worthy of

comparison with the ideal of his fancy, which, like the bird in the

Arabian tale, glides perpetually before him, always near yet never

overtaken. He was half humorously, half seriously, complaining of the

lack of beauty in the faces and forms that passed us on the crowded

sidewalk. Some defect was noticeable in all: one was too heavy, another

too angular; here a nose was at fault, there a mouth put a set of

otherwise fine features out of countenance; the fair complexions had red

hair, and glossy black locks were wasted upon dingy ones. In one way or

another all fell below his impossible standard.

The beauty which my friend seemed in search of was that of proportion

and coloring; mechanical exactness; a due combination of soft curves and

obtuse angles, of warm carnation and marble purity. Such a man, for

aught I can see, might love a graven image, like the girl of Florence

who pined into a shadow for the Apollo Belvidere, looking coldly on her

with stony eyes from his niche in the Vatican. One thing is certain,--

he will never find his faultless piece of artistical perfection by

searching for it amidst flesh-and-blood realities. Nature does not,

as far as I can perceive, work with square and compass, or lay on her

colors by the rules of royal artists or the dunces of the academies.

She eschews regular outlines. She does not shape her forms by a common

model. Not one of Eve's numerous progeny in all respects resembles her

who first culled the flowers of Eden. To the infinite variety and

picturesque inequality of Nature we owe the great charm of her uncloying

beauty. Look at her primitive woods; scattered trees, with moist sward

and bright mosses at their roots; great clumps of green shadow, where

limb intwists with limb and the rustle of one leaf stirs a hundred

others,--stretching up steep hillsides, flooding with green beauty the

valleys, or arching over with leaves the sharp ravines, every tree and

shrub unlike its neighbor in size and proportion,--the old and storm-

broken leaning on the young and vigorous,--intricate and confused,

without order or method. Who would exchange this for artificial French

gardens, where every tree stands stiff and regular, clipped and trimmed

into unvarying conformity, like so many grenadiers under review? Who

wants eternal sunshine or shadow? Who would fix forever the loveliest

cloudwork of an autumn sunset, or hang over him an everlasting

moonlight? If the stream had no quiet eddying place, could we so admire

its cascade over the rocks? Were there no clouds, could we so hail the

sky shining through them in its still, calm purity? Who shall venture

to ask our kind Mother Nature to remove from our sight any one of her

forms or colors? Who shall decide which is beautiful, or otherwise, in

itself considered?

There are too many, like my fastidious friend, who go through the world

"from Dan to Beersheba, finding all barren,"--who have always some fault

or other to find with Nature and Providence, seeming to consider

themselves especially ill used because the one does not always coincide

with their taste, nor the other with their narrow notions of personal

convenience. In one of his early poems, Coleridge has well expressed a

truth, which is not the less important because it is not generally

admitted. The idea is briefly this: that the mind gives to all things

their coloring, their gloom, or gladness; that the pleasure we derive

from external nature is primarily from ourselves:--

"from the mind itself must issue forth

A light, a glory, a fair luminous mist,

Enveloping the earth."

The real difficulty of these lifelong hunters after the beautiful exists

in their own spirits. They set up certain models of perfection in their

imaginations, and then go about the world in the vain expectation of

finding them actually wrought out according to pattern; very

unreasonably calculating that Nature will suspend her everlasting laws

for the purpose of creating faultless prodigies for their especial

gratification.

The authors of Gayeties and Gravities give it as their opinion that no

object of sight is regarded by us as a simple disconnected form, but

that--an instantaneous reflection as to its history, purpose, or

associations converts it into a concrete one,--a process, they shrewdly

remark, which no thinking being can prevent, and which can only be

avoided by the unmeaning and stolid stare of "a goose on the common or a

cow on the green." The senses and the faculties of the understanding

are so blended with and dependent upon each other that not one of them

can exercise its office alone and without the modification of some

extrinsic interference or suggestion. Grateful or unpleasant

associations cluster around all which sense takes cognizance of; the

beauty which we discern in an external object is often but the

reflection of our own minds.

What is beauty, after all? Ask the lover who kneels in homage to one

who has no attractions for others. The cold onlooker wonders that he

can call that unclassic combination of features and that awkward form

beautiful. Yet so it is. He sees, like Desdemona, her "visage in her

mind," or her affections. A light from within shines through the

external uncomeliness,--softens, irradiates, and glorifies it. That

which to others seems commonplace and unworthy of note is to him, in the

words of Spenser,--

"A sweet, attractive kind of grace;

A full assurance given by looks;

Continual comfort in a face;

The lineaments of Gospel books."

"Handsome is that handsome does,--hold up your heads, girls!" was the

language of Primrose in the play when addressing her daughters. The

worthy matron was right. Would that all my female readers who are

sorrowing foolishly because they are not in all respects like Dubufe's

Eve, or that statue of the Venus "which enchants the world," could be

persuaded to listen to her. What is good looking, as Horace Smith

remarks, but looking good? Be good, be womanly, be gentle,--generous in

your sympathies, heedful of the well-being of all around you; and, my

word for it, you will not lack kind words of admiration. Loving and

pleasant associations will gather about you. Never mind the ugly

reflection which your glass may give you. That mirror has no heart.

But quite another picture is yours on the retina of human sympathy.

There the beauty of holiness, of purity, of that inward grace which

passeth show, rests over it, softening and mellowing its features just

as the full calm moonlight melts those of a rough landscape into

harmonious loveliness. "Hold up your heads, girls!" I repeat after

Primrose. Why should you not? Every mother's daughter of you can be

beautiful. You can envelop yourselves in an atmosphere of moral and

intellectual beauty, through which your otherwise plain faces will look

forth like those of angels. Beautiful to Ledyard, stiffening in the

cold of a northern winter, seemed the diminutive, smokestained women of

Lapland, who wrapped him in their furs and ministered to his necessities

with kindness and gentle words of compassion. Lovely to the homesick

heart of Park seemed the dark maids of Sego, as they sung their low and

simple song of welcome beside his bed, and sought to comfort the white

stranger, who had "no mother to bring him milk and no wife to grind him

corn." Oh, talk as we may of beauty as a thing to be chiselled from

marble or wrought out on canvas, speculate as we may upon its colors and

outlines, what is it but an intellectual abstraction, after all? The

heart feels a beauty of another kind; looking through the outward

environment, it discovers a deeper and more real loveliness.

This was well understood by the old painters. In their pictures of

Mary, the virgin mother, the beauty which melts and subdues the gazer is

that of the soul and the affections, uniting the awe and mystery of that

mother's miraculous allotment with the irrepressible love, the

unutterable tenderness, of young maternity,--Heaven's crowning miracle

with Nature's holiest and sweetest instinct. And their pale Magdalens,

holy with the look of sins forgiven,--how the divine beauty of their

penitence sinks into the heart! Do we not feel that the only real

deformity is sin, and that goodness evermore hallows and sanctifies its

dwelling-place? When the soul is at rest, when the passions and desires

are all attuned to the divine harmony,--

"Spirits moving musically

To a lute's well-ordered law,"

The Haunted Palace, by Edgar A. Poe.

do we not read the placid significance thereof in the human countenance?

"I have seen," said Charles Lamb, "faces upon which the dove of peace

sat brooding." In that simple and beautiful record of a holy life, the

Journal of John Woolman, there is a passage of which I have been more

than once reminded in my intercourse with my fellow-beings: "Some

glances of real beauty may be seen in their faces who dwell in true

meekness. There is a harmony in the sound of that voice to which divine

love gives utterance."

Quite the ugliest face I ever saw was that of a woman whom the world

calls beautiful. Through its "silver veil" the evil and ungentle

passions looked out hideous and hateful. On the other hand, there are

faces which the multitude at the first glance pronounce homely,

unattractive, and such as "Nature fashions by the gross," which I always

recognize with a warm heart-thrill; not for the world would I have one

feature changed; they please me as they are; they are hallowed by kind

memories; they are beautiful through their associations; nor are they

any the less welcome that with my admiration of them "the stranger

intermeddleth not."

THE WORLD'S END.

"Our Father Time is weak and gray,

Awaiting for the better day;

See how idiot-like he stands,

Fumbling his old palsied hands!"

SHELLEY's Masque of Anarchy.

"STAGE ready, gentlemen! Stage for campground, Derry! Second Advent

camp-meeting!"

Accustomed as I begin to feel to the ordinary sights and sounds of this

busy city, I was, I confess, somewhat startled by this business-like

annunciation from the driver of a stage, who stood beside his horses

swinging his whip with some degree of impatience: "Seventy-five cents to

the Second Advent camp-ground!"

The stage was soon filled; the driver cracked his whip and went rattling

down the street.

The Second Advent,--the coming of our Lord in person upon this earth,

with signs, and wonders, and terrible judgments,--the heavens robing

together as a scroll, the elements melting with fervent heat! The

mighty consummation of all things at hand, with its destruction and its

triumphs, sad wailings of the lost and rejoicing songs of the glorified!

From this overswarming hive of industry,--from these crowded treadmills

of gain,--here were men and women going out in solemn earnestness to

prepare for the dread moment which they verily suppose is only a few

months distant,--to lift up their warning voices in the midst of

scoffers and doubters, and to cry aloud to blind priests and careless

churches, "Behold, the Bridegroom cometh!"

It was one of the most lovely mornings of this loveliest season of the

year; a warm, soft atmosphere; clear sunshine falling on the city spires

and roofs; the hills of Dracut quiet and green in the distance, with

their white farm-houses and scattered trees; around me the continual

tread of footsteps hurrying to the toils of the day; merchants spreading

out their wares for the eyes of purchasers; sounds of hammers, the sharp

clink of trowels, the murmur of the great manufactories subdued by

distance. How was it possible, in the midst of so much life, in that

sunrise light, and in view of all abounding beauty, that the idea of the

death of Nature--the baptism of the world in fire--could take such a

practical shape as this? Yet here were sober, intelligent men, gentle

and pious women, who, verily believing the end to be close at hand, had

left their counting-rooms, and workshops, and household cares to publish

the great tidings, and to startle, if possible, a careless and

unbelieving generation into preparation for the day of the Lord and for

that blessed millennium,--the restored paradise,--when, renovated and

renewed by its fire-purgation, the earth shall become as of old the

garden of the Lord, and the saints alone shall inherit it.

Very serious and impressive is the fact that this idea of a radical

change in our planet is not only predicted in the Scriptures, but that

the Earth herself, in her primitive rocks and varying formations, on

which are lithographed the history of successive convulsions, darkly

prophesies of others to come. The old poet prophets, all the world

over, have sung of a renovated world. A vision of it haunted the

contemplations of Plato. It is seen in the half-inspired speculations

of the old Indian mystics. The Cumaean sibyl saw it in her trances.

The apostles and martyrs of our faith looked for it anxiously and

hopefully. Gray anchorites in the deserts, worn pilgrims to the holy

places of Jewish and Christian tradition, prayed for its coming. It

inspired the gorgeous visions of the early fathers. In every age since

the Christian era, from the caves, and forests, and secluded "upper

chambers" of the times of the first missionaries of the cross, from the

Gothic temples of the Middle Ages, from the bleak mountain gorges of the

Alps, where the hunted heretics put up their expostulation, "How long,

O Lord, how long?" down to the present time, and from this Derry

campground, have been uttered the prophecy and the prayer for its

fulfilment.

How this great idea manifests itself in the lives of the enthusiasts of

the days of Cromwell! Think of Sir Henry Vane, cool, sagacious

statesman as he was, waiting with eagerness for the foreshadowings of

the millennium, and listening, even in the very council hall, for the

blast of the last trumpet! Think of the Fifth Monarchy Men, weary with

waiting for the long-desired consummation, rushing out with drawn swords

and loaded matchlocks into the streets of London to establish at once

the rule of King Jesus! Think of the wild enthusiasts at Munster,

verily imagining that the millennial reign had commenced in their mad

city! Still later, think of Granville Sharpe, diligently laboring in

his vocation of philanthropy, laying plans for the slow but beneficent

amelioration of the condition of his country and the world, and at the

same time maintaining, with the zeal of Father Miller himself, that the

earth was just on the point of combustion, and that the millennium would

render all his benevolent schemes of no sort of consequence!

And, after all, is the idea itself a vain one? Shall to-morrow be as

to-day? Shall the antagonism of good and evil continue as heretofore

forever? Is there no hope that this world-wide prophecy of the human

soul, uttered in all climes, in all times, shall yet be fulfilled? Who

shall say it may not be true? Nay, is not its truth proved by its

universality? The hope of all earnest souls must be realized. That

which, through a distorted and doubtful medium, shone even upon the

martyr enthusiasts of the French revolution,--soft gleams of heaven's

light rising over the hell of man's passions and crimes,--the glorious

ideal of Shelley, who, atheist as he was through early prejudice and

defective education, saw the horizon of the world's future kindling with

the light of a better day,--that hope and that faith which constitute,

as it were, the world's life, and without which it would be dark and

dead, cannot be in vain.

I do not, I confess, sympathize with my Second Advent friends in their

lamentable depreciation of Mother Earth even in her present state. I

find it extremely difficult to comprehend how it is that this goodly,

green, sunlit home of ours is resting under a curse. It really does not

seem to me to be altogether like the roll which the angel bore in the

prophet's vision, "written within and without with mourning,

lamentation, and woe." September sunsets, changing forests, moonrise

and cloud, sun and rain,--I for one am contented with them. They fill

my heart with a sense of beauty. I see in them the perfect work of

infinite love as well as wisdom. It may be that our Advent friends,

however, coincide with the opinions of an old writer on the prophecies,

who considered the hills and valleys of the earth's surface and its

changes of seasons as so many visible manifestations of God's curse, and

that in the millennium, as in the days of Adam's innocence, all these

picturesque inequalities would be levelled nicely away, and the flat

surface laid handsomely down to grass.

As might be expected, the effect of this belief in the speedy

destruction of the world and the personal coming of the Messiah, acting

upon a class of uncultivated, and, in some cases, gross minds, is not

always in keeping with the enlightened Christian's ideal of the better

day. One is shocked in reading some of the "hymns" of these believers.

Sensual images,--semi-Mahometan descriptions of the condition of the

"saints,"--exultations over the destruction of the "sinners,"--mingle

with the beautiful and soothing promises of the prophets. There are

indeed occasionally to be found among the believers men of refined and

exalted spiritualism, who in their lives and conversation remind one of

Tennyson's Christian knight-errant in his yearning towards the hope set

before him:

"to me is given

Such hope I may not fear;

I long to breathe the airs of heaven,

Which sometimes meet me here.

"I muse on joys that cannot cease,

Pure spaces filled with living beams,

White lilies of eternal peace,

Whose odors haunt my dreams."

One of the most ludicrous examples of the sensual phase of Millerism,

the incongruous blending of the sublime with the ridiculous, was

mentioned to me not long since. A fashionable young woman in the

western part of this State became an enthusiastic believer in the

doctrine. On the day which had been designated as the closing one of

time she packed all her fine dresses and toilet valuables in a large

trunk, with long straps attached to it, and, seating herself upon it,

buckled the straps over her shoulders, patiently awaiting the crisis,--

shrewdly calculating that, as she must herself go upwards, her goods and

chattels would of necessity follow.

Three or four years ago, on my way eastward, I spent an hour or two at a

camp-ground of the Second Advent in East Kingston. The spot was well

chosen. A tall growth of pine and hemlock threw its melancholy shadow

over the multitude, who were arranged upon rough seats of boards and

logs. Several hundred--perhaps a thousand people--were present, and

more were rapidly coming. Drawn about in a circle, forming a background

of snowy whiteness to the dark masses of men and foliage, were the white

tents, and back of them the provision-stalls and cook-shops. When I

reached the ground, a hymn, the words of which I could not distinguish,

was pealing through the dim aisles of the forest. I could readily

perceive that it had its effect upon the multitude before me, kindling

to higher intensity their already excited enthusiasm. The preachers

were placed in a rude pulpit of rough boards, carpeted only by the dead

forest-leaves and flowers, and tasselled, not with silk and velvet, but

with the green boughs of the sombre hemlocks around it. One of them

followed the music in an earnest exhortation on the duty of preparing

for the great event. Occasionally he was really eloquent, and his

description of the last day had the ghastly distinctness of Anelli's

painting of the End of the World.

Suspended from the front of the rude pulpit were two broad sheets of

canvas, upon one of which was the figure of a man, the head of gold, the

breast and arms of silver, the belly of brass, the legs of iron, and

feet of clay,--the dream of Nebuchadnezzar. On the other were depicted

the wonders of the Apocalyptic vision,--the beasts, the dragons, the

scarlet woman seen by the seer of Patmos, Oriental types, figures, and

mystic symbols, translated into staring Yankee realities, and exhibited

like the beasts of a travelling menagerie. One horrible image, with its

hideous heads and scaly caudal extremity, reminded me of the tremendous

line of Milton, who, in speaking of the same evil dragon, describes him

as

"Swinging the scaly horrors of his folded tail."

To an imaginative mind the scene was full of novel interest. The white

circle of tents; the dim wood arches; the upturned, earnest faces; the

loud voices of the speakers, burdened with the awful symbolic language

of the Bible; the smoke from the fires, rising like incense,--carried me

back to those days of primitive worship which tradition faintly whispers

of, when on hill-tops and in the shade of old woods Religion had her

first altars, with every man for her priest and the whole universe for

her temple.

Wisely and truthfully has Dr. Channing spoken of this doctrine of the

Second Advent in his memorable discourse in Berkshire a little before

his death:--

"There are some among us at the present moment who are waiting for the

speedy coming of Christ. They expect, before another year closes, to

see Him in the clouds, to hear His voice, to stand before His judgment-

seat. These illusions spring from misinterpretation of Scripture

language. Christ, in the New Testament, is said to come whenever His

religion breaks out in new glory or gains new triumphs. He came in the

Holy Spirit in the day of Pentecost. He came in the destruction of

Jerusalem, which, by subverting the old ritual law and breaking the

power of the worst enemies of His religion, insured to it new victories.

He came in the reformation of the Church. He came on this day four

years ago, when, through His religion, eight hundred thousand men were

raised from the lowest degradation to the rights, and dignity, and

fellowship of men. Christ's outward appearance is of little moment

compared with the brighter manifestation of His spirit. The Christian,

whose inward eyes and ears are touched by God, discerns the coming of

Christ, hears the sound of His chariot-wheels and the voice of His

trumpet, when no other perceives them. He discerns the Saviour's advent

in the dawning of higher truth on the world, in new aspirations of the

Church after perfection, in the prostration of prejudice and error, in

brighter expressions of Christian love, in more enlightened and intense

consecration of the Christian to the cause of humanity, freedom, and

religion. Christ comes in the conversion, the regeneration, the

emancipation, of the world."

THE HEROINE OF LONG POINT. (1869.)

LOOKING at the Government Chart of Lake Erie, one sees the outlines of a

long, narrow island, stretching along the shore of Canada West, opposite

the point where Loudon District pushes its low, wooded wedge into the

lake. This is Long Point Island, known and dreaded by the navigators of

the inland sea which batters its yielding shores, and tosses into

fantastic shapes its sandheaps. The eastern end is some twenty miles

from the Canada shore, while on the west it is only separated from the

mainland by a narrow strait known as "The Cut." It is a sandy, desolate

region, broken by small ponds, with dreary tracts of fenland, its ridges

covered with a low growth of pine, oak, beech, and birch, in the midst

of which, in its season, the dogwood puts out its white blossoms. Wild

grapes trail over the sand-dunes and festoon the dwarf trees. Here and

there are almost impenetrable swamps, thick-set with white cedars,

intertwisted and contorted by the lake winds, and broken by the weight

of snow and ice in winter. Swans and wild geese paddle in the shallow,

reedy bayous; raccoons and even deer traverse the sparsely wooded

ridges. The shores of its creeks and fens are tenanted by minks and

muskrats. The tall tower of a light-house rises at the eastern

extremity of the island, the keeper of which is now its solitary

inhabitant.

Fourteen years ago, another individual shared the proprietorship of Long

Point. This was John Becker, who dwelt on the south side of the island,

near its westerly termination, in a miserable board shanty nestled

between naked sand-hills. He managed to make a poor living by trapping

and spearing muskrats, the skins of which he sold to such boatmen and

small-craft skippers as chanced to land on his forlorn territory. His

wife, a large, mild-eyed, patient young woman of some twenty-six years,

kept her hut and children as tidy as circumstances admitted, assisted

her husband in preparing the skins, and sometimes accompanied him on his

trapping excursions.

On that lonely coast, seldom visited in summer, and wholly cut off from

human communication in winter, they might have lived and died with as

little recognition from the world as the minks and wildfowl with whom

they were tenants in common, but for a circumstance which called into

exercise unsuspected qualities of generous courage and heroic self-

sacrifice.

The dark, stormy close of November, 1854, found many vessels on Lake

Erie, but the fortunes of one alone have special interest for us. About

that time the schooner Conductor, owned by John McLeod, of the

Provincial Parliament, a resident of Amherstburg, at the mouth of the

Detroit River, entered the lake from that river, bound for Port

Dalhousie, at the mouth of the Welland Canal.

She was heavily loaded with grain. Her crew consisted of Captain

Hackett, a Highlander by birth, and a skilful and experienced navigator,

and six sailors. At nightfall, shortly after leaving the head of the

lake, one of those terrific storms, with which the late autumnal

navigators of that "Sea of the Woods" are all too familiar, overtook

them. The weather was intensely cold for the season; the air was filled

with snow and sleet; the chilled water made ice rapidly, encumbering the

schooner, and loading down her decks and rigging. As the gale

increased, the tops of the waves were shorn off by the fierce blasts,

clouding the whole atmosphere with frozen spray, or what the sailors

call "spoondrift," rendering it impossible to see any object a few rods

distant. Driving helplessly before the wind, yet in the direction of

her place of destination, the schooner sped through the darkness. At

last, near midnight, running closer than her crew supposed to the

Canadian shore, she struck on the outer bar off Long Point Island, beat

heavily across it, and sunk in the deeper water between it and the inner

bar. The hull was entirely submerged, the waves rolling in heavily, and

dashing over the rigging, to which the crew betook themselves. Lashed

there, numb with cold, drenched by the pitiless waves, and scourged by

the showers of sleet driven before the wind, they waited for morning.

The slow, dreadful hours wore away, and at length the dubious and

doubtful gray of a morning of tempest succeeded to the utter darkness of

night.

Abigail Becker chanced at that time to be in her hut with none but her

young children. Her husband was absent on the Canada shore, and she was

left the sole adult occupant of the island, save the light-keeper, at

its lower end, some fifteen miles off. Looking out at daylight on the

beach in front of her door, she saw the shattered boat of the Conductor,

east up by the waves. Her experience of storm and disaster on that

dangerous coast needed nothing more to convince her that somewhere in

her neighborhood human life had been, or still was, in peril. She

followed the southwesterly trend of the island for a little distance,

and, peering through the gloom of the stormy morning, discerned the

spars of the sunken schooner, with what seemed to be human forms

clinging to the rigging. The heart of the strong woman sunk within her,

as she gazed upon those helpless fellow-creatures, so near, yet so

unapproachable. She had no boat, and none could have lived on that wild

water. After a moment's reflection she went back to her dwelling, put

the smaller children in charge of the eldest, took with her an iron

kettle, tin teapot, and matches, and returned to the beach, at the

nearest point to the vessel; and, gathering up the logs and drift-wood

always abundant, on the coast, kindled a great fire, and, constantly

walking back and forth between it and the water, strove to intimate to

the sufferers that they were at least not beyond human sympathy. As the

wrecked sailors looked shoreward, and saw, through the thick haze of

snow and sleet, the red light of the fire and the tall figure of the

woman passing to and fro before it, a faint hope took the place of the

utter despair which had prompted them to let go their hold and drop into

the seething waters, that opened and closed about them like the jaws of

death. But the day wore on, bringing no abatement of the storm that

tore through the frail spars, and clutched at and tossed them as it

passed, and drenched them with ice-cold spray,--a pitiless, unrelenting

horror of sight, sound, and touch! At last the deepening gloom told

them that night was approaching, and night under such circumstances was

death.

All day long Abigail Becker had fed her fire, and sought to induce the

sailors by signals--for even her strong voice could not reach them--to

throw themselves into the surf, and trust to Providence and her for

succor. In anticipation of this, she had her kettle boiling over the

drift-wood, and her tea ready made for restoring warmth and life to the

half-frozen survivors. But either they did not understand her, or the

chance of rescue seemed too small to induce them to abandon the

temporary safety of the wreck. They clung to it with the desperate

instinct of life brought face to face with death. Just at nightfall

there was a slight break in the west; a red light glared across the

thick air, as if for one instant the eye of the storm looked out upon

the ruin it had wrought, and closed again under lids of cloud. Taking

advantage of this, the solitary watcher ashore made one more effort.

She waded out into the water, every drop of which, as it struck the

beach, became a particle of ice, and stretching out and drawing in her

arms, invited, by her gestures, the sailors to throw themselves into the

waves, and strive to reach her. Captain Hackett understood her. He

called to his mate in the rigging of the other mast: "It is our last

chance. I will try! If I live, follow me; if I drown, stay where you

are!" With a great effort he got off his stiffly frozen overcoat,

paused for one moment in silent commendation of his soul to God, and,

throwing himself into the waves, struck out for the shore. Abigail

Becker, breast-deep in the surf, awaited him. He was almost within her

reach, when the undertow swept him back. By a mighty exertion she

caught hold of him, bore him in her strong arms out of the water, and,

laying him down by her fire, warmed his chilled blood with copious

draughts of hot tea. The mate, who had watched the rescue, now

followed, and the captain, partially restored, insisted upon aiding him.

As the former neared the shore, the recoiling water baffled him.

Captain Hackett caught hold of him, but the undertow swept them both

away, locked in each other's arms. The brave woman plunged after them,

and, with the strength of a giantess, bore them, clinging to each other,

to the shore, and up to her fire. The five sailors followed in

succession, and were all rescued in the same way.

A few days after, Captain Hackett and his crew were taken off Long Point

by a passing vessel; and Abigail Becker resumed her simple daily duties

without dreaming that she had done anything extraordinary enough to win

for her the world's notice. In her struggle every day for food and

warmth for her children, she had no leisure for the indulgence of self-

congratulation. Like the woman of Scripture, she had only "done what

she could," in the terrible exigency that had broken the dreary monotony

of her life.

It so chanced, however, that a gentleman from Buffalo, E. P. Dorr, who

had, in his early days, commanded a vessel on the lake, found himself,

shortly after, at a small port on the Canada shore, not far from Long

Point Island. Here he met an old shipmate, Captain Davis, whose vessel

had gone ashore at a more favorable point, and who related to him the

circumstances of the wreck of the Conductor. Struck by the account,

Captain Dorr procured a sleigh and drove across the frozen bay to the

shanty of Abigail Becker. He found her with her six children, all

thinly clad and barefooted in the bitter cold. She stood there six feet

or more of substantial womanhood,--not in her stockings, for she had

none,--a veritable daughter of Anak, broad-bosomed, large-limbed, with

great, patient blue eyes, whose very smile had a certain pathos, as if

one saw in it her hard and weary life-experience. She might have passed

for any amiable giantess, or one of those much--developed maids of honor

who tossed Gulliver from hand to hand in the court of Brobdingnag. The

thing that most surprised her visitor was the childlike simplicity of

the woman, her utter unconsciousness of deserving anything for an action

that seemed to her merely a matter of course. When he expressed his

admiration with all the warmth of a generous nature, she only opened her

wide blue eyes still wider with astonishment.

"Well, I don't know," she said, slowly, as if pondering the matter for

the first time,--"I don't know as I did more 'n I'd ought to, nor more'n

I'd do again."

Before Captain Dorr left, he took the measure of her own and her

children's feet, and on his return to Buffalo sent her a box containing

shoes, stockings, and such other comfortable articles of clothing as

they most needed. He published a brief account of his visit to the

heroine of Long Point, which attracted the attention of some members of

the Provincial Parliament, and through their exertions a grant of one

hundred acres of land, on the Canada shore, near Port Rowan, was made to

her. Soon after she was invited to Buffalo, where she naturally excited

much interest. A generous contribution of one thousand dollars, to

stock her farm, was made by the merchants, ship-owners and masters of

the city, and she returned to her family a grateful and, in her own

view, a rich woman.

When the story of her adventure reached New York, the Life-Saving

Benevolent Association sent her a gold medal with an appropriate

inscription, and a request that she would send back a receipt in her own

name. As she did not know how to write, Captain Dorr hit upon the

expedient of having her photograph taken with the medal in her hand, and

sent that in lieu of her autograph.

In a recent letter dictated at Walsingham, where Abigail Becker now

lives,--a widow, cultivating with her own hands her little farm in the

wilderness,--she speaks gratefully of the past and hopefully of the

future. She mentions a message received from Captain Hackett, who she

feared had almost forgotten her, that he was about to make her a visit,

adding with a touch of shrewdness: "After his second shipwreck last

summer, I think likely that I must have recurred very fresh to him."

The strong lake winds now blow unchecked over the sand-hills where once

stood the board shanty of Abigail Becker. But the summer tourist of the

great lakes, who remembers her story, will not fail to give her a place

in his imagination with Perry's battle-line and the Indian heroines of

Cooper and Longfellow. Through her the desolate island of Long Point is

richly dowered with the interest which a brave and generous action gives

to its locality.

VOLUME VI. OLD PORTRAITS AND MODERN SKETCHES, plus PERSONAL SKETCHES AND TRIBUTES and HISTORICAL PAPERS

CONTENTS

OLD PORTRAITS AND MODERN SKETCHES.

JOHN BUNYAN

THOMAS ELLWOOD

JAMES NAYLER

ANDREW MARVELL

JOHN ROBERTS

SAMUEL HOPKINS

RICHARD BAXTER

WILLIAM LEGGETT

NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS

ROBERT DINSMORE

PLACIDO, THE SLAVE POET

PERSONAL SKETCHES AND TRIBUTES.

THE FUNERAL OF TORREY

EDWARD EVERETT

LEWIS TAPPAN

BAYARD TAYLOR

WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING

DEATH OF PRESIDENT GARFIELD

LYDIA MARIA CHILD

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

LONGFELLOW

OLD NEWBURY

SCHOOLDAY REMEMBRANCES

EDWIN PERCY WHIPPLE

HISTORICAL PAPERS.

DANIEL O'CONNELL

ENGLAND UNDER JAMES II.

THE BORDER WAR OF 1708

THE GREAT IPSWICH FRIGHT

THE BOY CAPTIVES

THE BLACK MEN IN THE REVOLUTION AND WAR OF 1812

THE SCOTTISH REFORMERS

THE PILGRIMS OF PLYMOUTH

GOVERNOR ENDICOTT

JOHN WINTHROP

OLD PORTRAITS AND MODERN SKETCHES

Inscribed as follows, when first collected in book-form:--

To Dr. G. BAILEY, of the National Era, Washington, D. C., these

sketches, many of which originally appeared in the columns of the

paper under his editorial supervision, are, in their present form,

offered as a token of the esteem and confidence which years of

political and literary communion have justified and confirmed, on

the part of his friend and associate,

THE AUTHOR.

JOHN BUNYAN.

"Wouldst see

A man I' the clouds, and hear him speak to thee?"

Who has not read Pilgrim's Progress? Who has not, in childhood,

followed the wandering Christian on his way to the Celestial City? Who

has not laid at night his young head on the pillow, to paint on the

walls of darkness pictures of the Wicket Gate and the Archers, the Hill

of Difficulty, the Lions and Giants, Doubting Castle and Vanity Fair,

the sunny Delectable Mountains and the Shepherds, the Black River and

the wonderful glory beyond it; and at last fallen asleep, to dream over

the strange story, to hear the sweet welcomings of the sisters at the

House Beautiful, and the song of birds from the window of that "upper

chamber which opened towards the sunrising?" And who, looking back to

the green spots in his childish experiences, does not bless the good

Tinker of Elstow?

And who, that has reperused the story of the Pilgrim at a maturer age,

and felt the plummet of its truth sounding in the deep places of the

soul, has not reason to bless the author for some timely warning or

grateful encouragement? Where is the scholar, the poet, the man of taste

and feeling, who does not, with Cowper,

"Even in transitory life's late day,

Revere the man whose Pilgrim marks the road,

And guides the Progress of the soul to God!"

We have just been reading, with no slight degree of interest, that simple

but wonderful piece of autobiography, entitled Grace abounding to the

Chief of Sinners, from the pen of the author of Pilgrim's Progress. It

is the record of a journey more terrible than that of the ideal Pilgrim;

"truth stranger than fiction;" the painful upward struggling of a spirit

from the blackness of despair and blasphemy, into the high, pure air of

Hope and Faith. More earnest words were never written. It is the entire

unveiling of a human heart; the tearing off of the fig-leaf covering of

its sin. The voice which speaks to us from these old pages seems not so

much that of a denizen of the world in which we live, as of a soul at the

last solemn confessional. Shorn of all ornament, simple and direct as

the contrition and prayer of childhood, when for the first time the

Spectre of Sin stands by its bedside, the style is that of a man dead to

self-gratification, careless of the world's opinion, and only desirous to

convey to others, in all truthfulness and sincerity, the lesson of his

inward trials, temptations, sins, weaknesses, and dangers; and to give

glory to Him who had mercifully led him through all, and enabled him,

like his own Pilgrim, to leave behind the Valley of the Shadow of Death,

the snares of the Enchanted Ground, and the terrors of Doubting Castle,

and to reach the land of Beulah, where the air was sweet and pleasant,

and the birds sang and the flowers sprang up around him, and the Shining

Ones walked in the brightness of the not distant Heaven. In the

introductory pages he says "he could have dipped into a style higher than

this in which I have discoursed, and could have adorned all things more

than here I have seemed to do; but I dared not. God did not play in

tempting me; neither did I play when I sunk, as it were, into a

bottomless pit, when the pangs of hell took hold on me; wherefore, I may

not play in relating of them, but be plain and simple, and lay down the

thing as it was."

This book, as well as Pilgrim's Progress, was written in Bedford prison,

and was designed especially for the comfort and edification of his

"children, whom God had counted him worthy to beget in faith by his

ministry." In his introduction he tells them, that, although taken from

them, and tied up, "sticking, as it were, between the teeth of the lions

of the wilderness," he once again, as before, from the top of Shemer and

Hermon, so now, from the lion's den and the mountain of leopards, would

look after then with fatherly care and desires for their everlasting

welfare. "If," said he, "you have sinned against light; if you are

tempted to blaspheme; if you are drowned in despair; if you think God

fights against you; or if Heaven is hidden from your eyes, remember it

was so with your father. But out of all the Lord delivered me."

He gives no dates; he affords scarcely a clue to his localities; of the

man, as he worked, and ate, and drank, and lodged, of his neighbors and

contemporaries, of all he saw and heard of the world about him, we have

only an occasional glimpse, here and there, in his narrative. It is the

story of his inward life only that he relates. What had time and place

to do with one who trembled always with the awful consciousness of an

immortal nature, and about whom fell alternately the shadows of hell and

the splendors of heaven? We gather, indeed, from his record, that he was

not an idle on-looker in the time of England's great struggle for

freedom, but a soldier of the Parliament, in his young years, among the

praying sworders and psalm-singing pikemen, the Greathearts and Holdfasts

whom he has immortalized in his allegory; but the only allusion which he

makes to this portion of his experience is by way of illustration of the

goodness of God in preserving him on occasions of peril.

He was born at Elstow, in Bedfordshire, in 1628; and, to use his own

words, his "father's house was of that rank which is the meanest and most

despised of all the families of the land." His father was a tinker, and

the son followed the same calling, which necessarily brought him into

association with the lowest and most depraved classes of English society.

The estimation in which the tinker and his occupation were held, in the

seventeenth century, may be learned from the quaint and humorous

description of Sir Thomas Overbury. "The tinker," saith he, "is a

movable, for he hath no abiding in one place; he seems to be devout, for

his life is a continual pilgrimage, and sometimes, in humility, goes

barefoot, therein making necessity a virtue; he is a gallant, for he

carries all his wealth upon his back; or a philosopher, for he bears all

his substance with him. He is always furnished with a song, to which his

hammer, keeping tune, proves that he was the first founder of the kettle-

drum; where the best ale is, there stands his music most upon crotchets.

The companion of his travel is some foul, sun-burnt quean, that, since

the terrible statute, has recanted gypsyism, and is turned pedlaress. So

marches he all over England, with his bag and baggage; his conversation

is irreprovable, for he is always mending. He observes truly the

statutes, and therefore had rather steal than beg. He is so strong an

enemy of idleness, that in mending one hole he would rather make three

than want work; and when he hath done, he throws the wallet of his faults

behind him. His tongue is very voluble, which, with canting, proves him

a linguist. He is entertained in every place, yet enters no farther than

the door, to avoid suspicion. To conclude, if he escape Tyburn and

Banbury, he dies a beggar."

Truly, but a poor beginning for a pious life was the youth of John

Bunyan. As might have been expected, he was a wild, reckless, swearing

boy, as his father doubtless was before him. "It was my delight," says

he, "to be taken captive by the Devil. I had few equals, both for

cursing and swearing, lying and blaspheming." Yet, in his ignorance and

darkness, his powerful imagination early lent terror to the reproaches of

conscience. He was scared, even in childhood, with dreams of hell and

apparitions of devils. Troubled with fears of eternal fire, and the

malignant demons who fed it in the regions of despair, he says that he

often wished either that there was no hell, or that he had been born a

devil himself, that he might be a tormentor rather than one of the

tormented.

At an early age he appears to have married. His wife was as poor as

himself, for he tells us that they had not so much as a dish or spoon

between them; but she brought with her two books on religious subjects,

the reading of which seems to have had no slight degree of influence on

his mind. He went to church regularly, adored the priest and all things

pertaining to his office, being, as he says, "overrun with superstition."

On one occasion, a sermon was preached against the breach of the Sabbath

by sports or labor, which struck him at the moment as especially designed

for himself; but by the time he had finished his dinner he was prepared

to "shake it out of his mind, and return to his sports and gaming."

"But the same day," he continues, "as I was in the midst of a game of

cat, and having struck it one blow from the hole, just as I was about to

strike it a second time, a voice did suddenly dart from Heaven into my

soul, which said, 'Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to heaven, or have thy

sins and go to hell?' At this, I was put to an exceeding maze;

wherefore, leaving my cat upon the ground, I looked up to Heaven, and it

was as if I had, with the eyes of my understanding, seen the Lord Jesus

look down upon me, as being very hotly displeased with me, and as if He

did severely threaten me with some grievous punishment for those and

other ungodly practices.

"I had no sooner thus conceived in my mind, but suddenly this conclusion

fastened on my spirit, (for the former hint did set my sins again before

my face,) that I had been a great and grievous sinner, and that it was

now too late for me to look after Heaven; for Christ would not forgive me

nor pardon my transgressions. Then, while I was thinking of it, and

fearing lest it should be so, I felt my heart sink in despair, concluding

it was too late; and therefore I resolved in my mind to go on in sin;

for, thought I, if the case be thus, my state is surely miserable;

miserable if I leave my sins, and but miserable if I follow them; I can

but be damned; and if I must be so, I had as good be damned for many sins

as be damned for few."

The reader of Pilgrim's Progress cannot fail here to call to mind the

wicked suggestions of the Giant to Christian, in the dungeon of Doubting

Castle.

"I returned," he says, "desperately to my sport again; and I well

remember, that presently this kind of despair did so possess my soul,

that I was persuaded I could never attain to other comfort than what I

should get in sin; for Heaven was gone already, so that on that I must

not think; wherefore, I found within me great desire to take my fill of

sin, that I might taste the sweetness of it; and I made as much haste as

I could to fill my belly with its delicates, lest I should die before I

had my desires; for that I feared greatly. In these things, I protest

before God, I lie not, neither do I frame this sort of speech; these were

really, strongly, and with all my heart, my desires; the good Lord, whose

mercy is unsearchable, forgive my transgressions."

One day, while standing in the street, cursing and blaspheming, he met

with a reproof which startled him. The woman of the house in front of

which the wicked young tinker was standing, herself, as he remarks, "a

very loose, ungodly wretch," protested that his horrible profanity made

her tremble; that he was the ungodliest fellow for swearing she had ever

heard, and able to spoil all the youth of the town who came in his

company. Struck by this wholly unexpected rebuke, he at once abandoned

the practice of swearing; although previously he tells us that "he had

never known how to speak, unless he put an oath before and another

behind."

The good name which he gained by this change was now a temptation to him.

"My neighbors," he says, "were amazed at my great conversion from

prodigious profaneness to something like a moral life and sober man.

Now, therefore, they began to praise, to commend, and to speak well of

me, both to my face and behind my back. Now I was, as they said, become

godly; now I was become a right honest man. But oh! when I understood

those were their words and opinions of me, it pleased me mighty well; for

though as yet I was nothing but a poor painted hypocrite, yet I loved to

be talked of as one that was truly godly. I was proud of my godliness,

and, indeed, I did all I did either to be seen of or well spoken of by

men; and thus I continued for about a twelvemonth or more."

The tyranny of his imagination at this period is seen in the following

relation of his abandonment of one of his favorite sports.

"Now, you must know, that before this I had taken much delight in

ringing, but my conscience beginning to be tender, I thought such

practice was but vain, and therefore forced myself to leave it; yet my

mind hankered; wherefore, I would go to the steeple-house and look on,

though I durst not ring; but I thought this did not become religion

neither; yet I forced myself, and would look on still. But quickly

after, I began to think, 'How if one of the bells should fall?' Then I

chose to stand under a main beam, that lay overthwart the steeple, from

side to side, thinking here I might stand sure; but then I thought again,

should the bell fall with a swing, it might first hit the wall, and then,

rebounding upon me, might kill me for all this beam. This made me stand

in the steeple door; and now, thought I, I am safe enough; for if a bell

should then fall, I can slip out behind these thick walls, and so be

preserved notwithstanding.

"So after this I would yet go to see them ring, but would not go any

farther than the steeple-door. But then it came in my head, 'How if the

steeple itself should fall?' And this thought (it may, for aught I know,

when I stood and looked on) did continually so shake my mind, that I

durst not stand at the steeple-door any longer, but was forced to flee,

for fear the steeple should fall upon my head."

About this time, while wandering through Bedford in pursuit of

employment, he chanced to see three or four poor old women sitting at a

door, in the evening sun, and, drawing near them, heard them converse

upon the things of God; of His work in their hearts; of their natural

depravity; of the temptations of the Adversary; and of the joy of

believing, and of the peace of reconciliation. The words of the aged

women found a response in the soul of the listener. "He felt his heart

shake," to use his own words; he saw that he lacked the true tokens of a

Christian. He now forsook the company of the profane and licentious, and

sought that of a poor man who had the reputation of piety, but, to his

grief, he found him "a devilish ranter, given up to all manner of

uncleanness; he would laugh at all exhortations to sobriety, and deny

that there was a God, an angel, or a spirit."

"Neither," he continues, "was this man only a temptation to me, but, my

calling lying in the country, I happened to come into several people's

company, who, though strict in religion formerly, yet were also drawn

away by these ranters. These would also talk with me of their ways, and

condemn me as illegal and dark; pretending that they only had attained to

perfection, that they could do what they would, and not sin. Oh! these

temptations were suitable to my flesh, I being but a young man, and my

nature in its prime; but God, who had, as I hope, designed me for better

things, kept me in the fear of His name, and did not suffer me to accept

such cursed principles."

At this time he was sadly troubled to ascertain whether or not he had

that faith which the Scriptures spake of. Travelling one day from Elstow

to Bedford, after a recent rain, which had left pools of water in the

path, he felt a strong desire to settle the question, by commanding the

pools to become dry, and the dry places to become pools. Going under the

hedge, to pray for ability to work the miracle, he was struck with the

thought that if he failed he should know, indeed, that he was a castaway,

and give himself up to despair. He dared not attempt the experiment, and

went on his way, to use his own forcible language, "tossed up and down

between the Devil and his own ignorance."

Soon after, he had one of those visions which foreshadowed the wonderful

dream of his Pilgrim's Progress. He saw some holy people of Bedford on

the sunny side of an high mountain, refreshing themselves in the pleasant

air and sunlight, while he was shivering in cold and darkness, amidst

snows and never-melting ices, like the victims of the Scandinavian hell.

A wall compassed the mountain, separating him from the blessed, with one

small gap or doorway, through which, with great pain and effort, he was

at last enabled to work his way into the sunshine, and sit down with the

saints, in the light and warmth thereof.

But now a new trouble assailed him. Like Milton's metaphysical spirits,

who sat apart,

"And reasoned of foreknowledge, will, and fate," he grappled with one of

those great questions which have always perplexed and baffled human

inquiry, and upon which much has been written to little purpose. He was

tortured with anxiety to know whether, according to the Westminster

formula, he was elected to salvation or damnation. His old adversary

vexed his soul with evil suggestions, and even quoted Scripture to

enforce them. "It may be you are not elected," said the Tempter; and the

poor tinker thought the supposition altogether too probable. "Why,

then," said Satan, "you had as good leave off, and strive no farther; for

if, indeed, you should not be elected and chosen of God, there is no hope

of your being saved; for it is neither in him that willeth nor in him

that runneth, but in God who showeth mercy." At length, when, as he

says, he was about giving up the ghost of all his hopes, this passage

fell with weight upon his spirit: "Look at the generations of old, and

see; did ever any trust in God, and were confounded?" Comforted by these

words, he opened his Bible took note them, but the most diligent search

and inquiry of his neighbors failed to discover them. At length his eye

fell upon them in the Apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus. This, he says,

somewhat doubted him at first, as the book was not canonical; but in the

end he took courage and comfort from the passage. "I bless God," he

says, "for that word; it was good for me. That word doth still

oftentimes shine before my face."

A long and weary struggle was now before him. "I cannot," he says,

"express with what longings and breathings of my soul I cried unto Christ

to call me. Gold! could it have been gotten by gold, what would I have

given for it. Had I a whole world, it had all gone ten thousand times

over for this, that my soul might have been in a converted state. How

lovely now was every one in my eyes, that I thought to be converted men

and women. They shone, they walked like a people who carried the broad

seal of Heaven with them."

With what force and intensity of language does he portray in the

following passage the reality and earnestness of his agonizing

experience:--

"While I was thus afflicted with the fears of my own damnation, there

were two things would make me wonder: the one was, when I saw old people

hunting after the things of this life, as if they should live here

always; the other was, when I found professors much distressed and cast

down, when they met with outward losses; as of husband, wife, or child.

Lord, thought I, what seeking after carnal things by some, and what grief

in others for the loss of them! If they so much labor after and shed so

many tears for the things of this present life, how am I to be bemoaned,

pitied, and prayed for! My soul is dying, my soul is damning. Were my

soul but in a good condition, and were I but sure of it, ah I how rich

should I esteem myself, though blessed but with bread and water! I

should count these but small afflictions, and should bear them as little

burdens. 'A wounded spirit who can bear!'"

He looked with envy, as he wandered through the country, upon the birds

in the trees, the hares in the preserves, and the fishes in the streams.

They were happy in their brief existence, and their death was but a

sleep. He felt himself alienated from God, a discord in the harmonies of

the universe. The very rooks which fluttered around the old church spire

seemed more worthy of the Creator's love and care than himself. A vision

of the infernal fire, like that glimpse of hell which was afforded to

Christian by the Shepherds, was continually before him, with its

"rumbling noise, and the cry of some tormented, and the scent of

brimstone." Whithersoever he went, the glare of it scorched him, and its

dreadful sound was in his ears. His vivid but disturbed imagination lent

new terrors to the awful figures by which the sacred writers conveyed the

idea of future retribution to the Oriental mind. Bunyan's World of Woe,

if it lacked the colossal architecture and solemn vastness of Milton's

Pandemonium, was more clearly defined; its agonies were within the pale

of human comprehension; its victims were men and women, with the same

keen sense of corporeal suffering which they possessed in life; and who,

to use his own terrible description, had "all the loathed variety of hell

to grapple with; fire unquenchable, a lake of choking brimstone, eternal

chains, darkness more black than night, the everlasting gnawing of the

worm, the sight of devils, and the yells and outcries of the damned."

His mind at this period was evidently shaken in some degree from its

balance. He was troubled with strange, wicked thoughts, confused by

doubts and blasphemous suggestions, for which he could only account by

supposing himself possessed of the Devil. He wanted to curse and swear,

and had to clap his hands on his mouth to prevent it. In prayer, he

felt, as he supposed, Satan behind him, pulling his clothes, and telling

him to have done, and break off; suggesting that he had better pray to

him, and calling up before his mind's eye the figures of a bull, a tree,

or some other object, instead of the awful idea of God.

He notes here, as cause of thankfulness, that, even in this dark and

clouded state, he was enabled to see the "vile and abominable things

fomented by the Quakers," to be errors. Gradually, the shadow wherein he

had so long

"Walked beneath the day's broad glare,

A darkened man,"

passed from him, and for a season he was afforded an "evidence of his

salvation from Heaven, with many golden seals thereon hanging in his

sight." But, ere long, other temptations assailed him. A strange

suggestion haunted him, to sell or part with his Saviour. His own

account of this hallucination is too painfully vivid to awaken any other

feeling than that of sympathy and sadness.

"I could neither eat my food, stoop for a pin, chop a stick, or cast mine

eye to look on this or that, but still the temptation would come, Sell

Christ for this, or sell Christ for that; sell him, sell him.

"Sometimes it would run in my thoughts, not so little as a hundred times

together, Sell him, sell him; against which, I may say, for whole hours

together, I have been forced to stand as continually leaning and forcing

my spirit against it, lest haply, before I were aware, some wicked

thought might arise in my heart, that might consent thereto; and

sometimes the tempter would make me believe I had consented to it; but

then I should be as tortured upon a rack, for whole days together.

"This temptation did put me to such scares, lest I should at sometimes, I

say, consent thereto, and be overcome therewith, that, by the very force

of my mind, my very body would be put into action or motion, by way of

pushing or thrusting with my hands or elbows; still answering, as fast as

the destroyer said, Sell him, I will not, I will not, I will not; no, not

for thousands, thousands, thousands of worlds; thus reckoning, lest I

should set too low a value on him, even until I scarce well knew where I

was, or how to be composed again.

"But to be brief: one morning, as I did lie in my bed, I was, as at other

times, most fiercely assaulted with this temptation, to sell and part

with Christ; the wicked suggestion still running in my mind, Sell him,

sell him, sell him, sell him, sell him, as fast as a man could speak;

against which, also, in my mind, as at other times, I answered, No, no,

not for thousands, thousands, thousands, at least twenty times together;

but at last, after much striving, I felt this thought pass through my

heart, Let him go if he will; and I thought also, that I felt my heart

freely consent thereto. Oh, the diligence of Satan! Oh, the

desperateness of man's heart!

"Now was the battle won, and down fell I, as a bird that is shot from the

top of a tree, into great guilt, and fearful despair. Thus getting out

of my bed, I went moping into the field; but God knows with as heavy a

heart as mortal man, I think, could bear; where, for the space of two

hours, I was like a man bereft of life; and, as now, past all recovery,

and bound over to eternal punishment.

"And withal, that Scripture did seize upon my soul: 'Or profane person,

as Esau, who, for one morsel of meat, sold his birthright; for ye know,

how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was

rejected; for he found no place for repentance, though he sought it

carefully with tears."

For two years and a half, as he informs us, that awful scripture sounded

in his ears like the knell of a lost soul. He believed that he had

committed they unpardonable sin. His mental anguish 'was united with

bodily illness and suffering. His nervous system became fearfully

deranged; his limbs trembled; and he supposed this visible tremulousness

and agitation to be the mark of Cain. 'Troubled with pain and

distressing sensations in his chest, he began to fear that his breast-

bone would split open, and that he should perish like Judas Iscariot. He

feared that the tiles of the houses would fall upon him as he walked in

the streets. He was like his own Man in the Cage at the House of the

Interpreter, shut out from the promises, and looking forward to certain

judgment. "Methought," he says, "the very sun that shineth in heaven did

grudge to give me light." And still the dreadful words, "He found no

place for repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears," sounded

in the depths of his soul. They were, he says, like fetters of brass to

his legs, and their continual clanking followed him for months.

Regarding himself elected and predestined for damnation, he thought that

all things worked for his damage and eternal overthrow, while all things

wrought for the best and to do good to the elect and called of God unto

salvation. God and all His universe had, he thought, conspired against

him; the green earth, the bright waters, the sky itself, were written

over with His irrevocable curse.

Well was it said by Bunyan's contemporary, the excellent Cudworth, in his

eloquent sermon before the Long Parliament, that "We are nowhere

commanded to pry into the secrets of God, but the wholesome advice given

us is this: 'To make our calling and election sure.' We have no warrant

from Scripture to peep into the hidden rolls of eternity, to spell out

our names among the stars." "Must we say that God sometimes, to exercise

His uncontrollable dominion, delights rather in plunging wretched souls

down into infernal night and everlasting darkness? What, then, shall we

make the God of the whole world? Nothing but a cruel and dreadful

_Erinnys_, with curled fiery snakes about His head, and firebrands in His

hand; thus governing the world! Surely, this will make us either

secretly think there is no God in the world, if He must needs be such, or

else to wish heartily there were none." It was thus at times with

Bunyan. He was tempted, in this season of despair, to believe that there

was no resurrection and no judgment.

One day, he tells us, a sudden rushing sound, as of wind or the wings of

angels, came to him through the window, wonderfully sweet and pleasant;

and it was as if a voice spoke to him from heaven words of encouragement

and hope, which, to use his language, commanded, for the time, "a silence

in his heart to all those tumultuous thoughts that did use, like

masterless hell-hounds, to roar and bellow and make a hideous noise

within him." About this time, also, some comforting passages of

Scripture were called to mind; but he remarks, that whenever he strove to

apply them to his case, Satan would thrust the curse of Esau in his face,

and wrest the good word from him. The blessed promise "Him that cometh

to me, I will in no wise cast out" was the chief instrumentality in

restoring his lost peace. He says of it: "If ever Satan and I did strive

for any word of God in all my life, it was for this good word of Christ;

he at one end, and I at the other. Oh, what work we made! It was for

this in John, I say, that we did so tug and strive; he pulled, and I

pulled, but, God be praised! I overcame him; I got sweetness from it.

Oh, many a pull hath my heart had with Satan for this blessed sixth

chapter of John!" Who does not here call to mind the struggle between

Christian and Apollyon in the valley!

That was no fancy sketch; it was the narrative of the author's own

grapple with the Spirit of Evil. Like his ideal Christian, he "conquered

through Him that loved him." Love wrought the victory the Scripture of

Forgiveness overcame that of Hatred.

He never afterwards relapsed into that state of religious melancholy from

which he so hardly escaped. He speaks of his deliverance as the waking

out of a troublesome dream. His painful experience was not lost upon

him; for it gave him, ever after, a tender sympathy for the weak, the

sinful, the ignorant, and desponding. In some measure, he had been

"touched with the feeling of their infirmities." He could feel for those

in the bonds of sin and despair, as bound with them. Hence his power as

a preacher; hence the wonderful adaptation of his great allegory to all

the variety of spiritual conditions. Like Fearing, he had lain a month

in the Slough of Despond, and had played, like him, the long melancholy

bass of spiritual heaviness. With Feeble-mind, he had fallen into the

hands of Slay-good, of the nature of Man-eaters: and had limped along his

difficult way upon the crutches of Ready-to-halt. Who better than

himself could describe the condition of Despondency, and his daughter

Much-afraid, in the dungeon of Doubting Castle? Had he not also fallen

among thieves, like Little-faith?

His account of his entering upon the solemn duties of a preacher of the

Gospel is at once curious and instructive. He deals honestly with

himself, exposing all his various moods, weaknesses, doubts, and

temptations. "I preached," he says, "what I felt; for the terrors of the

law and the guilt of transgression lay heavy on my conscience. I have

been as one sent to them from the dead. I went, myself in chains, to

preach to them in chains; and carried that fire in my conscience which I

persuaded them to beware of." At times, when he stood up to preach,

blasphemies and evil doubts rushed into his mind, and he felt a strong

desire to utter them aloud to his congregation; and at other seasons,

when he was about to apply to the sinner some searching and fearful text

of Scripture, he was tempted to withhold it, on the ground that it

condemned himself also; but, withstanding the suggestion of the Tempter,

to use his own simile, he bowed himself like Samson to condemn sin

wherever he found it, though he brought guilt and condemnation upon

himself thereby, choosing rather to die with the Philistines than to deny

the truth.

Foreseeing the consequences of exposing himself to the operation of the

penal laws by holding conventicles and preaching, he was deeply afflicted

at the thought of the suffering and destitution to which his wife and

children might be exposed by his death or imprisonment. Nothing can be

more touching than his simple and earnest words on this point. They show

how warm and deep were him human affections, and what a tender and loving

heart he laid as a sacrifice on the altar of duty.

"I found myself a man compassed with infirmities; the parting with my

wife and poor children hath often been to me in this place as the pulling

the flesh from the bones; and also it brought to my mind the many

hardships, miseries, and wants, that my poor family was like to meet

with, should I be taken from them, especially my poor blind child, who

lay nearer my heart than all beside. Oh, the thoughts of the hardships I

thought my poor blind one might go under would break my heart to pieces.

"Poor child! thought I, what sorrow art thou like to have for thy portion

in this world! thou must be beaten, must beg, suffer hunger, cold,

nakedness, and a thousand calamities, though I cannot now endure the wind

should blow upon thee. But yet, thought I, I must venture you all with

God, though it goeth to the quick to leave you: oh! I saw I was as a man

who was pulling down his house upon the heads of his wife and children;

yet I thought on those 'two milch kine that were to carry the ark of God

into another country, and to leave their calves behind them.'

"But that which helped me in this temptation was divers considerations:

the first was, the consideration of those two Scriptures, 'Leave thy

fatherless children, I will preserve them alive; and let thy widows trust

in me;' and again, 'The Lord said, verily it shall go well with thy

remnant; verily I will cause the enemy to entreat them well in the time

of evil.'"

He was arrested in 1660, charged with "devilishly and perniciously

abstaining from church," and of being "a common upholder of

conventicles." At the Quarter Sessions, where his trial seems to have

been conducted somewhat like that of Faithful at Vanity Fair, he was

sentenced to perpetual banishment. This sentence, however, was never

executed, but he was remanded to Bedford jail, where he lay a prisoner

for twelve years.

Here, shut out from the world, with no other books than the Bible and

Fox's Martyrs, he penned that great work which has attained a wider and

more stable popularity than any other book in the English tongue. It is

alike the favorite of the nursery and the study. Many experienced

Christians hold it only second to the Bible; the infidel himself would

not willingly let it die. Men of all sects read it with delight, as in

the main a truthful representation of the 'Christian pilgrimage, without

indeed assenting to all the doctrines which the author puts in the month

of his fighting sermonizer, Great-heart, or which may be deduced from

some other portions of his allegory. A recollection of his fearful

sufferings, from misapprehension of a single text in the Scriptures,

relative to the question of election, we may suppose gave a milder tone

to the theology of his Pilgrim than was altogether consistent with the

Calvinism of the seventeenth century. "Religion," says Macaulay, "has

scarcely ever worn a form so calm and soothing as in Bunyan's allegory."

In composing it, he seems never to have altogether lost sight of the

fact, that, in his life-and-death struggle with Satan for the blessed

promise recorded by the Apostle of Love, the adversary was generally

found on the Genevan side of the argument. Little did the short-sighted

persecutors of Bunyan dream, when they closed upon him the door of

Bedford jail, that God would overrule their poor spite and envy to His

own glory and the worldwide renown of their victim. In the solitude of

his prison, the ideal forms of beauty and sublimity, which had long

flitted before him vaguely, like the vision of the Temanite, took shape

and coloring; and he was endowed with power to reduce them to order, and

arrange them in harmonious groupings. His powerful imagination, no

longer self-tormenting, but under the direction of reason and grace,

expanded his narrow cell into a vast theatre, lighted up for the display

of its wonders. To this creative faculty of his mind might have been

aptly applied the language which George Wither, a contemporary prisoner,

addressed to his Muse:--

"The dull loneness, the black shade

Which these hanging vaults have made,

The rude portals that give light

More to terror than delight;

This my chamber of neglect,

Walled about with disrespect,--

From all these, and this dull air,

A fit object for despair,

She hath taught me by her might,

To draw comfort and delight."

That stony cell of his was to him like the rock of Padan-aram to the

wandering Patriarch. He saw angels ascending and descending. The House

Beautiful rose up before him, and its holy sisterhood welcomed him. He

looked, with his Pilgrim, from the Chamber of Peace. The Valley of

Humiliation lay stretched out beneath his eye, and he heard "the curious,

melodious note of the country birds, who sing all the day long in the

spring time, when the flowers appear, and the sun shines warm, and make

the woods and groves and solitary places glad." Side by side with the

good Christiana and the loving Mercy, he walked through the green and

lowly valley, "fruitful as any the crow flies over," through "meadows

beautiful with lilies;" the song of the poor but fresh-faced shepherd-

boy, who lived a merry life, and wore the herb heartsease in his bosom,

sounded through his cell:--

"He that is down need fear no fall;

He that is low no pride."

The broad and pleasant "river of the Water of Life" glided peacefully

before him, fringed "on either side with green trees, with all manner of

fruit," and leaves of healing, with "meadows beautified with lilies, and

green all the year long;" he saw the Delectable Mountains, glorious with

sunshine, overhung with gardens and orchards and vineyards; and beyond

all, the Land of Beulah, with its eternal sunshine, its song of birds,

its music of fountains, its purple clustered vines, and groves through

which walked the Shining Ones, silver-winged and beautiful.

What were bars and bolts and prison-walls to him, whose eyes were

anointed to see, and whose ears opened to hear, the glory and the

rejoicing of the City of God, when the pilgrims were conducted to its

golden gates, from the black and bitter river, with the sounding

trumpeters, the transfigured harpers with their crowns of gold, the sweet

voices of angels, the welcoming peal of bells in the holy city, and the

songs of the redeemed ones? In reading the concluding pages of the first

part of Pilgrim's Progress, we feel as if the mysterious glory of the

Beatific Vision was unveiled before us. We are dazzled with the excess

of light. We are entranced with the mighty melody; overwhelmed by the

great anthem of rejoicing spirits. It can only be adequately described

in the language of Milton in respect to the Apocalypse, as "a seven-fold

chorus of hallelujahs and harping symphonies."

Few who read Bunyan nowadays think of him as one of the brave old English

confessors, whose steady and firm endurance of persecution baffled and in

the end overcame the tyranny of the Established Church in the reign of

Charles II. What Milton and Penn and Locke wrote in defence of Liberty,

Bunyan lived out and acted. He made no concessions to worldly rank.

Dissolute lords and proud bishops he counted less than the humblest and

poorest of his disciples at Bedford. When first arrested and thrown into

prison, he supposed he should be called to suffer death for his faithful

testimony to the truth; and his great fear was, that he should not meet

his fate with the requisite firmness, and so dishonor the cause of his

Master. And when dark clouds came over him, and he sought in vain for a

sufficient evidence that in the event of his death it would be well with

him, he girded up his soul with the reflection, that, as he suffered for

the word and way of God, he was engaged not to shrink one hair's breadth

from it. "I will leap," he says, "off the ladder blindfold into

eternity, sink or swim, come heaven, come hell. Lord Jesus, if thou wilt

catch me, do; if not, I will venture in thy name!"

The English revolution of the seventeenth century, while it humbled the

false and oppressive aristocracy of rank and title, was prodigal in the

development of the real nobility of the mind and heart. Its history is

bright with the footprints of men whose very names still stir the hearts

of freemen, the world over, like a trumpet peal. Say what we may of its

fanaticism, laugh as we may at its extravagant enjoyment of newly

acquired religious and civil liberty, who shall now venture to deny that

it was the golden age of England? Who that regards freedom above

slavery, will now sympathize with the outcry and lamentation of those

interested in the continuance of the old order of things, against the

prevalence of sects and schism, but who, at the same time, as Milton

shrewdly intimates, dreaded more the rending of their pontifical sleeves

than the rending of the Church? Who shall now sneer at Puritanism, with

the Defence of Unlicensed Printing before him? Who scoff at Quakerism

over the Journal of George Fox? Who shall join with debauched lordlings

and fat-witted prelates in ridicule of Anabaptist levellers and dippers,

after rising from the perusal of Pilgrim's Progress? "There were giants

in those days." And foremost amidst that band of liberty-loving and God-

fearing men,

"The slandered Calvinists of Charles's time,

Who fought, and won it, Freedom's holy fight,"

stands the subject of our sketch, the Tinker of Elstow. Of his high

merit as an author there is no longer any question. The Edinburgh Review

expressed the common sentiment of the literary world, when it declared

that the two great creative minds of the seventeenth century were those

which produced Paradise Lost and the Pilgrim's Progress.

THOMAS ELLWOOD.

Commend us to autobiographies! Give us the veritable notchings of

Robinson Crusoe on his stick, the indubitable records of a life long

since swallowed up in the blackness of darkness, traced by a hand the

very dust of which has become undistinguishable. The foolishest egotist

who ever chronicled his daily experiences, his hopes and fears, poor

plans and vain reachings after happiness, speaking to us out of the Past,

and thereby giving us to understand that it was quite as real as our

Present, is in no mean sort our benefactor, and commands our attention,

in spite of his folly. We are thankful for the very vanity which

prompted him to bottle up his poor records, and cast them into the great

sea of Time, for future voyagers to pick up. We note, with the deepest

interest, that in him too was enacted that miracle of a conscious

existence, the reproduction of which in ourselves awes and perplexes us.

He, too, had a mother; he hated and loved; the light from old-quenched

hearths shone over him; he walked in the sunshine over the dust of those

who had gone before him, just as we are now walking over his. These

records of him remain, the footmarks of a long-extinct life, not of mere

animal organism, but of a being like ourselves, enabling us, by studying

their hieroglyphic significance, to decipher and see clearly into the

mystery of existence centuries ago. The dead generations live again in

these old self-biographies. Incidentally, unintentionally, yet in the

simplest and most natural manner, they make us familiar with all the

phenomena of life in the bygone ages. We are brought in contact with

actual flesh-and-blood men and women, not the ghostly outline figures

which pass for such, in what is called History. The horn lantern of the

biographer, by the aid of which, with painful minuteness, he chronicled,

from day to day, his own outgoings and incomings, making visible to us

his pitiful wants, labors, trials, and tribulations of the stomach and of

the conscience, sheds, at times, a strong clear light upon

contemporaneous activities; what seemed before half fabulous, rises up in

distinct and full proportions; we look at statesmen, philosophers, and

poets, with the eyes of those who lived perchance their next-door

neighbors, and sold them beer, and mutton, and household stuffs, had

access to their kitchens, and took note of the fashion of their wigs and

the color of their breeches. Without some such light, all history would

be just about as unintelligible and unreal as a dimly remembered dream.

The journals of the early Friends or Quakers are in this respect

invaluable. Little, it is true, can be said, as a general thing, of

their literary merits. Their authors were plain, earnest men and women,

chiefly intent upon the substance of things, and having withal a strong

testimony to bear against carnal wit and outside show and ornament. Yet,

even the scholar may well admire the power of certain portions of George

Fox's Journal, where a strong spirit clothes its utterance in simple,

downright Saxon words; the quiet and beautiful enthusiasm of Pennington;

the torrent energy of Edward Burrough; the serene wisdom of Penn; the

logical acuteness of Barclay; the honest truthfulness of Sewell; the wit

and humor of John Roberts, (for even Quakerism had its apostolic jokers

and drab-coated Robert Halls;) and last, not least, the simple beauty of

Woolman's Journal, the modest record of a life of good works and love.

Let us look at the Life of Thomas Ellwood. The book before us is a

hardly used Philadelphia reprint, bearing date of 1775. The original was

published some sixty years before. It is not a book to be found in

fashionable libraries, or noticed in fashionable reviews, but is none the

less deserving of attention.

Ellwood was born in 1639, in the little town of Crowell, in Oxfordshire.

Old Walter, his father, was of "gentlemanly lineage," and held a

commission of the peace under Charles I. One of his most intimate

friends was Isaac Pennington, a gentleman of estate and good reputation,

whose wife, the widow of Sir John Springette, was a lady of superior

endowments. Her only daughter, Gulielma, was the playmate and companion

of Thomas. On making this family a visit, in 1658, in company with his

father, he was surprised to find that they had united with the Quakers, a

sect then little known, and everywhere spoken against. Passing through

the vista of nearly two centuries, let us cross the threshold, and look

with the eyes of young Ellwood upon this Quaker family. It will

doubtless give us a good idea of the earnest and solemn spirit of that

age of religious awakening.

"So great a change from a free, debonair, and courtly sort of behavior,

which we had formerly found there, into so strict a gravity as they now

received us with, did not a little amuse us, and disappointed our

expectations of such a pleasant visit as we had promised ourselves.

"For my part, I sought, and at length found, means to cast myself into

the company of the daughter, whom I found gathering flowers in the

garden, attended by her maid, also a Quaker. But when I addressed her

after my accustomed manner, with intention to engage her in discourse on

the foot of our former acquaintance, though she treated me with a

courteous mien, yet, as young as she was, the gravity of her looks and

behavior struck such an awe upon me, that I found myself not so much

master of myself as to pursue any further converse with her.

"We staid dinner, which was very handsome, and lacked nothing to

recommend it to me but the want of mirth and pleasant discourse, which we

could neither have with them, nor, by reason of them, with one another;

the weightiness which was upon their spirits and countenances keeping

down the lightness that would have been up in ours."