"I wish we could get the duties on those ships to pay some of our

military bills," said a genteel, clean-spoken Charlestonian, to a long,

green, kindly-faced youth, from I know not what Southern military

academy.

We had arrived off the harbor about midnight, but had not entered, for

lack of a beacon whereby to shape our course. Now we must wait until

noon for the tide, standing off and on the while merely to keep up our

fires. A pilot came under our quarter in his little schooner, and told

us that the steamer Nashville had got out the day before with only a

hard bumping. No other news had he: Fort Sumter had not been taken, nor

assaulted; the independence of South Carolina had not been recognized;

various desirable events had not happened. In short, the political world

had remained during our voyage in that chaotic _status quo_ so loved by

President Buchanan. At twelve we stood for the bar, sounding our way

with extreme caution. Without accident we passed over the treacherous

bottom, although in places it could not have been more than eighteen

inches below our keel. The shores closed in on both sides as we passed

onward. To the south was the long, low, gray Morris Island, with its

extinguished lighthouse, its tuft or two of pines, its few dwellings,

and its invisible batteries. To the north was the long, low, gray

Sullivan's Island, a repetition of the other, with the distinctions of

higher sand-rolls, a village, a regular fort, and palmettos. We passed

the huge brown Moultrie House, in summer a gay resort, at present a

barrack; passed the hundred scattered cottages of the island, mostly

untenanted now, and looking among the sand-drifts as if they had been

washed ashore at random; passed the low walls of Fort Moultrie,

once visibly yellow, but now almost hidden by the new _glacis_, and

surmounted by piles of barrels and bags of sand, with here and there

palmetto stockades as a casing for the improvised embrasures; passed its

black guns, its solidly built, but rusty barracks, and its weather-worn

palmetto flag waving from a temporary flag-staff. On the opposite side

of the harbor was Fort Johnstone, a low point, exhibiting a barrack, a

few houses, and a sand redoubt, with three forty-two pounders. And

here, in the midst of all things, apparent master of all things, at the

entrance of the harbor proper, and nearly equidistant from either shore,

though nearest the southern, frowned Fort Sumter, a huge and lofty

and solid mass of brickwork with stone embrasures, all rising from

a foundation of ragged granite boulders washed by the tides. The

port-holes were closed; a dozen or so of monstrous cannon peeped from

the summit; two or three sentinels paced slowly along the parapet; the

stars and stripes blew out from the lofty flag-staff. The plan of Fort

Sumter may be briefly described as five-sided, with each angle just so

much truncated as to give room for one embrasure in every story. Its

whole air is massive, commanding, and formidable.

Eighty or a hundred citizens, volunteers, cadets from the military

academy, policemen, and negroes, greeted the arrival of the Columbia at

her wharf. It was a larger crowd than usual, partly because a report had

circulated that we should be forced to bring to off Fort Sumter and give

an account of ourselves, and partly because many persons in Charleston

have lately been perplexed with an abundant leisure. As I drove to my

hotel, I noticed that the streets showed less movement of business

and population than when I knew them four years ago. The place seemed

dirtier, too,--worse paved, shabbier as to its brick-work and stucco,

and worse painted,--but whether through real deterioration, or by

comparison with the neatly finished city which I had lately left, I

cannot decide. There was surely not a third of the usual shipping, nor a

quarter of the accustomed cotton. Here and there were wharves perfectly

bare, not only of masting and of freight, but even of dust, as if they

had not been used for days, or possibly for weeks.

My old hotel was as well kept, and its table as plentiful and excellent

as ever. I believe we are all aware by this time that Charleston has

not suffered from hunger; that beef has not sold at thirty-five cents a

pound, but rather at ten or fifteen; that its Minute Men have not

been accustomed to come down upon its citizens for forced dinners and

dollars; that the State loan was taken willingly by the banks, instead

of unwillingly by private persons; that the rich, so far from being

obliged to give a great deal for the cause of Secession, have generally

given very little; that the streets are well-policed, untrodden by mobs,

and as orderly as those of most cities; that, in short, the revolution

so far has been political, and not social. At the same time exports

and imports have nearly ceased; business, even in the retail form, is

stagnant; the banks have suspended; debts are not paid.

After dinner I walked up to the Citadel square and saw a drill of the

Home Guard. About thirty troopers, all elderly men, and several with

white hair and whiskers, uniformed in long overcoats of homespun gray,

went through some of the simpler cavalry evolutions in spite of their

horses' teeth. The Home Guard is a volunteer police force, raised

because of the absence of so many of the young men of the city at the

islands, and because of the supposed necessity of keeping a strong hand

over the negroes. A malicious citizen assured me that it was in training

to take Fort Sumter by charging upon it at low water. On the opposite

side of the square from where I stood rose the Citadel, or military

academy, a long and lofty reddish-yellow building, stuccoed and

castellated, which, by the way, I have seen represented in one of our

illustrated papers as the United States Arsenal. Under its walls

were half a dozen iron cannon which I judged at that distance to be

twenty-four pounders. A few negroes, certainly the most leisurely part

of the population at this period, and still fewer white people, leaned

over the shabby fence and stared listlessly at the horsemen, with the

air of people whom habit had made indifferent to such spectacles. Near

me three men of the middle class of Charleston talked of those two

eternal subjects, Secession and Fort Sumter. One of them, a rosy-faced,

kindly-eyed, sincere, seedy, pursy gentleman of fifty, congratulated the

others and thanked God because of the present high moral stand of South

Carolina, so much loftier than if she had seized the key to her main

harbor, when she had the opportunity. Her honor was now unspotted; her

good faith and her love of the right were visible to the whole world;

while the position of the Federal Government was disgraced and sapped by

falsity. Better Sumter treacherously in the hands of the United States

than in the hands of South Carolina; better suffer for a time under

physical difficulties than forever under moral dishonor.

Simple-hearted man, a fair type of his fellow-citizens, he saw but his

own side of the question, and might fairly claim in this matter to

be justified by his faith. His bald crown, sandy side-locks, reddish

whiskers, sanguineous cheeks, and blue eyes were all luminous with

confidence in the integrity of his State, and with scorn for the

meanness and wickedness of her enemies. No doubt had he that the fort

ought to be surrendered to South Carolina; no suspicion that the

Government could show a reason for holding it, aside from low

self-interest and malice. He was the honest mouthpiece of a most

peculiar people, local in its opinions and sentiments beyond anything

known at the North, even in self-poised Boston. Changing his subject, he

spoke with hostile, yet chivalrous, respect of the pluck of the Black

Republicans in Congress. They had never faltered; they had vouchsafed no

hint of concession; while, on the other hand, Southerners had shamed him

by their craven spirit. It grieved, it mortified him, to see such a man

as Crittenden on his knees to the North, begging, actually with tears,

for what he ought to demand as a right, with head erect and hands

clenched. He departed with a mysterious allusion to some secret of his

for taking Fort Sumter,--some disagreeably odorous chemical

preparation, I guessed, by the scientific terms in which he beclouded

himself,--something which he expected would soon be called for by the

Governor. May he never smell anything worse, even in the other world,

than his own compounds! Unionist, and perhaps Consolidationist, as I

am, I could not look upon his honest, persuaded face, and judge him a

traitor, at least not to any sentiment of right that was in his own

soul.

Our hotel was full of legislators and volunteer officers, mostly

planters or sons of planters, and almost without exception men of

standing and property. South Carolina is an oligarchy in spirit, and

allows no plebeians in high places. Two centuries of plenteous feeding

and favorable climate showed their natural results in the _physique_ of

these people. I do not think that I exaggerate, when I say that they

averaged six feet or nearly in height, and one hundred and seventy

pounds or thereabouts in weight. One or two would have brought in money,

if enterprisingly heralded as Swiss or Belgian giants. The general

physiognomy was good, mostly high-featured, often commanding, sometimes

remarkable for massive beauty of the Jovian type, and almost invariably

distinguished by a fearless, open-eyed frankness, in some instances

running into arrogance and pugnacity. I remember one or two elderly

men, in particular, whose faces would help an artist to idealize a

Lacedaemonian general, or a baron of the Middle Ages. In dress somewhat

careless, and wearing usually the last fashion but one, they struck me

as less tidy than the same class when I saw it four years ago; and I

made a similar remark concerning the citizens of Charleston,--not only

men, but women,--from whom dandified suits and superb silks seem to have

departed during the present martial time. Indeed, I heard that economy

was the order of the day; that the fashionables of Charleston bought

nothing new, partly because of the money pressure, and partly because

the guns of Major Anderson might any day send the whole city into

mourning; that patrician families had discharged their foreign cooks and

put their daughters into the kitchen; that there were no concerts, no

balls, and no marriages. Even the volunteers exhibited little of the

pomp and vanity of war. The small French military cap was often the only

sign of their present profession. The uniform, when it appeared, was

frequently a coarse homespun gray, charily trimmed with red worsted, and

stained with the rains and earth of the islands. One young dragoon in

this sober dress walked into our hotel, trailing the clinking steel

scabbard of his sabre across the marble floor of the vestibule with a

warlike rattle which reminded me of the Austrian officers whom I used

to see, yes, and hear, stalking about the _cafe's_ of Florence. Half a

dozen surrounded him to look at and talk about the weapon. A portly,

middle-aged legislator must draw it and cut and thrust, with a smile of

boyish satisfaction between his grizzled whiskers, bringing the point so

near my nose, in his careless eagerness, that I had to fall back upon

a stronger, that is, a more distant position. Then half a dozen others

must do likewise, their eyes sparkling like those of children examining

a new toy.

"It's not very sharp," said one, running his thumb carefully along the

edge of the narrow and rather light blade.

"Sharp enough to cut a man's head open," averred the dragoon.

"Well, it's a dam' shame that sixty-five men tharr in Sumter should make

such an expense to the State," declared a stout, blonde young rifleman,

speaking with a burr which proclaimed him from the up-country. "We

haven't even troyed to get 'em out. We ought at least to make a troyal."

All strangers at Charleston walk to the Battery. It is the extreme point

of the city peninsula, its right facing on the Ashley, its left on the

Cooper, and its outlook commanding the entire harbor, with Fort Sumter,

Port Pinckney, Fort Moultrie, and Fort Johnstone in the distance. Plots

of thin clover, a perfect wonder in this grassless land; promenades,

neatly fenced, and covered with broken shells instead of gravel; a

handsome bronze lantern-stand, twenty-five feet high, meant for a

beacon; a long and solid stone quay, the finest sea-walk in the United

States; a background of the best houses in Charleston, three-storied and

faced with verandas: such are the features of the Battery. Lately

four large iron guns, mounted like field-pieces, form an additional

attraction to boys and soldierly-minded men. Nobody knew their calibre;

the policemen who watched them could not say; the idlers who gathered

about them disputed upon it: they were eighteen pounders; they were

twenty-fours; they were thirty-sixes. Nobody could tell what they were

there for. They were aimed at Fort Sumter, but would not carry half way

to it. They could hit Fort Pinckney, but that was not desirable. The

policeman could not explain; neither could the idlers; neither can I.

At last it got reported about the city that they were to sink any boats

which might come down the river to reinforce Anderson; though how the

boats were to get into the river, whether by railroad from Washington,

or by balloon from the Free States, nobody even pretended to guess.

Standing on this side of the Ashley, and looking across it, you

naturally see the other side. The long line of nearly dead level, with

its stretches of thin pine-forest and its occasional glares of open

sand, gives you an idea of nearly the whole country about Charleston,

except that in general you ought to add to the picture a number of noble

evergreen oaks bearded with pendent, weird Spanish moss, and occasional

green spikes of the tropical-looking Spanish bayonet. Of palmettos there

are none that I know of in this immediate region, save the hundred or

more on Sullivan's Island and the one or two exotics in the streets

of Charleston. In the middle of the Ashley, which is here more than a

quarter of a mile wide, lies anchored a topsail schooner, the nursery

of the South Carolina navy. I never saw it sail anywhere; but then my

opportunities of observation were limited. Quite a number of boys are on

board of it, studying maritime matters; and I can bear witness that they

are sufficiently advanced to row themselves ashore. Possibly they are

moored thus far up the stream to guard them from sea-sickness, which

might be discouraging to young sailors. However, I ought not to talk on

this subject, for I am the merest civilian and land-lubber.

My first conversation in Charleston on Secession was with an estimable

friend, Northern-born, but drawing breath of Southern air ever since he

attained the age of manhood. After the first salutation, he sat down,

his hands on his knees, gazing on the floor, and shaking his head

soberly, if not sadly.

"You have found us in a pretty fix,--in a pretty fix!"

"But what are you going to do? Are you really going out? You are not a

politician, and will tell me the honest facts."

"Yes, we are going out,'--there is no doubt of it, I have not been a

seceder,--I have even been called one of the disaffected; but I am

obliged to admit that secession is the will of the community. Perhaps

you at the North don't believe that we are honest in our professions and

actions. We are so. The Carolinians really mean to go out of the Union,

and don't mean to come back. They say that they _are_ out, and they

believe it. And now, what are you going to do with us? What is the

feeling at the North?"

"The Union must and shall be preserved, at all hazards. That famous

declaration expresses the present Northern popular sentiment. When I

left, people were growing martial; they were joining military companies;

they wanted to fight; they were angry."

"So I supposed. That agrees with what I hear by letter. Well, I am very

sorry for it. Our people here will not retreat; they will accept a war,

first. If you preserve the Union, it must be by conquest. I suppose you

can do it, if you try hard enough. The North is a great deal stronger

than the South; it can desolate it,--crush it. But I hope it won't be

done. I wish you would speak a good word for us, when you go back. You

can destroy us, I suppose. But don't you think it would be inhuman?

Don't you think it would be impolitic? Do you think it would result in

sufficient good to counterbalance the evident and certain evil?"

"Why, people reason in this way. They say, that, even if we allow the

final independence of the seceding States, we must make it clear that

there is no such thing as the right of secession, but only that of

revolution or rebellion. We must fix a price for going out of the Union,

which shall be so high that henceforward no State will ever be willing

to pay it. We must kill, once for all, the doctrine of peaceable

secession, which is nothing else than national disintegration and ruin.

Lieutenant-Governor Morton of Indiana declares in substance that England

never spent blood and money to wiser purpose than when she laid down

fifty thousand lives and one hundred millions of pounds to prevent her

thirteen disaffected colonies from having their own way. No English

colony since has been willing to face the tremendous issue thus offered

it. Just so it is the interest, it is the sole safety of the Federal

Government, to try to hold in the Cotton States by force, and, if they

go out, to oblige them to pay an enormous price for the privilege.

Revolution is a troublesome luxury, and ought to be made expensive. That

is the way people talk at the North and at Washington. They reason thus,

you see, because they believe that this is not a league, but a nation."

"And our people believe that the States are independent and have a right

to recede from the Confederation without asking its leave. With few

exceptions, all agree on that; it is honest, common public opinion. The

South Carolinians sincerely think that they are exercising a right, and

you may depend that they will not be reasoned nor frightened out of it;

and if the North tries coercion, there will be war. I don't say this

defiantly, but sadly, and merely because I want you to know the truth.

War is abhorrent to my feelings,--especially a war with our own

brethren: and then _we_ are so poorly prepared for it!"

Such was the substance of several conversations. The reader may rely, I

think, on the justness of my friend's opinions, founded as they are on

his honesty of intellect, his moderation, and his opportunities for

studying his fellow-citizens. All told me the same story, but generally

with more passion, sometimes with defiance; defiance toward the

Government, I mean, and not toward me personally; for the better classes

of Charleston are eminently courteous. South Carolina had seceded

forever, defying all the hazards; she would accept nothing but

independence or destruction; she did not desire any supposable

compromise; she had altogether done with the Union. Yet her desire was

not for war; it was simply and solely for escape. She would forget all

her wrongs and insults, she would seek no revenge for the injurious

past, provided she were allowed to depart without a conflict. Nearly

every man with whom I talked began the conversation by asking if the

North meant coercion, and closed it by deprecating hostilities and

affirming the universal wish for _peaceable_ secession. In case of

compulsion, however, the State would accept the gage of battle; her

sister communities of the South would side with her, the moment they saw

her blood flow; Northern commerce would be devoured by privateers of all

nations under the Southern flag; Northern manufactures would perish for

lack of Southern raw material and Southern consumers; Northern banks

would suspend, and Northern finances go into universal insolvency; the

Southern ports would be opened forcibly by England and France, who must

have cotton; the South would flourish in the struggle, and the North

decay.

"But why do you venture on this doubtful future?" I asked of one

gentleman. "What is South Carolina's grievance? The Personal-Liberty

Bills?"

"Yes,--they constitute a grievance. And yet not much of one. Some of us

even--the men of the 'Mercury' school, I mean--do not complain of the

Union because of those bills. They say that it is the Fugitive-Slave Law

itself which is unconstitutional; that the rendition of runaways is

a State affair, in which the Federal Government has no concern; that

Massachusetts, and other States, were quite right in nullifying an

illegal and aggressive statute. Besides, South Carolina has lost very

few slaves."

"Is it the Territorial Question which forces you to quit us?"

"Not in its practical issues. The South needs no more territory; has not

negroes to colonize it. The doctrine of 'No more Slave States' is an

insult to us, but hardly an injury. The flow of population has settled

that matter. You have won all the Territories, not even excepting New

Mexico, where slavery exists nominally, but is sure to die out under the

hostile influences of unpropitious soil and climate. The Territorial

Question has become a mere abstraction. We no longer talk of it."

"Then your great grievance is the election of Lincoln?"

"Yes."

"And the grievance is all the greater because he was elected according

to all the forms of law?"

"Yes."

"If he had been got into the Presidency by trickery, by manifest

cheating, your grievance would have been less complete?"

"Yes."

"Is Lincoln considered here to be a bad or dangerous man?"

"Not personally. I understand that he is a man of excellent private

character, and I have nothing to say against him as a ruler, inasmuch as

he has never been tried. Mr. Lincoln is simply a sign to us that we are

in danger, and must provide for our own safety."

"You secede, then, solely because you think his election proves that the

mass of the Northern people is adverse to you and your interests?"

"Yes."

"So Mr. Wigfall of Texas hit the nail on the head, when he said

substantially that the South cannot be at peace with the North until the

latter concedes that slavery is right?"

"Well,--I admit it; that is precisely it."

I desire the reader to note the loyal frankness, the unshrinking honesty

of these avowals, so characteristic of the South Carolina _morale_.

Whenever the native of that State does an act or holds an opinion, it is

his nature to confess it and avow the motives thereof, without quibbling

or hesitation. It is a persuaded, self-poised community, strikingly like

its negative pole on the Slavery Question, Massachusetts. All those

Charlestonians whom I talked with I found open-hearted in their

secession, and patient of my open-heartedness as an advocate of the

Union, although often astonished, I suspect, that any creature capable

of drawing a conclusion from two premises should think so differently

from themselves.

"But have you looked at the platform of the Republicans?" I proceeded.

"It is not adverse to slavery in the States; it only objects to its

entrance into the Territories; it is not an Abolition platform."

"We don't trust in the platform; we believe that it is an incomplete

expression of the party creed,--that it suppresses more than it utters.

The spirit which keeps the Republicans together is enmity to slavery,

and that spirit will never be satisfied until the system is extinct."

"Finally,--yes; gradually and quietly and safely,--that is possible. I

suppose that the secret and generally unconscious _animus_ of the party

is one which will abolitionize it after a long while."

"When will it begin to act in an abolition sense, do you think?"

"I can't say: perhaps a hundred years from now; perhaps two hundred."

There was a general laugh from the half-dozen persons who formed the

group.

"What time do _you_ fix?" I inquired.

"Two years. But for this secession of ours, there would have been bills

before Congress within two years, looking to the abolition of slavery in

the navy-yards, the District of Columbia, etc. That would be only the

point of the wedge, which would soon assume the dimensions of an attack

on slavery in the States. Look how aggressive the party has been in the

question of the Territories."

"The questions are different. When Congress makes local laws for Utah,

it does not follow that it will do likewise for South Carolina. You

might as well infer, that, because a vessel sails from Liverpool to New

York in ten days, therefore it will sail overland to St. Louis in five

more."

Incredulous laughter answered me again. The South has labored under two

delusions: first, that the Republicans are Abolitionists; second, that

the North can be frightened. Back of these, rendering them fatally

effective, lies that other delusion, the imagined right of peaceable

secession, founded on a belief in the full and unresigned sovereignty of

the States. Let me tell a story illustrative of the depth to which

this belief has penetrated. Years ago, a friend of mine, talking to a

Charleston boy about patriotism, asked him, "What is the name of your

country?" "South Carolina!" responded the eight-year-old, promptly and

proudly. What Northern boy, what Massachusetts boy even, would not have

replied, "The United States of America"?

South Carolina, I am inclined to think, has long been a disunionist

community, or nearly so, deceived by the idea that the Confederation is

a bar rather than a help to her prosperity, and waiting only for a good

chance to quit it. Up to the election of Lincoln all timid souls were

against secession; now they are for it, because they think it less

dangerous than submission. For instance, when I asked one gentleman what

the South expected to gain by going out, he replied, "First, safety.

Our slaves have heard of Lincoln,--that he is a black man, or black

Republican, or black something,--that he is to become ruler of this

country on the fourth of March,--that he is a friend of theirs, and will

free them. We must establish our independence in order to make them

believe that they are beyond his help. We have had to hang some of them

in Alabama,--and we expect to be obliged to hang others, perhaps many."

This was not the only statement of the sort which I heard in Charleston.

Other persons assured me of the perfect fidelity of the negroes, and

declared that they would even fight against Northern invaders, if

needful. Skepticism in regard to this last comfortable belief is,

however, not wanting.

"If it comes to a war, you have one great advantage over us," said to me

a military gentleman, lately in the service of the United States. "Your

working-class is a fighting-class, and will constitute the rank and file

of your armies. Our working-class is not a fighting-class. Indeed, there

is some reason to fear, that, if it take up arms at all, it will be on

the wrong side."

My impression is, that a prevalent, though not a universal fear, existed

lest the negroes should rise in partial insurrections on or about the

fourth of March. A Northern man, who had lived for several years in

the back-country of South Carolina, had married there, and had lately

travelled through a considerable portion of the South, informed me that

many of the villages were lately forming Home Guards, as a measure of

defence against the slave population. The Home Guard is frequently a

cavalry corps, and is always composed of men who have passed the usual

term of military service; for it is deemed necessary to reserve the

youth of the country to meet the "Northern masses," the "Federal

mercenaries," on the field of possible battle. By letters from

Montgomery, Alabama, I learn that unusual precautions have been common

during the last winter, many persons locking up their negroes over

night in the quarters, and most sleeping with arms at hand, ready for

nocturnal conflict. Whoever considers the necessarily horrible nature

of a servile insurrection will find in it some palliation for Southern

violence toward suspected incendiaries and Southern precipitation in

matters of secession, however strongly he may still maintain that

lynch-law should not usurp the place of justice, nor revolution the

place of regular government If you live in a powder-magazine, you

positively must feel inhospitably inclined towards a man who presents

himself with a cigar in his mouth. Even if he shows you that it is but a

tireless stump, it still makes you uneasy. And if you catch sight of

a multitude of smokers, distant as yet, but apparently intent on

approaching, you will be very apt to rush toward them, deprecate their

advance, forbid it, or possibly threaten armed resistance, even at the

risk of being considered aggressive.

Are all the South Carolinians disunionists? It seemed so when I was

there in January, 1861, and yet it did not seem so when I was there in

1855 and '56. At that time you could find men in Charleston who held

that the right of secession was but the right of revolution, of

rebellion,--well enough, if successful, but inductive to hanging, if

unfortunate. Now those same men nearly all argue for the right of

peaceable secession, declaring that the State has a right to go out at

will, and that the Federal Government has no right to coerce or punish

it. These turncoats are the sympathetic, who are carried away by a

rush of popular enthusiasm, and the fearful or peaceable, who dread or

dislike violence. Let us see how a timid Unionist can be converted into

an advocate of the right of secession. Let us suppose a boat with three

men on board, which is hailed by a revenue-cutter, with a threat of

firing, if she does not come to. Two of these men believe that the

revenue-officer is performing a legal duty, and desire to obey him; but

the third, a reckless, domineering fellow, seizes the helm, lets the

sail fill, and attempts to run by, meantime declaring at the top of his

voice that the cutter has no business to stop his progress. The others

dare not resist him and cannot persuade him. Now, then, what position

will they take as to the right of the revenue-officer to fire? Ten to

one they will join their comrade whom they lately opposed; they will cry

out, that the pursuer was wrong in ordering them to stop, and ought not

to punish them for disobedience; in short, they will be converted by the

instinct of self-preservation into advocates of the right of peaceable

secession. I understand, indeed I know, that there are a few opponents

of disunion remaining In South Carolina; but, although they are wealthy

people and of good position, it is pretty certain that they have not an

atom of political influence.

Secession peaceable! It is what is most particularly desired at

Charleston, and, I believe, throughout the Cotton States. Certainly,

when I was there, the war-party, the party of the "Mercury," was not in

the ascendant, unless in the sense of having been "hoist with its own

petard" when it cried out for immediate hostilities. Not only Governor

Pickens and his Council, but nearly all the influential citizens, were

opposed to bloodshed. They demanded independence and Fort Sumter, but

desired and hoped to get both by argument. They believed, or tried to

believe, that at last the Administration would hearken to reason and

grant to South Carolina what it seemed to them could not be denied her

with justice. The battle-cry of the "Mercury," urging precipitation

even at the expense of defeat, for the sake of uniting the South, was

listened to without enthusiasm, except by the young and thoughtless.

"We shall never attack Fort Sumter," said one gentleman. "Don't you see

why? I have a son in the trenches, my next neighbor has one, everybody

in the city has one. Well, we shan't let our boys fight; we can't bear

to lose them. We don't want to risk our handsome, genteel, educated

young fellows against a gang of Irishmen, Germans, British deserters,

and New York roughs, not worth killing, and yet instructed to kill to

the best advantage. We can't endure it, and we shan't do it."

This repugnance to stake the lives of South Carolina patricians against

the lives of low-born, mercenaries was a feeling that I frequently heard

expressed. It was betting guineas against pennies, and on a limited

stock of guineas.

Other men, anti-secessionists even, assured me that war was inevitable,

that Fort Sumter would be attacked, that the volunteers were panting for

the strife, that Governor Pickens was excessively unpopular because of

his peaceful inclinations, and that he would soon be forced to give the

signal for battle. Once or twice I was seriously invited to stay a few

days longer, in order to witness the struggle and victory of South

Carolina. However, it was clear that the enthusiasm and confidence of

the people were no longer what they had been. Several dull and costly

weeks had passed since the passage of the secession ordinance.

Stump-speeches, torchlight-processions, fireworks, and other

jubilations, were among bygone things. The flags were falling to pieces,

and the palmettos withering, unnoticed except by strangers. Men had

begun to realize that a hurrah is not sufficient to carry out a great

revolution successfully; that the work which they had undertaken was

weightier, and the reward of it more distant, if not more doubtful, than

they had supposed. The political prophets had been forced, like the

Millerites, to ask an extension for their predictions. The anticipated

fleet of cotton-freighters had not arrived from Europe, and the expected

twelve millions of foreign gold had not refilled the collapsed banks.

The daily expenses were estimated at twenty thousand dollars; the

treasury was in rapid progress of depletion; and as yet no results. It

is not wonderful, that, under these circumstances, the most enthusiastic

secessionists were not gay, and that the general physiognomy of the city

was sober, not to say troubled. It must not be understood, however,

that there was any visible discontent or even discouragement. "We are

suffering in our affairs," said a business-man to me; "but you will

hear no grumbling." "We expect to be poor, very poor, for two or three

years," observed a lady; "but we are willing to bear it, for the sake of

the noble and prosperous end." "Our people do not want concessions,

and will never be tempted back into the Union," was the voice of every

private person, as well as of the Legislature. "I hope the Republicans

will offer no compromise," remarked one excellent person who has not

favored the revolution. "They would be sure to see it rejected: that

would humiliate them and anger them; then there would be more danger of

war."

Hatred of Buchanan, mingled with contempt for him, I found almost

universal. If any Northerner should ever get into trouble in South

Carolina because of his supposed abolition tendencies, I advise him to

bestow a liberal cursing on our Old Public Functionary, assuring him

that he will thereby not only escape tar and feathers, but acquire

popularity. The Carolinians called the then President double-faced

and treacherous, hardly allowing him the poor credit of being a

well-intentioned imbecile. Why should they not consider him false? Up to

the garrisoning of Fort Sumter he favored the project of secession full

as decidedly as he afterwards crossed it. Did he think that he was

laying a train to blow the Republicans off their platform, and leave off

his labor in a fright, when he found that the powder-bags to be exploded

had been placed under the foundations of the Union? The man who could

explain Mr. Buchanan would have a better title than Daniel Webster to be

called The Great Expounder.

During the ten days of my sojourn, Charleston was full of surprising

reports and painful expectations. If a door slammed, we stopped talking,

and looked at each other; and if the sound was repeated, we went to

the window and listened for Fort Sumter. Every strange noise was

metamorphosed by the watchful ear into the roar of cannon or the rush of

soldiery. Women trembled at the salutes which were fired in honor of the

secession of other States, fearing lest the struggle had commenced and

the dearly-loved son or brother in volunteer uniform was already under

the storm of the columbiads. One day, a reinforcement was coming to

Anderson, and the troops must attack him before it arrived; the next

day, Florida had assaulted Fort Pickens, and South Carolina was bound

to dash her bare bosom against Fort Sumter. The batteries were strong

enough to make a breach; and then again, the best authorities had

declared them not strong enough. A columbiad throwing a ball of one

hundred and twenty pounds, sufficient to crack the strongest embrasures,

was on its way from some unknown region. An Armstrong gun capable of

carrying ten miles had arrived or was about to arrive. No one inquired

whether Governor Pickens had suspended the law of gravitation in South

Carolina, in view of the fact that ordinarily an Armstrong gun will not

carry five miles,--nor whether, in such case, the guns of Fort Sumter

might not also be expected to double their range. Major Anderson was

a Southerner, who would surrender rather than shed the blood of

fellow-Southerners. Major Anderson was an army-officer, incapable by his

professional education of comprehending State rights, angry because he

had been charged with cowardice in withdrawing from Fort Moultrie, and

resolved to defend himself to the death.

In the mean time, the city papers were strangely deficient in local news

concerning the revolution,--possibly from a fear of giving valuable

military information to the enemy at Washington. Uselessly did I study

them for particulars concerning the condition of the batteries, and

the number of guns and troops,--finding little in them but mention

of parades, soldierly festivities, offers of service by enthusiastic

citizens, and other like small business. I thought of visiting the

islands, but heard that strangers were closely watched there, and that

a permit from authority to enter the forts was difficult to obtain.

Fortune, or rather, misfortune, favored me in this matter.

After passing six days in Charleston, hearing much that was

extraordinary, but seeing little, I left in the steamer Columbia for New

York. The main opening to the harbor, or Ship Channel, as it is called,

being choked with sunken vessels, and the Middle Channel little known,

our only resource for exit was Maffitt's Channel, a narrow strip of deep

water closely skirting Sullivan's Island. It was half-past six in the

morning, slightly misty and very quiet Passing Fort Sumter, then Fort

Moultrie, we rounded a low break-water, and attempted to take the

channel. I have heard a half-dozen reasons why we struck; but all I

venture to affirm is that we did strike. There was a bump; we hoped it

was the last:--there was another; we hoped again:--there was a third; we

stopped. The wheels rolled and surged, bringing the fine sand from

the bottom and changing the green waters to yellow; but the Columbia

remained inert under the gray morning sky, close alongside of the brown,

damp beach of Sullivan's Island. There was only a faint breeze, and a

mere ripple of a sea; but even those slight forces swung our stern far

enough toward the land to complete our helplessness. We lay broadside to

the shore, in the centre of a small crescent or cove, and, consequently,

unable to use our engines without forcing either bow or stern higher

up on the sloping bottom. The Columbia tried to advance, tried to back

water, and then gave up the contest, standing upright on her flat

flooring with no motion beyond an occasional faint bumping. The tugboat

Aid, half a mile ahead of us, cast off from the vessel which it was

taking out, and came to our assistance. Apparently it had been engaged

during the night in watching the harbor; for on deck stood a score of

volunteers in gray overcoats, while the naval-looking personage with

grizzled whiskers who seemed to command was the same Lieutenant Coste

who transferred the revenue-cutter Aiken from the service of the United

States to that of South Carolina. The Aid took hold of us, broke a large

new hawser after a brief struggle, and then went up to the city to

report our condition.

The morning was lowery, with driving showers running through it from

time to time, and an atmosphere penetratingly damp and cheerless. On the

beach two companies of volunteers were drilling in the rain, no doubt

getting an appetite for breakfast. Without uniforms, their trousers

tucked into their boots, and here and there a white blanket fastened

shawl-like over the shoulders, they looked, as one of our passengers

observed, like a party of returned Californians. Their line was uneven,

their wheeling excessively loose, their evolutions of the simplest and

yet awkwardly executed. Evidently they were newly embodied, and from the

country; for the Charleston companies are spruce in appearance and well

drilled. Half a dozen of them, who had been on sentinel duty during the

night, discharged their guns in the air,--a daily process, rendered

necessary by the moist atmosphere of the harbor at this season; and

then, the exercise being over, there was a general scamper for the

shelter of a neighboring cottage, low-roofed and surrounded by a veranda

after the fashion of Sullivan's Island. Within half an hour they

reappeared in idle squads, and proceeded to kill the heavy time

by staring at us as we stared at them. One individual, learned in

sea-phrase, insulted our misfortune by bawling, "Ship ahoy!" A fellow

in a red shirt, who looked more like a Bowery _bhoy_ than like a

Carolinian, hailed the captain to know if he might come aboard;

whereupon he was surrounded by twenty others, who appeared to

question him and confound him until he thought it best to disappear

unostentatiously. I conjectured that he was a hero of Northern birth,

who had concluded to run away, if he could do it safely.

When we tired of the volunteers, we looked at the harbor and its

inanimate surroundings. A ship from Liverpool, a small steamer from

Savannah, and a schooner or two of the coasting class passed by us

toward the city during the day, showing to what small proportions the

commerce of Charleston had suddenly shrunk. On shore there seemed to be

no population aside from the volunteers, Sullivan's Island is a summer

resort, much favored by Charlestonians in the hot season, because of its

coolness and healthfulness, but apparently almost uninhabited in winter,

notwithstanding that it boasts a village called Moultrieville. Its

hundred cottages are mostly of one model, square, low-roofed, a single

story in height, and surrounded by a veranda, a portion of which is in

some instances inclosed by blinds so as to add to the amount of shelter.

Paint has been sparingly used, when applied at all, and is seldom

renewed, when weather-stained. The favorite colors, at least those which

most strike the eye at a distance, are green and yellow. The yards are

apt to be full of sand-drifts, which are much prized by the possessors,

with whom it is an object to be secured from high tides and other

more permanent aggressions of the ocean. The whole island is but a

verdureless sand-drift, of which the outlines are constantly changing

under the influence of winds and waters. Fort Moultrie, once close to

the shore, as I am told, is now a hundred yards from it; while, half

a mile off, the sea flows over the site of a row of cottages not long

since washed away. Behind Fort Moultrie, where the land rises to its

highest, appears a continuous foliage of the famous palmettos, a low

palm, strange to the Northern eye, but not beautiful, unless to those

who love it for its associations. Compared with its brothers of the

East, it is short, contracted in outline, and deficient in waving grace.

The chill mist and drizzling rain frequently drove us under

cover. "While enjoying my cigar in the little smoking-room on the

promenade-deck, I listened to the talk of four players of euchre, two of

them Georgians, one a Carolinian, and one a pro-slavery New-Yorker.

"I wish the Cap'n would invite old Greeley on board his boat in New

York," said the Gothamite, "and then run him off to Charleston. I'd give

ten thousand dollars towards paying expenses; that is, if they could do

what they was a mind to with him."

"I reckon a little more'n ten thousand dollars'd do it," grinned

Georgian First.

"They'd cut him up into little bits," pursued the New-Yorker.

"They'd worry him first like a cat does a mouse," added the Carolinian.

"I'd rather serve Beecher or--what's his name?--Cheever, that trick,"

observed Georgian Second. "It's the cussed parsons that's done all the

mischief. Who played that bower? Yours, eh? My deal."

"I want to smash up some of these dam' Black Republicans," resumed the

New-Yorker. "I want to see the North suffer some. I don't care, if New

York catches it. I own about forty thousand dollars' worth of property

in ---- Street, and I want to see the grass growing all round it.

Blasted, if I can get a hand any way!"

"I say, we should be in a tight place, if the forts went to firing now,"

suggested the Carolinian. "Major Anderson would have a fair chance at

us, if he wanted to do us any harm."

"Damn Major Anderson!" answered the New-Yorker. "I'd shoot him myself,

if I had a chance. I've heard about Bob Anderson till I'm sick of it."

Of this fashion of conversation you may hear any desired amount at the

South, by going among the right sort of people. Let us take it for

granted, without making impertinent inquiry, that nothing of the kind

is ever uttered in any other country, whether in pot-house or parlor.

I suppose that such remarks seem very horrid to ladies and other

gentle-minded folk, who perhaps never heard the like in their lives,

and imagine, when they see the stuff on paper, that it is spoken with

scowling brows, through set teeth, and out of a heart of red-hot

passion. The truth is, that these ferocious phrases are generally

drawled forth in an _ex-officio_ tone, as if the speaker were rather

tired of that sort of thing, meant nothing very particular by it, and

talked thus only as a matter of fashion. It will be observed that the

most violent of these politicians was a New-Yorker. I am inclined to

pronounce, also, that the two Georgians were by birth New-Englanders.

The Carolinian was the most moderate of the company, giving his

attention chiefly to the game, and throwing out his one remark

concerning the worrying of Greeley with an air of simply civil assent

to the general meaning of the conversation, as an exchange of

anti-abolition sentiments. "If you will play that card," he seemed to

say, "I follow suit as a mere matter of course."

There was a second attempt to haul us off at sunset, and a third in the

morning, both unsuccessful. Each tide, though stormless, carried the

Columbia a little higher up the beach; and the tugs, trying singly

to move her, only broke their hawsers and wasted precious time.

Fortunately, the sea continued smooth, so that the ship escaped a

pounding. On Saturday, at eleven, twenty-eight hours after we struck,

all hope of getting off without discharging cargo having been abandoned,

we passengers were landed on Sullivan's Island, to make our way back

to Charleston. Our baggage was forwarded to the ferry in carts, and

we followed at leisure on foot. In company with Georgian First and a

gentleman from Brooklyn, I strolled over the sand-rolls, damp and

hard now with a week's rain, passed one or two of the tenantless

summer-houses, and halted beside the _glacis_ of Fort Moultrie. I do not

wonder that Major Anderson did not consider his small force safe within

this fortification. It is overlooked by neighboring sand-hills and by

the houses of Moultrieville, which closely surround it on the land side,

while its ditch is so narrow and its rampart so low that a ladder of

twenty-five feet in length would reach from the outside of the former to

the summit of the latter. A fire of sharp-shooters from the commanding

points, and two columns of attack, would have crushed the feeble

garrison. No military movement could be more natural than the retreat to

Fort Sumter. What puzzles one, especially on the spot, and what nobody

in Charleston could explain to me, is the fact that this manoeuvre could

be executed unobserved by the people of Moultrieville, few as they are,

and by the guard-boats which patrolled the harbor.

On the eastern side of the fort two or three dozen negroes were engaged

in filling canvas bags with sand, to be used in forming temporary

embrasures. One lad of eighteen, a dark mulatto, presented the very

remarkable peculiarity of chest-nut hair, only slightly curling. The

others were nearly all of the true field-hand type, aboriginal black,

with dull faces, short and thick forms, and an air of animal contentment

or at least indifference. They talked little, but giggled a great deal,

snatching the canvas bags from each other, and otherwise showing their

disbelief in the doctrine of all work and no play. When the barrows were

sufficiently filled to suit their weak ideal of a load, a procession of

them set off along a plank causeway leading into the fort, observing a

droll semblance of military precision and pomp, and forcing a passage

through lounging unmilitary buckras with an air of, "Out of de way, Ole

Dan Tucker!" We glanced at the yet unfinished ditch, half full of water,

and walked on to the gateway. A grinning, skipping negro drummer was

showing a new pair of shoes to the tobacco-chewing, jovial youth who

stood, or rather sat, sentinel.

"How'd you get hold of _them?_" asked the latter, surveying the articles

admiringly.

"Got a special order frum the Cap'm fur 'um. That ee way to do it. Won't

wet through, no matter how it rain. He, he! I'm all right now."

Here he showed ivory to his ears, cut a caper, and danced into the fort.

"D-a-m' nig-ger!" grinned the sentinel, approvingly, looking at us to

see if we also enjoyed the incident. Thus introduced to the temporary

guardian of the fort, we told him that we were from the Columbia, which

he was glad to bear of, wanting to know if she was damaged, how she went

ashore, whether she could get off, etc., etc. He was a fair specimen of

the average country Southerner, lounging, open to address, and fond of

talk.

"I've no authority to let you in," he said, when we asked that favor;

"but I'll call the corporal of the guard."

"If you please."

"Corporal of the guard!"

Appeared the corporal, who civilly heard us, and went for the lieutenant

of the guard. Presently a blonde young officer, with a pleasant face,

somewhat Irish in character, came out to us, raising his forefinger in

military salute.

"We should like to go into the fort, if it is proper," I said. "We ask

hospitality the more boldly, because we are shipwrecked people."

"It is against the regulations. However, I venture to take the

responsibility," was the obliging answer.

We passed in, and wandered unwatched for half an hour about the

irregular, many-angled fortress. One-third of the interior is occupied

by two brick barracks, covered with rusty stucco, and by other brick

buildings, as yet incomplete, which I took to be of the nature of

magazines. On the walls, gaping landward as well as seaward, are thirty

or thirty-five iron cannon, all _en barbette_, but protected toward the

harbor by heavy piles of sand-bags, fenced up either with barrels of

sand or palmetto-logs driven firmly into the rampart. Four eight-inch

columbiads, carrying sixty-four pound balls, pointed at Fort Sumter. Six

other heavy pieces, Paixhans, I believe, faced the neck of the harbor.

The remaining armament of lighter calibre, running, I should judge, from

forty-twos down to eighteens. Only one gun lay on the ground destitute

of a carriage. The place will stand a great deal of battering; for the

walls are nearly bidden by the sand-covered _glacis_, which would catch

and smother four point-blank shots out of five, if discharged from a

distance. Against shells, however, it has no resource; and one mortar

would make it a most unwholesome residence.

"What's this?" asked a volunteer, in homespun gray uniform, who, like

ourselves, had come in by courtesy.

"That's the butt of the old flag-staff," answered a comrade. "Cap'n

Foster cut it down before he left the fort, damn him I It was a dam'

sneaking trick. I've a great mind to shave off a sliver and send it to

Lincoln."

The idea of getting a bit of the famous staff as a memento struck

me, and I attempted to put it in practice; but the exceedingly tough

pitch-pine defied my slender pocket-knife.

"Jim, cut the gentleman a piece," said one of the volunteers, Jim drew a

toothpick a foot long and did me the favor, for which I here repeat my

thanks to him.

They were good-looking, healthy fellows, these two, like most of their

comrades, with a certain air of frank gentility and self-respect about

them, being probably the sons of well-to-do planters. It would be a

great mistake to suppose that the volunteers are drawn, to any extent

whatever, from the "poor white trash." The secession movement, like all

the political action of the State at all times, is independent of the

crackers, asks no aid nor advice of them, and, in short, ignores them

utterly.

"I was here when the Star of the West was fired on," the Lieutenant told

us. "We only had powder for two hours. Anderson could have put us out in

a short time, if he had chosen."

"How rapidly can these heavy guns be fired?"

"About ten times an hour."

"Do you think the defences will protect the garrison against a

bombardment?"

"I think the palmetto stockades will answer. I don't know about that

enormous pile of barrels, however. If a shot hits the mass on the top, I

am afraid it will come down, bags and barrels together, bury the gun and

perhaps the gunners."

"What if Sumter should open now?" I suggested.

"We should be here to help," answered the Georgian.

"We should be here to run away," amended my comrade from Brooklyn.

"Well, I suppose we should be of mighty little use, and might as well

clear out," was the sober second-thought of the Georgian.

Having satisfied our curiosity, we thanked the Lieutenant and left Fort

Moultrie. The story of our visit to it excited much surprise, when we

recounted it in the city. Members of the Legislature and other men high

in influence had desired the privilege, but had not applied for it,

expecting a repulse.

A walk down a winding street, bordered by scattered cottages, inclosed

by brown board-fences or railings, and tracked by a horse-railroad built

for the Moultrie House, led us to the ferry-wharf, where we found our

baggage piled together, and our fellow-passengers wandering about in a

state of bored expectation. Sullivan's Island in winter is a good spot

for an economical man, inasmuch as it presents no visible opportunities

of spending money. There were houses of refreshment, as we could see

by their signs; but if they did business, it was with closed doors

and barred shutters. After we had paid a newsboy five cents for the

"Mercury," and five more for the "Courier," we were at the end of our

possibilities in the way of extravagance. At half-past one arrived the

ferry-boat with a few passengers, mostly volunteers, and a deck-load of

military stores, among which I noticed Boston biscuit and several dozen

new knapsacks. Then, from the other side, came the "dam' nigger," that

is to say, the drummer of the new shoes, beating his sheepskin at the

head of about fifty men of the Washington Artillery, who were on their

way back to town from Fort Moultrie. They were fine-looking young

fellows, mostly above the middle size of Northerners, with spirited and

often aristocratic faces, but somewhat more devil-may-care in expression

than we are accustomed to see in New England. They poured down the

gangway, trailed arms, ascended the promenade-deck, ordered arms,

grounded arms, and broke line. The drill struck me as middling, which

may be owing to the fact that the company has lately increased to about

two hundred members, thus diluting the old organization with a large

number of new recruits. Military service at the South is a patrician

exercise, much favored by men of "good family," more especially at this

time, when it signifies real danger and glory.

Our rajpoots having entered the boat, we of lower caste were permitted

to follow. At two o'clock we were steaming over the yellow waters of the

harbor. The volunteers, like everybody else in Charleston, discussed

Secession and Fort Sumter, considering the former as an accomplished

fact, and the latter as a fact of the kind called stubborn. They talked

uniform, too, and equipments, and marksmanship, and drinks, and cigars,

and other military matters. Now and then an awkwardly folded blanket was

taken from the shoulders which it disgraced, refolded, packed carefully

in its covering of India-rubber, and strapped once more in its place,

two or three generally assisting in the operation. Presently a firing at

marks from the upper deck commenced. The favorite target was a conical

floating buoy, showing red on the sunlit surface of the harbor, some

four hundred yards away. With a crack and a hoarse whiz the minié-balls

flew towards it, splashing up the water where they first struck and then

taking two or three tremendous skips before they sank. A militiaman from

New York city, who was one of my fellow-passengers, told me that he

"never saw such good shooting." It seemed to me that every sixth ball

either hit the buoy full, or touched water but a few yards this side of

it, while not more than one in a dozen went wild.

"It is good for a thousand yards," said a volunteer, slapping his

bright, new piece, proudly.

A favorite subject of argument appeared to be whether Fort Sumter ought

to be attacked immediately or not. A lieutenant standing near me talked

long and earnestly regarding this matter with a civilian friend,

breaking out at last in a loud tone,--

"Why, good Heaven, Jim! do you want that place to go peaceably into the

hands of Lincoln?"

"No, Fred, I do not. But I tell you, Fred, when that fort is attacked,

it will be the bloodiest day,--the bloodiest day!--the bloodiest----!!"

And here, unable to express himself in words, Jim flung his arms wildly

about, ground his tobacco with excitement, spit on all sides, and walked

away, shaking his head, I thought, in real grief of spirit.

We passed close to Fort Pinckney, our volunteers exchanging hurrahs with

the garrison. It is a round, two-storied, yellow little fortification,

standing at one end of a green marsh known as Shute's Folly Island.

What it was put there for no one knows: it is too close to the city to

protect it; too much out of the harbor to command that. Perhaps it might

keep reinforcements for Anderson from coming down the Ashley, just as

the guns on the Battery were supposed to be intended to deter them from

descending the Cooper.

On the wharf of the ferry three drunken volunteers, the first that I had

seen in that condition, brushed against me. The nearest one, a handsome

young fellow of six feet two, half turned to stare back at me with a--

"How are ye, Cap'm? Gaw damn ye! Haw, haw, aw!"--and reeled onward,

brimful of spirituous good-nature.

Four days more had I in Charleston, waiting from tide to tide for a

chance to sail to New York, and listening from hour to hour for the guns

of Fort Sumter. Sunday was a day of excitement, a report spreading that

the Floridians had attacked Fort Pickens, and the Charlestonians feeling

consequently bound in honor to fight their own dragon. Groups of earnest

men talked all day and late into the evening under the portico and in

the basement-rooms of the hotel, besides gathering at the corners and

strolling about the Battery. "We must act." "We cannot delay." "We ought

not to submit." Such were the phrases that fell upon the ear oftenest

and loudest.

As I lounged, after tea, in the vestibule of the reading-room, an

eccentric citizen of Arkansas varied the entertainment. A short, thin

man, of the cracker type, swarthy, long-bearded, and untidy, he was

dressed in well-worn civilian costume, with the exception of an old

blue coat showing dim remnants of military garniture. Heeling up to a

gentleman who sat near me, he glared stupidly at him from beneath a

broad-brimmed hat, demanding a seat mutely, but with such eloquence of

oscillation that no words were necessary. The respectable person thus

addressed, not anxious to receive the stranger into his lap, rose and

walked away, with that air of not, having seen anything so common to

disconcerted people who wish to conceal their disturbance. Into the

vacant place dropped the stranger, stretching out his feet, throwing

his head back against the wall, and half closing his eyes with the

drunkard's own leer of self-sufficiency. During a few moments of

agonizing suspense the world waited. Then from those whiskey-scorched

and tobacco-stained lips came a long, shrill "Yee-p!"

It was his exordium; it demanded the attention of the company; and

though he had it not, he continued:--

"I'm an Arkansas man, _I_ am. I'm a big su-gar planter, _I_ am. All

right! Go a'ead! I own fifty niggers, _I_ do. Yee-p!"

He lifted both feet and slammed them on the floor energetically, pausing

for a reply. He had addressed all men; no one responded, and he went

on:--

"I'm for straightout, immedit shession, _I_ am. I go for 'staining

coursh of Sou' Car'lina, _I_ do. I'm ready to fight for Sou' Car'lina.

I'm a Na-po-le-on Bonaparte. All right! Go a'ead! Yee-p! Fellahs don't

know me here. I'm an Arkansas man, I am. Sou' Car'lina won't kill an

Arkansas man. I'm an immedit shessionist. Hurrah for Sou' Car'lina! All

right! Yee-p!"

There was a lingering, caressing accent on his "_I_ am," which told how

dear to him was his individuality, drunk or sober. He looked at no one;

his hat was drawn over his eyes; his hands were deep in his pockets;

his feet did all needful gesturing. I stepped in front of him to get

a fuller view of his face, and the action aroused his attention. He

surveyed my gray Inverness wrapper and gave me a chuckling nod of

approbation.

"How are ye, Bub? I like that blanket, _I_ do."

In spite of this noble stranger's goodwill and prowess, we still found

Fort Sumter a knotty question. In a country which for eighty years has

not seen a shot fired in earnest, it is not wonderful that a good

deal of ignorance should exist concerning military matters, and

that second-class plans should be hatched for taking a first-class

fortification. While I was in Charleston, the most popular proposition

was to bombard continuously for two whole days and nights, thereby

demoralizing the garrison by depriving it of sleep and causing it to

surrender at the first attempt to escalade. Another plan, not in general

favor, was to smoke Anderson out by means of a raft covered with burning

mixtures of a chemical and bad-smelling nature. Still another, with

perhaps yet fewer adherents, was to advance on all sides in such a vast

number of row-boats that the fort could not sink them all, whereupon

the survivors should land on the wharf and proceed to take such further

measures as might be deemed expedient. The volunteers from the country

always arrived full of faith and defiance. "We want to get a squint at

that Fort Sumter," they would say to their city friends. "We are going

to take it. If we don't plant the palmetto on it, it's because there's

no such tree as the palmetto." Down the harbor they would go in the

ferry-boats to Morris or Sullivan's Island. The spy-glass would be

brought out, and one after another would peer through it at the object

of their enmity. Some could not sight it at all, confounded the

instrument, and fell back on their natural vision. Others, more lucky,

or better versed in telescopic observations, got a view of the fortress,

and perhaps burst out swearing at the evident massiveness of the walls

and the size of the columbiads.

"Good Lord, what a gun!" exclaimed one man. "D'ye see that gun? What an

almighty thing! I'll be ----, if I ever put my head in front of it!"

The difficulties of assault were admitted to be very great, considering

the bad footing, the height of the ramparts, and the abundant store of

muskets and grenades in the garrison. As to breaches, nobody seemed to

know whether they could be made or not. The besieging batteries were

neither heavy nor near, nor could they be advanced as is usual in

regular sieges, nor had they any advantage over the defence except in

the number of gunners, while in regard to position and calibre they were

inferior. To knock down a wall nearly forty feet high and fourteen feet

thick at a distance of more than half a mile seemed a tough undertaking,

even when unresisted. It was discovered also that the side of the

fortification towards Fort Johnstone, its only weak point, had been

strengthened so as to make it bomb-proof by means of interior masonry

constructed from the stones of the landing-place. Then nobody wanted to

knock Fort Sumter down, inasmuch as that involved either the labor

of building it up again, or the necessity of going without it as a

harbor-defence. Finally, suppose it should be attacked and not taken?

Really, we unlearned people in the art of war were vastly puzzled as we

thought tins whole matter over, and we sometimes doubted whether our

superiors were not almost equally bothered with ourselves.

This fighting was a sober, sad subject; and yet at times it took a turn

toward the ludicrous. A gentleman told me that he was present when the

steamer Marion was seized with the intention of using her in pursuing

the Star of the West. A vehement dispute arose as to the fitness of the

vessel for military service.

"Fill her with men, and put two or three eighteen-pounders in her," said

the advocates of the measure.

"Where will you put your eighteen-pounders?" demanded the opposition.

"On the promenade-deck, to be sure."

"Yes, and the moment you fire one, you'll see it go through the bottom

of the ship, and then you'll have to go after it."

During the two days previous to my second and successful attempt to quit

Charleston, the city was in full expectation that the fort would shortly

be attacked. News had arrived that Federal troops were on their way with

reinforcements. An armed steamer had been seen off the harbor, both by

night and day, making signals to Anderson. The Governor went down

to Sullivan's Island to inspect the troops and Fort Moultrie. The

volunteers, aided by negroes and even negro women, worked all night on

the batteries. Notwithstanding we were close upon race-week, when the

city is usually crowded, the streets had a deserted air, and nearly

every acquaintance I met told me he had been down to the islands to

see the preparations. Yet the whole excitement, like others which had

preceded, ended even short of smoke. News came that reinforcements had

not been sent to Anderson; and the destruction of that most inconvenient

person was once more postponed. People fell back on the old hope that

the Government would be brought to listen to reason,--that it would

give up to South Carolina what it could not keep from her with justice,

--that it would grant, in short, the incontrovertible right of peaceable

secession. For, in the midst of all these labors and terrors, this

expense and annoyance, no one talked of returning into the Union, and

all agreed in deprecating compromise.

Once more, this time in the James Adger, I set sail from Charleston. The

boat lost one tide, and consequently one day, because at the last

moment the captain found himself obliged to take out a South Carolina

clearance. As I passed down the harbor, I counted fourteen square-rigged

vessels at the wharves, and one lying at anchor, while three others had

just passed the bar, outward-bound, and two were approaching from the

open sea. Deterred from the Ship Channel by the sunken schooners, and

from Maffitt's Channel by the fate of the Columbia, we tried the Middle

Channel, and glided over the bar without accident.

"Sailing to Charleston is very much like going foreign," I said to a

middle-aged sea-captain whom we numbered among our passengers. "What

with heaving the lead, and doing without beacons, and lying off the

coast o' nights, it makes one think of trading to new countries."

I had, it seems, unintentionally pulled the string which jerked him.

Springing up, he paced about excitedly for a few moments, and then broke

out with his story.

"Yes,--I know it,--I know as much about it as anybody, I reckon. I lay

off there nine days in a nor'easter and lost my anchors; and here I am

going on to New York to buy some more; and all for those cursed Black

Republicans!"

In South Carolina they see but one side of the shield,--which is quite

different, as we know, from the custom of the rest of mankind.

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

1. _Descriptive Ethnology._ By R.G. LATHAM. 2 vols. London. 1859.

2. _Anthropologie der Naturvölker._ Von Dr. T. WAIZ. 2 Bänder. Leipzig.

1860.

Some writers have the remarkable faculty of making the subject which

they may happen to treat forever more distasteful and wearisome to their

readers. Whether the cause be in the style, or the point of view, or

the method of treatment, or in all together, they seem able to force the

student away in disgust from the whole field on which they labor, with

vows never again to cross it.

Such an author, it seems to us, is pre-eminently R.G. Latham, in his

treatment of Ethnology. Happy the man who has any such philosophic

interest in Human Races, that he can ever care to hear again of the

subject, after perusing Mr. Latham's various volumes on "Descriptive

Ethnology." We wonder that the whole English reading public; has not

consigned the science to the shelf of Encyclopedias of Useful Knowledge,

or of Year-Books of Fact, or any other equally philosophic and connected

works, after the treatment which this modern master of Ethnology has

given to the subject.

Such disconnected masses of facts are heaped together in these works,

such incredible dulness is shown in presenting them, such careful

avoidance of any generalization or of any interesting particular, such

a bald and conceited style, and such a cockneyish and self-opinionated

view of human history, as our soul wearies even to think of. Mr. Latham

disdains any link of philosophy, or any classification, among his "ten

thousand facts," as being a fault of the "German School" (whatever that

may be) of Ethnology. It seems to him soundly "British" to disbelieve

all the best conclusions of modern scholarship, and to urge his own

fanciful or shallow theories. He treats all human superstitions and

mythologies as if he were standing in the Strand and judging them by the

ideas of modern London. His is a Cockney's view of antiquity. He cannot

imagine that a barbarous and infant people, groping in the mysteries of

the moral universe, might entertain some earnest and poetic views which

were not precisely in the line of thought of the Londoners of the

nineteenth century, and yet which might be worth investigating. To his

mind, there is no grand march of humanity, slow, but certain, towards

higher ideals, through the various lines of race,--but rather

innumerable ripples on the surface of history, which come and pass away

without connection and without purpose.

The reader wades slowly through his books, and leaves them with a

feeling of intense disgust. Such a vast gathering of facts merely to

produce this melancholy confusion of details! You feel that his eminence

in the science must be from the circumstance that no one else is dull

enough and patient enough to gather such a museum of facts in regard

to human beings. The mind is utterly confused as to divisions of human

races, and is ready to conclude that there must be almost as many

varieties of man as there are tribes or dialects, and that Ethnology has

not yet reached the position of a science.

The reader must pardon the bitterness of our feelings; but we are just

smarting from a prolonged perusal of all Mr. Latham's works, especially

the two volumes whose title is given above; and that we may have

sympathy, if only in a faint degree, from our friends, we quote a few

passages, taken at random, though we cannot possibly thus convey an

adequate conception of the infinite dulness of the work.

The following is his elegant introduction:--

"I follow the Horatian rule, and plunge, at

once, _in medias res_. I am on the Indus, but

not on the Indian portion of it. I am on the

Himalayas, but not on their southern side. I

am on the northwestern ranges, with Tartary

on the north, Bokhara on the west, and Hindostan

on the south. I am in a neighborhood

where three great religions meet: Mahometanism,

Buddhism. Brahminism. I _must_ begin

somewhere; and here is my beginning."--

Vol. i. p. 1.

The following is his analysis of the beautiful Finnish Kalevala:--

"Wainamoinen is much of a smith, and more of a harper. Illmarinen is

most of a smith. Lemminkainen is much of a harper, and little of a

smith. The hand of the daughter of the mistress of Pohjola is what, each

and all, the three sons of Kalevala strive to win,--a hand which the

mother of the owner will give to any one who can make for her and

for Pohjola _Sampo_, Wainamoinen will not; but he knows of one who

will,--Illmarinen. Illmarinen makes it, and gains the mother's consent

thereby. But the daughter requires another service. He must hunt down

the elk of Tunela. We now see the way in which the actions of the heroes

are, at one and the same time, separate and connected. Wainamoinen

tries; Illmarinen tries (and eventually wins); Lemminkainen tries. There

are alternations of friendship and enmity. Sampo is made and presented.

It is then wanted back again.

"'Give us,' says Wainamoinen, 'if not the whole, half.'

"'Sampo,' says Louki, the mistress of Pohjola,' cannot be divided.'

"'Then let us steal it,' says one of the three.

"'Agreed,' say the other two.

"So the rape of Sampo takes place. It is taken from Pohjola, whilst the

owners are sung to sleep by the harp of Lemminkainen; sung to sleep,

but not for so long a time as to allow the robbers to escape. They are

sailing Kalevalaward, when Louki comes after them on the wings of the

wind, and raises a storm. Sampo is broken, and thrown into the sea. Bad

days now come. There is no sun, no moon. Illmarinen makes them of silver

and gold. He had previously made his second wife (for he lost his first)

out of the same metals. However, Sampo is washed up, and made whole.

Good days come. The sun and moon shine as before, and the sons of

Kalevala possess Sampo."--Vol. i., pp. 433, 434.

This, again, is Mr. Latham's profound and interesting view of

_Buddhism:--_

"Buddhism is one thing. Practices out of which Buddhism may be developed

are another. It has been already suggested that the ideas conveyed by

the terms _Sramanoe_ and _Gymnosophistoe_ are just as Brahminic as

Buddhist, and, _vice versâ_, just as Buddhist as Brahminic.

"The earliest dates of specific Buddhism are of the same age as the

earliest dates of specific Brahminism.

"Clemens of Alexandria mentions Buddhist pyramids, the Buddhist habit of

depositing certain bones in them, the Buddhist practice of foretelling

events, the Buddhist practice of continence, the Buddhist Semnai or holy

virgins. This, however, may he but so much asceticism. He mentions this

and more. He supplies the name Bouta; Bouta being honored as a god.

"From Cyril of Jerusalem we learn that Samnaism was, more or less,

Manichaean,--Manichaeanism being, more or less, Samanist. Terebinthus,

the preceptor of Manes, took the name Baudas. In Epiphanius, Terebinthus

is the pupil of Scythianus.

"Suidas makes Terebinthus a pupil of Baudda, who pretended to be the

son of a virgin. And here we may stop to remark, that the Mongol

Tshingiz-Khan is said to be virgin-born; that, word for word, Scythianus

is Sak; that Sakya Muni (compare it with Manes) is a name of Buddha.

"Be this as it may, there was, before A.D. 300,--

"1. Action and reaction between Buddhism

and Christianity.

"2. Buddhist buildings.

"3. The same cultus in both Bactria and

India.

"Whether this constitute Buddhism is another

question."--Vol. ii. p. 317.

And more of an equally attractive and comprehensible character.

We assure the reader that these extracts are but feeble exponents of the

peculiar power of Mr. Latham's works,--a power of unmitigated dulness.

What his views are on the great questions of the science--the origin

of races, the migrations, the crossings of varieties, and the like--no

mortal can remember, who has penetrated the labyrinth of his researches.

An author of a very different kind is Professor Waiz, whose work on

Anthropology has just reached this country: a writer as philosophic as

Mr. Latham is disconnected; as pleasing and natural in style as the

other is affected; as simply open to the true and good in all customs or

superstitions of barbarous peoples as the Englishman is contemptuous of

everything not modern and European. Waiz seems to us the most careful

and truly scientific author in the field of Ethnology whom we have

had since Prichard, and with the wider scope which belongs to the

intellectual German.

The bane of this science, as every one knows, has been its theorizing,

and its want of careful inductive reasoning from facts. The

classifications in it have been endless, varying almost with the fancies

of each new student; while every prominent follower of it has had some

pet hypothesis, to which he desired to suit his facts. Whether the

_a priori_ theory were of modern miraculous origin or of gradual

development, of unity or of diversity of parentage, of permanent and

absolute divisions of races or of a community of blood, it has equally

forced the author to twist his facts.

Perhaps the basest of all uses to which theory has been put in this

science was in a well-known American work, where facts and fancies in

Ethnology were industriously woven together to form another withe about

the limbs of the wretched African slave.

Waiz has reasoned slowly and carefully from facts, considering in

his view all possible hypotheses,--even, for instance, the

development-theory of Darwin,--and has formed his own conclusion on

scientific data, or has wisely avowed that no conclusion is possible.

The classification to which he is forced is that which all profound

investigators are approaching,--that of language interpreted by history.

He is compelled to believe that no physiological evidences of race can

be considered as at all equal to the evidences from language. At the

same time, he is ready to admit that even this classification is

imperfect, as from the nature of the case it must be; for the source of

the confusion lies in the very unity of mankind. He rejects _in toto_

Professor Agassiz's "realm-theory," as inconsistent with facts. The

hybrid-question, as put by Messrs. Gliddon and Nott, meets with a

searching and careful investigation, with the conclusion that nothing

in facts yet ascertained proves any want of vitality or power of

propagation in mulattoes or in crosses of any human races.

The unity of origin and the vast antiquity of mankind are the two

important conclusions drawn.

His second volume is entirely devoted to the negro races, and is the

most valuable treatise yet written on that topic.

The whole work is mainly directed towards _Naturvölker_, or "Peoples in

a State of Nature," and therefore cannot be recommended for translation,

as a general text-book on the science of Ethnology,--a book which is

now exceedingly needed in all our higher schools and colleges; but as

a general treatise, with many new and important facts, scientifically

treated, it can be most highly commended to the general scholar.

_Il Politecnico. Repertorio Mensile di Studi applicati alia Prosperità e

Coltura Sociale._ Milano, 1860. New York: Charles B. Norton, Agent for

Libraries, 596, Broadway.

Among the best first-fruits of Italian liberty are the free publication

and circulation of books; and it is a striking indication of the new

order of things in Lombardy, that the publishers at Milan of the monthly

journal, "Il Politecnico," should at once have established an American

agency in New York, and that in successive numbers of their periodical

during the present year they should have furnished lists of some of the

principal American publications which they are prepared to obtain for

Italian readers. It will be a fortunate circumstance for the people of

both countries, should a ready means be established for the interchange

of their contemporaneous works in literature and science.

The "Politecnico" is not altogether a new journal. Seven volumes of it

bad been published, and had acquired for it a high reputation and a

considerable circulation, when political events put a stop to its

issue. The Austrian system of government after 1849 repressed alt free

expression of thought in Lombardy; and no encouragement was afforded for

the publication of any work not under the control of the administration.

With the beginning of the present year the "Politecnico" was

reëstablished, mainly through the influence and under the direction of

Dr. Carlo Cattaneo, who had been the chief promoter of the preceding

original series. The numbers of the new series give evidence of talent

and independence in its conductors and contributors, and contain

articles of intrinsic value, beside that which they possess as

indications of the present intellectual condition and tendencies of

Italy. The journal is wholly devoted to serious studies, its object

being the cultivation of the moral and physical sciences with the arts

depending on them, and their practical application to promote the

national prosperity. That it will carry out its design with ability is

guarantied by the character of Cattaneo.

Carlo Cattaneo is a man of unquestioned power of intellect, of strong

character, and resolute energy. Already distinguished, not only as a

political economist, but as a forcible reasoner in applied politics, he

took a leading part in the struggle of 1848 in Milan, and, inspired by

ill-will towards Charles Albert and the Piedmontese, was one of the

promoters of the disastrous Lombard policy which defeated the hopes of

the opponents of Austria at that day. Though an Italian liberal, and

unquestionably honest in his patriotic intentions, he was virtually an

ally of Radetzky. When the Austrians retook Milan, he was compelled to

fly, and took refuge in Lugano, where he compiled three large volumes

on the affairs of Italy, from the accession of Pius IX. to the fall of

Venice, in which he exhibited his political views, endeavoring to show

that the misfortunes of Lombardy were due to the ambitious and false

policy of the unhappy Charles Albert. His distrust of the Piedmontese

has not diminished with the recent changes in the affairs of Italy; and

although Lombardy is now united to Piedmont, and the hope of freedom

seems to lie in a hearty and generous union of men of all parties in

support of the new government, Cattaneo, when in March last he was

elected a member of the National Parliament, refused to take his seat,

that he might not be obliged to swear allegiance to the King and the

Constitution. His political desire seems to be to see Italy not brought

under one rule, but composed of a union of states, each preserving

its special autonomy. He is a federalist, and does not share in the

unitarian view which prevails with almost all the other prominent

Italian statesmen, and which at this moment appears to be the only

system that can create a strong, united, independent Italy. It was to

him, perhaps, more than to any other single man, that the difficulties

which lately arose in the settling of the mode of annexation of Sicily

and Naples to the Sardinian kingdom were due; and the small party in

Parliament which recently refused to join in the vote of confidence in

the ministry of Cavour was led by Ferrari, the disciple of the Milanese

Doctor.

But however impracticable Cattaneo may be, and however mistaken and

extravagant his political views, he is a man of such vigor of mind, that

a journal conducted by him becomes, from the fact of his connection with

it, one of the important organs of Italian thought. We trust that the

"Politecnico" will find subscribers among those in our country who

desire to keep up their knowledge of Italian affairs at a time of such

extraordinary interest as the present.

_Elsie Venner_. A Romance of Destiny. By OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 2 vols.

Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1861.

English literature numbers among its more or less distinguished authors

a goodly number of physicians. Sir Thomas Browne was, perhaps, the

last of the great writers of English prose whose mind and style were

impregnated with imagination. He wrote poetry without meaning it, as

many of his brother doctors have meant to write poetry without doing it,

in the classic style of

"Inoculation, heavenly maid, descend!"

Garth's "Dispensary" was long ago as fairly buried as any of his

patients; and Armstrong's "Health" enjoys the dreary immortality of

being preserved in the collections, like one of those queer things they

show you in a glass jar at the anatomical museums. Arbuthnot, a truly

genial humorist, has hardly had justice done him. People laugh over his

fun in the "Memoirs of Scriblerus," and are commonly satisfied to think

it Pope's. Smollett insured his literary life in "Humphrey Clinker";

and we suppose his Continuation of Hume is still one of the pills which

ingenuous youth is expected to gulp before it is strong enough to

resist. Goldsmith's fame has steadily gained; and so has that of Keats,

whom we may also fairly reckon in our list, though he remained harmless,

having never taken a degree. On the whole, the proportion of doctors who

have positively succeeded in our literature is a large one, and we

have now another very marked and beautiful case in Dr. Holmes. Since

Arbuthnot, the profession has produced no such wit; since Goldsmith, no

author so successful.

Five years ago it would have been only Dr. Holmes's intimate friends

that would have considered the remarkable success he has achieved not

only possible, but probable. They knew, that, if the fitting opportunity

should only come, he would soon show how much stuff he had in

him,--sterner stuff, too, than the world had supposed,--stuff not

merely to show off the iris of a brilliant reputation, but to block out

into the foundations of an enduring fame. It seems an odd thing to say

that Dr. Holmes had suffered by having given proof of too much wit; but

it is undoubtedly true. People in general have a great respect for those

who scare them or make them cry, but are apt to weigh lightly one who

amuses them. They like to be tickled, but they would hardly take the

advice of their tickler on any question they thought serious. We have

our doubts whether the majority of those who make up what is called "the

world" are fond of wit. It rather puts them out, as Nature did Fuseli:

They look on its crinkling play as men do at lightning; and while they

grant it is very fine, are teased with an uncomfortable wonder as to

where it is going to strike next. They would rather, on the whole,

it were farther off. They like well-established jokes, the fine old

smoked-herring sort, such as the clown offers them in the circus,

warranted never to spoil, if only kept dry enough. Your fresh wit

demands a little thought, perhaps, or at least a kind of negative wit,

in the recipient. It is an active, meddlesome--quality, forever putting

things in unexpected and somewhat startling relations to each other;

and such new relations are as unwelcome to the ordinary mind as poor

relations to a _nouveau riche_. Who wants to be all the time painfully

conceiving of the antipodes walking like flies on the ceiling? Yet wit

is related to some of the profoundest qualities of the intellect. It is

the reasoning faculty acting _per saltum_, the sense of analogy brought

to a focus; it is generalization in a flash, logic by the electric

telegraph, the sense of likeness in unlikeness, that lies at the root

of all discoveries; it is the prose imagination, common-sense at fourth

proof. All this is no reason why the world should like it, however; and

we fancy that the Question, _Ridentem dicere verum quid vetat?_ was

plaintively put in the primitive tongue by one of the world's gray

fathers to another without producing the slightest conviction. Of

course, there must be some reason for this suspicion of wit, as there

is for most of the world's deep-rooted prejudices. There is a kind of

surface-wit that is commonly the sign of a light and shallow nature.

It becomes habitual _persiflage_, incapable of taking a deliberate and

serious view of anything, or of conceiving the solemnities that environ

life. This has made men distrustful of all laughers; and they are apt to

confound in one sweeping condemnation with this that humor whose base

is seriousness, and which is generally the rebound of the mind from

over-sad contemplation. They do not see that the same qualities that

make Shakspeare the greatest of tragic poets make him also the deepest

of humorists.

Dr. Holmes was already an author of more than a quarter of a century's

standing, and was looked on by most people as an _amusing_ writer

merely. He protested playfully and pointedly against this, once or

twice; but, as he could not help being witty, whether he would or no,

his audience laughed and took the protest as part of the joke. He felt

that he was worth a great deal more than he was vulgarly rated at, and

perhaps chafed a little; but his opportunity had not come. With the

first number of the "Atlantic" it came at last, and wonderfully he

profited by it. The public were first delighted, and then astonished. So

much wit, wisdom, pathos, and universal Catharine-wheeling of fun and

fancy was unexampled. "Why, good gracious," cried Madam Grundy, "we've

got a _genius_ among us fit last! I always knew what it would come to!"

"Got a fiddlestick!" says Mr. G.; "it's only rockets." And there was no

little watching and waiting for the sticks to come down. We are afraid

that many a respectable skeptic has a crick in his neck by this time;

for we are of opinion that these are a new kind of rocket, that go

without sticks, and _stay up_ against all laws of gravity.

We expected a great deal from Dr. Holmes; we thought he had in him the

makings of the best magazinist in the country; but we honestly confess

we were astonished. We remembered the proverb, "'Tis the pace that

kills," and could scarce believe that such a two-forty gait could be

kept up through a twelvemonth. Such wind and bottom were unprecedented.

But this was Eclipse himself; and he came in as fresh as a May morning,

ready at a month's end for another year's run. And it was not merely

the perennial vivacity, the fun shading down to seriousness, and the

seriousness up to fun, in perpetual and charming vicissitude;--here was

the man of culture, of scientific training, the man who had thought as

well as felt, and who had fixed purposes and sacred convictions. No, the

Eclipse-comparison is too trifling. This was a stout ship under press

of canvas; and however the phosphorescent star-foam of wit and fancy,

crowding up under her bows or gliding away in subdued flashes of

sentiment in her wake, may draw the eye, yet she has an errand of duty;

she carries a precious freight, she steers by the stars, and all her

seemingly wanton zigzags bring her nearer to port.

When children have made up their minds to like some friend of the

family, they commonly besiege him for a story. The same demand is made

by the public of authors, and accordingly it was made of Dr. Holmes. The

odds were heavy against him; but here again he triumphed. Like a good

Bostonian, he took for his heroine a _schoolma'am_, the Puritan Pallas

Athene of the American Athens, and made her so lovely that everybody was

looking about for a schoolmistress to despair after. Generally, the best

work in imaginative literature is done before forty; but Dr. Holmes

should seem not to have found out what a Mariposa grant Nature had made

him till after fifty.

There is no need of our analyzing "Elsie Venner," for all our readers

know it as well as we do. But we cannot help saying that Dr. Holmes has

struck a new vein of New-England romance. The story is really a romance,

and the character of the heroine has in it an element of mystery; yet

the materials are gathered from every-day New-England life, and that

weird borderland between science and speculation where psychology and

physiology exercise mixed jurisdiction, and which rims New England as

it does all other lands. The character of Elsie is exceptional, but not

purely ideal, like Cristabel and Lamia. In Doctor Kittredge and his

"hired man," and in the Principal of the "Apollinean Institoot," Dr.

Holmes has shown his ability to draw those typical characters that

represent the higher and lower grades of average human nature; and in

calling his work a Romance he quietly justifies himself for mingling

other elements in the composition of Elsie and her cousin. Apart from

the merit of the book as a story, it is full of wit, and of sound

thought sometimes hiding behind a mask of humor. Admirably conceived are

the two clergymen, gradually changing sides almost without knowing it,

and having that persuasion of consistency which men always feel, because

they must always bring their creed into some sort of agreement with

their dispositions.

There is something melancholy in the fact, that, the moment Dr. Holmes

showed that he felt a deep interest in the great questions which concern

this world and the next, and proved not only that he believed in

something, but thought his belief worth standing up for, the cry of

_Infidel_ should have been raised against him by people who believe in

nothing but an authorized version of Truth, they themselves being the

censors. For our own part, we do not like the smell of Smithfield,

whether it be Catholic or Protestant that is burning there; though,

fortunately, one can afford to smile at the Inquisition, so long as its

Acts of Faith are confined to the corners of sectarian newspapers.

But Dr. Holmes can well afford to possess his soul in patience. The

Unitarian John Milton has won and kept quite a respectable place in

literature, though he was once forced to say, bitterly, that "new

Presbyter was only old Priest writ large." One can say nowadays, _E pur

si muove_, with more comfort than Galileo could; the world does move

forward, and we see no great chance for any ingenious fellow-citizen to

make his fortune by a "Yankee Heretic-Baker," as there might have been

two centuries ago.

Dr. Holmes has proved his title to be a wit in the earlier and higher

sense of the word, when it meant a man of genius, a player upon thoughts

rather than words. The variety, freshness, and strength which he has

lent to our pages during the last three years seem to demand of us that

we should add our expression of admiration to that which his countrymen

have been so eager and unanimous in rendering.

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