I mourn no more my vanished years:

Beneath a tender rain,

An April rain of smiles and tears,

My heart is young again.

The west winds blow, and, singing low,

I hear the glad streams run;

The windows of my soul I throw

Wide open to the sun.

No longer forward nor behind

I look in hope or fear;

But, grateful, take the good I find,

The best of now and here.

I plough no more a desert land,

To harvest weed and tare;

The manna dropping from God's hand

Rebukes my painful care.

I break my pilgrim staff, I lay

Aside the toiling oar;

The angel sought so far away

I welcome at my door.

The airs of Spring may never play

Among the ripening corn,

Nor freshness of the flowers of May

Blow through the Autumn morn;--

Yet shall the blue-eyed gentian look

Through fringed lids to heaven,

And the pale aster in the brook

Shall see its image given;--

The woods shall wear their robes of praise,

The south wind softly sigh,

And sweet, calm days in golden haze

Melt down the amber sky.

Not less shall manly deed and word

Rebuke an age of wrong;

The graven flowers that wreathe the sword

Make not the blade less strong.

But smiting hands shall learn to heal,

To build as to destroy;

Nor less my heart for others feel

That I the more enjoy.

All as God wills, who wisely heeds

To give or to withhold,

And knoweth more of all my needs

Than all my prayers have told!

Enough that blessings undeserved

Have marked my erring track,--

That, wheresoe'er my feet have swerved,

His chastening turned me back,--

That more and more a Providence

Of love is understood,

Making the springs of time and sense

Sweet with eternal good,--

That death seems but a covered way

Which opens into light,

Wherein no blinded child can stray

Beyond the Father's sight,--

That care and trial seem at last,

Through Memory's sunset air,

Like mountain-ranges overpast,

In purple distance fair,--

That all the jarring notes of life

Seem blending in a psalm,

And all the angles of its strife

Slow rounding into calm.

And so the shadows fall apart,

And so the west winds play;

And all the windows of my heart

I open to the day!

THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.

WHAT HE SAID, WHAT HE HEARD, AND WHAT HE SAW.

There has been a sort of stillness in the atmosphere of our

boarding-house since my last record, as if something or other were going

on. There is no particular change that I can think of in the aspect of

things; yet I have a feeling as if some game of life were quietly

playing and strange forces were at work, underneath this smooth surface

of every-day boarding-house life, which would show themselves some fine

morning or other in events, if not in catastrophes. I have been

watchful, as I said I should be, but have little to tell as yet. You may

laugh at me, and very likely think me foolishly fanciful to trouble

myself about what is going on in a middling-class household like ours.

Do as you like. But here is that terrible fact to begin with,--a

beautiful young girl, with the blood and the nerve-fibre that belong to

Nature's women, turned loose among live men.

--_Terrible_ fact?

Very terrible. Nothing more so. Do you forget the angels who lost heaven

for the daughters of men? Do you forget Helen, and the fair women who

made mischief and set nations by the ears before Helen was born? If

jealousies that gnaw men's hearts out of their bodies,--if pangs that

waste men to shadows and drive them into raving madness or moping

melancholy,--if assassination and suicide are dreadful possibilities,

then there is always something frightful about a lovely young woman.--I

love to look at this "Rainbow," as her father used sometimes to call

her, of ours. Handsome creature that she is in forms and colors,--the

very picture, as it seems to me, of that "golden blonde" my friend whose

book you read last year fell in love with when he was a boy, (as you

remember, no doubt,)--handsome as she is, fit for a sea-king's bride, it

is not her beauty alone that holds my eyes upon her. Let me tell you one

of my fancies, and then you will understand the strange sort of

fascination she has for me.

It is in the hearts of many men and women--let me add children--that

there is a _Great Secret_ waiting for them,--a secret of which they get

hints now and then, perhaps oftener in early than in later years. These

hints come sometimes in dreams, sometimes in sudden startling

flashes,--second wakings, as it were,--a waking out of the waking state,

which last is very apt to be a half-sleep. I have many times stopped

short and held my breath, and felt the blood leaving my cheeks, in one

of these sudden clairvoyant flashes. Of course I cannot tell what kind

of a secret this is; but I think of it as a disclosure of certain

relations of our personal being to time and space, to other

intelligences, to the procession of events, and to their First Great

Cause. This secret seems to be broken up, as it were, into fragments, so

that we find here a word and there a syllable, and then again only a

letter of it; but it never is written out for most of us as a complete

sentence, in this life. I do not think it could be; for I am disposed to

consider our beliefs about such a possible disclosure rather as a kind

of premonition of an enlargement of our faculties in some future state

than as an expectation to be fulfilled for most of us in this life.

Persons, however, have fallen into trances,--as did the Reverend William

Tennent, among many others,--and learned some things which they could

not tell in our human words.

Now among the visible objects which hint to us fragments of this

infinite secret for--which our souls are waiting, the faces of women are

those that carry the most legible hieroglyphics of the great mystery.

There are women's faces, some real, some ideal, which contain something

in them that becomes a positive element in our creed, so direct and

palpable a revelation is it of the infinite purity and love. I remember

two faces of women with wings, such as they call angels, of Fra

Angelico,--and I just now came across a print of Raphael's Santa

Apollina, with something of the same quality,--which I was sure had

their prototypes in the world above ours. No wonder the Catholics pay

their vows to the Queen of Heaven! The unpoetical side of Protestantism

is, that it has no women to be worshipped.

But mind you, it is not every beautiful face that hints the Great Secret

to us, nor is it only in beautiful faces that we find traces of it.

Sometimes it looks out from a sweet sad eye, the only beauty of a plain

countenance; sometimes there is so much meaning in the lips of a woman,

not otherwise fascinating, that we know they have a message for us, and

wait almost with awe to hear their accents. But this young girl has at

once the beauty of feature and the unspoken mystery of expression. Can

she tell me anything? Is her life a complement of mine, with the missing

element in it which I have been groping after through so many

friendships that I have tired of, and through--Hush! Is the door fast?

Talking loud is a bad trick in these curious boarding-houses.

You must have sometimes noted this fact that I am going to remind you of

and to use for a special illustration. Riding along over a rocky road,

suddenly the slow monotonous grinding of the crushing gravel changes to

a deep heavy rumble. There is a great hollow under your feet,--a huge

unsunned cavern. Deep, deep beneath you, in the core of the living rock,

it arches its awful vault, and far away it stretches its winding

galleries, their roofs dripping into streams where fishes have been

swimming and spawning in the dark until their scales are white as milk

and their eyes have withered out, obsolete and useless.

So it is in life. We jog quietly along, meeting the same faces, grinding

over the same thoughts,--the gravel of the soul's highway,--now and then

jarred against an obstacle we cannot crush, but must ride over or round

as we best may, sometimes bringing short up against a disappointment,

but still working along with the creaking and rattling and grating and

jerking that belong to the journey of life, even in the

smoothest-rolling vehicle. Suddenly we hear the deep underground

reverberation that reveals the unsuspected depth of some abyss of

thought or passion beneath us.----

I wish the girl would go. I don't like to look at her so much, and yet I

cannot help it. Always that same expression of something that I ought to

know,--something that she was made to tell and I to hear,--lying there

ready to fall off from her lips, ready to leap out of her eyes and make

a saint of me, or a devil or a lunatic, or perhaps a prophet to tell the

truth and be hated of men, or a poet whose words shall flash upon the

dry stubble-field of worn-out thoughts and burn over an age of lies in

an hour of passion.

It suddenly occurs to me that I may have put you on the wrong track. The

Great Secret that I refer to has nothing to do with the Three Words. Set

your mind at ease about that,--there are reasons I could give you which

settle all that matter. I don't wonder, however, that you confounded the

Great Secret with the Three Words.

I LOVE YOU is all the secret that many, nay, most women have to tell.

When that is said, they are like China-crackers on the morning of the

fifth of July. And just as that little patriotic implement is made with

a slender train which leads to the magazine in its interior, so a sharp

eye can almost always see the train leading from a young girl's eye or

lip to the "I love you" in her heart. But the Three Words are not the

Great Secret I mean. No, women's faces are only one of the tablets on

which that is written in its partial, fragmentary symbols. It lies

deeper than Love, though very probably Love is a part of it. Some, I

think,--Wordsworth might be one of them,--spell out a portion of it from

certain beautiful natural objects, landscapes, flowers, and others. I

can mention several poems of his that have shadowy hints which seem to

me to come near the region where I think it lies. I have known two

persons who pursued it with the passion of the old alchemists,--all

wrong evidently, but infatuated, and never giving up the daily search

for it until they got tremulous and feeble, and their dreams changed to

visions of things that ran and crawled about their floor and ceilings,

and so they died. The vulgar called them drunkards.

I told you that I would let you know the mystery of the effect this

young girl's face produces on me. It is akin to those influences a

friend of mine has described, you may remember, as coming from certain

voices. I cannot translate it into words,--only into feelings; and these

I have attempted to shadow by showing that her face hinted that

revelation of something we are close to knowing, which all imaginative

persons are looking for either in this world or on the very threshold of

the next.

You shake your head at the vagueness and fanciful incomprehensibleness

of my description of the expression in a young girl's face. You forget

what a miserable surface-matter this language is in which we try to

reproduce our interior state of being. Articulation is a shallow trick.

From the light Poh! which we toss off from our lips as we fling a

nameless scribbler's impertinences into our waste-baskets, to the

gravest utterance which comes from our throats in our moments of deepest

need, is only a space of some three or four inches. Words, which are a

set of clickings, hissings, lispings, and so on, mean very little,

compared to tones and expression of the features. I give it up; I

thought I could shadow forth in some feeble way, by their aid, the

effect this young girl's face produces on my imagination; but it is of

no use. No doubt your head aches, trying to make something of my

description. If there is here and there one that can make anything

intelligible out of my talk about the Great Secret, and who has spelt

out a syllable or two of it on some woman's face, dead or living, that

is all I can expect. One should see the person with whom he converses

about such matters. There are dreamy-eyed people to whom I should say

all these things with a certainty of being understood;--

That moment that his face I see,

I know the man that must hear me:

To him my tale I teach.

----I am afraid some of them have not got a spare quarter for this

August number, so that they will never see it.

----Let us start again, just as if we had not made this ambitious

attempt, which may go for nothing, and you can have your money refunded,

if you will make the change.

This young girl, about whom I have talked so unintelligibly, is the

unconscious centre of attraction to the whole solar system of our

breakfast-table. The little gentleman, leans towards her, and she again

seems to be swayed as by some invisible gentle force towards him. That

slight inclination of two persons with a strong affinity towards each

other, throwing them a little out of plumb when they sit side by side,

is a physical fact I have often noticed. Then there is a tendency in all

the men's eyes to converge on her; and I do firmly believe, that, if all

their chairs were examined, they would be found a little obliquely

placed, so as to favor the direction in which their occupants love to

look.

That bland, quiet old gentleman, of whom I have spoken as sitting

opposite to me, is no exception to the rule. She brought down some

mignonette one morning, which she had grown in her chamber. She gave a

sprig to her little neighbor, and one to the landlady, and sent another

by the hand of Bridget to this old gentleman.

----Sarvant, Ma'am! Much obleeged,--he said, and put it gallantly in his

button-hole.--After breakfast he must see some of her drawings. Very

fine performances,--very fine!--truly elegant productions,--truly

elegant!--Had seen Miss Linley's needle-work in London, in the year

(eighteen hundred and little or nothing, I think he said,)--patronized

by the nobility and gentry, and Her Majesty,--elegant, truly elegant

productions, very fine performances; these drawings reminded him of

them;--wonderful resemblance to Nature; an extraordinary art, painting;

Mr. Copley made some very fine pictures that he remembered seeing when

he was a boy. Used to remember some lines about a portrait written by

Mr. Cowper, beginning,--

"Oh that those lips had language! Life has past

With me but roughly since I saw thee last."

And with this the old gentleman fell to thinking about a dead mother of

his that he remembered ever so much younger than he now was, and

looking, not as his mother, but as his daughter should look. The dead

young mother was looking at the old man, her child, as she used to look

at him so many, many years ago. He stood still as if cataleptic, his

eyes fixed on the drawings till their outlines grew indistinct and they

ran into each other, and a pale, sweet face shaped itself out of the

glimmering light through which he saw them.--What is there quite so

profoundly human as an old man's memory of a mother who died in his

earlier years? Mother she remains till manhood, and by-and-by she grows,

as it were, to be as a sister; and at last, when, wrinkled and bowed and

broken, he looks back upon her in her fair youth, he sees in the sweet

image he caresses, not his parent, but, as it were, his child.

If I had not seen all this in the old gentleman's face, the words with

which he broke his silence would have betrayed his train of thought.

----If they had only taken pictures then as they do now!--he said.--All

gone! all gone! nothing but her face as she leaned on the arms of her

great chair; and I would give a hundred pound for the poorest little

picture of her, such as you can buy for a shilling of anybody that you

don't want to see.--The old gentleman put his hand to his forehead so as

to shade his eyes. I saw he was looking at the dim photograph of memory,

and turned from him to Iris.

How many drawing-books have you filled,--I said,--since you began to

take lessons?--This was the first,--she answered,--since she was here;

and it was not full, but there were many separate sheets of large size

she had covered with drawings.

I turned over the leaves of the book before us. Academic studies,

principally of the human figure. Heads of sibyls, prophets, and so

forth. Limbs from statues. Hands and feet from Nature. What a superb

drawing of an arm! I don't remember it among the figures from Michel

Angelo, which seem to have been her patterns mainly. From Nature, I

think, or after a cast from Nature.--Oh!----

----Your smaller studies are in this, I suppose,--I said, taking up the

drawing-book with a lock on it.----Yes,--she said.--I should like to see

her style of working on a small scale.--There was nothing in it worth

showing,--she said; and presently I saw her try the lock, which proved

to be fast. We are all caricatured in it, I haven't the least doubt. I

think, though, I could tell by her way of dealing with us what her

fancies were about us boarders. Some of them act as if they were

bewitched with her, but she does not seem to notice it much. Her

thoughts seem to be on her little neighbor more than on anybody else.

The young fellow John appears to stand second in her good graces. I

think he has once or twice sent her what the landlady's daughter calls

bó-kays of flowers,--somebody has, at any rate.--I saw a book she had,

which must have come from the divinity-student. It had a dreary

title-page, which she had enlivened with a fancy portrait of the

author,--a face from memory, apparently,--one of those faces that small

children loathe without knowing why, and which give them that inward

disgust for heaven so many of the little wretches betray, when they hear

that these are "good men," and that heaven is full of such.--The

gentleman with the "diamond"--the Koh-i-noor, so called by us--was not

encouraged, I think, by the reception of his packet of perfumed soap. He

pulls his purple moustache and looks appreciatingly at Iris, who never

sees him, as it should seem. The young Marylander, who I thought would

have been in love with her before this time, sometimes looks from his

corner across the long diagonal of the table, as much as to say, I wish

you were up here by me, or I were down there by you,--which would,

perhaps, be a more natural arrangement than the present one. But nothing

comes of all this,--and nothing has come of my sagacious idea of finding

out the girl's fancies by looking into her locked drawing-book.

Not to give up all the questions I was determined to solve, I made an

attempt also to work into the little gentleman's chamber. For this

purpose, I kept him in conversation, one morning, until he was just

ready to go up-stairs, and then, as if to continue the talk, followed

him as he toiled back to his room. He rested on the landing and faced

round toward me. There was something in his eye which said, Stop there!

So we finished our conversation on the landing. The next day, I mustered

assurance enough to knock at his door, having a pretext ready.--No

answer.--Knock again. A door, as if of a cabinet, was shut softly and

locked, and presently I heard the peculiar dead beat of his thick-soled,

misshapen boots. The bolts and the lock of the inner door were

unfastened,--with unnecessary noise, I thought,--and he came into the

passage. He pulled the inner door after him and opened the outer one at

which I stood. He had on a flowered silk dressing-gown, such as "Mr.

Copley" used to paint his old-fashioned merchant-princes in; and a

quaint-looking key in his hand. Our conversation was short, but long

enough to convince me that the little gentleman did not want my company

in his chamber, and did not mean to have it.

I have been making a great fuss about what is no mystery at all,--a

schoolgirl's secrets and a whimsical man's habits. I mean to give up

such nonsense and mind my own business.--Hark! What the deuse is that

odd noise in his chamber?

----I think I am a little superstitious. There were two things, when I

was a boy, that diabolized my imagination,--I mean, that gave me a

distinct apprehension of a formidable bodily shape which prowled round

the neighborhood where I was born and bred. The first was a series of

marks called the "Devil's footsteps." These were patches of sand in the

pastures, where no grass grew, where even the low-bush blackberry, the

"dewberry," as our Southern neighbors call it, in prettier and more

Shakspearian language, did not spread its clinging creepers,--where even

the pale, dry, sadly-sweet "everlasting" could not grow, but all was

bare and blasted. The second was a mark in one of the public buildings

near my home,--the college dormitory named after a Colonial Governor. I

do not think many persons are aware of the existence of this

mark,--little having been said about the story in print, as it was

considered very desirable, for the sake of the institution, to hush it

up. In the northwest corner, and on the level of the third or fourth

story, there are signs of a breach in the walls, mended pretty well, but

not to be mistaken. A considerable portion of that corner must have been

carried away, from within outward. It was an unpleasant story; and I do

not care to repeat the particulars; but some young men had been using

sacred things in a profane and unlawful way, when the occurrence, which

was variously explained, took place. The story of the Appearance in the

chamber was, I suppose, invented afterwards; but of the injury to the

building there could be no question; and the zig-zag line, where the

mortar is a little thicker than before, is still distinctly visible. The

queer burnt spots, called the "Devil's footsteps," had never attracted

attention before this time, though there is no evidence that they had

not existed previously, except that of the late Miss M., a "Goody," so

called, or sweeper, who was positive on the subject, but had a strange

horror of referring to an affair of which she was thought to know

something.--I tell you it was not so pleasant for a little boy of

impressible nature to go up to bed in an old gambrel-roofed house, with

untenanted, locked upper-chambers, and a most ghostly garret,--with the

"Devil's footsteps" in the fields behind the house, and in front of it

the patched dormitory where the unexplained occurrence had taken place

which startled those godless youths at their mock devotions, so that one

of them was an idiot from that day forward, and another, after a

dreadful season of mental conflict, took holy orders and became renowned

for his ascetic sanctity.

There were other circumstances that kept up the impression produced by

these two singular facts I have just mentioned. There was a dark

storeroom, on looking through the keyhole of which, I could dimly see a

heap of chairs and tables, and other four-footed things, which seemed to

me to have rushed in there, frightened, and in their fright to have

huddled together and climbed up on each other's backs,--as the people

did in that awful crush where so many were killed, at the execution of

Holloway and Haggerty. Then the Lady's portrait, up-stairs, with the

sword-thrusts through it,--marks of the British officers' rapiers,--and

the tall mirror in which they used to look at their red coats,--confound

them for smashing its mate!--and the deep, cunningly wrought arm-chair

in which Lord Percy used to sit while his hair was dressing;--he was a

gentleman, and always had it covered with a large _peignoir_, to save

the silk covering my grandmother embroidered. Then the little room

down-stairs, from which went the orders to throw up a bank of earth on

the hill yonder, where you may now observe a granite obelisk,--"the

study," in my father's time, but in those days the council-chamber of

armed men,--sometimes filled with soldiers;--come with me, and I will

show you the "dents" left by the butts of their muskets all over the

floor.--With all these suggestive objects round me, aided by the wild

stories those awful country-boys that came to live in our service

brought with them,--of contracts written in blood and left out over

night, not to be found the next morning,--removed by the Evil One, who

takes his nightly round among our dwellings, and filed away for future

use,--of dreams coming true,--of death-signs,--of apparitions,--no

wonder that my imagination got excited, and I was liable to

superstitious fancies.

Jeremy Bentham's logic, by which he proved that he couldn't possibly see

a ghost, is all very well--in the day-time. All the reason in the world

will never get those impressions of childhood, created by just such

circumstances as I have been telling, out of a man's head. That is the

only excuse I have to give for the nervous kind of curiosity with which

I watch my little neighbor, and the obstinacy with which I lie awake

whenever I hear anything going on in his chamber after midnight.

But whatever further observations I may have made must be deferred for

the present. You will see in what way it happened that my thoughts were

turned from spiritual matters to bodily ones, and how I got my fancy

full of material images,--faces, heads, figures, muscles, and so

forth,--in such a way that I should have no chance in this number to

gratify any curiosity you may feel, if I had the means of so doing.

Indeed, I have come pretty near omitting my periodical record this time.

It was all the work of a friend of mine, who would have it that I should

sit to him for my portrait. When a soul draws a body in the great

lottery of life, where every one is sure of a prize, such as it is, the

said soul inspects the said body with the same curious interest with

which one who has ventured into a "gift enterprise" examines the

"massive silver pencil-case" with the coppery smell and impressible

tube, or the "splendid gold ring" with the questionable specific

gravity, which it has been his fortune to obtain in addition to his

purchase.

The soul, having studied the article of which it finds itself

proprietor, thinks, after a time, it knows it pretty well. But there is

this difference between its view and that of a person looking at us:--we

look from within, and see nothing but the mould formed by the elements

in which we are incased; other observers look from without, and see us

as living statues. To be sure, by the aid of mirrors, we get a few

glimpses of our outside aspect; but this occasional impression is always

modified by that look of the soul from within outward which none but

ourselves can take. A portrait is apt, therefore, to be a surprise to

us. The artist looks only from without. He sees us, too, with a hundred

aspects on our faces we are never likely to see. No genuine expression

can be studied by the subject of it in the looking-glass.

More than this; he sees us in a way in which many of our friends or

acquaintances never see us. Without wearing any mask we are conscious

of, we have a special face for each friend. For, in the first place,

each puts a special reflection of himself upon us, on the principle of

assimilation referred to in my last record, if you happen to have read

that document. And secondly, each of our friends is capable of seeing

just so far, and no farther, into our face, and each sees in it the

particular thing that he looks for. Now the artist, if he is truly an

artist, does not take any one of these special views. Suppose he should

copy you as you appear to the man who wants your name to a

subscription-list, you could hardly expect a friend who entertains you

to recognize the likeness to the smiling face which sheds its radiance

at his board. Even within your own family, I am afraid there is a face

which the rich uncle knows, that is not so familiar to the poor

relation. The artist must take one or the other, or something compounded

of the two, or something different from either. What the daguerreotype

and photograph do is to give the features and one particular look, the

very look which kills all expression, that of self-consciousness. The

artist throws you off your guard, watches you in movement and in repose,

puts your face through its exercises, observes its transitions, and so

gets the whole range of its expression. Out of all this he forms an

ideal portrait, which is not a copy of your exact look at any one time

or to any particular person. Such a portrait cannot be to everybody what

the ungloved call "as nat'ral as life." Every good picture, therefore,

must be considered wanting in resemblance by many persons.

There is one strange revelation which comes out, as the artist shapes

your features from his outline. It is that you resemble so many

relatives to whom you yourself never had noticed any particular likeness

in your countenance.

He is at work at me now, when I catch some of these resemblances,

thus:--

There! that is just the look my father used to have sometimes; I never

thought I had a sign of it. The mother's eyebrow and grayish-blue eye,

those I knew I had. But there is a something which recalls a smile that

faded away from my sister's lips--how many years ago! I thought it so

pleasant in her, that I love myself better for having a trace of it.

Are we not young? Are we not fresh and blooming? Wait a bit. The artist

takes a mean little brush and draws three fine lines, diverging outwards

from the eye over the temple. Five years.--The artist draws one

tolerably distinct and two faint lines, perpendicularly between the

eyebrows. Ten years.--The artist breaks up the contours round the mouth,

so that they look a little as a hat does that has been sat upon and

recovered itself, ready, as one would say, to crumple up again in the

same creases, on smiling or other change of feature.--Hold on! Stop

that! Give a young fellow a chance! Are we not whole years short of that

interesting period of life when Mr. Balzac says that a man, etc., etc.,

etc.?

There now! That is ourself, as we look after finishing an article,

getting a three-mile pull with the ten-foot sculls, redressing the

wrongs of the toilet, and standing with the light of hope in our eye and

the reflection of a red curtain on our cheek. Is he not a POET that

painted us?

"Blest be the art that can immortalize!"

COWPER

----Young folks look on a face as a unit; children who go to school with

any given little John Smith see in his name a distinctive appellation,

and in his features as special and definite an expression of his sole

individuality as if he were the first created of his race. As soon as we

are old enough to get the range of three or four generations well in

hand, and to take in large family histories, we never see an individual

in a face of any stock we know, but a mosaic copy of a pattern, with

fragmentary tints from this and that ancestor. The analysis of a face

into its ancestral elements requires that it should be examined in the

very earliest infancy, before it has lost that ancient and solemn look

it brings with it out of the past eternity; and again in that brief

space when Life, the mighty sculptor, has done his work, and Death, his

silent servant, lifts the veil and lets us look at the marble lines he

has wrought so faithfully; and lastly, while a painter who can seize all

the traits of a countenance is building it up, feature after feature,

from the slight outline to the finished portrait.

----I am satisfied, that, as we grow older, we learn to look upon our

bodies more and more as a temporary possession, and less and less as

identified with ourselves. In early years, while the child "feels its

life in every limb," it lives in the body and for the body to a very

great extent. It ought to be so. There have been many very interesting

children who have shown a wonderful indifference to the things of earth

and an extraordinary development of the spiritual nature. There is a

perfect literature of their biographies, all alike in their essentials;

the same "disinclination to the usual amusements of childhood"; the same

remarkable sensibility; the same docility; the same conscientiousness;

in short, an almost uniform character, marked by beautiful traits, which

we look at with a painful admiration. It will be found that most of

these children are the subjects of some constitutional unfitness for

living, the most frequent of which I need not mention. They are like the

beautiful, blushing, half-grown fruit that falls before its time because

its core is gnawed out. They have their meaning,--they do not live in

vain,--but they are windfalls. I am convinced that many healthy children

are injured morally by being forced to read too much about these little

meek sufferers and their spiritual exercises. Here is a boy that loves

to run, swim, kick football, turn somersets, make faces, whittle, fish,

tear his clothes, coast, skate, fire crackers, blow squash "tooters,"

cut his name on fences, read about Robinson Crusoe and Sinbad the

Sailor, eat the widest-angled slices of pie and untold cakes and

candies, crack nuts with his back teeth and bite out the better part of

another boy's apple with his front ones, turn up coppers, "stick"

knives, call names, throw stones, knock off hats, set mousetraps, chalk

doorsteps, "cut behind" anything on wheels or runners, whistle through

his teeth, "holler" Fire! on slight evidence, run after soldiers,

patronize an engine-company, or, in his own words, "blow for tub No.

11," or whatever it may be;--isn't that a pretty nice sort of a boy,

though he has not got anything the matter with him that takes the taste

of this world out? Now, when you put into such a hot-blooded,

hard-fisted, round-cheeked little rogue's hand a sad-looking volume or

pamphlet, with the portrait of a thin, white-faced child, whose life is

really as much a training for death as the last month of a condemned

criminal's existence, what does he find in common between his own

overflowing and exulting sense of vitality and the experiences of the

doomed offspring of invalid parents? The time comes when we have learned

to understand the music of sorrow, the beauty of resigned suffering, the

holy light that plays over the pillow of those who die before their

time, in humble hope and trust. But it is not until he has worked his

way through the period of honest, hearty animal existence, which every

robust, child should make the most of,--not until he has learned the use

of his various faculties, which is his first duty,--that a boy of

courage and animal vigor is in a proper state to read these tearful

records of premature decay. I have no doubt that disgust is implanted in

the minds of many healthy children by early surfeits of pathological

piety. I do verily believe that He who took children in His arms and

blessed them loved the healthiest and most playful of them just as well

as those who were richest in the tuberculous virtues. I know what I am

talking about, and there are more parents in this country who will be

willing to listen to what I say than there are fools to pick a quarrel

with me. In the sensibility and the sanctity which often accompany

premature decay I see one of the most beautiful instances of the

principle of compensation which marks the Divine benevolence. But to get

the spiritual hygiene of robust natures out of the exceptional regimen

of invalids is just simply what we Professors call "bad practice"; and I

know by experience that there are worthy people who not only try it on

their own children, but actually force it on those of their neighbors.

----Having been photographed, and stereographed, and chromatographed, or

done in colors, it only remained to be phrenologized. A polite note from

Messrs. Bumpus and Crane, requesting our attendance at their

Physiological Emporium, was too tempting to be resisted. We repaired to

that scientific Golgotha.

Messrs. Bumpus and Crane are arranged on the plan of the man and the

woman in the toy called a "weather-house," both on the same wooden arm

suspended on a pivot,--so that when one comes to the door, the other

retires backwards, and _vice versâ_. The more particular speciality of

one is to lubricate your entrance and exit,--that of the other to polish

you off phrenologically in the recesses of the establishment. Suppose

yourself in a room full of casts and pictures, before a counter-full of

books with taking titles. I wonder if the picture of the brain is there,

"approved" by a noted Phrenologist, which was copied from _my_, the

Professor's, folio plate in the work of Gall and Spurzheim. An extra

convolution, No. 9, _Destructiveness_, according to the list beneath,

which was not to be seen in the plate, itself a copy of Nature, was very

liberally supplied by the artist, to meet the wants of the catalogue of

"organs." Professor Bumpus is seated in front of a row of

women,--horn-combers and gold-beaders, or somewhere about that range of

life,--looking so credulous, that, if any Second-Advent Miller or Joe

Smith should come along, he could string the whole lot of them on his

cheapest lie, as a boy strings a dozen "shiners" on a stripped twig of

willow.

The Professor (meaning ourselves) is in a hurry, as usual; let the

horn-combers wait,--he shall be bumped without inspecting the

antechamber.

Tape round the head,--22 inches. (Come on, old 23 inches, if you think

you are the better man!)

Feels of thorax and arm, and nuzzles round among muscles as those horrid

old women poke their fingers into the salt-meat on the provision-stalls

at the Quincy Market. Vitality, No. 5 or 6, or something or other.

_Victuality_, (organ at epigastrium,) some other number equally

significant.

Mild champooing of head now commences. Extraordinary revelations!

Cupidipbilous, 6! Hymeniphilous, 6+! Paediphilous, 5! Deipniphilous, 6!

Gelasmiphilous, 6! Muslkiphilous, 5! Uraniphilous, 5! Glossiphilous, 8!!

and so on. Meant for a linguist.--Invaluable information. Will invest in

grammars and dictionaries immediately.--I have nothing against the grand

total of my phrenological endowments.

I never set great store by my head, and did not think Messrs. Bumpus and

Crane would give me so good a lot of organs as they did, especially

considering that I was a _dead_-head on that occasion. Much obliged to

them for their politeness. They have been useful in their way by calling

attention to important physiological facts. (This concession is due to

our immense bump of Candor.)

_A short Lecture on Phrenology, read to the Boarders at our

Breakfast-Table._

I shall begin, my friends, with the definition of a _Pseudo-science_. A

Pseudo-science consists of _a nomenclature_, with a self-adjusting

arrangement, by which all positive evidence, or such as favors its

doctrines, is admitted, and all negative evidence, or such as tells

against it, is excluded. It is invariably connected with some lucrative

practical application. Its professors and practitioners are usually

shrewd people; they are very serious with the public, but wink and laugh

a good deal among themselves. The believing multitude consists of women

of both sexes, feeble-minded inquirers, poetical optimists, people who

always get cheated in buying horses, philanthropists who insist on

hurrying up the millennium, and others of this class, with here and

there a clergyman, less frequently a lawyer, very rarely a physician,

and almost never a horse-jockey or a member of the detective police.--I

did not say that Phrenology was one of the Pseudo-sciences.

A Pseudo-science does not necessarily consist wholly of lies. It may

contain many truths, and even valuable ones. The rottenest bank starts

with a little specie. It puts out a thousand promises to pay on the

strength of a single dollar, but the dollar is very commonly a good one.

The practitioners of the Pseudo-sciences know that common minds, after

they have been baited with a real fact or two, will jump at the merest

rag of a lie, or even at the bare hook. When we have one fact found us,

we are very apt to supply the next out of our own imagination. (How many

persons can read Judges xv. 16 correctly the first time?) The

Pseudo-sciences take advantage of this.--I did not say that it was so

with Phrenology.

I have rarely met a sensible man who would not allow that there was

_something_ in Phrenology. A broad, high forehead, it is commonly

agreed, promises intellect; one that is "villanous low" and has a huge

hind-head back of it, is wont to mark an animal nature. I have as rarely

met an unbiassed and sensible man who really believed in the bumps. It

is observed, however, that persons with what the Phrenologists call

"good heads" are more prone than others toward plenary belief in the

doctrine.

It is so hard to prove a negative, that, if a man should assert that the

moon was in truth a green cheese, formed by the coagulable substance of

the Milky Way, and challenge me to prove the contrary, I might be

puzzled. But if he offer to sell me a ton of this lunar cheese, I call

on him to prove the truth of the caseous nature of our satellite, before

I purchase.

It is not necessary to prove the falsity of the phrenological statement.

It is only necessary to show that its truth is not proved, and cannot

be, by the common course of argument. The walls of the head are double,

with a great air-chamber between them, over the smallest and most

closely crowded "organs." Can you tell how much money there is in a

safe, which also has thick double walls, by kneading its knobs with your

fingers? So when a man fumbles about my forehead, and talks about the

organs of _Individuality_, _Size_, etc., I trust him as much as I should

if he felt of the outside of my strong-box and told me that there was a

five-dollar- or a ten-dollar-bill under this or that particular rivet.

Perhaps there is; _only he doesn't know anything about it_. But this is

a point that I, the Professor, understand, my friends, or ought to,

certainly, better than you do. The next argument you will all

appreciate.

I proceed, therefore, to explain the self-adjusting mechanism of

Phrenology, which is _very similar_ to that of the Pseudo-sciences. An

example will show it most conveniently.

A. is a notorious thief. Messrs. Bumpus and Crane examine him and find a

good-sized organ of Acquisitiveness. Positive fact for Phrenology. Casts

and drawings of A. are multiplied, and the bump _does not lose_ in the

act of copying.--I did not Hay it gained.--What do you look so for? (to

the boarders.)

Presently B. turns up, a bigger thief than A. But B. has no bump at all

over Acquisitiveness. Negative fact; goes against Phrenology.--Not a bit

of it. Don't you see how small Conscientiousness is? _That's_ the reason

B. stole.

And then comes C., ten times as much a thief as either A. or B.,--used

to steal before he was weaned, and would pick one of his own pockets and

put its contents in another, if he could find no other way of committing

petty larceny. Unfortunately, C. has a _hollow_, instead of a bump, over

Acquisitiveness. Ah, but just look and see what a bump of

Alimentiveness! Did not C. buy nuts and ginger-bread, when a boy, with

the money he stole? Of course you see why he is a thief, and how his

example confirms our noble science.

At last comes along a case which is apparently a _settler_, for there is

a little brain with vast and varied powers,--a case like that of Byron,

for instance. Then comes out the grand reserve-reason which covers

everything and renders it simply impossible ever to corner a

Phrenologist. "It is not the size alone, but the _quality_ of an organ,

which determines its degree of power."

Oh! oh! I see.--The argument may be briefly stated thus by the

Phrenologist: "Heads I win, tails you lose." Well, that's convenient.

It must be confessed that Phrenology has a certain resemblance to the

Pseudo-sciences. I did not say it was a Pseudo-science.

I have often met persons who have been altogether struck up and amazed

at the accuracy with which some wandering Professor of Phrenology had

read their characters written upon their skulls. Of course the Professor

acquires his information solely through his cranial inspections and

manipulations.--What are you laughing at? (to the boarders).--But let us

just _suppose_, for a moment, that a tolerably cunning fellow, who did

not know or care anything about Phrenology, should open a shop and

undertake to read off people's characters at fifty cents or a dollar

apiece. Let us see how well he could get along without the "organs."

I will suppose myself to set up such a shop. I would invest one hundred

dollars, more or less, in casts of brains, skulls, charts, and other

matters that would make the most show for the money. That would do to

begin with. I would then advertise myself as the celebrated Professor

Brainey, or whatever name I might choose, and wait for my first

customer. My first customer is a middle-aged man. I look at him,--ask

him a question or two, so as to hear him talk. When I have got the hang

of him, I ask him to sit down, and proceed to fumble his skull,

dictating as follows:--

SCALE FROM I TO 10.

LIST OF FACULTIES FOR CUSTOMER. PRIVATE NOTES FOR MY PUPIL:

_Each to be accompanied with a wink._

_Amativeness_, 7. Most men love the conflicting sex, and all

men love to be told they do.

_Alimentiveness_, 8. Don't you see that he has burst off his

lowest waistcoat-button with feeding,--hay?

_Acquisitiveness_, 8. Of course. A middle-aged Yankee.

_Approbativeness_, 7+. Hat well brushed. Hair ditto. Mark the

effect of that _plus_ sign.

_Self-esteem_, 6. His face shows that.

_Benevolence_, 9. That'll please him

_Conscientiousness_, 8-1/2. That fraction looks first-rate.

_Mirthfulness_, 7. Has laughed twice since he came in.

_Ideality_, 9. That sounds well.

_Form, Size, Weight, Color, }

Locality, Eventuality, etc.,} 4 to 6. Average everything that

etc.,_ } can't be guessed.

And so of the other faculties.

Of course, you know, that isn't the way the Phrenologists do. They go

only by the bumps.--What do you keep laughing so for? (to the boarders.)

I only said that is the way _I_ should practise "Phrenology" for a

living.

_End of my Lecture._

----The Reformers have good heads generally. Their faces are commonly

serene enough, and they are lambs in private intercourse, even though

their voices may be like

The wolf's long howl from Oonalaska's shore,

when heard from platform. Their greatest spiritual danger is from the

perpetual _flattery of abuse_ to which they are exposed. These lines are

meant to caution them.

SAINT ANTHONY THE REFORMER.

HIS TEMPTATION.

No fear lest praise should make us proud!

We know how cheaply that is won;

The idle homage of the crowd

Is proof of tasks as idly done.

A surface-smile may pay the toil

That follows still the conquering Right,

With soft, white hands to dress the spoil

That sunbrowned arms have clutched in fight.

Sing the sweet song of other days,

Serenely placid, safely true,

And o'er the present's parching ways

Thy verse distils like evening dew.

But speak in words of living power,--

They fall like drops of scalding rain

That plashed before the burning shower

swept o'er the cities of the plain!

Then scowling Hate turns deadly pale,--

Then Passion's half-coiled adders spring,

And, smitten through their leprous mail,

Strike right and left in hope to sting.

If thou, unmoved by poisoning wrath,

They feet on earth, they heart above,

Canst walk in peace they kingly path,

Unchanged in trust, unchilled in love,--

Too kind for bitter words to grieve,

Too firm for clamor to dismay,

When Faith forbids thee to believe,

And Meekness calls to disobey,--

Ah, then beware of mortal pride!

The smiling pride that calmly scorns

Those foolish fingers, crimson dyed

In laboring on thy crown of thorns!

THE ITALIAN WAR.

War has been pronounced the condition of humanity; and it is certain

that conflict of some kind rages everywhere and at all times. The most

combative people on earth are the advocates of universal and perpetual

peace. There is something essentially defiant in the action of men who

avowedly seek the abolition of a custom that has existed since the days

of Cain, and which was well known to those magnificent beasts that

ranged over the earth's face long before man began to dream or was

dreamed of. To fight seems a necessity of the animal nature, whether the

animal be called tiger, bull, or man. Those who have fought assure us

that there is a positive pleasure in battle. That clever young woman,

Miss Flora Mac-Ivor, who passed most of her life in the very highest

fighting society, assures us, that men, when confronted with each other,

have a certain instinct for strife, as we see in other male animals,

such as dogs, bulls, and so forth. It is even so; and, further, the

fondness that men have for accounts and details of battles is another

evidence of the popularity of war, and an absolute stumbling-block in

the way of the Peace Society, which has the hardest of combats to fight.

The journals of the world are at this time full of the details of a war

such as that world has not witnessed since 1815, and in comparison with

which even the Russian War was but a second-rate contest. The old

quarrel between Austria and France, which has repeatedly caused the

peace of Europe to be broken since the days of Frederick III. and Louis

XI., has been renewed in our time with a fierceness and a vehemence and

on a scale that would have astonished Francis I., Charles V., Richelieu,

Turenne, Condé, Louis XIV., Eugène, and even Napoleon himself, the most

mighty of whose contests with Austria alone cannot be compared with that

which his nephew is now waging with the House of Lorraine. For, in 1805

and in 1809, Napoleon was not merely the ruler of France, but had at his

control the resources of many other countries. Belgium and Holland were

then at the command of France, and now they are independent monarchies,

holding strictly the position of neutrals. In 1809, Napoleon had those

very German States for his active allies that now threaten Napoleon

III.; and some of the hardest fighting on the French side, in the first

days of the campaign, was the work of Bavarians and other German

soldiers. That part of Poland which then constituted the Grand Duchy of

Warsaw was among his dependent principalities; and Russia sent an army

to his aid. In 1805, Napoleon I. had far more of Italian assistance than

Napoleon III. has had at the time we write; and in 1809, the entire

Peninsula obeyed his decrees as implicitly as they were obeyed by

France. Napoleon III. entered upon the war with the hereditary rival of

his country with no other ally than Sardinia, though it is now evident

that there was an "understanding" between him and the Czar, not pointing

to an attack on England, but to prevent the intervention of the Germans

in behalf of Austria, by holding out the implied threat of an attack on

Germany by Russia, should its rulers or people move against the allies.

Whatever may be thought of the motives of the French Emperor, and

however little most men may be disposed to believe in his generosity, it

is impossible to refrain from admiring the promptness and skill with

which he has acted, or to deny to him the merit of courage in daring to

pronounce so decidedly against the Austrians at a time when he could not

have reasonably reckoned upon a single ally beyond the limits of Italy,

when England, under Tory rule, was more disposed to act against him than

with him, and when the hostility of Germany, and its readiness to

support the Slavonic empire of Austria, were unequivocally expressed. So

great indeed, were the odds against him, that we find in that fact the

chief reason for the indisposition of the world to believe in the

possibility of war, and its extraordinary surprise when war actually

broke out.

To those who had closely scanned the affairs of Europe, and who observed

them by the light of the history of nearly four centuries, the coming of

war was no surprise. They foresaw it, and predicted its occurrence some

time before that famous lecture which the Emperor of the French

administered to the Emperor of Austria in the person of Baron Hübner.

With them, the question was not, Shall there be a war?--but it was, When

will the war break out? They reasoned from the _cause_ of the quarrel

between the two empires; while those who so long clung to the belief

that peace would be preserved, and who so plausibly argued in support of

their theory as to impose upon wellnigh the whole world, concerned

themselves only with its _occasion_. The former referred to things that

lay beyond the range of temporary politics, and, while admitting that

the shock of actual conflict might be postponed even for a few years,

were certain that such conflict must come, even if in the interval there

should happen an entire change of government in France. France might be

imperial, or royal, or republican, she might be Bonapartean, or

Henriquist, or Orléansist, or democratic,--tri-color, white, blue or

red,--but the quarrel would come, and cause new campaigns. The latter

thinking that the dispute was on the Italian question only, and knowing

that that was susceptible of diplomatic settlement, and believing that

there would be a union of European powers to accomplish such settlement,

rather than allow peace to be disturbed, never could suppose that the

balance of probabilities would be found on the side of war. It is due to

them to say, that a variety of causes conduced not merely to make them

firm in their faith, but to win for their views the general approbation

on mankind. Prominent among these was the striking fact, that there had

been no European was, strictly so called, with the single exception of

the Russian contest,--and that was highly exceptional in its

character,--for four-and-forty years. The generation that is passing

away, and the generation that is most active in discharging the business

of the world, never had seen a grand conflict between Christian states,

in which mighty armies had operated on vast and various fields. Old men

recollected the wars of Napoleon, but the number of such men is not

large, and their influence on opinion is small. Of quarrels and threats

of war all had seen enough; but this only tended to make them slow to

believe that war was really at hand. If so many quarrels had taken

place, and had been settled without resort to arms, assuredly the new

quarrel might be settled, and Europe get on peaceably for a few years

more without warfare. Neither the invasion of Spain in 1823, nor the

revolution of 1830, nor the Eastern question of 1840, nor the universal

outbreaks of 1848-9, nor the threats of Russia against Turkey when she

sought to compel the Sultan to give up those who had eaten his salt to

the gallows of Arad, nor the repeated discussions of the practicability

of a French conquest of England had led to a general war. If so many and

so black clouds had been dispersed without storms, it was not reasonable

to believe that the cloud which rose in the beginning of 1859 might also

break, and leave again a serene sky. It may be added that we have all of

us come to the conclusion that this is the best age the world has ever

known, as in most respects it is; and it seemed scarcely compatible with

our estimate of the age's excellence to believe that it _could_ send a

couple of million of men into the field for the purpose of cutting one

another's throats, except clearly as an act of self-defence. Man is the

same war-making animal now that he was in the days of Marathon, but he

readily admits the evils of war, and is peremptory in demanding that

they shall not be incurred save for good and valid reasons. He is as

ready to fight as ever he was, but he must fight for some definite

cause,--for a cause that will bear examination: and it did not seem

possible that a mere dispute concerning the manner in which Austria

governed her Italian dominions was of sufficient moment to light up the

flames of war anew on a scale as gigantic as ever they were made to

blaze during the days of Napoleon. Then, so far as the Russian War threw

any light upon the policy of France, the fair inference was that she at

least was not disposed to fight. France made the peace by which that war

was brought to a sudden end. She dictated that peace, much to the

disgust of the English, who had just become thoroughly roused, and who,

little anticipating the Indian mutiny, were for carrying on the contest

until Russia should be thoroughly humiliated. Considering all these

things, it was not unreasonable to believe that peace could be

maintained, and that Austria, far from taking the initiative in the war,

would be found ready to make such concessions as should lead to the

indefinite postponement of hostilities.

Those who reasoned from the mere occasion of the war were perfectly

right, from their point of view. Unfortunately for their reputation for

sagacity, their premises were entirely wrong, and hence the viciousness

of their conclusion. If we would know the cause of the war, we must

banish from our minds all that is said about the desire of Napoleon III

for vengeance on the conquerors of his uncle, all that we are told of

his sentimental wish for the elevation of the Italian people to a

national position, and all that is predicated of his ambitious longings

for the reconstruction of the First Empire. We must regard Napoleon III

in the light of what he really is, namely, one of the greatest statesmen

that ever lived, or we shall never be able to understand what are his

purposes. We have nothing to do with his morals, but have to regard him

only as the chief of France, pursuing the policy he believes best

calculated to advance that country's interests, and doing so in strict

accordance with her historical traditions, and in the same manner in

which it was pursued by the ablest of the Valois kings, by Henry IV. and

Sully, by Richelieu and Mazarin, by Louis XIV., by the chiefs of the

First Republic, and by Napoleon I. He may be a good man or a bad man,

but his character is entirely aside from the question, the nature and

merits of which have no necessary connection with the nature and merits

of the men engaged in effecting its solution. Let us examine the

subject, and see if we cannot find an intelligent, reasonable cause for

Napoleon's course of action, that shall harmonize with the duties, we

might almost say the instincts, of a great French statesman. The

examination will embrace nothing recondite, but we are confident it will

show that the French Emperor is no Quixote, and that he has been forced

into the war by the necessities of his situation, and by the very

natural desire he feels to prevent France from being compelled to

descend to a secondary place in the scale of European nations.

Modern Europe, in the sense in which we understand the term, dates from

the last quarter of the Fifteenth Century. Then England ceased to

attempt permanent conquests on the continent. Then Spain assumed

European rank and definite position. But two powers then began

especially to show themselves, and to play parts which both have

maintained down to the present time. The one was France, which then

ceased to dread English invasions, from the effects of which she was

rapidly recovering, whereby she was left to employ her energies on

foreign fields. The other was the _House of Austria_, which, by a series

of fortunate marriages, became, in the short period of forty years, the

most powerful family the modern world has ever known. On the day when

Maximilian, son of Frederick III., Emperor of Germany, wedded Mary of

Burgundy, daughter of Charles the Bold, the rivalry between France and

the Austrian family began. Philip, son of that marriage, married Juana,

daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella; and their son, Charles I. of the

Spains, became Charles V. of Germany. Thus there centred in his person a

degree of power such as no other sovereign could boast, and which alone

would have sufficed to make him the rival of the King of France, Francis

I., had no personal feeling entered into the relations between them. But

such feeling existed, and grew out of their competition for the imperial

crown. The previous ill-will between the Valois and the Hapsburg was

greatly increased, and assumed such force as permanently to color the

course of European history from that day to this. The rivalry of Charles

and Francis was the cause of many contests, and the French monarch,

though he was "The Most Christian King," in the opinion of some, more

than once aided, or offered to aid, the German Protestants against the

Emperor. To Philip II. and Henry II. the rivalry of their fathers

descended as an inheritance. It was in their warfare that the Battle of

St. Quentin was fought. The progress of the Reformation led monarchs in

those days to take a view of affairs not much unlike that which monarchs

of this century took in the days of the Holy Alliance, and after the

revolution of 1830. The hatred of Protestantism led the two kings to

draw together, though Henry II. had had no mean part in that work which

had enabled the Protestant Maurice of Saxony to render abortive all the

plans of Charles V. for the full restoration of Catholicism in Germany.

During the thirty years that followed the death of Henry II., the

dissensions of France had rendered her unable to contend with the House

of Austria, then principally represented by the Spanish branch of that

family; and Philip II. at one time thought of obtaining the crown of

that country for a member of his own house. But no sooner had Henry IV.

ascended the French throne, and established himself firmly thereon, than

the rivalry of France and Austria became as clearly pronounced as it had

been in the reign of Francis I.; and at the time of his death that most

popular of the Bourbon kings was engaged on a plan having for its object

the subversion of the Austrian power. His assassination changed the

course of events for a few years; but Richelieu became the ally of the

Swedes and Protestant Germans in the Thirty Years' War, though he was a

Cardinal, had destroyed the political power of the Huguenots, and might

have aspired to the Papacy. Mazarin, another Cardinal, followed

Richelieu's policy. Louis XIV. was repeatedly at war with the House of

Austria, though he was the son of an Austrian princess, and was married

to another. His last war with that house was for the throne of Spain,

when the elder branch of the Hapsburgs died out, in 1700. Louis XV. had

two contests with Austria; but in 1756, under the lead of Count Kaunitz,

France and Austria were united, and acted together in the Seven Years'

War, the incidents and effects of which were by no means calculated to

reconcile the French to the departure of their government from its

ancient policy. One of the causes of the French Revolution was the

Austrian alliance, and one of its effects was the complete rupture of

that alliance. Austria was the most determined foe that the French

Republic and Empire ever encountered. Including the war of 1815, there

were six contests between Austria and republican and imperial France. In

all these wars Austria was the aggressor, and showed herself to be the

enemy of _France_ as well as of those _French principles_ which so

frightened the conservatives of the world in those days. In the first

war, she took possession of French places for herself, and not for the

House of Bourbon; and in the last she purposed a partition of France,

long after Louis XVIII. had been finally restored, and when Napoleon was

at or near St. Helena. She demanded that Alsace and Lorraine should be

made over to her, in the autumn of 1815. She sought to induce Prussia to

unite with her by offering to support any demand that she might make for

French territory; and, failing to move that power, endeavored to get the

smaller German States to act with her,--the same States, indeed, that

are now so hostile to France, and which talk of a march upon Paris, and

of a reduction of French territorial strength. Nothing prevented the

Austrian idea from being reduced to practice but the opposition of

Russia and England, neither of which had any interest in the spoliation

of France, while both had no desire to see Austria rendered stronger

than she was. It was to England that Austria owed her Italian

possessions, which, in 1814, she at first had the sense not to wish to

be cumbered with; and to make her still more powerful north of the Alps

was not to be thought of even by the Liverpools and Castlereaghs. The

Czar, too, had in his thoughts a closer connection with France than it

suited him then to avow, and for purposes of his own; and therefore he

could not desire the sensible diminution of the power of a country the

resources of which he expected to employ. Nicholas inherited his

brother's ideas and designs, and we are to attribute much of the

ill-feeling that he exhibited towards the Orléans dynasty to his

disappointment; for the revolution that elevated that dynasty to the

French throne destroyed the hope that he had entertained of having

French aid to effect the conquest of Turkey. There never would have been

a siege of Sebastopol, if the elder branch of the Bourbons had continued

to rule in France. It required even a series of revolutions to bring

France to that condition in which the Western Alliance was possible. But

there would have been something more than "an understanding" between

France and Russia concerning Austria, had the government of the

Restoration endured a few years beyond 1830. It suited the Austrian

government to show considerable coldness towards the Orléans dynasty;

but assuredly so wise a man as Prince Metternich, and who had such

excellent means of information, never could have believed otherwise than

that the establishment of that dynasty saved Austria from being assailed

by both Russia and France.

The rivalry of France and Austria being understood, and that rivalry

leading to war whenever occasion therefor chances to arise, it remains

to inquire what is the occasion of the existing contest. When Napoleon

III. became head of France, as Prince-President, at the close of 1848,

Austria was the last power with which he could have engaged in war,

supposing that he had then been strong enough to control the policy of

France, and it had suited him to make an occasion for war. She was then

engaged in her death-and-life struggles with Hungarians, Italians, and

others of her subjects who that year threw off her yoke, while the

Sardinians had endeavored to obtain possession of Lombardy and Venice.

Francis Joseph became chief of the Austrian Empire at the same time that

Louis Napoleon ascended to the same point in France. Certainly, if the

object of France had been the mere weakening and spoliation of Austria,

then was the time to assail her, when one half her subjects were

fighting the other half, when the Germans outside of her empire were by

no means her friends, and when it was far from clear that she could rely

upon assistance from Russia. Austria was then in a condition of

helplessness apparently so complete, that many thought her hour had

come; but those who knew her history, and were aware how often she had

recovered from just such crises, held no belief of the kind. Yet if

France had assailed her at that time, Austria must have lost all her

Italian provinces; and it is now generally admitted, that, if Cavaignac

had sent a French army into Italy immediately after the victory won by

Radetzky over Charles Albert at Somma Campagna, (July 26th, 1848,) the

"Italian question" would then have been settled in a manner that would

have been satisfactory to the greater part of Europe, and have rendered

such a war as is now waging in Italy quite impossible. Russia could have

done nothing to prevent the success of the French arms, and it is

probable that Austria would have abandoned the contest without fighting

a battle. At an earlier period she had signified her readiness to allow

the incorporation of most of Lombardy with Sardinia, she to retain the

country beyond the Mincio, and to hold the two great fortresses of

Peschiera (at the southern extremity of the Lago di Garda, and at the

point where the river issues from the lake) and Mantua. She even asked

the aid of France and England to effect a peace on this basis, but

unsuccessfully. Cavoignac's anomalous political position prevented him

from aiding the Italians. He was a Liberal, but the actual head of the

reactionists in France of all colors, of men who looked upon the

Italians as ruffians wedded to disorder, while Austria, in their eyes,

was the champion of order. France did nothing, and in December Louis

Napoleon became President. An opportunity was soon afforded him to

interfere in Italian affairs. The armistice that had existed between the

Austrians and the Sardinians after the 9th of August, 1848, was

denounced on the 12th of March, 1849, by the latter; and Radetzky closed

the order of the day, issued immediately after this denunciation was

made, with the words,--"Forward, soldiers, to Turin!" The intentions of

the Sardinians must have been known to Louis Napoleon, but he took no

measures to aid them. He saw Piedmont conquered in a campaign of

"hours." He saw Brescia treated by Haynau as Tilly treated Magdeburg. He

saw the long and heroical defence of Venice against the Austrians,

during the dreary spring and summer of '49,--a defence as worthy of

immortality as the War of Chiozza, and indicating the presence of the

spirit of Zeno, and Contarini, and Pisani in the old home of those

patriots. But nothing moved him. He would not even mediate in behalf of

the Venetians; and it was by the advice of the French consul and the

French admiral on the station that Venice finally surrendered, but not

until she had exhausted the means of defence and life. At that time, few

men in America but were in the habit of denouncing the French President

for his indifference to the Italian cause. He was charged with having

been guilty of a blunder and a crime. His consent to the expedition to

Rome aggravated his offence, for it was an act of intervention on the

wrong side. But the passage of ten years enables us to be more just to

him than it was possible for us to be in 1849. He was not firm in his

seat. He was but a temporary chief of the State. He was surrounded by

enemies, political and personal, who were seeking his overthrow, without

any regard for the tenure of his office. He knew not his power. His

object was the restoration of internal peace to France, her recovery

from the weakness info which she had fallen or had been precipitated. He

dared not offend the Catholics, who saw then, as they see now, a

champion in Austria. He was the victim of circumstances, and he had to

bow before them, in order that he might finally become their master.

Then he had no occasion for a quarrel with Austria. She was at the

lowest ebb her fortunes had known since the day that the Turks appeared

for the second time before Vienna. She could not have maintained herself

in Italy, even after the successes of Radetzky, had not Nicholas sent

one hundred and fifty thousand men to her assistance in Hungary. What

had France to fear from her? No more than she had to fear from her on

the day after Austerlitz.

Years rolled on, and brought with them great changes; and the greatest

of those changes was to be seen in Italy, in reference to the position

of Austria there, and its effect upon France. Austria rapidly

reëstablished her power in Italy, not only over Lombardy and Venice, but

over every part of the Peninsula, excepting Sardinia. Tuscany was

connected with her by various ties, and was ruled as she wished it to be

ruled. Parma and Modena were hers in every sense. She was the patron and

protector of the abominable Bomba, and her support alone enabled him to

defy the sentiment of the civilized world, and to indulge in cruelties

such as would have added new infamy to the name of Ezzelino. She upheld

the misgovernment of the Papal States, which has made Rome the scandal

of Europe. All the nominal rulers of the Italian States, with the

honorable exception of the King of Sardinia, were her vassal princes,

and were no more free to act without her consent than were the kings the

Roman Republic and Empire allowed to exist within their dominions free

to act without the consent of the proconsuls. What the proconsul of

Syria was to the little potentates mentioned in the New Testament, the

Austrian viceroy in the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom was to the nominal

rulers of the various Italian States. It only remained to bring Sardinia

within this ring-fence of sea and mountains to convert all Italy into an

Austrian dependency. There is nothing like this in history, we verily

believe. In the short period of ten years after the capture of Milan by

Radetzky, (August 4, 1848,) the Austrians had established themselves

completely in nearly every part of Italy. Of the twenty-seven millions

of people that compose her population, twenty-two millions were as much

at the command of Austria as were the Hungarians and Bohemians. Had she

had the sense to use her power, not with mildness only, but beneficially

to this great mass of men, and had nothing occurred to disturb her

plans, she would have nearly doubled the number of her subjects, and

have more than doubled her resources. She would have become a great

maritime state, and have converted the Mediterranean into an Austrian

lake. Had they been well governed, the Italians might, and most probably

would, have accepted their condition, and have become loyal subjects of

the House of Lorraine. Foreign rule is no new thing to them, nor have

they ever been impatient under its existence, when it has existed for

their good. The people rarely are hostile to any government that is

conducted with ordinary fairness. There is no greater error than that

involved in the idea that revolutions or changes of any kind originate

from below, that they proceed from the people. Almost invariably they

come from above, from governmental action; and it is ever in the power

of a government to make itself perpetual. The term of its existence is

in its own hands. At the very worst for Austria, she might have

accomplished in Italy what was accomplished there three centuries ago by

Spain, then ruled by the elder branch of the Hapsburgs. She might have

commanded almost everything within its limits, with Sardinia to play

some such part as was then played by Venice.

This is said on the supposition, first, that her government should have

been mild and conciliatory, active only for good, and that all her

interference with local rule should have been on the side of humanity;

and, second, that no foreign power should have interfered to prevent the

full development of her policy. Unfortunately for her, but fortunately

for other nations, and especially so for Italy, she not only did _not_

govern well, but governed badly; and there was a great power which was

deeply, vitally interested--moved by the all-controlling principle of

self-preservation--in watching all her movements, and in finding

occasion to drive her out of Italy. She was not content with upholding

misgovernment in Naples, Rome, Tuscany, Modena, Parma, and elsewhere,

but she meant to subvert the constitutional polity established in the

Sub-Alpine Kingdom of Sardinia. The enemy of constitutionalism and

freedom everywhere, she was especially hostile to their existence in the

little state that bordered on a portion of her Italian possessions,

whence they always threatened Lombardy with a plague she detests far

more heartily than she detests cholera. No natural boundary or _cordon

militaire_ could suffice to stay the march of principles. Nothing would

answer but the subversion of the Sardinian constitution and the bringing

of that nation's government into harmony with the admirable rule that

existed, under the double-headed eagle's protection, in Naples and

Modena. Unless all Austrian history be false, Austria's object for years

has been a revolution in Sardinia, and Rome has aided her. This is the

necessity of her moral situation with reference to her little neighbor.

The world has smiled at Austria's late complaint that Sardinia menaced

her, it seemed so like the wolf's protestation that the lamb was doing

him an injury; but it was really well founded, though not entitled to

much respect. Sardinia _did_ menace Austria. She menaced her by the

force of her example,--as the honest man menaces the rogue, as the

peaceful man menaces the ruffian, as the charitable man menaces the

miser, as the Good Samaritan menaced the priest and Levite. In the sense

that virtue ever menaces vice, and right constantly menaces wrong,

Sardinia was a menace to Austria;--and as we often find the wrongdoer

denouncing the good as subverters of social order, we ought not to be

astonished at the plaintive whine of the master of thrice forty legions

at the conduct of the decorous, humane, and enlightened Victor Emanuel.

The only foreign power that had a direct, immediate, positive interest

in preventing the establishment of Austrian power over Italy was France.

Several other powers had some interest adverse to the success of the

Austrian scheme, but it was so far below that which France felt, that it

is difficult to make any comparison between the several cases. England,

speaking generally, might not like the idea of a new naval power coming

into existence in the Mediterranean, which, with great fleets and

greater armies, might come to have a controlling influence in the East,

and prevent the establishment of her power in Egypt and Syria. She might

see with some jealousy the further development of Austrian commerce,

which has been so successfully pursued in the Mediterranean and the

Levant since 1815. But then England is not very remarkable for

forethought, and she has a just confidence in her own naval power.

Besides, would not Austria, in the event of her adding Italy virtually

to her dominions, become the ally of England in the business of

supporting Turkey against Russia, and in preventing the further

extension of Russian power to the South and the East? The old

traditionary policy of England pointed to an Austrian alliance, and

nations are tenacious of their traditions. The war in Italy was

unquestionably precipitated by Austria's belief that in the last resort

she could rely upon English support; and she made a fatal delay in her

military movements in deference to English interposition. Prussia could

not be expected to see the increase of the power of the House of Austria

with pleasure; but it was possible that the extension of its dominions

to the South, by giving it new objects of ambition, and forcing upon it

a leading part in Eastern affairs, might cause that house to pay less

regard to German matters, leaving them to be managed by the House of

Hohenzollern. Russia, under the system that Nicholas pursued, could not

have seen Austria absorb Italy without resisting the process at any

cost; but Alexander IV., [Footnote: I call the present czar Alexander

the _Fourth_, as there have been three other Alexanders _sovereigns_ of

Russia; but he is generally styled Alexander the _Second_.] a wiser man

than his father was, never would have gone to war to prevent it, his

views being directed to those internal reforms the success of which is

likely to create a _Russian People_, and to place his empire in a far

higher position than it has ever yet occupied. Yet Russia could not have

witnessed Austria's success with pleasure; and the readiness with which

she has agreed to aid France, should the Germans aid Austria, is proof

sufficient that she is desirous that Austria should not merely be

prevented from extending her territory, but actually reduced in extent

and in means. From no part of Europe have come more decided

condemnations of the course of Austria than from the Russian capital.

The language of the St. Petersburg journals touching the Treaties of

Vienna has been absolutely contemptuous; and that language is all the

more oracular and significant because we know that the editors of those

journals must have been inspired by the government. It has been justly

regarded as expressing the views of the Czar, and of the statesmen who

compose his cabinet. Though not disposed for war, and probably sincerely

desirous of the preservation of peace everywhere, the rulers of Russia

are quite ready to support France in all proper measures that she may

adopt to drive the Austrians from every part of the Italian Peninsula.

They are too sagacious not to see that France cannot hold a league of

Italian territory, and the reduction of Austrian power is just so much

gained towards the ultimate realization of their Oriental policy.

Of the other European powers, and of their opinions respecting the

effect of Austrian supremacy, little need be said. Such countries as

Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, and Portugal have little weight in

the European system, individually or collectively. Even Spain, though

she is not the feeble nation many of our countrymen are pleased to

represent her, when seeking to find a _reason_ for the seizure of

Cuba,--even Spain, we say, could not be much moved by the prospect of

Austria's reaching to that condition of vast strength which would

necessarily follow from her undisputed ascendency in Italy. The lesser

German States would probably have seen Austria's increase with pleasure,

partly because it would have helped to remove their fears of France and

Russia, and partly because it would have been flattering to their pride

of race, the House of Austria being Germanic in its character, though

ruling directly over but few Germans,--few, we mean, in comparison with

the Slaves, Magyars, Italians, and other races that compose the bulk of

its subjects. Turkey alone had a direct interest in Austria's success,

as promising her protection against all the other great European powers;

but Turkey is not, properly speaking, a member of the European

Commonwealth.

But the case was very different with France. She is the first nation of

Continental Europe,--a position she has held for nearly four centuries,

though sometimes her fortunes have been reduced very low, as during the

closing days of the Valois dynasty, and in 1815; but even in 1815 she

had the melancholy consolation of knowing that it required the combined

exertions of all Europe to conquer her. Her wonderful elasticity in

rising superior to the severest visitations has often surprised the

world, and those who remember 1815 will be most astonished at her

present position in Europe, or rather in Christendom. Her position,

however, has always been the result of indefatigable exertions, and a

variety of circumstances have made those exertions necessary on several

occasions. Great as France is now, and great as she has been at several

periods of her history since the death of Mazarin, it may be doubted if

she is so great as she was at the date of the Treaty of Westphalia, the

work of her arms and her diplomacy (1648). At that time, and for many

years afterwards, several nations had no pronounced political existence

that now are powers of the first class. Russia had no weight in Europe

until the last years of Louis XIV., and her real importance commenced

fifty years after that monarch was placed in his grave. Prussia, though

she attained to a respectable position at the close of the seventeenth

century, the date of the creation of her monarchy, did not become a

first-class power until two generations later, and as the result of the

Seven Years' War. The United States count but eighty-three years of

national life; and they have had international influence less than half

of that time. England, which the restoration of the Stuarts caused to

sink so low in those very years during which Louis XIV. was at the

zenith of his greatness, has been for one hundred and seventy years the

equal of France. On the other hand, the two nations with which France

was formerly much connected, Turkey and Sweden, have ceased to influence

events. France allied herself with Turkey in the early years of her

struggle with the House of Austria, to the offence of Christian peoples;

and the relations between Paris and Constantinople were long maintained

on the basis of common interest, the only tie that has ever sufficed to

bind nations. Both countries were the enemies of Austria. The second

half of the Thirty Years' War was maintained, on the part of the enemies

of Austria, by the alliance of France and Sweden; and between these

countries a good understanding frequently prevailed in after-times, the

growth of Russia serving to force Sweden into the arms of France. Poland

has disappeared from the list of nations, and her territory has

augmented the resources of two countries that had no political weight in

the first century of the Bourbon kings, and those of France's rival.

Thus France has relatively fallen. That ancient international system of

which she was the centre for nearly one hundred and fifty years--say

from the middle of the reign of Henry IV. to the Peace of

Aix-la-Chapelle, (1599-1748)--has passed entirely away from the world,

and never can be restored. France has seldom seriously thought of

attempting its restoration, though some of her statesmen, and probably a

large majority of the more intelligent of her people, have from time to

time warmly favored the idea of the reconstruction of Poland; and of all

the errors of Napoleon I., his failure to realize that idea was

unquestionably the greatest. The turn that things took in the French

Revolution enabled France to establish an hegemony in Europe, which

might have been long preserved but for the disasters of 1812; but the

empire of Napoleon I. was never a political empire, being only of a

military character. France then led Europe, but she lost her ascendency

on the first reverse, like Sparta after Leuctra. History has no parallel

to the change that the France of 1814 presented to the France of 1812.

On the 1st of October, 1812, the French were at Moscow; on the 1st of

April, 1814, the allies were in Paris. Eighteen months had done work

that no man living at the first date had expected to see accomplished.

What happened in 1815 was but the complement of 1814. Then France was

struck down, trampled upon, spoiled, insulted, and mulcted in immense

sums of money; and finally forced to pay the cost of an armed police,

headed by Wellington himself, which held her chief fortresses for three

years, and saw that her chains were kept bright and strong. Never, since

Lysander demolished the Long Walls of Athens to the music of the Spartan

flute, had the world seen so bitter a spectacle of national humiliation,

so absolute a reversal of fortune,--the long-conquering legions

perishing by the sword, and him who had headed so many triumphal

processions perishing as it were in the Mamertine dungeon.