(Mount Holly is a village lying in the western part of the long,

narrow township of Northampton, on Rancocas Creek, a tributary of

the Delaware. In John Woolman's day it was almost entirely a

settlement of Friends. A very few of the old houses with their

quaint stoops or porches are left. That occupied by John Woolman

was a small, plain, two-story structure, with two windows in each

story in front, a four-barred fence inclosing the grounds, with the

trees he planted and loved to cultivate. The house was not painted,

but whitewashed. The name of the place is derived from the highest

hill in the county, rising two hundred feet above the sea, and

commanding a view of a rich and level country, of cleared farms and

woodlands. Here, no doubt, John Woolman often walked under the

shadow of its holly-trees, communing with nature and musing on the

great themes of life and duty.

When the excellent Joseph Sturge was in this country, some thirty

years ago, on his errand of humanity, he visited Mount Holly, and

the house of Woolman, then standing. He describes it as a very

"humble abode." But one person was then living in the town who had

ever seen its venerated owner. This aged man stated that he was at

Woolman's little farm in the season of harvest when it was customary

among farmers to kill a calf or sheep for the laborers. John

Woolman, unwilling that the animal should be slowly bled to death,

as the custom had been, and to spare it unnecessary suffering, had a

smooth block of wood prepared to receive the neck of the creature,

when a single blow terminated its existence. Nothing was more

remarkable in the character of Woolman than his concern for the

well-being and comfort of the brute creation. "What is religion?"

asks the old Hindoo writer of the Vishnu Sarman. "Tenderness toward

all creatures." Or, as Woolman expresses it, "Where the love of God

is verily perfected, a tenderness towards all creatures made subject

to our will is experienced, and a care felt that we do not lessen

that sweetness of life in the animal creation which the Creator

intends for them under our government.")

On taking up his pen, the young clerk felt a sudden and strong scruple in

his mind. The thought of writing an instrument of slavery for one of his

fellow-creatures oppressed him. God's voice against the desecration of

His image spoke in the soul. He yielded to the will of his employer,

but, while writing the instrument, he was constrained to declare, both to

the buyer and the seller, that he believed slave-keeping inconsistent

with the Christian religion. This young man was John Woolman. The

circumstance above named was the starting-point of a life-long testimony

against slavery. In the year 1746 he visited Maryland, Virginia, and

North Carolina. He was afflicted by the prevalence of slavery. It

appeared to him, in his own words, "as a dark gloominess overhanging the

land." On his return, he wrote an essay on the subject, which was

published in 1754. Three years after, he made a second visit to the

Southern meetings of Friends. Travelling as a minister of the gospel, he

was compelled to sit down at the tables of slaveholding planters, who

were accustomed to entertain their friends free of cost, and who could

not comprehend the scruples of their guest against receiving as a gift

food and lodging which he regarded as the gain of oppression. He was a

poor man, but he loved truth more than money. He therefore either placed

the pay for his entertainment in the hands of some member of the family,

for the benefit of the slaves, or gave it directly to them, as he had

opportunity. Wherever he went, he found his fellow-professors entangled

in the mischief of slavery. Elders and ministers, as well as the younger

and less high in profession, had their house servants and field hands.

He found grave drab-coated apologists for the slave-trade, who quoted the

same Scriptures, in support of oppression and avarice, which have since

been cited by Presbyterian doctors of divinity, Methodist bishops; and

Baptist preachers for the same purpose. He found the meetings generally

in a low and evil state. The gold of original Quakerism had become dim,

and the fine gold changed. The spirit of the world prevailed among them,

and had wrought an inward desolation. Instead of meekness, gentleness,

and heavenly wisdom, he found "a spirit of fierceness and love of

dominion."

(The tradition is that he travelled mostly on foot during his

journeys among slaveholders. Brissot, in his New Travels in

America, published in 1788, says: "John Woolman, one of the most

distinguished of men in the cause of humanity, travelled much as a

minister of his sect, but always on foot, and without money, in

imitation of the Apostles, and in order to be in a situation to be

more useful to poor people and the blacks. He hated slavery so much

that he could not taste food provided by the labor of slaves." That

this writer was on one point misinformed is manifest from the

following passage from the Journal: "When I expected soon to leave a

friend's house where I had entertainment, if I believed that I

should not keep clear from the gain of oppression without leaving

money, I spoke to one of the heads of the family privately, and

desired them to accept of pieces of silver, and give them to such of

their negroes as they believed would make the best use of them; and

at other times I gave them to the negroes myself, as the way looked

clearest to me. Before I came out, I had provided a large number of

small pieces for this purpose, and thus offering them to some who

appeared to be wealthy people was a trial both to me and them. But

the fear of the Lord so covered me at times that my way was made

easier than I expected; and few, if any, manifested any resentment

at the offer, and most of them, after some conversation, accepted of

them.")

In love, but at the same time with great faithfulness, he endeavored to

convince the masters of their error, and to awaken a degree of sympathy

for the enslaved.

At this period, or perhaps somewhat earlier, a remarkable personage took

up his residence in Pennsylvania. He was by birthright a member of the

Society of Friends, but having been disowned in England for some

extravagances of conduct and language, he spent several years in the West

Indies, where he became deeply interested in the condition of the slaves.

His violent denunciations of the practice of slaveholding excited the

anger of the planters, and he was compelled to leave the island. He came

to Philadelphia, but, contrary to his expectations, he found the same

evil existing there. He shook off the dust of the city, and took up his

abode in the country, a few miles distant. His dwelling was a natural

cave, with some slight addition of his own making. His drink was the

spring-water flowing by his door; his food, vegetables alone. He

persistently refused to wear any garment or eat any food purchased at the

expense of animal life, or which was in any degree the product of slave

labor. Issuing from his cave, on his mission of preaching "deliverance

to the captive," he was in the habit of visiting the various meetings for

worship and bearing his testimony against slaveholders, greatly to their

disgust and indignation. On one occasion he entered the Market Street

Meeting, and a leading Friend requested some one to take him out. A

burly blacksmith volunteered to do it, leading him to the gate and

thrusting him out with such force that he fell into the gutter of the

street. There he lay until the meeting closed, telling the bystanders

that he did not feel free to rise himself. "Let those who cast me here

raise me up. It is their business, not mine."

His personal appearance was in remarkable keeping with his eccentric

life. A figure only four and a half feet high, hunchbacked, with

projecting chest, legs small and uneven, arms longer than his legs; a

huge head, showing only beneath the enormous white hat large, solemn eyes

and a prominent nose; the rest of his face covered with a snowy

semicircle of beard falling low on his breast,--a figure to recall the

old legends of troll, brownie, and kobold. Such was the irrepressible

prophet who troubled the Israel of slave-holding Quakerism, clinging like

a rough chestnut-bur to the skirts of its respectability, and settling

like a pertinacious gad-fly on the sore places of its conscience.

On one occasion, while the annual meeting was in session at Burlington,

N. J., in the midst of the solemn silence of the great assembly, the

unwelcome figure of Benjamin Lay, wrapped in his long white overcoat,

was seen passing up the aisle. Stopping midway, he exclaimed, "You

slaveholders! Why don't you throw off your Quaker coats as I do mine,

and show yourselves as you are?" Casting off as he spoke his outer

garment, he disclosed to the astonished assembly a military coat

underneath and a sword dangling at his heels. Holding in one hand a

large book, he drew his sword with the other. "In the sight of God," he

cried, "you are as guilty as if you stabbed your slaves to the heart, as

I do this book!" suiting the action to the word, and piercing a small

bladder filled with the juice of poke-weed (playtolacca decandra), which

he had concealed between the covers, and sprinkling as with fresh blood

those who sat near him. John Woolman makes no mention of this

circumstance in his Journal, although he was probably present, and it

must have made a deep impression on his sensitive spirit. The violence

and harshness of Lay's testimony, however, had nothing in common with

the tender and sorrowful remonstrances and appeals of the former, except

the sympathy which they both felt for the slave himself.

(Lay was well acquainted with Dr. Franklin, who sometimes visited him.

Among other schemes of reform he entertained the idea of converting

all mankind to Christianity. This was to be done by three

witnesses,--himself, Michael Lovell, and Abel Noble, assisted by Dr.

Franklin. But on their first meeting at the Doctor's house, the

three "chosen vessels" got into a violent controversy on points of

doctrine, and separated in ill-humor. The philosopher, who had been

an amused listener, advised the three sages to give up the project

of converting the world until they had learned to tolerate each

other.)

Still later, a descendant of the persecuted French Protestants, Anthony

Benezet, a man of uncommon tenderness of feeling, began to write and

speak against slavery. How far, if at all, he was moved thereto by the

example of Woolman is not known, but it is certain that the latter found

in him a steady friend and coadjutor in his efforts to awaken the

slumbering moral sense of his religious brethren. The Marquis de

Chastellux, author of _De la Felicite Publique_, describes him as a

small, eager-faced man, full of zeal and activity, constantly engaged in

works of benevolence, which were by no means confined to the blacks.

Like Woolman and Lay, he advocated abstinence from intoxicating spirits.

The poor French neutrals who were brought to Philadelphia from Nova

Scotia, and landed penniless and despairing among strangers in tongue and

religion, found in him a warm and untiring friend, through whose aid and

sympathy their condition was rendered more comfortable than that of their

fellow-exiles in other colonies.

The annual assemblage of the Yearly Meeting in 1758 at Philadelphia must

ever be regarded as one of the most important religious convocations in

the history of the Christian church. The labors of Woolman and his few

but earnest associates had not been in vain. A deep and tender interest

had been awakened; and this meeting was looked forward to with varied

feelings of solicitude by all parties. All felt that the time had come

for some definite action; conservative and reformer stood face to face in

the Valley of Decision. John Woolman, of course, was present,--a man

humble and poor in outward appearance, his simple dress of undyed

homespun cloth contrasting strongly with the plain but rich apparel of

the representatives of the commerce of the city and of the large slave-

stocked plantations of the country. Bowed down by the weight of his

concern for the poor slaves and for the well-being and purity of the

Society, he sat silent during the whole meeting, while other matters were

under discussion. "My mind," he says, "was frequently clothed with

inward prayer; and I could say with David that 'tears were my meat and

drink, day and night.' The case of slave-keeping lay heavy upon me; nor

did I find any engagement, to speak directly to any other matter before

the meeting." When the important subject came up for consideration, many

faithful Friends spoke with weight and earnestness. No one openly

justified slavery as a system, although some expressed a concern lest the

meeting should go into measures calculated to cause uneasiness to many

members of the Society. It was also urged that Friends should wait

patiently until the Lord in His own time should open a way for the

deliverance of the slave. This was replied to by John Woolman. "My

mind," he said, "is led to consider the purity of the Divine Being, and

the justice of His judgments; and herein my soul is covered with

awfulness. I cannot forbear to hint of some cases where people have not

been treated with the purity of justice, and the event has been most

lamentable. Many slaves on this continent are oppressed, and their cries

have entered into the ears of the Most High. Such are the purity and

certainty of His judgments that He cannot be partial in our favor. In

infinite love and goodness He hath opened our understandings from one

time to another, concerning our duty towards this people; and it is not a

time for delay. Should we now be sensible of what He requires of us, and

through a respect to the private interest of some persons, or through a

regard to some friendships which do not stand upon an immutable

foundation, neglect to do our duty in firmness and constancy, still

waiting for some extraordinary means to bring about their deliverance,

God may by terrible things in righteousness answer us in this matter."

This solemn and weighty appeal was responded to by many in the assembly,

in a spirit of sympathy and unity. Some of the slave-holding members

expressed their willingness that a strict rule of discipline should be

adopted against dealing in slaves for the future. To this it was

answered that the root of the evil would never be reached effectually

until a searching inquiry was made into the circumstances and motives of

such as held slaves. At length the truth in a great measure triumphed

over all opposition; and, without any public dissent, the meeting agreed

that the injunction of our Lord and Saviour to do to others as we would

that others should do to us should induce Friends who held slaves "to set

them at liberty, making a Christian provision for them," and four

Friends--John Woolman, John Scarborough, Daniel Stanton, and John Sykes--

were approved of as suitable persons to visit and treat with such as kept

slaves, within the limits of the meeting.

This painful and difficult duty was faithfully performed. In that

meekness and humility of spirit which has nothing in common with the

"fear of man, which bringeth a snare," the self-denying followers of

their Divine Lord and Master "went about doing good." In the city of

Philadelphia, and among the wealthy planters of the country, they found

occasion often to exercise a great degree of patience, and to keep a

watchful guard over their feelings. In his Journal for this important

period of his life John Woolman says but little of his own services. How

arduous and delicate they were may be readily understood. The number of

slaves held by members of the Society was very large. Isaac Jackson, in

his report of his labors among slave-holders in a single Quarterly

Meeting, states that he visited the owners of more than eleven hundred

slaves. From the same report may be gleaned some hints of the

difficulties which presented themselves. One elderly man says he has

well brought up his eleven slaves, and "now they must work to maintain

him." Another owns it is all wrong, but "cannot release his slaves; his

tender wife under great concern of mind" on account of his refusal. A

third has fifty slaves; knows it to be wrong, but can't see his way clear

out of it. "Perhaps," the report says, "interest dims his vision." A

fourth is full of "excuses and reasonings." "Old Jos. Richison has

forty, and is determined to keep them." Another man has fifty, and

"means to keep them." Robert Ward "wants to release his slaves, but his

wife and daughters hold back." Another "owns it is wrong, but says he

will not part with his negroes,--no, not while he lives." The far

greater number, however, confess the wrong of slavery, and agree to take

measures for freeing their slaves.

(An incident occurred during this visit of Isaac Jackson which

impressed him deeply. On the last evening, just as he was about to

turn homeward, he was told that a member of the Society whom he had

not seen owned a very old slave who was happy and well cared for.

It was a case which it was thought might well be left to take care

of itself. Isaac Jackson, sitting in silence, did not feel his mind

quite satisfied; and as the evening wore away, feeling more and more

exercised, he expressed his uneasiness, when a young son of his host

eagerly offered to go with him and show him the road to the place.

The proposal was gladly accepted. On introducing the object of

their visit, the Friend expressed much surprise that any uneasiness

should be felt in the case, but at length consented to sign the form

of emancipation, saying, at the same time, it would make no

difference in their relations, as the old man was perfectly happy.

At Isaac Jackson's request the slave was called in and seated before

them. His form was nearly double, his thin hands were propped on

his knees, his white head was thrust forward, and his keen,

restless, inquiring eyes gleamed alternately on the stranger and on

his master. At length he was informed of what had been done; that

he was no longer a slave, and that his master acknowledged his past

services entitled him to a maintenance so long as he lived. The old

man listened in almost breathless wonder, his head slowly sinking on

his breast. After a short pause, he clasped his hands; then

spreading them high over his hoary head, slowly and reverently

exclaimed, "Oh, goody Gody, oh!"--bringing his hands again down on

his knees. Then raising them as before, he twice repeated the

solemn exclamation, and with streaming eyes and a voice almost too

much choked for utterance, he continued, "I thought I should die a

slave, and now I shall die a free man!"

It is a striking evidence of the divine compensations which are

sometimes graciously vouchsafed to those who have been faithful to

duty, that on his death-bed this affecting scene was vividly revived

in the mind of Isaac Jackson. At that supreme moment, when all

other pictures of time were fading out, that old face, full of

solemn joy and devout thanksgiving, rose before him, and comforted

him as with the blessing of God.)

An extract or two from the Journal at this period will serve to show both

the nature of the service in which he was engaged and the frame of mind

in which he accomplished it:--

"In the beginning of the 12th month I joined in company with my friends,

John Sykes and Daniel Stanton, in visiting such as had slaves. Some,

whose hearts were rightly exercised about them, appeared to be glad of

our visit, but in some places our way was more difficult. I often saw

the necessity of keeping down to that root from whence our concern

proceeded, and have cause in reverent thankfulness humbly to bow down

before the Lord who was near to me, and preserved my mind in calmness

under some sharp conflicts, and begat a spirit of sympathy and tenderness

in me towards some who were grievously entangled by the spirit of this

world."

"1st month, 1759.--Having found my mind drawn to visit some of the more

active members of society at Philadelphia who had slaves, I met my friend

John Churchman there by agreement, and we continued about a week in the

city. We visited some that were sick, and some widows and their

families; and the other part of the time was mostly employed in visiting

such as had slaves. It was a time of deep exercise; but looking often to

the Lord for assistance, He in unspeakable kindness favored us with the

influence of that spirit which crucifies to the greatness and splendor of

this world, and enabled us to go through some heavy labors, in which we

found peace."

These labors were attended with the blessing of the God of the poor and

oppressed. Dealing in slaves was almost entirely abandoned, and many who

held slaves set them at liberty. But many members still continuing the

practice, a more emphatic testimony against it was issued by the Yearly

Meeting in 1774; and two years after the subordinate meetings were

directed to deny the right of membership to such as persisted in holding

their fellow-men as property.

A concern was now felt for the temporal and religious welfare of the

emancipated slaves, and in 1779 the Yearly Meeting came to the conclusion

that some reparation was due from the masters to their former slaves for

services rendered while in the condition of slavery. The following is an

extract from an epistle on this subject:

"We are united in judgment that the state of the oppressed people who

have been held by any of us, or our predecessors, in captivity and

slavery, calls for a deep inquiry and close examination how far we are

clear of withholding from them what under such an exercise may open to

view as their just right; and therefore we earnestly and affectionately

entreat our brethren in religious profession to bring this matter home,

and that all who have let the oppressed go free may attend to the further

openings of duty.

"A tender Christian sympathy appears to be awakened in the minds of many

who are not in religious profession with us, who have seriously

considered the oppressions and disadvantages under which those people

have long labored; and whether a pious care extended to their offspring

is not justly due from us to them is a consideration worthy our serious

and deep attention."

Committees to aid and advise the colored people were accordingly

appointed in the various Monthly Meetings. Many former owners of slaves

faithfully paid the latter for their services, submitting to the award

and judgment of arbitrators as to what justice required at their hands.

So deeply had the sense of the wrong of slavery sunk into the hearts of

Friends!

John Woolman, in his Journal for 1769, states, that having some years

before, as one of the executors of a will, disposed of the services of a

negro boy belonging to the estate until he should reach the age of thirty

years, he became uneasy in respect to the transaction, and, although he

had himself derived no pecuniary benefit from it, and had simply acted as

the agent of the heirs of the estate to which the boy belonged, he

executed a bond, binding himself to pay the master of the young man for

four years and a half of his unexpired term of service.

The appalling magnitude of the evil against which he felt himself

especially called to contend was painfully manifest to John Woolman. At

the outset, all about him, in every department of life and human

activity, in the state and the church, he saw evidences of its strength,

and of the depth and extent to which its roots had wound their way among

the foundations of society. Yet he seems never to have doubted for a

moment the power of simple truth to eradicate it, nor to have hesitated

as to his own duty in regard to it. There was no groping like Samson in

the gloom; no feeling in blind wrath and impatience for the pillars of

the temple of Dagon. "The candle of the Lord shone about him," and his

path lay clear and unmistakable before him. He believed in the goodness

of God that leadeth to repentance; and that love could reach the witness

for itself in the hearts of all men, through all entanglements of custom

and every barrier of pride and selfishness. No one could have a more

humble estimate of himself; but as he went forth on his errand of mercy

he felt the Infinite Power behind him, and the consciousness that he had

known a preparation from that Power "to stand as a trumpet through which

the Lord speaks." The event justified his confidence; wherever he went

hard hearts were softened, avarice and love of power and pride of opinion

gave way before his testimony of love.

The New England Yearly Meeting then, as now, was held in Newport, on

Rhode Island. In the year 1760 John Woolman, in the course of a

religious visit to New England, attended that meeting. He saw the

horrible traffic in human beings,--the slave-ships lying at the wharves

of the town, the sellers and buyers of men and women and children

thronging the market-place. The same abhorrent scenes which a few years

after stirred the spirit of the excellent Hopkins to denounce the slave-

trade and slavery as hateful in the sight of God to his congregation at

Newport were enacted in the full view and hearing of the annual

convocation of Friends, many of whom were themselves partakers in the

shame and wickedness. "Understanding," he says, "that a large number of

slaves had been imported from Africa into the town, and were then on sale

by a member of our Society, my appetite failed; I grew outwardly weak,

and had a feeling of the condition of Habakkuk: 'When I heard, my belly

trembled, my lips quivered; I trembled in myself, that I might rest in

the day of trouble.' I had many cogitations, and was sorely distressed."

He prepared a memorial to the Legislature, then in session, for the

signatures of Friends, urging that body to take measures to put an end to

the importation of slaves. His labors in the Yearly Meeting appear to

have been owned and blessed by the Divine Head of the church. The London

Epistle for 1758, condemning the unrighteous traffic in men, was read,

and the substance of it embodied in the discipline of the meeting; and

the following query was adopted, to be answered by the subordinate

meetings:--

"Are Friends clear of importing negroes, or buying them when imported;

and do they use those well, where they are possessed by inheritance or

otherwise, endeavoring to train them up in principles of religion?"

At the close of the Yearly Meeting, John Woolman requested those members

of the Society who held slaves to meet with him in the chamber of the

house for worship, where he expressed his concern for the well-being of

the slaves, and his sense of the iniquity of the practice of dealing in

or holding them as property. His tender exhortations were not lost upon

his auditors; his remarks were kindly received, and the gentle and loving

spirit in which they were offered reached many hearts.

In 1769, at the suggestion of the Rhode Island Quarterly Meeting, the

Yearly Meeting expressed its sense of the wrongfulness of holding slaves,

and appointed a large committee to visit those members who were

implicated in the practice. The next year this committee reported that

they had completed their service, "and that their visits mostly seemed to

be kindly accepted. Some Friends manifested a disposition to set such at

liberty as were suitable; some others, not having so clear a sight of

such an unreasonable servitude as could be desired, were unwilling to

comply with the advice given them at present, yet seemed willing to take

it into consideration; a few others manifested a disposition to keep them

in continued bondage."

It was stated in the Epistle to London Yearly Meeting of the year 1772,

that a few Friends had freed their slaves from bondage, but that others

"have been so reluctant thereto that they have been disowned for not

complying with the advice of this meeting."

In 1773 the following minute was made: "It is our sense and judgment that

truth not only requires the young of capacity and ability, but likewise

the aged and impotent, and also all in a state of infancy and nonage,

among Friends, to be discharged and set free from a state of slavery,

that we do no more claim property in the human race, as we do in the

brutes that perish."

In 1782 no slaves were known to be held in the New England Yearly

Meeting. The next year it was recommended to the subordinate meetings to

appoint committees to effect a proper and just settlement between the

manumitted slaves and their former masters, for their past services. In

1784 it was concluded by the Yearly Meeting that any former slave-holder

who refused to comply with the award of these committees should, after

due care and labor with him, be disowned from the Society. This was

effectual; settlements without disownment were made to the satisfaction

of all parties, and every case was disposed of previous to the year 1787.

In the New York Yearly Meeting, slave-trading was prohibited about the

middle of the last century. In 1771, in consequence of an Epistle from

the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, a committee was appointed to visit those

who held slaves, and to advise with them in relation to emancipation. In

1776 it was made a disciplinary offence to buy, sell, or hold slaves upon

any condition. In 1784 but one slave was to be found in the limits of

the meeting. In the same year, by answers from the several subordinate

meetings, it was ascertained that an equitable settlement for past

services had been effected between the emancipated negroes and their

masters in all save three cases.

In the Virginia Yearly Meeting slavery had its strongest hold. Its

members, living in the midst of slave-holding communities, were

necessarily exposed to influences adverse to emancipation. I have

already alluded to the epistle addressed to them by William Edmondson,

and to the labors of John Woolman while travelling among them. In 1757

the Virginia Yearly Meeting condemned the foreign slave-trade. In 1764

it enjoined upon its members the duty of kindness towards their servants,

of educating them, and carefully providing for their food and clothing.

Four years after, its members were strictly prohibited from purchasing

any more slaves. In 1773 it earnestly recommended the immediate

manumission of all slaves held in bondage, after the females had reached

eighteen and the males twenty-one years of age. At the same time it was

advised that committees should be appointed for the purpose of

instructing the emancipated persons in the principles of morality and

religion, and for advising and aiding them in their temporal concerns.

I quote a single paragraph from the advice sent down to the subordinate

meetings, as a beautiful manifestation of the fruits of true repentance:--

"It is the solid sense of this meeting, that we of the present generation

are under strong obligations to express our love and concern for the

offspring of those people who by their labors have greatly contributed

towards the cultivation of these colonies under the afflictive

disadvantage of enduring a hard bondage, and the benefit of whose toil

many among us are enjoying."

In 1784, the different Quarterly Meetings having reported that many still

held slaves, notwithstanding the advice and entreaties of their friends,

the Yearly Meeting directed that where endeavors to convince those

offenders of their error proved ineffectual, the Monthly Meetings should

proceed to disown them. We have no means of ascertaining the precise

number of those actually disowned for slave-holding in the Virginia

Yearly Meeting, but it is well known to have been very small. In almost

all cases the care and assiduous labors of those who had the welfare of

the Society and of humanity at heart were successful in inducing

offenders to manumit their slaves, and confess their error in resisting

the wishes of their friends and bringing reproach upon the cause of

truth.

So ended slavery in the Society of Friends. For three quarters of a

century the advice put forth in the meetings of the Society at stated

intervals, that Friends should be "careful to maintain their testimony

against slavery," has been adhered to so far as owning, or even hiring, a

slave is concerned. Apart from its first-fruits of emancipation, there

is a perennial value in the example exhibited of the power of truth,

urged patiently and in earnest love, to overcome the difficulties in the

way of the eradication of an evil system, strengthened by long habit,

entangled with all the complex relations of society, and closely allied

with the love of power, the pride of family, and the lust of gain.

The influence of the life and labors of John Woolman has by no means been

confined to the religious society of which he was a member. It may be

traced wherever a step in the direction of emancipation has been taken in

this country or in Europe. During the war of the Revolution many of the

noblemen and officers connected with the French army became, as their

journals abundantly testify, deeply interested in the Society of Friends,

and took back to France with them something of its growing anti-slavery

sentiment. Especially was this the case with Jean Pierre Brissot, the

thinker and statesman of the Girondists, whose intimacy with Warner

Mifflin, a friend and disciple of Woolman, so profoundly affected his

whole after life. He became the leader of the "Friends of the Blacks,"

and carried with him to the scaffold a profound hatred, of slavery. To

his efforts may be traced the proclamation of emancipation in Hayti by

the commissioners of the French convention, and indirectly the subsequent

uprising of the blacks and their successful establishment of a free

government. The same influence reached Thomas Clarkson and stimulated

his early efforts for the abolition of the slave-trade; and in after life

the volume of the New Jersey Quaker was the cherished companion of

himself and his amiable helpmate. It was in a degree, at least, the

influence of Stephen Grellet and William Allen, men deeply imbued with

the spirit of Woolman, and upon whom it might almost be said his mantle

had fallen, that drew the attention of Alexander I. of Russia to the

importance of taking measures for the abolition of serfdom, an object the

accomplishment of which the wars during his reign prevented, but which,

left as a legacy of duty, has been peaceably effected by his namesake,

Alexander II. In the history of emancipation in our own country

evidences of the same original impulse of humanity are not wanting. In

1790 memorials against slavery from the Society of Friends were laid

before the first Congress of the United States. Not content with

clearing their own skirts of the evil, the Friends of that day took an

active part in the formation of the abolition societies of New England,

New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. Jacob Lindley, Elisha

Tyson, Warner Mifflin, James Pemberton, and other leading Friends were

known throughout the country as unflinching champions of freedom. One of

the earliest of the class known as modern abolitionists was Benjamin

Lundy, a pupil in the school of Woolman, through whom William Lloyd

Garrison became interested in the great work to which his life has been

so faithfully and nobly devoted. Looking back to the humble workshop at

Mount Holly from the stand-point of the Proclamation of President

Lincoln, how has the seed sown in weakness been raised up in power!

The larger portion of Woolman's writings is devoted to the subjects of

slavery, uncompensated labor, and the excessive toil and suffering of the

many to support the luxury of the few. The argument running through them

is searching, and in its conclusions uncompromising, but a tender love

for the wrong-doer as well as the sufferer underlies all. They aim to

convince the judgment and reach the heart without awakening prejudice and

passion. To the slave-holders of his time they must have seemed like the

voice of conscience speaking to them in the cool of the day. One feels,

in reading them, the tenderness and humility of a nature redeemed from

all pride of opinion and self-righteousness, sinking itself out of sight,

and intent only upon rendering smaller the sum of human sorrow and sin by

drawing men nearer to God, and to each other. The style is that of a man

unlettered, but with natural refinement and delicate sense of fitness,

the purity of whose heart enters into his language. There is no attempt

at fine writing, not a word or phrase for effect; it is the simple

unadorned diction of one to whom the temptations of the pen seem to have

been wholly unknown. He wrote, as he believed, from an inward spiritual

prompting; and with all his unaffected humility he evidently felt that

his work was done in the clear radiance of

"The light which never was on land or sea."

It was not for him to outrun his Guide, or, as Sir Thomas Browne

expresses it, to "order the finger of the Almighty to His will and

pleasure, but to sit still under the soft showers of Providence." Very

wise are these essays, but their wisdom is not altogether that of this

world. They lead one away from all the jealousies, strifes, and

competitions of luxury, fashion, and gain, out of the close air of

parties and sects, into a region of calmness,--

"The haunt

Of every gentle wind whose breath can teach

The wild to love tranquillity,"--

a quiet habitation where all things are ordered in what he calls "the

pure reason;" a rest from all self-seeking, and where no man's interest

or activity conflicts with that of another. Beauty they certainly have,

but it is not that which the rules of art recognize; a certain

indefinable purity pervades them, making one sensible, as he reads, of a

sweetness as of violets. "The secret of Woolman's purity of style," said

Dr. Channing, "is that his eye was single, and that conscience dictated

his words."

Of course we are not to look to the writings of such a man for tricks of

rhetoric, the free play of imagination, or the unscrupulousness of

epigram and antithesis. He wrote as he lived, conscious of "the great

Task-master's eye." With the wise heathen Marcus Aurelius Antoninus he

had learned to "wipe out imaginations, to check desire, and let the

spirit that is the gift of God to every man, as his guardian and guide,

bear rule."

I have thought it inexpedient to swell the bulk of this volume with the

entire writings appended to the old edition of the Journal, inasmuch as

they mainly refer to a system which happily on this continent is no

longer a question at issue. I content myself with throwing together a

few passages from them which touch subjects of present interest.

"Selfish men may possess the earth: it is the meek alone who inherit it

from the Heavenly Father free from all defilements and perplexities of

unrighteousness."

"Whoever rightly advocates the cause of some thereby promotes the good of

the whole."

"If one suffer by the unfaithfulness of another, the mind, the most noble

part of him that occasions the discord, is thereby alienated from its

true happiness."

"There is harmony in the several parts of the Divine work in the hearts

of men. He who leads them to cease from those gainful employments which

are carried on in the wisdom which is from beneath delivers also from the

desire of worldly greatness, and reconciles to a life so plain that a

little suffices."

"After days and nights of drought, when the sky hath grown dark, and

clouds like lakes of water have hung over our heads, I have at times

beheld with awfulness the vehement lightning accompanying the blessings

of the rain, a messenger from Him to remind us of our duty in a right use

of His benefits."

"The marks of famine in a land appear as humbling admonitions from God,

instructing us by gentle chastisements, that we may remember that the

outward supply of life is a gift from our Heavenly Father, and that we

should not venture to use or apply that gift in a way contrary to pure

reason."

"Oppression in the extreme appears terrible; but oppression in more

refined appearances remains to be oppression. To labor for a perfect

redemption from the spirit of it is the great business of the whole

family of Jesus Christ in this world."

"In the obedience of faith we die to self-love, and, our life being 'hid

with Christ in God,' our hearts are enlarged towards mankind universally;

but many in striving to get treasures have departed from this true light

of life and stumbled on the dark mountains. That purity of life which

proceeds from faithfulness in following the pure spirit of truth, that

state in which our minds are devoted to serve God and all our wants are

bounded by His wisdom, has often been opened to me as a place of

retirement for the children of the light, in which we may be separated

from that which disordereth and confuseth the affairs of society, and may

have a testimony for our innocence in the hearts of those who behold us."

"There is a principle which is pure, placed in the human mind, which in

different places and ages bath had different names; it is, however, pure,

and proceeds from God. It is deep and inward, confined to no forms of

religion nor excluded from any, when the heart stands in perfect

sincerity. In whomsoever this takes root and grows, they become

brethren."

"The necessity of an inward stillness hath appeared clear to my mind. In

true silence strength is renewed, and the mind is weaned from all things,

save as they may be enjoyed in the Divine will; and a lowliness in

outward living, opposite to worldly honor, becomes truly acceptable to

us. In the desire after outward gain the mind is prevented from a

perfect attention to the voice of Christ; yet being weaned from all

things, except as they may be enjoyed in the Divine will, the pure light

shines into the soul. Where the fruits of the spirit which is of this

world are brought forth by many who profess to be led by the Spirit of

truth, and cloudiness is felt to be gathering over the visible church,

the sincere in heart, who abide in true stillness, and are exercised

therein before the Lord for His name's sake, have knowledge of Christ in

the fellowship of His sufferings; and inward thankfulness is felt at

times, that through Divine love our own wisdom is cast out, and that

forward, active part in us is subjected, which would rise and do

something without the pure leadings of the spirit of Christ.

"While aught remains in us contrary to a perfect resignation of our

wills, it is like a seal to the book wherein is written 'that good and

acceptable and perfect will of God' concerning us. But when our minds

entirely yield to Christ, that silence is known which followeth the

opening of the last of the seals. In this silence we learn to abide in

the Divine will, and there feel that we have no cause to promote except

that alone in which the light of life directs us."

Occasionally, in Considerations on the Keeping of? Negroes, the intense

interest of his subject gives his language something of passionate

elevation, as in the following extract:--

"When trade is carried on productive of much misery, and they who suffer

by it are many thousand miles off, the danger is the greater of not

laying their sufferings to heart. In procuring slaves on the coast of

Africa, many children are stolen privately; wars are encouraged among the

negroes, but all is at a great distance. Many groans arise from dying

men which we hear not. Many cries are uttered by widows and fatherless

children which reach not our ears. Many cheeks are wet with tears, and

faces sad with unutterable grief, which we see not. Cruel tyranny is

encouraged. The hands of robbers are strengthened.

"Were we, for the term of one year only, to be eye-witnesses of what

passeth in getting these slaves; were the blood that is there shed to be

sprinkled on our garments; were the poor captives, bound with thongs, and

heavily laden with elephants' teeth, to pass before our eyes on their way

to the sea; were their bitter lamentations, day after day, to ring in our

ears, and their mournful cries in the night to hinder us from sleeping,--

were we to behold and hear these things, what pious heart would not be

deeply affected with sorrow!"

"It is good for those who live in fulness to cultivate tenderness of

heart, and to improve every opportunity of being acquainted with the

hardships and fatigues of those who labor for their living, and thus to

think seriously with themselves: Am I influenced by true charity in

fixing all my demands? Have I no desire to support myself in expensive

customs, because my acquaintances live in such customs?

"If a wealthy man, on serious reflection, finds a witness in his own

conscience that he indulges himself in some expensive habits, which might

be omitted, consistently with the true design of living, and which, were

he to change places with those who occupy his estate, he would desire to

be discontinued by them,--whoever is thus awakened will necessarily find

the injunction binding, 'Do ye even so to them.' Divine Love imposeth no

rigorous or unreasonable commands, but graciously points out the spirit

of brotherhood and the way to happiness, in attaining which it is

necessary that we relinquish all that is selfish.

"Our gracious Creator cares and provides for all His creatures; His

tender mercies are over all His works, and so far as true love influences

our minds, so far we become interested in His workmanship, and feel a

desire to make use of every opportunity to lessen the distresses of the

afflicted, and to increase the happiness of the creation. Here we have a

prospect of one common interest from which our own is inseparable, so

that to turn all we possess into the channel of universal love becomes

the business of our lives."

His liberality and freedom from "all narrowness as to sects and opinions"

are manifest in the following passages:--

"Men who sincerely apply their minds to true virtue, and find an inward

support from above, by which all vicious inclinations are made subject;

who love God sincerely, and prefer the real good of mankind universally

to their own private interest,--though these, through the strength of

education and tradition, may remain under some great speculative errors,

it would be uncharitable to say that therefore God rejects them. The

knowledge and goodness of Him who creates, supports, and gives

understanding to all men are superior to the various states and

circumstances of His creatures, which to us appear the most difficult.

Idolatry indeed is wickedness; but it is the thing, not the name, which

is so. Real idolatry is to pay that adoration to a creature which is

known to be due only to the true God.

"He who professeth to believe in one Almighty Creator, and in His Son

Jesus Christ, and is yet more intent on the honors, profits, and

friendships of the world than he is, in singleness of heart, to stand

faithful to the Christian religion, is in the channel of idolatry; while

the Gentile, who, notwithstanding some mistaken opinions, is established

in the true principle of virtue, and humbly adores an Almighty Power, may

be of the number that fear God and work righteousness."

Nowhere has what is called the "Labor Question," which is now agitating

the world, been discussed more wisely and with a broader humanity than in

these essays. His sympathies were with the poor man, yet the rich too

are his brethren, and he warns them in love and pity of the consequences

of luxury and oppression:--

"Every degree of luxury, every demand for money inconsistent with the

Divine order, hath connection with unnecessary labors."

"To treasure up wealth for another generation, by means of the immoderate

labor of those who in some measure depend upon us, is doing evil at

present, without knowing that wealth thus gathered may not be applied to

evil purposes when we are gone. To labor hard, or cause others to do so,

that we may live conformably to customs which our Redeemer

discountenanced by His example, and which are contrary to Divine order,

is to manure a soil for propagating an evil seed in the earth."

"When house is joined to house, and field laid to field, until there is

no place, and the poor are thereby straitened, though this is done by

bargain and purchase, yet so far as it stands distinguished from

universal love, so far that woe predicted by the prophet will accompany

their proceedings. As He who first founded the earth was then the true

proprietor of it, so He still remains, and though He hath given it to the

children of men, so that multitudes of people have had their sustenance

from it while they continued here, yet He bath never alienated it, but

His right is as good as at first; nor can any apply the increase of their

possessions contrary to universal love, nor dispose of lands in a way

which they know tends to exalt some by oppressing others, without being

justly chargeable with usurpation."

It will not lessen the value of the foregoing extracts in the minds of

the true-disciples of our Divine Lord, that they are manifestly not

written to subserve the interests of a narrow sectarianism. They might

have been penned by Fenelon in his time, or Robertson in ours, dealing as

they do with Christian practice,--the life of Christ manifesting itself

in purity and goodness,--rather than with the dogmas of theology. The

underlying thought of all is simple obedience to the Divine word in the

soul. "Not every one that saith unto me Lord, Lord, shall enter into the

kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father in heaven."

In the preface to an English edition, published some years ago, it is

intimated that objections had been raised to the Journal on the ground

that it had so little to say of doctrines and so much of duties. One may

easily understand that this objection might have been forcibly felt by

the slave-holding religious professors of Woolman's day, and that it may

still be entertained by a class of persons who, like the Cabalists,

attach a certain mystical significance to words, names, and titles, and

who in consequence question the piety which hesitates to flatter the

Divine ear by "vain repetitions" and formal enumeration of sacred

attributes, dignities, and offices. Every instinct of his tenderly

sensitive nature shrank from the wordy irreverence of noisy profession.

His very silence is significant: the husks of emptiness rustle in every

wind; the full corn in the ear holds up its golden fruit noiselessly to

the Lord of the harvest. John Woolman's faith, like the Apostle's, is

manifested by his labors, standing not in words but in the demonstration

of the spirit,--a faith that works by love to the purifying of the heart.

The entire outcome of this faith was love manifested in reverent waiting

upon God, and in that untiring benevolence, that quiet but deep

enthusiasm of humanity, which made his daily service to his fellow-

creatures a hymn of praise to the common Father.

However the intellect may criticise such a life, whatever defects it may

present to the trained eyes of theological adepts, the heart has no

questions to ask, but at once owns and reveres it. Shall we regret that

he who had so entered into fellowship of suffering with the Divine One,

walking with Him under the cross, and dying daily to self, gave to the

faith and hope that were in him this testimony of a life, rather than any

form of words, however sound? A true life is at once interpreter and

proof of the gospel, and does more to establish its truth in the hearts

of men than all the "Evidences" and "Bodies of Divinity" which have

perplexed the world with more doubts than they solved. Shall we venture

to account it a defect in his Christian character, that, under an abiding

sense of the goodness and long-suffering of God, he wrought his work in

gentleness and compassion, with the delicate tenderness which comes of a

deep sympathy with the trials and weaknesses of our nature, never

allowing himself to indulge in heat or violence, persuading rather than

threatening? Did he overestimate that immeasurable Love, the

manifestation of which in his own heart so reached the hearts of others,

revealing everywhere unsuspected fountains of feeling and secret longings

after purity, as the rod of the diviner detects sweet, cool water-springs

under the parched surfaces of a thirsty land? And, looking at the

purity, wisdom, and sweetness of his life, who shall say that his faith

in the teaching of the Holy Spirit--the interior guide and light--was a

mistaken one? Surely it was no illusion by which his feet were so guided

that all who saw him felt that, like Enoch, he walked with God. "Without

the actual inspiration of the Spirit of Grace, the inward teacher and

soul of our souls," says Fenelon, "we could neither do, will, nor believe

good. We must silence every creature, we must silence ourselves also, to

hear in a profound stillness of the soul this inexpressible voice of

Christ. The outward word of the gospel itself without this living

efficacious word within would be but an empty sound." "Thou Lord," says

Augustine in his Meditations, "communicatest thyself to all: thou

teachest the heart without words; thou speakest to it without articulate

sounds."

"However, I am sure that there is a common spirit that plays within

us, and that is the Spirit of God. Whoever feels not the warm gale

and gentle ventilation of this Spirit, I dare not say he lives; for

truly without this to me there is no heat under the tropic, nor any

light though I dwelt in the body of the sun."--Sir Thomas Browne's

Religio Medici.

Never was this divine principle more fully tested than by John Wool man;

and the result is seen in a life of such rare excellence that the world

is still better and richer for its sake, and the fragrance of it comes

down to us through a century, still sweet and precious.

It will be noted throughout the Journal and essays that in his lifelong

testimony against wrong he never lost sight of the oneness of humanity,

its common responsibility, its fellowship of suffering and communion of

sin. Few have ever had so profound a conviction of the truth of the

Apostle's declaration that no man liveth and no man dieth to himself.

Sin was not to him an isolated fact, the responsibility of which began

and ended with the individual transgressor; he saw it as a part of a vast

network and entanglement, and traced the lines of influence converging

upon it in the underworld of causation. Hence the wrong and discord

which pained him called out pity, rather than indignation. The first

inquiry which they awakened was addressed to his own conscience. How far

am I in thought, word, custom, responsible for this? Have none of my

fellow-creatures an equitable right to any part which is called mine?

Have the gifts and possessions received by me from others been conveyed

in a way free from all unrighteousness? "Through abiding in the law of

Christ," he says, "we feel a tenderness towards our fellow-creatures, and

a concern so to walk that our conduct may not be the means of

strengthening them in error." He constantly recurs to the importance of

a right example in those who profess to be led by the spirit of Christ,

and who attempt to labor in His name for the benefit of their fellow-men.

If such neglect or refuse themselves to act rightly, they can but

"entangle the minds of others and draw a veil over the face of

righteousness." His eyes were anointed to see the common point of

departure from the Divine harmony, and that all the varied growths of

evil had their underlying root in human selfishness. He saw that every

sin of the individual was shared in greater or less degree by all whose

lives were opposed to the Divine order, and that pride, luxury, and

avarice in one class gave motive and temptation to the grosser forms of

evil in another. How gentle, and yet how searching, are his rebukes of

self-complacent respectability, holding it responsible, in spite of all

its decent seemings, for much of the depravity which it condemned with

Pharisaical harshness! In his Considerations on the True Harmony of

Mankind be dwells with great earnestness upon the importance of

possessing "the mind of Christ," which removes from the heart the desire

of superiority and worldly honors, incites attention to the Divine

Counsellor, and awakens an ardent engagement to promote the happiness of

all. "This state," he says, "in which every motion from the selfish

spirit yieldeth to pure love, I may acknowledge with gratitude to the

Father of Mercies, is often opened before me as a pearl to seek after."

At times when I have felt true love open my heart towards my fellow-

creatures, and have been engaged in weighty conversation in the cause of

righteousness, the instructions I have received under these exercises in

regard to the true use of the outward gifts of God have made deep and

lasting impressions on my mind. I have beheld how the desire to provide

wealth and to uphold a delicate life has greviously entangled many, and

has been like a snare to their offspring; and though some have been

affected with a sense of their difficulties, and have appeared desirous

at times to be helped out of them, yet for want of abiding under the

humbling power of truth they have continued in these entanglements;

expensive living in parents and children hath called for a large supply,

and in answering this call the 'faces of the poor' have been ground away,

and made thin through hard dealing.

"There is balm; there is a physician! and oh what longings do I feel that

we may embrace the means appointed for our healing; may know that removed

which now ministers cause for the cries of many to ascend to Heaven

against their oppressors; and that thus we may see the true harmony

restored!--a restoration of that which was lost at Babel, and which will

be, as the prophet expresses it, 'the returning of a pure language!'"

It is easy to conceive how unwelcome this clear spiritual insight must

have been to the superficial professors of his time busy in tithing mint,

anise, and cummin. There must have been something awful in the presence

of one endowed with the gift of looking through all the forms, shows, and

pretensions of society, and detecting with certainty the germs of evil

hidden beneath them; a man gentle and full of compassion, clothed in "the

irresistible might of meekness," and yet so wise in spiritual

discernment,

"Bearing a touchstone in his hand

And testing all things in the land

By his unerring spell.

"Quick births of transmutation smote

The fair to foul, the foul to fair;

Purple nor ermine did he spare,

Nor scorn the dusty coat."

In bringing to a close this paper, the preparation of which has been to

me a labor of love, I am not unmindful of the wide difference between the

appreciation of a pure and true life and the living of it, and am willing

to own that in delineating a character of such moral and spiritual

symmetry I have felt something like rebuke from my own words. I have

been awed and solemnized by the presence of a serene and beautiful spirit

redeemed of the Lord from all selfishness, and I have been made thankful

for the ability to recognize and the disposition to love him. I leave

the book with its readers. They may possibly make large deductions from

my estimate of the author; they may not see the importance of all his

self-denying testimonies; they may question some of his scruples, and

smile over passages of childlike simplicity; but I believe they will all

agree in thanking me for introducing them to the Journal of John Woolman.

AMESBURY, 20th 1st mo.,1871.

HAVERFORD COLLEGE.

Letter to President Thomas Chase, LL. D.

AMESBURY, MASS., 9th mo., 1884.

THE Semi-Centennial of Haverford College is an event that no member of

the Society of Friends can regard without deep interest. It would give

me great pleasure to be with you on the 27th inst., but the years rest

heavily upon me, and I have scarcely health or strength for such a

journey.

It was my privilege to visit Haverford in 1838, in "the day of small

beginnings." The promise of usefulness which it then gave has been more

than fulfilled. It has grown to be a great and well-established

institution, and its influence in thorough education and moral training

has been widely felt. If the high educational standard presented in the

scholastic treatise of Barclay and the moral philosophy of Dymond has

been lowered or disowned by many who, still retaining the name of

Quakerism, have lost faith in the vital principle wherein precious

testimonials of practical righteousness have their root, and have gone

back to a dead literalness, and to those materialistic ceremonials for

leaving which our old confessors suffered bonds and death, Haverford, at

least, has been in a good degree faithful to the trust committed to it.

Under circumstances of more than ordinary difficulty, it has endeavored

to maintain the Great Testimony. The spirit of its culture has not been

a narrow one, nor could it be, if true to the broad and catholic

principles of the eminent worthies who founded the State of

Pennsylvania, Penn, Lloyd, Pastorius, Logan, and Story; men who were

masters of the scientific knowledge and culture of their age, hospitable

to all truth, and open to all light, and who in some instances

anticipated the result of modern research and critical inquiry.

It was Thomas Story, a minister of the Society of Friends, and member of

Penn's Council of State, who, while on a religious visit to England,

wrote to James Logan that he had read on the stratified rocks of

Scarborough, as from the finger of God, proofs of the immeasurable age

of our planet, and that the "days" of the letter of Scripture could

only mean vast spaces of time.

May Haverford emulate the example of these brave but reverent men, who,

in investigating nature, never lost sight of the Divine Ideal, and who,

to use the words of Fenelon, "Silenced themselves to hear in the

stillness of their souls the inexpressible voice of Christ." Holding

fast the mighty truth of the Divine Immanence, the Inward Light and

Word, a Quaker college can have no occasion to renew the disastrous

quarrel of religion with science. Against the sublime faith which shall

yet dominate the world, skepticism has no power. No possible

investigation of natural facts; no searching criticism of letter and

tradition can disturb it, for it has its witness in all human hearts.

That Haverford may fully realize and improve its great opportunities as

an approved seat of learning and the exponent of a Christian philosophy

which can never be superseded, which needs no change to fit it for

universal acceptance, and which, overpassing the narrow limits of sect,

is giving new life and hope to Christendom, and finding its witnesses in

the Hindu revivals of the Brahmo Somaj and the fervent utterances of

Chunda Sen and Mozoomdar, is the earnest desire of thy friend.

CRITICISM: EVANGELINE

A review of Mr. Longfellow's poem.

EUREKA! Here, then, we have it at last,--an American poem, with the lack

of which British reviewers have so long reproached us. Selecting the

subject of all others best calculated for his purpose,--the expulsion of

the French settlers of Acadie from their quiet and pleasant homes around

the Basin of Minas, one of the most sadly romantic passages in the

history of the Colonies of the North,--the author has succeeded in

presenting a series of exquisite pictures of the striking and peculiar

features of life and nature in the New World. The range of these

delineations extends from Nova Scotia on the northeast to the spurs of

the Rocky Mountains on the west and the Gulf of Mexico on the south.

Nothing can be added to his pictures of quiet farm-life in Acadie, the

Indian summer of our northern latitudes, the scenery of the Ohio and

Mississippi Rivers, the bayous and cypress forests of the South, the

mocking-bird, the prairie, the Ozark hills, the Catholic missions, and

the wild Arabs of the West, roaming with the buffalo along the banks of

the Nebraska. The hexameter measure he has chosen has the advantage of a

prosaic freedom of expression, exceedingly well adapted to a descriptive

and narrative poem; yet we are constrained to think that the story of

Evangeline would have been quite as acceptable to the public taste had it

been told in the poetic prose of the author's Hyperion.

In reading it and admiring its strange melody we were not without fears

that the success of Professor Longfellow in this novel experiment might

prove the occasion of calling out a host of awkward imitators, leading us

over weary wastes of hexameters, enlivened neither by dew, rain, nor

fields of offering.

Apart from its Americanism, the poem has merits of a higher and universal

character. It is not merely a work of art; the pulse of humanity throbs

warmly through it. The portraits of Basil the blacksmith, the old

notary, Benedict Bellefontaine, and good Father Felician, fairly glow

with life. The beautiful Evangeline, loving and faithful unto death, is

a heroine worthy of any poet of the present century.

The editor of the Boston Chronotype, in the course of an appreciative

review of this poem, urges with some force a single objection, which we

are induced to notice, as it is one not unlikely to present itself to the

minds of other readers:--

"We think Mr. Longfellow ought to have expressed a much deeper

indignation at the base, knavish, and heartless conduct of the English

and Colonial persecutors than he has done. He should have put far bolder

and deeper tints in the picture of suffering. One great, if not the

greatest, end of poetry is rhadamanthine justice. The poet should mete

out their deserts to all his heroes; honor to whom honor, and infamy to

whom infamy, is due.

"It is true that the wrong in this case is in a great degree fathered

upon our own Massachusetts; and it maybe said that it is afoul bird that

pollutes its own nest. We deny the applicability of the rather musty

proverb. All the worse. Of not a more contemptible vice is what is

called American literature guilty than this of unmitigated self-

laudation. If we persevere in it, the stock will become altogether too

small for the business. It seems that no period of our history has been

exempt from materials for patriotic humiliation and national self-

reproach; and surely the present epoch is laying in a large store of that

sort. Had our poets always told us the truth of ourselves, perhaps it

would now be otherwise. National self-flattery and concealment of faults

must of course have their natural results."

We must confess that we read the first part of Evangeline with something

of the feeling so forcibly expressed by Professor Wright. The natural

and honest indignation with which, many years ago, we read for the first

time that dark page of our Colonial history--the expulsion of the French

neutrals--was reawakened by the simple pathos of the poem; and we longed

to find an adequate expression of it in the burning language of the poet.

We marvelled that he who could so touch the heart by his description of

the sad suffering of the Acadian peasants should have permitted the

authors of that suffering to escape without censure. The outburst of the

stout Basil, in the church of Grand Pre, was, we are fain to acknowledge,

a great relief to us. But, before reaching the close of the volume, we

were quite reconciled to the author's forbearance. The design of the

poem is manifestly incompatible with stern "rhadamanthine justice" and

indignant denunciation of wrong. It is a simple story of quiet pastoral

happiness, of great sorrow and painful bereavement, and of the endurance

of a love which, hoping and seeking always, wanders evermore up and down

the wilderness of the world, baffled at every turn, yet still retaining

faith in God and in the object of its lifelong quest. It was no part of

the writer's object to investigate the merits of the question at issue

between the poor Acadians and their Puritan neighbors. Looking at the

materials before him with the eye of an artist simply, he has arranged

them to suit his idea of the beautiful and pathetic, leaving to some

future historian the duty of sitting in judgment upon the actors in the

atrocious outrage which furnished them. With this we are content. The

poem now has unity and sweetness which might have been destroyed by

attempting to avenge the wrongs it so vividly depicts. It is a psalm of

love and forgiveness: the gentleness and peace of Christian meekness and

forbearance breathe through it. Not a word of censure is directly

applied to the marauding workers of the mighty sorrow which it describes

just as it would a calamity from the elements,--a visitation of God. The

reader, however, cannot fail to award justice to the wrong-doers. The

unresisting acquiescence of the Acadians only deepens his detestation of

the cupidity and religious bigotry of their spoilers. Even in the

language of the good Father Felician, beseeching his flock to submit to

the strong hand which had been laid upon them, we see and feel the

magnitude of the crime to be forgiven:--

"Lo, where the crucified Christ from his cross is gazing upon you!

See in those sorrowful eyes what meekness and holy compassion!

Hark! how those lips still repeat the prayer, O Father, forgive

them!

Let us repeat that prayer in the hour when the wicked assail us;

Let us repeat it now, and say, O Father, forgive them!"

How does this simple prayer of the Acadians contrast with the "deep

damnation of their taking off!"

The true history of the Puritans of New England is yet to be written.

Somewhere midway between the caricatures of the Church party and the

self-laudations of their own writers the point may doubtless be found

from whence an impartial estimate of their character may be formed. They

had noble qualities: the firmness and energy which they displayed in the

colonization of New England must always command admiration. We would not

rob them, were it in our power to do so, of one jot or tittle of their

rightful honor. But, with all the lights which we at present possess, we

cannot allow their claim of saintship without some degree of

qualification. How they seemed to their Dutch neighbors at New

Netherlands, and their French ones at Nova Scotia, and to the poor

Indians, hunted from their fisheries and game-grounds, we can very well

conjecture. It may be safely taken for granted that their gospel claim

to the inheritance of the earth was not a little questionable to the

Catholic fleeing for his life from their jurisdiction, to the banished

Baptist shaking off the dust of his feet against them, and to the

martyred Quaker denouncing woe and judgment upon them from the steps of

the gallows. Most of them were, beyond a doubt, pious and sincere; but

we are constrained to believe that among them were those who wore the

livery of heaven from purely selfish motives, in a community where

church-membership was an indispensable requisite, the only open sesame

before which the doors of honor and distinction swung wide to needy or

ambitious aspirants. Mere adventurers, men of desperate fortunes,

bankrupts in character and purse, contrived to make gain of godliness

under the church and state government of New England, put on the austere

exterior of sanctity, quoted Scripture, anathematized heretics, whipped

Quakers, exterminated Indians, burned and spoiled the villages of their

Catholic neighbors, and hewed down their graven images and "houses of

Rimmon." It is curious to observe how a fierce religious zeal against

heathen and idolaters went hand in hand with the old Anglo-Saxon love of

land and plunder. Every crusade undertaken against the Papists of the

French colonies had its Puritan Peter the Hermit to summon the saints to

the wars of the Lord. At the siege of Louisburg, ten years before the

onslaught upon the Acadian settlers, one minister marched with the

Colonial troops, axe in hand, to hew down the images in the French

churches; while another officiated in the double capacity of drummer and

chaplain,--a "drum ecclesiastic," as Hudibras has it.

At the late celebration of the landing of the Pilgrims in New York, the

orator of the day labored at great length to show that the charge of

intolerance, as urged against the colonists of New England, is unfounded

in fact. The banishment of the Catholics was very sagaciously passed

over in silence, inasmuch as the Catholic Bishop of New York was one of

the invited guests, and (hear it, shade of Cotton Mather!) one of the

regular toasts was a compliment to the Pope. The expulsion of Roger

Williams was excused and partially justified; while the whipping, ear-

cropping, tongue-boring, and hanging of the Quakers was defended, as the

only effectual method of dealing with such devil-driven heretics, as

Mather calls them. The orator, in the new-born zeal of his amateur

Puritanism, stigmatizes the persecuted class as "fanatics and ranters,

foaming forth their mad opinions;" compares them to the Mormons and the

crazy followers of Mathias; and cites an instance of a poor enthusiast,

named Eccles, who, far gone in the "tailor's melancholy," took it into

his head that he must enter into a steeple-house pulpit and stitch

breeches "in singing time,"--a circumstance, by the way, which took place

in Old England,--as a justification of the atrocious laws of the

Massachusetts Colony. We have not the slightest disposition to deny the

fanaticism and folly of some few professed Quakers in that day; and had

the Puritans treated them as the Pope did one of their number whom he

found crazily holding forth in the church of St. Peter, and consigned

them to the care of physicians as religious monomaniacs, no sane man

could have blamed them. Every sect, in its origin, and especially in its

time of persecution, has had its fanatics. The early Christians, if we

may credit the admissions of their own writers or attach the slightest

credence to the statements of pagan authors, were by no means exempt from

reproach and scandal in this respect. Were the Puritans themselves the

men to cast stones at the Quakers and Baptists? Had they not, in the

view at least of the Established Church, turned all England upside down

with their fanaticisms and extravagances of doctrine and conduct? How

look they as depicted in the sermons of Dr. South, in the sarcastic pages

of Hudibras, and the coarse caricatures of the clerical wits of the times

of the second Charles? With their own backs scored and their ears

cropped for the crime of denying the divine authority of church and state

in England, were they the men to whip Baptists and hang Quakers for doing

the same thing in Massachusetts?

Of all that is noble and true in the Puritan character we are sincere

admirers. The generous and self-denying apostleship of Eliot is, of

itself, a beautiful page in their history. The physical daring and

hardihood with which, amidst the times of savage warfare, they laid the

foundations of mighty states, and subdued the rugged soil, and made the

wilderness blossom; their steadfast adherence to their religious

principles, even when the Restoration had made apostasy easy and

profitable; and the vigilance and firmness with which, under all

circumstances, they held fast their chartered liberties and extorted new

rights and privileges from the reluctant home government,--justly entitle

them to the grateful remembrance of a generation now reaping the fruits

of their toils and sacrifices. But, in expressing our gratitude to the

founders of New England, we should not forget what is due to truth and

justice; nor, for the sake of vindicating them from the charge of that

religious intolerance which, at the time, they shared with nearly all

Christendom, undertake to defend, in the light of the nineteenth century,

opinions and practices hostile to the benignant spirit of the gospel and

subversive of the inherent rights of man.

MIRTH AND MEDICINE

A review of Poems by Oliver Wendell Holmes.

IF any of our readers (and at times we fear it is the case with all) need

amusement and the wholesome alterative of a hearty laugh, we commend

them, not to Dr. Holmes the physician, but to Dr. Holmes the scholar, the

wit, and the humorist; not to the scientific medical professor's

barbarous Latin, but to his poetical prescriptions, given in choice old

Saxon. We have tried them, and are ready to give the Doctor certificates

of their efficacy.

Looking at the matter from the point of theory only, we should say that a

physician could not be otherwise than melancholy. A merry doctor! Why,

one might as well talk of a laughing death's-head,--the cachinnation of a

monk's _memento mori_. This life of ours is sorrowful enough at its best

estate; the brightest phase of it is "sicklied o'er with the pale cast"

of the future or the past. But it is the special vocation of the doctor

to look only upon the shadow; to turn away from the house of feasting and

go down to that of mourning; to breathe day after day the atmosphere of

wretchedness; to grow familiar with suffering; to look upon humanity

disrobed of its pride and glory, robbed of all its fictitious ornaments,

--weak, helpless, naked,--and undergoing the last fearful metempsychosis

from its erect and godlike image, the living temple of an enshrined

divinity, to the loathsome clod and the inanimate dust. Of what ghastly

secrets of moral and physical disease is he the depositary! There is woe

before him and behind him; he is hand and glove with misery by

prescription,--the ex officio gauger of the ills that flesh is heir to.

He has no home, unless it be at the bedside of the querulous, the

splenetic, the sick, and the dying. He sits down to carve his turkey,

and is summoned off to a post-mortem examination of another sort. All

the diseases which Milton's imagination embodied in the lazar-house dog

his footsteps and pluck at his doorbell. Hurrying from one place to

another at their beck, he knows nothing of the quiet comfort of the

"sleek-headed men who sleep o' nights." His wife, if he has one, has an

undoubted right to advertise him as a deserter of "bed and board." His

ideas of beauty, the imaginations of his brain, and the affections of his

heart are regulated and modified by the irrepressible associations of his

luckless profession. Woman as well as man is to him of the earth,

earthy. He sees incipient disease where the uninitiated see only

delicacy. A smile reminds him of his dental operations; a blushing cheek

of his hectic patients; pensive melancholy is dyspepsia; sentimentalism,

nervousness. Tell him of lovelorn hearts, of the "worm I' the bud," of

the mental impalement upon Cupid's arrow, like that of a giaour upon the

spear of a janizary, and he can only think of lack of exercise, of

tightlacing, and slippers in winter. Sheridan seems to have understood

all this, if we may judge from the lament of his Doctor, in St.

Patrick's Day, over his deceased helpmate. "Poor dear Dolly," says he.

"I shall never see her like again; such an arm for a bandage! veins that

seemed to invite the lancet! Then her skin,--smooth and white as a

gallipot; her mouth as round and not larger than that of a penny vial;

and her teeth,--none of your sturdy fixtures,--ache as they would, it was

only a small pull, and out they came. I believe I have drawn half a

score of her dear pearls. (Weeps.) But what avails her beauty? She has

gone, and left no little babe to hang like a label on papa's neck!"

So much for speculation and theory. In practice it is not so bad after

all. The grave-digger in Hamlet has his jokes and grim jests. We have

known many a jovial sexton; and we have heard clergymen laugh heartily at

small provocation close on the heel of a cool calculation that the great

majority of their fellow-creatures were certain of going straight to

perdition. Why, then, should not even the doctor have his fun? Nay, is

it not his duty to be merry, by main force if necessary? Solomon, who,

from his great knowledge of herbs, must have been no mean practitioner

for his day, tells us that "a merry heart doeth good like a medicine;"

and universal experience has confirmed the truth of his maxim. Hence it

is, doubtless, that we have so many anecdotes of facetious doctors,

distributing their pills and jokes together, shaking at the same time the

contents of their vials and the sides of their patients. It is merely

professional, a trick of the practice, unquestionably, in most cases; but

sometimes it is a "natural gift," like that of the "bonesetters," and

"scrofula strokers," and "cancer curers," who carry on a sort of guerilla

war with human maladies. Such we know to be the case with Dr. Holmes.

He was born for the "laughter cure," as certainly as Priessnitz was for

the "water cure," and has been quite as successful in his way, while his

prescriptions are infinitely more agreeable.

The volume now before us gives, in addition to the poems and lyrics

contained in the two previous editions, some hundred or more pages of the

later productions of the author, in the sprightly vein, and marked by the

brilliant fancy and felicitous diction for which the former were

noteworthy. His longest and most elaborate poem, _Urania_, is perhaps

the best specimen of his powers. Its general tone is playful and

humorous; but there are passages of great tenderness and pathos. Witness

the following, from a description of the city churchgoers. The whole

compass of our literature has few passages to equal its melody and

beauty.

"Down the chill street, which winds in gloomiest shade,

What marks betray yon solitary maid?

The cheek's red rose, that speaks of balmier air,

The Celtic blackness of her braided hair;

The gilded missal in her kerchief tied;

Poor Nora, exile from Killarney's side!

Sister in toil, though born of colder skies,

That left their azure in her downcast eyes,

See pallid Margaret, Labor's patient child,

Scarce weaned from home, a nursling of the wild,

Where white Katahdin o'er the horizon shines,

And broad Penobscot dashes through the pines;

Still, as she hastes, her careful fingers hold

The unfailing hymn-book in its cambric fold:

Six days at Drudgery's heavy wheel she stands,

The seventh sweet morning folds her weary hands.

Yes, child of suffering, thou mayst well be sure

He who ordained the Sabbath loved the poor."

This is but one of many passages, showing that the author is capable of

moving the heart as well as of tickling the fancy. There is no straining

for effect; simple, natural thoughts are expressed in simple and

perfectly transparent language.

_Terpsichore_, read at an annual dinner of the Phi Beta Kappa Society at

Cambridge, sparkles throughout with keen wit, quaint conceits, and satire

so good-natured that the subjects of it can enjoy it as heartily as their

neighbors. Witness this thrust at our German-English writers:--

"Essays so dark, Champollion might despair

To guess what mummy of a thought was there,

Where our poor English, striped with foreign phrase, Looks like a

zebra in a parson's chaise."

Or this at our transcendental friends:--

"Deluded infants! will they never know

Some doubts must darken o'er the world below

Though all the Platos of the nursery trail

Their clouds of glory at the go-cart's tail?"

The lines _On Lending a Punch-Bowl_ are highly characteristic. Nobody

but Holmes could have conjured up so many rare fancies in connection with

such a matter. Hear him:--

"This ancient silver bowl of mine, it tells of good old times,

Of joyous days, and jolly nights, and merry Christmas chimes;

They were a free and jovial race, but honest, brave, and true,

That dipped their ladle in the punch when this old bowl was new.

"A Spanish galleon brought the bar; so runs the ancient tale;

'T was hammered by an Antwerp smith, whose arm was like a flail;

And now and then between the strokes, for fear his strength should fail,

He wiped his brow, and quaffed a cup of good old Flemish ale.

"'T was purchased by an English squire to please his loving dame,

Who saw the cherubs, and conceived a longing for the same;

And oft as on the ancient stock another twig was found,

'T was filled with candle spiced and hot and handed smoking round.

"But, changing hands, it reached at length a Puritan divine,

Who used to follow Timothy, and take a little wine,

But hated punch and prelacy; and so it was, perhaps,

He went to Leyden, where he found conventicles and schnaps.

"And then, of course, you know what's next,--it left the Dutchman's shore

With those that in the Mayflower came,--a hundred souls and more,--

Along with all the furniture, to fill their new abodes,--

To judge by what is still on hand, at least a hundred loads.

"'T was on a dreary winter's eve, the night was closing dim,

When brave Miles Standish took the bowl, and filled it to the brim;

The little Captain stood and stirred the posset with his sword,

And all his sturdy men-at-arms were ranged about the board.

"He poured the fiery Hollands in,--the man that never feared,--

He took a long and solemn draught, and wiped his yellow beard;

And one by one the musketeers--the men that fought and prayed--

All drank as 't were their mother's milk, and not a man afraid.

"That night, affrighted from his nest, the screaming eagle flew,

He heard the Pequot's ringing whoop, the soldier's wild halloo;

And there the sachem learned the rule he taught to kith and kin,

'Run from the white man when you find he smells of Hollands gin!'"

In his _Nux Postcoenatica_ he gives us his reflections on being invited

to a dinner-party, where he was expected to "set the table in a roar" by

reading funny verses. He submits it to the judgment and common sense of

the importunate bearer of the invitation, that this dinner-going, ballad-

making, mirth-provoking habit is not likely to benefit his reputation as

a medical professor.

"Besides, my prospects. Don't you know that people won't employ

A man that wrongs his manliness by laughing like a boy,

And suspect the azure blossom that unfolds upon a shoot,

As if Wisdom's oldpotato could not flourish at its root?

"It's a very fine reflection, when you're etching out a smile

On a copperplate of faces that would stretch into a mile.

That, what with sneers from enemies and cheapening shrugs from friends,

It will cost you all the earnings that a month of labor lends."

There are, as might be expected, some commonplace pieces in the volume,--

a few failures in the line of humor. The _Spectre Pig_, the _Dorchester

Giant_, the _Height of the Ridiculous_, and one or two others might be

omitted in the next edition without detriment. They would do well enough

for an amateur humorist, but are scarcely worthy of one who stands at the

head of the profession.

It was said of James Smith, of the Rejected Addresses, that "if he had

not been a witty man, he would have been a great man." Hood's humor and

drollery kept in the background the pathos and beauty of his sober

productions; and Dr. Holmes, we suspect, might have ranked higher among a

large class of readers than he now does had he never written his _Ballad

of the Oysterman_, his _Comet_, and his _September Gale_. Such lyrics as

_La Grisette_, the _Puritan's Vision_, and that unique compound of humor

and pathos, _The Last Leaf_; show that he possesses the power of touching

the deeper chords of the heart and of calling forth tears as well as

smiles. Who does not feel the power of this simple picture of the old

man in the last-mentioned poem?

"But now he walks the streets,

And he looks at all he meets

Sad and wan,

And he shakes his feeble head,

That it seems as if he said,

'They are gone.'

"The mossy marbles rest

On the lips that he has prest

In their bloom,

And the names he loved to hear

Have been carved for many a year

On the tomb."

Dr. Holmes has been likened to Thomas Hood; but there is little in common

between them save the power of combining fancy and sentiment with

grotesque drollery and humor. Hood, under all his whims and oddities,

conceals the vehement intensity of a reformer. The iron of the world's

wrongs had entered into his soul; there is an undertone of sorrow in his

lyrics; his sarcasm, directed against oppression and bigotry, at times

betrays the earnestness of one whose own withers have been wrung. Holmes

writes simply for the amusement of himself and his readers; he deals only

with the vanity, the foibles, and the minor faults of mankind, good

naturedly and almost sympathizingly suggesting excuses for the folly

which he tosses about on the horns of his ridicule. In this respect he

differs widely from his fellow-townsman, Russell Lowell, whose keen wit

and scathing sarcasm, in the famous Biglow Papers, and the notes of

Parson Wilbur, strike at the great evils of society and deal with the

rank offences of church and state. Hosea Biglow, in his way, is as

earnest a preacher as Habakkuk Mucklewrath or Obadiah Bind-their-kings-

in-chains-and-their-nobles-in-fetters-of-iron. His verse smacks of the

old Puritan flavor. Holmes has a gentler mission. His careless, genial

humor reminds us of James Smith in his _Rejected Addresses_ and of Horace

in _London_. Long may he live to make broader the face of our care-

ridden generation, and to realize for himself the truth of the wise man's

declaration that a "merry heart is a continual feast."

FAME AND GLORY.

Notice of an Address before the Literary Society of Amherst College, by

Charles Sumner.

THE learned and eloquent author of the pamphlet lying before us with the

above title belongs to a class, happily on the increase in our country,

who venture to do homage to unpopular truths in defiance of the social

and political tyranny of opinion which has made so many of our statesmen,

orators, and divines the mere playthings and shuttlecocks of popular

impulses for evil far oftener than for good. His first production, the

_True Grandeur of Nations_, written for the anniversary of American

Independence, was not more remarkable for its evidences of a highly

cultivated taste and wide historical research than for its inculcation of

a high morality,--the demand for practical Christianity in nations as

well as individuals. It burned no incense under the nostrils of an

already inflated and vain people. It gratified them by no rhetorical

falsehoods about "the land of the free and the home of the brave." It

did not apostrophize military heroes, nor strut "red wat shod" over the

plains of battle, nor call up, like another Ezekiel, from the valley of

vision the dry bones thereof. It uttered none of the precious scoundrel

cant, so much in vogue after the annexation of Texas was determined upon,

about the destiny of the United States to enter in and possess the lands

of all whose destiny it is to live next us, and to plant everywhere the

"peculiar institutions" of a peculiarly Christian and chosen people, the

landstealing propensity of whose progressive republicanism is declared to

be in accordance with the will and by the grace of God, and who, like the

Scotch freebooter,--

"Pattering an Ave Mary

When he rode on a border forray,"--

while trampling on the rights of a sister republic, and re-creating

slavery where that republic had abolished it, talk piously of "the

designs of Providence" and the Anglo-Saxon instrumentalities thereof in

"extending the area of freedom." On the contrary, the author portrayed

the evils of war and proved its incompatibility with Christianity,--

contrasting with its ghastly triumphs the mild victories of peace and

love. Our true mission, he taught, was not to act over in the New World

the barbarous game which has desolated the Old; but to offer to the

nations of the earth, warring and discordant, oppressed and oppressing,

the beautiful example of a free and happy people studying the things

which make for peace,--Democracy and Christianity walking hand in hand,

blessing and being blessed.

His next public effort, an Address before the Literary Society of his

Alma Mater, was in the same vein. He improved the occasion of the recent

death of four distinguished members of that fraternity to delineate his

beautiful ideal of the jurist, the scholar, the artist, and the

philanthropist, aided by the models furnished by the lives of such men as

Pickering, Story, Allston, and Channing. Here, also, he makes greatness

to consist of goodness: war and slavery and all their offspring of evil

are surveyed in the light of the morality of the New Testament. He looks

hopefully forward to the coming of that day when the sword shall devour

no longer, when labor shall grind no longer in the prison-house, and the

peace and freedom of a realized and acted-out Christianity shall

overspread the earth, and the golden age predicted by the seers and poets

alike of Paganism and Christianity shall become a reality.

The Address now before us, with the same general object in view, is more

direct and practical. We can scarcely conceive of a discourse better

adapted to prepare the young American, just issuing from his collegiate

retirement, for the duties and responsibilities of citizenship. It

treats the desire of fame and honor as one native to the human heart,

felt to a certain extent by all as a part of our common being,--a motive,

although by no means the most exalted, of human conduct; and the lesson

it would inculcate is, that no true and permanent fame can be founded

except in labors which promote the happiness of mankind. To use the

language of Dr. South, "God is the fountain of honor; the conduit by

which He conveys it to the sons of men are virtuous and generous

practices." The author presents the beautiful examples of St. Pierre,

Milton, Howard, and Clarkson,--men whose fame rests on the firm

foundation of goodness,--for the study and imitation of the young

candidate for that true glory which belongs to those who live, not for

themselves, but for their race. "Neither present fame, nor war, nor

power, nor wealth, nor knowledge alone shall secure an entrance to the

true and noble Valhalla. There shall be gathered only those who have

toiled each in his vocation for the welfare of others." "Justice and

benevolence are higher than knowledge and power It is by His goodness

that God is most truly known; so also is the great man. When Moses said

to the Lord, Show me Thy glory, the Lord said, I will make all my

goodness pass before thee."

We copy the closing paragraph of the Address, the inspiring sentiment of

which will find a response in all generous and hopeful hearts:--

"Let us reverse the very poles of the worship of past ages. Men have

thus far bowed down before stocks, stones, insects, crocodiles, golden

calves,--graven images, often of cunning workmanship, wrought with

Phidian skill, of ivory, of ebony, of marble, but all false gods. Let

them worship in future the true God, our Father, as He is in heaven and

in the beneficent labors of His children on earth. Then farewell to the

siren song of a worldly ambition! Farewell to the vain desire of mere

literary success or oratorical display! Farewell to the distempered

longings for office! Farewell to the dismal, blood-red phantom of

martial renown! Fame and glory may then continue, as in times past, the

reflection of public opinion; but of an opinion sure and steadfast,

without change or fickleness, enlightened by those two sons of Christian

truth,--love to God and love to man. From the serene illumination of

these duties all the forms of selfishness shall retreat like evil spirits

at the dawn of day. Then shall the happiness of the poor and lowly and

the education of the ignorant have uncounted friends. The cause of those

who are in prison shall find fresh voices; the majesty of peace other

vindicators; the sufferings of the slave new and gushing floods of

sympathy. Then, at last, shall the brotherhood of man stand confessed;

ever filling the souls of all with a more generous life; ever prompting

to deeds of beneficence; conquering the heathen prejudices of country,

color, and race; guiding the judgment of the historian; animating the

verse of the poet and the eloquence of the orator; ennobling human

thought and conduct; and inspiring those good works by which alone we may

attain to the heights of true glory. Good works! Such even now is the

heavenly ladder on which angels are ascending and descending, while weary

humanity, on pillows of storfe, slumbers heavily at its feet."

We know how easy it is to sneer at such anticipations of a better future

as baseless and visionary. The shrewd but narrow-eyed man of the world

laughs at the suggestion that there car: be any stronger motive than

selfishness, any higher morality than that of the broker's board. The

man who relies for salvation from the consequences of an evil and selfish

life upon the verbal orthodoxy of a creed presents the depravity and

weakness of human nature as insuperable obstacles in the way of the

general amelioration of the condition of a world lying in wickedness. He

counts it heretical and dangerous to act upon the supposition that the

same human nature which, in his own case and that of his associates, can

confront all perils, overcome all obstacles, and outstrip the whirlwind

in the pursuit of gain,--which makes the strong elements its servants,

taming and subjugating the very lightnings of heaven to work out its own

purposes of self-aggrandizement,--must necessarily, and by an ordination

of Providence, become weak as water, when engaged in works of love and

goodwill, looking for the coming of a better day for humanity, with faith

in the promises of the Gospel, and relying upon Him, who, in calling man

to the great task-field of duty, has not mocked him with the mournful

necessity of laboring in vain. We have been pained more than words can

express to see young, generous hearts, yearning with strong desires to

consecrate themselves to the cause of their fellow-men, checked and

chilled by the ridicule of worldly-wise conservatism, and the solemn

rebukes of practical infidelity in the guise of a piety which professes

to love the unseen Father, while disregarding the claims of His visible

children. Visionary! Were not the good St. Pierre, and Fenelon, and

Howard, and Clarkson visionaries also?

What was John Woolman, to the wise and prudent of his day, but an amiable

enthusiast? What, to those of our own, is such an angel of mercy as

Dorothea Dix? Who will not, in view of the labors of such

philanthropists, adopt the language of Jonathan Edwards: "If these things

be enthusiasms and the fruits of a distempered brain, let my brain be

evermore possessed with this happy distemper"?

It must, however, be confessed that there is a cant of philanthropy too

general and abstract for any practical purpose,--a morbid

sentimentalism,--which contents itself with whining over real or

imaginary present evil, and predicting a better state somewhere in the

future, but really doing nothing to remove the one or hasten the coming

of the other. To its view the present condition of things is all wrong;

no green hillock or twig rises over the waste deluge; the heaven above is

utterly dark and starless: yet, somehow, out of this darkness which may

be felt, the light is to burst forth miraculously; wrong, sin, pain, and

sorrow are to be banished from the renovated world, and earth become a

vast epicurean garden or Mahometan heaven.

"The land, unploughed, shall yield her crop;

Pure honey from the oak shall drop;

The fountain shall run milk;

The thistle shall the lily bear;

And every bramble roses wear,

And every worm make silk."

(Ben Jenson's Golden Age Restored.)

There are, in short, perfectionist reformers as well as religionists, who

wait to see the salvation which it is the task of humanity itself to work

out, and who look down from a region of ineffable self-complacence on

their dusty and toiling brethren who are resolutely doing whatsoever

their hands find to do for the removal of the evils around them.

The emblem of practical Christianity is the Samaritan stooping over the

wounded Jew. No fastidious hand can lift from the dust fallen humanity

and bind up its unsightly gashes. Sentimental lamentation over evil and

suffering may be indulged in until it becomes a sort of melancholy

luxury, like the "weeping for Thammuz" by the apostate daughters of

Jerusalem. Our faith in a better day for the race is strong; but we feel

quite sure it will come in spite of such abstract reformers, and not by

reason of them. The evils which possess humanity are of a kind which go

not out by their delicate appliances.

The author of the Address under consideration is not of this class. He

has boldly, and at no small cost, grappled with the great social and

political wrong of our country,--chattel slavery. Looking, as we have

seen, hopefully to the future, he is nevertheless one of those who can

respond to the words of a true poet and true man:--

"He is a coward who would borrow

A charm against the present sorrow

From the vague future's promise of delight

As life's alarums nearer roll,

The ancestral buckler calls,

Self-clanging, from the walls

In the high temple of the soul!"

(James Russell Lowell.)

FANATICISM.

THERE are occasionally deeds committed almost too horrible and revolting

for publication. The tongue falters in giving them utterance; the pen

trembles that records them. Such is the ghastly horror of a late tragedy

in Edgecomb, in the State of Maine. A respectable and thriving citizen

and his wife had been for some years very unprofitably engaged in

brooding over the mysteries of the Apocalypse, and in speculations upon

the personal coming of Christ and the temporal reign of the saints on

earth,--a sort of Mahometan paradise, which has as little warrant in

Scripture as in reason. Their minds of necessity became unsettled; they

meditated self-destruction; and, as it appears by a paper left behind in

the handwriting of both, came to an agreement that the husband should

first kill his wife and their four children, and then put an end to his

own existence. This was literally executed,--the miserable man striking

off the heads of his wife and children with his axe, and then cutting his

own throat.

Alas for man when he turns from the light of reason and from the simple

and clearly defined duties of the present life, and undertakes to pry

into the mysteries of the future, bewildering himself with uncertain and

vague prophecies, Oriental imagery, and obscure Hebrew texts! Simple,

cheerful faith in God as our great and good Father, and love of His

children as our brethren, acted out in all relations and duties, is

certainly best for this world, and we believe also the best preparation

for that to come. Once possessed by the falsity that God's design is

that man should be wretched and gloomy here in order to obtain rest and

happiness hereafter; that the mental agonies and bodily tortures of His

creatures are pleasant to Him; that, after bestowing upon us reason for

our guidance, He makes it of no avail by interposing contradictory

revelations and arbitrary commands,--there is nothing to prevent one of a

melancholic and excitable temperament from excesses so horrible as almost

to justify the old belief in demoniac obsession.

Charles Brockden Brown, a writer whose merits have not yet been

sufficiently acknowledged, has given a powerful and philosophical

analysis of this morbid state of mind--this diseased conscientiousness,

obeying the mad suggestions of a disordered brain as the injunctions of

Divinity--in his remarkable story of Wieland. The hero of this strange

and solemn romance, inheriting a melancholy and superstitious mental

constitution, becomes in middle age the victim of a deep, and tranquil

because deep, fanaticism. A demon in human form, perceiving his state of

mind, wantonly experiments upon it, deepening and intensifying it by a

fearful series of illusions of sight and sound. Tricks of jugglery and

ventriloquism seem to his feverish fancies miracles and omens--the eye

and the voice of the Almighty piercing the atmosphere of supernatural

mystery in which he has long dwelt. He believes that he is called upon

to sacrifice the beloved wife of his bosom as a testimony of the entire

subjugation of his carnal reason and earthly affections to the Divine

will. In the entire range of English literature there is no more

thrilling passage than that which describes the execution of this baleful

suggestion. The coloring of the picture is an intermingling of the

lights of heaven and hell,--soft shades of tenderest pity and warm tints

of unextinguishable love contrasting with the terrible outlines of an

insane and cruel purpose, traced with the blood of murder. The masters

of the old Greek tragedy have scarcely exceeded the sublime horror of

this scene from the American novelist. The murderer confronted with his

gentle and loving victim in her chamber; her anxious solicitude for his

health and quiet; her affectionate caress of welcome; his own relentings

and natural shrinking from his dreadful purpose; and the terrible

strength which he supposes is lent him of Heaven, by which he puts down

the promptings and yearnings of his human heart, and is enabled to

execute the mandate of an inexorable Being,--are described with an

intensity which almost stops the heart of the reader. When the deed is

done a frightful conflict of passions takes place, which can only be told

in the words of the author:--

"I lifted the corpse in my arms and laid it on the bed. I gazed upon it

with delight. Such was my elation that I even broke out into laughter.

I clapped my hands, and exclaimed, 'It is done! My sacred duty is

fulfilled! To that I have sacrificed, O God, Thy last and best gift, my

wife!'

"For a while I thus soared above frailty. I imagined I had set myself

forever beyond the reach of selfishness. But my imaginations were false.

This rapture quickly subsided. I looked again at my wife. My joyous

ebullitions vanished. I asked myself who it was whom I saw. Methought

it could not be my Catharine; it could not be the woman who had lodged

for years in my heart; who had slept nightly in my bosom; who had borne

in her womb and fostered at her breast the beings who called me father;

whom I had watched over with delight and cherished with a fondness ever

new and perpetually growing. It could not be the same!

"The breath of heaven that sustained me was withdrawn, and I sunk into

mere man. I leaped from the floor; I dashed my head against the wall; I

uttered screams of horror; I panted after torment and pain. Eternal fire

and the bickerings of hell, compared with what I felt, were music and a

bed of roses.

"I thank my God that this was transient; that He designed once more to

raise me aloft. I thought upon what I had done as a sacrifice to duty,

and was calm. My wife was dead; but I reflected that, although this

source of human consolation was closed, others were still open. If the

transports of the husband were no more, the feelings of

the father had still scope for exercise. When remembrance of their

mother should excite too keen a pang, I would look upon my children and

be comforted.

"While I revolved these things new warmth flowed in upon my heart. I was

wrong. These feelings were the growth of selfishness. Of this I was not

aware; and, to dispel the mist that obscured my perceptions, a new light

and a new mandate were necessary.

"From these thoughts I was recalled by a ray which was shot into the

room. A voice spoke like that I had before heard: 'Thou hast done well;

but all is not done--the sacrifice is incomplete--thy children must be

offered--they must perish with their mother!'"

The misguided man obeys the voice; his children are destroyed in their

bloom and innocent beauty. He is arrested, tried for murder, and

acquitted as insane. The light breaks in upon him at last; he discovers

the imposture which has controlled him; and, made desperate by the full

consciousness of his folly and crime, ends the terrible drama by suicide.

Wieland is not a pleasant book. In one respect it resembles the modern

tale of Wuthering Heights: it has great strength and power, but no

beauty. Unlike that, however, it has an important and salutary moral. It

is a warning to all who tamper with the mind and rashly experiment upon

its religious element. As such, its perusal by the sectarian zealots of

all classes would perhaps be quite as profitable as much of their present

studies.

THE POETRY OF THE NORTH.

THE Democratic Review not long since contained a singularly wild and

spirited poem, entitled the Norseman's Ride, in which the writer appears

to have very happily blended the boldness and sublimity of the heathen

saga with the grace and artistic skill of the literature of civilization.

The poetry of the Northmen, like their lives, was bold, defiant, and full

of a rude, untamed energy. It was inspired by exhibitions of power

rather than of beauty. Its heroes were beastly revellers or cruel and

ferocious plunderers; its heroines unsexed hoidens, playing the ugliest

tricks with their lovers, and repaying slights with bloody revenge,--very

dangerous and unsatisfactory companions for any other than the fire-

eating Vikings and redhanded, unwashed Berserkers. Significant of a

religion which reverenced the strong rather than the good, and which

regarded as meritorious the unrestrained indulgence of the passions, it

delighted to sing the praises of some coarse debauch or pitiless

slaughter. The voice of its scalds was often but the scream of the

carrion-bird, or the howl of the wolf, scenting human blood:--

"Unlike to human sounds it came;

Unmixed, unmelodized with breath;

But grinding through some scrannel frame,

Creaked from the bony lungs of Death."

Its gods were brutal giant forces, patrons of war, robbery, and drunken

revelry; its heaven a vast cloud-built ale-house, where ghostly warriors

drank from the skulls of their victims; its hell a frozen horror of

desolation and darkness,--all that the gloomy Northern imagination could

superadd to the repulsive and frightful features of arctic scenery:

volcanoes spouting fire through craters rimmed with perpetual frost,

boiling caldrons flinging their fierce jets high into the air, and huge

jokuls, or ice-mountains, loosened and upheaved by volcanic agencies,

crawling slowly seaward, like misshapen monsters endowed with life,--a

region of misery unutterable, to be avoided only by diligence in robbery

and courage in murder.

What a work had Christianity to perform upon such a people as the

Icelanders, for instance, of the tenth century!--to substitute in rude,

savage minds the idea of its benign and gentle Founder for that of the

Thor and Woden of Norse mythology; the forgiveness, charity, and humility

of the Gospel for the revenge, hatred, and pride inculcated by the Eddas.

And is it not one of the strongest proofs of the divine life and power of

that Gospel, that, under its influence, the hard and cruel Norse heart

has been so softened and humanized that at this moment one of the best

illustrations of the peaceful and gentle virtues which it inculcates is

afforded by the descendants of the sea-kings and robbers of the middle

centuries? No one can read the accounts which such travellers as Sir

George Mackenzie and Dr. Henderson have given us of the peaceful

disposition, social equality, hospitality, industry, intellectual

cultivation, morality, and habitual piety of the Icelanders, without a

grateful sense of the adaptation of Christianity to the wants of our

race, and of its ability to purify, elevate, and transform the worst

elements of human character. In Iceland Christianity has performed its

work of civilization, unobstructed by that commercial cupidity which has

caused nations more favored in respect to soil and climate to lapse into

an idolatry scarcely less debasing and cruel than that which preceded the

introduction of the Gospel. Trial by combat was abolished in 1001, and

the penalty of the imaginary crime of witchcraft was blotted from the

statutes of the island nearly half a century before it ceased to disgrace

those of Great Britain. So entire has been the change wrought in the

sanguinary and cruel Norse character that at the present day no Icelander

can be found who, for any reward, will undertake the office of

executioner. The scalds, who went forth to battle, cleaving the skulls

of their enemies with the same skilful hands which struck the harp at the

feast, have given place to Christian bards and teachers, who, like

Thorlakson, whom Dr. Henderson found toiling cheerfully with his beloved

parishioners in the hay-harvest of the brief arctic summer, combine with

the vigorous diction and robust thought of their predecessors the warm

and genial humanity of a religion of love and the graces and amenities of

a high civilization.

But we have wandered somewhat aside from our purpose, which was simply to

introduce the following poem, which, in the boldness of its tone and

vigor of language, reminds us of the Sword Chant, the Wooing Song, and

other rhymed sagas of Motherwell.

THE NORSEMAN'S RIDE. BY BAYARD TAYLOR.

The frosty fires of northern starlight

Gleamed on the glittering snow,

And through the forest's frozen branches

The shrieking winds did blow;

A floor of blue and icy marble

Kept Ocean's pulses still,

When, in the depths of dreary midnight,

Opened the burial hill.

Then, while the low and creeping shudder

Thrilled upward through the ground,

The Norseman came, as armed for battle,

In silence from his mound,--

He who was mourned in solemn sorrow

By many a swordsman bold,

And harps that wailed along the ocean,

Struck by the scalds of old.

Sudden a swift and silver shadow

Came up from out the gloom,--

A charger that, with hoof impatient,

Stamped noiseless by the tomb.

"Ha! Surtur,!* let me hear thy tramping,

My fiery Northern steed,

That, sounding through the stormy forest,

Bade the bold Viking heed!"

He mounted; like a northlight streaking

The sky with flaming bars,

They, on the winds so wildly shrieking,

Shot up before the stars.

"Is this thy mane, my fearless Surtur,

That streams against my breast?

(*The name of the Scandinavian god of fire.)

Is this thy neck, that curve of moonlight

Which Helva's hand caressed?

"No misty breathing strains thy nostril;

Thine eye shines blue and cold;

Yet mounting up our airy pathway

I see thy hoofs of gold.

Not lighter o'er the springing rainbow

Walhalla's gods repair

Than we in sweeping journey over

The bending bridge of air.

"Far, far around star-gleams are sparkling

Amid the twilight space;

And Earth, that lay so cold and darkling,

Has veiled her dusky face.

Are those the Normes that beckon onward

As if to Odin's board,

Where by the hands of warriors nightly

The sparkling mead is poured?

"'T is Skuld:* I her star-eye speaks the glory

That wraps the mighty soul,

When on its hinge of music opens

The gateway of the pole;

When Odin's warder leads the hero

To banquets never o'er,

And Freya's** glances fill the bosom

With sweetness evermore.

"On! on! the northern lights are streaming

In brightness like the morn,

And pealing far amid the vastness

I hear the gyallarhorn ***

The heart of starry space is throbbing

With songs of minstrels old;

And now on high Walhalla's portal

Gleam Surtur's hoofs of gold."

* The Norne of the future.

** Freya, the Northern goddess of love.

*** The horn blown by the watchers on the rainbow, the bridge over which

the gods pass in Northern mythology.