CHAPTER XXXII.

When the remains of John Fletcher were borne to the grave, the memory

of his faults was buried with him. "Poor fellow!" was the general

ejaculation in State Street,--at once his _requiescat_ and epitaph. But

the great wheels of business moved on; Bulls and Bears kept up their

ever-renewing conflicts and their secret machinations; new gladiators

stepped into the ring; new crowds waited the turn of the wheel of

Fortune; and new Fletchers were ready to sacrifice themselves, if need

were, for the Bullions of the exchange. Who believes in the efficacy of

"lessons"? What public execution ever deterred the murderer from his

design? What spectacle of drunkenness ever restrained the youthful

debauchee? What accession, however notable, to the ranks of "the

unfortunate" ever made the fascinated woman pause in her first steps

toward ruin?

No,--human nature remains the same; and the erring ones, predestined to

sin by their own unrestrained passions, wait only for the overmastering

circumstances to yield and fall. When any of these solemn warnings are

held up to the yet callow sinner, what does he propose to do? To stop

and repent? No,--to be a little more careful and not be caught.

Not that precepts and examples are useless. All together go to make up

the moral government of the world,--pervading like the atmosphere, and

like it resting with uniform pressure upon the earth. Crime and folly

will always have their exemplars, but retribution furnishes the

restraining influence that keeps evil down to its average. As locks and

bolts are made for honest men, not for thieves, so the moral law and its

penalties are for those who have never openly sinned.

If Mr. Bullion had been ten times the Shylock he was, he could not have

disregarded the last injunction of Fletcher. The turn in the market

enabled him to make advantageous sales of his stocks, and in less than

a week he resumed payment. The first thing he did was to pay over to

trustees the notes he had given Fletcher, thereby securing the widow at

least a decent support. He also sent Danforth & Co. the ten thousand

dollars for which their clerk had paid such a terrible forfeiture.

After discharging all his obligations, there was still an ample margin

left,--a large fortune, in fact. Mr. Bullion could now retire with

comfort,--could look forward to many years; so he flattered himself.

His will was made, his children provided for; and some unsettled

accounts, not remembered by any save himself and the recording angel,

were adjusted as well as the lapse of time would allow. So he thought of

purchasing a country-house for the next season, and of giving the rest

of his days to the enjoyment of life.

But it was not so to be. A swift and sudden stroke smote him down. In

the dead of night, and alone, he met the angel for whose summons all of

us are waiting, and went his way without a struggle. The morning sun,

as its rays shot in between the blinds, lighted the seamed and careworn

face of an old man, resting as in a serene, dreamless sleep.

* * * * *

Mr. Tonsor found, on consulting the best legal authorities, that he

could not maintain his claim upon the notes he had received of Sandford;

and, rather than subject himself to the expense of a lawsuit in which he

was certain to be beaten, he relinquished them to Monroe, and filed his

claim for the money against Sandford's estate. Ten _per cent._ was the

amount of the dividend he received; the remainder was charged to Profit

and Loss,--Experience being duly credited with the same amount.

* * * * *

It was with the greatest difficulty that the judicious Easelmann

prevented his friend from making a second visit in the evening of the

same day. Greenleaf had come to a full conviction, in his own mind, that

his difference with Alice ought to be settled, and he could not conceive

that it might take time to bring her to the same conclusion. Some people

adapt themselves to circumstances instantly; the aversion of one hour

becomes the delight of the next; but those who are guided by reasoning,

especially where there is a shade of resentment,--who are fortified by

pride of opinion, and by the idea of consistent self-respect,--such

persons are slow to change a settled conviction; the course of feeling

is too powerful and too constant to be arrested and turned backward.

Easelmann thought--and perhaps rightly--that Alice needed only time to

become accustomed to the new view of the case; and he believed that any

precipitation might be fatal to his friend's hopes.

"Give her the opportunity to think about it," he said; "if she loves

you, depend upon it, the wind will change with her. Due east to-day,

according to all you have told me; and the violets won't blossom till

the sun comes out of the sullen gray cloud and the south wind breathes

on them.--The very contact with a lover, you see, makes me poetical."

"But her thoughts may take another direction. Who can tell what

impression that malicious vixen has made upon her?"

"Alice, I fancy, is a sensible young woman; and Miss Sandford, in her

rage, must have shown her hand too freely. To be sure, Alice might

wonder how you could ever have been captivated; but she could not blame

you for getting out of reach of such a Tartar. Besides, the exemplary

widow is your friend, you know, and I'll warrant that she will set the

matter right. Marcia won't trouble you again; such a mischance couldn't

happen twice. You are as safe as the sailor who put his head into the

hole where a cannon-shot had just come through. Lightning doesn't strike

the same tree twice in one shower."

Greenleaf was at length persuaded to wait and let events take their

course. If he remained inactive, however, Easelmann did not; from Mrs.

Sandford he heard daily the progress of affairs, and at length intimated

to his friend that it might be judicious to call again.

Once more Greenleaf was seated in the drawing-room of the

boarding-house. At every distant footstep his heart beat almost audibly;

and when at last the breezy rustle of a woman's robes came in from the

hall, he thought, as many a man has, before and since,--

"She is coming, my life, my fate!"

She entered, not with the welcoming smile he would have liked to see,

nor with the forbidding cloud of sadness which veiled her face a few

days before. But how lovely! Time had given fulness and perfection to

her beauty, while the effect of the trials she had undergone was seen

only in the look of womanly dignity and self-control she had acquired.

It was the freshness of girlhood joined to the grace of maturity.

Nothing is more inscrutable than the working of the human will; argument

does not reach it, nor does persuasion overcome it. It holds out against

reason, against interest, against passion; no sufficient motive can be

found with which to control it. On the other hand, it sometimes stoops

in a way that defies prediction; pride is vanquished or disarmed,

resentment melts away like frost, and the resolution that at first

seemed firm as the everlasting rock proves to be no barrier. Nor is this

uncertainty confined to the sex at whose foibles the satirists have been

wont to let fly their arrows.

Feeling is deeper than thought; and as the earthquake lifts the mountain

with all the weight of its rocky strata and of the piled-up edifices

that crown its top, so there comes a time when the emotional nature

rises up and overthrows the carefully wrought structures of the

intellect, and asserts its original and supreme mastery over the soul of

man.

Alice felt sure that every trace of her love for Greenleaf had

disappeared. She looked in her heart and saw there only the memory of

neglect and unfaithfulness. If love existed, it was as fire lurks in

ashes, unrecognized. She had conversed freely with Mrs. Sandford, and

learned that Greenleaf's version of the story was the correct one. Still

the original treason remained without apology; and she had determined

to express her regret for what had happened, to assure him of her

friendship, but to forbid any hope of reëstablishing their former

relations. With this intention, she bade him good-morning and quietly

took a seat.

"I did not think that so many days would pass before I should see you;

but now that you have had time to reflect, I hope your feelings have

softened towards me."

"You mistake, if you suppose that giving me time for reflection has

produced any such change."

"Then, pray, forget the past altogether."

"I cannot forget."

"If your memory must be busy, pray, go back to the pleasanter days of

our acquaintance."

"I remember the days you speak of; I shall never forget them; but it is

a happiness that is dead and buried."

"Love will make it live again."

"It is hard to recognize love when it comes like Lazarus from the tomb."

"Still we don't read that the friends of Lazarus were displeased with

his return and wished him back to his grave-clothes."

"You can turn the comparison as you choose; but it is not necessary that

an illustration should be perfect in every respect; if one catches a

gleam of resemblance, it is enough."

The perfect command of her faculties, and the deliberate way in which

she sustained her part in the conversation, thus far, were sufficiently

disheartening to Greenleaf. He longed to change the tone, but feared to

lose all by any rapid advance. He answered deprecatingly,--"But all this

intellectual fencing, my dear Alice, is useless. Love is not a spark

to be struck out by the collision of arguments; I shall in vain try to

_reason_ you into affection for me. I have already said all I can say by

way of apology for what I have done. If there yet lingers any particle

of regard for me in your heart, I would fain revive it. If it is your

pride that withstands me, I pray you consider whether it is well to make

us both unhappy in order to maintain so poor a triumph. I am already

conquered, and throw myself upon your generosity."

"You would put me in the wrong, then, and ascribe my refusal to an

ungenerous pride? Is it generous in you to do so? Have you the right to

place such a construction upon my conduct? I appeal to you in return.

Remember, it is you who are responsible for this painful interview. I

never sought you to cover you with reproaches. You force me to say what

I would gladly leave in silence."

"Forgive me, Alice, if I wrong you; but my heart clings to you and will

not be repulsed. I would fain believe, that, beneath all your natural

resentment, there yet survives some portion of the love you once bore

to me. If it were the first time I had ever approached you, a sense of

delicacy, to say nothing of my own self-respect, would have prevented

my importuning you in this way. But my fault has given me warrant to

be bold, and if you finally cast me off,--but that is what I won't

anticipate; I can't give you up. You once loved me,--and am I not the

same?"

"No, not the same; or, rather, you have proved to be not what I

thought."

"You persist in fixing your attention upon one dark spot. Do you

remember this miniature? It has never been out of my bosom, and there

has never been but one day in which I might not loyally carry it there.

At that time, when I opened it, your eyes looked out at me with a tender

reproach, and I was instantly recalled to myself. It was only the

illusion of a moment, through which I had passed. Whatever may happen, I

have one consolation: this dear image will remind me of the love I once

possessed. I shall fold to my bosom the Alice that once was mine, and

strive to forget our estrangement."

Alice was sensibly touched by this appeal, and much more by the tone in

which it was made. In the momentary pause, Greenleaf raised his eyes and

saw the struggle in her face. He rose, came nearer, and quietly took a

seat on the sofa beside her.

"I heard you distinctly where you sat," she said, making an effort to

keep down the tumult within, and shrinking, perhaps, from the influence

of his presence.

"I wished to hear you, dear Alice, and therefore came nearer. Tell me,

are you not mistaken? You have not forgotten me: you do love me yet. Let

your heart speak; if you imprison it and force the dissembling lips to

deny me, the dear traitor will make signals: it looks out of your eyes

now."

He seized and imprisoned her hand, and still watched the current of

feeling in her face.

"I thought myself strong enough for this," she said, tremblingly, "but I

am not. I meant only to say that we would part----friends, but that we

must part. It is not so easy to be calm, when you distract me so."

"Alice, you only deceive yourself; you love me. You have covered

the spring in your heart with snow, but the fountain still flows

underneath."

Her tears could be kept back no longer; they fell not like November

rain, but rather like those sudden showers of spring from passing

clouds, while the blue sky still looks down, and rainbow smiles

transfigure the landscape.

His heart gave a mighty throb as those softly humid eyes were turned

upon him. He drew her, half consenting, still nearer. She hesitated, but

not long.

* * * * *

"Hard a-port!" shouts the master; and the helmsman, with firm hand,

holds down the wheel. Slowly the ship veers; the sails flutter and back,

the yards are swung; waves strive to head the bow off, but the rudder is

held with iron grasp; now comes the wind, the shaking sails fill with

the sudden rush, and the ship bounds on her new course over the heaving

waters.

Shall I fill out the comparison? Not for you, elders, who have seen the

struggle of "tacking ship," and have felt the ecstatic swell of delight

when it was accomplished! Not for the younger, who must learn for

themselves the seamanship that is to carry them safely over the

mysterious ocean on whose shore they have lingered and gazed and wished!

The conversation that followed it would be vain to report, even if

it were possible; for the force of ejaculations depends so much

on _tone_,--which our types do not know how to convey; and their

punctuation-marks, I fear, were such as are not in use in any

well-regulated printing-office. In due time it came to an end; and when

Greenleaf took his unwilling departure, having repeatedly said good-bye,

with the usual confirmation, he could no more remember what had been

said in that miraculous hour than a bee flying home from a garden could

tell you about the separate blossoms from which he (the Sybarite!) had

gathered his freight of flower-dust.

One thing only he heard which the wisely incurious reader will care

to know. Alice had met her cousin, Walter Monroe, the day before, had

received a proper scolding for her absurd independence, and, after a

frank settlement of the heart-question which came up on the day of her

flight, had promised at once to return to his house,--where, for the

brief remainder of our story, she is to be found. Let us wish her

joy,--and the kind, motherly aunt, also.

Greenleaf went directly to Easelmann's room, opened the door, and spread

his arms.

"Have you a strawberry-mark?" he shouted.

"No."

"Then you are my long-lost brother! Come to my arms!"

Easelmann laughed long and loudly.

"Forgive my nonsense, Easelmann. I know I am beside myself and ready for

any extravagance,--I am so full of joy. I feared, in coming along the

street, that I should break out into singing, or fall to dancing, like

the Scriptural hills."

"Then you have succeeded, and the girl is yours! I forgive your stupid

old joke. You can say and do just what you like. You have a right to

be jolly, and to make a prodigious fool of yourself, if you want to. I

should like to have heard you. You were very poetical, quoted Tennyson,

fell on your knees, and perhaps blubbered a little. You _are_

sentimental, you know."

"I am happy, I know, and I don't care whether you think me sentimental

or not."

"Well, I wish you joy anyhow. Let us make a night of it. 'It is our

royal pleasure to be'--imagine the rest of the line. 'Now is the winter

of our discontent.' 'My bosom's lord sits lightly on his throne.' Come,

let us make ready, and we'll talk till

"'Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day

Stands tiptoe on the misty'--

misty steeple of Park-Street Church,--since we haven't any misty

mountaintops in the neighborhood."

"One would think _you_ the happy man."

"I am; your enthusiasm is so contagious that I am back in my twenties

again."

"Why do you take your pleasure vicariously? There is Mrs. Sandford, the

charming woman; I love her, because"--

"No, Sir, not her,--one is enough."

"Then why not love her yourself? We'll make a double-barrelled shot of

it,--two couples brought down by one parson."

"Very ingenious, and economical, too; but I think not. It is too late. I

was brought up in the country, and I don't think it good policy to begin

agricultural operations in the fall of the year; my spring has past. But

is the day fixed? When are you to be the truly happy man?"

"No,--the day is not fixed," said Greenleaf, thoughtfully. "You see,

I was so bent upon the settlement of the difficulty, that I had not

considered the practical bearing of the matter. I am too poor to marry,

and I am heartsick at the prospect of waiting"--

"With the chance of another rupture."

"No,--we shall not quarrel again. But I shall go to work. I'll inundate

the town with pictures; if I can't sell them myself, I will have Jews to

peddle them for me."

"Hear the mercenary man! No,--go to work in earnest, but put your life

into your pictures. If you can keep up your present glow, you will be

warmer than Cuyp, dreamier than Claude, more imaginative than Millais."

"But the desperate long interval!"

"I don't know about that. I quite like the philosophy of Mr. Micawber,

and strenuously believe in something turning up."

"What is that?" asked Greenleaf, noticing a letter on his friend's

table. "It seems to be addressed to me."

"Yes,--I met a lawyer to-day, who asked me if I knew one George

Greenleaf. As I did, he gave me the letter. Some dun, probably, or

threat of a suit. I wouldn't open it. Don't!"

"You only make me curious. I shall open it. To-day I can defy a dun even

from--What, what's this? Bullion dead?--left in his will a bequest--forty

thousand--to _me_?"

Easelmann looked over his friend's shoulder with well-simulated

astonishment.

"Sure enough; there it is, in black and white.--What do you think of

Micawber?"

"I think," said Greenleaf, with manly tears in his eyes, "that you are

the artfullest, craftiest, hugger-muggering, dear old rascal that ever

lived. Now let me embrace you in good earnest. Oh, Easelmann, this is

too much! Here is Alice--mine! Here is Europe, that I have looked at as

I would heaven, beyond reach in this life! _Now_ we will go to work; and

let Cuyp, Claude, and the rest of them, look out for their laurels!"

"Softly, my boy; you squeeze like a cider-press. But how came the old

miser to give you this?"

"My father was his partner; he was thought to be worth a handsome sum

while he lived,--but at his death, though Bullion and another junior

went on with the business, there was nothing left for us. My mother died

poor. I am the only child living. This, I suppose, is the return for the

property that Bullion wrongfully detained,--with compound interest, too,

I should say. Let us not speak ill of the dead. He has made restitution

and squared the books; I hope the correction has been made above."

"How lucky for you that Bullion was your banker! Suppose you had grown

up with the expectation of having this money, what would you have

been good for? You would have run all to patent-leather boots, silky

moustaches, and black-tan terriers. Your struggles have developed your

muscles, metaphorically speaking, and made a man of you."

"Two sides to that question. It is true, luxury might have spoiled me,

for I am accessible to such influences; but, on the other hand, I should

have escaped some painful things. No one who has not been poor can

understand me, can know the wounds which a sensitive man must receive as

he is working his way up in the world,--wounds that leave lasting scars,

too. I am conscious of certain feelings, most discreditable, if I were

to avow them, which have been cultivated in me, and which will probably

cling to me all my days. What I have gained in hardiness I have

gained as the smith gains his strength, at the expense of symmetry,

sensibility, and grace."

"Nonsense, you mimosa! Don't curl up your leaves before you are

touched."

"But if I am a sensitive-plant, as you say, I can't help it; if I were a

burdock, I might."

"You'll get over that. By-the-by, you may as well tell Alice. I know

you will be uneasy; go, go,--but come back soon. It is jolly that she

accepted you poor; if the report had got abroad, you might have thought

she was influenced by golden reasons."

"That's because you don't know her, my cynical friend. She is incapable

of mercenary motives."

"'What female heart can gold despise?

What cat's averse to fish?'"

"Well, for an hour, good-bye. Have a good fire and the pipes ready."

"Yes, truly,--and a magnum, if my closet is not empty. The king will

drink to Hamlet."

* * * * *

Little more remains to be told. After the long period of probation, it

was not deemed necessary that the nuptials should be deferred beyond

the time necessary to make due preparation. In a month the wedding took

place at Mr. Monroe's house, Mr. Easelmann giving away the bride. I do

not say that the bachelor felt no twinges when he saw among the guests

the lovely Mrs. Sandford in her becoming white robes; in fact, he

"thought seriously," as all such people do while there remains even the

recollection of youth--but his habits were too fixed. He saw and sighed,

and that was all. However, he is on the right side of----forty, we will

call it, and there is hope for him. We may find him in some adventure

yet; if so, the reader shall assuredly know it.

In the spring, Greenleaf with his wife went abroad and took up their

residence in Rome.

"What pictures has he painted?" did you ask?

Really, Madam, a great many; but I have not the least idea of letting

you come at the name of my hero in this way. You have seen them both

here and in New York, and you thought them the productions of a rising

man,--as they are.

* * * * *

Our friend Monroe is now a partner in the house of Lindsay & Co. He

makes frequent visits to the villa at Brookline, and is always welcome.

Mr. Lindsay considers him a most sensible and worthy young man, and his

daughter Clara has implicit confidence in his judgment of literature as

well as in his taste for pictures. One fine day last summer, Mrs. Monroe

was prevailed upon, after some weeks of solicitation, to get into a

carriage and take a drive with her son. "She's a nice girl," said the

mother, fervently, on their return; "and if you _must_ marry anybody, I

don't think you can do better." Walter's smile showed that he thought

so too, although the alternative was hardly so painful as she seemed to

consider it,--from which we infer that his relations with the senior

partner of the house have become, or will be, still more intimate.

Mrs. Sandford has left Boston and gone to live with her relatives some

fifty miles distant;--the place Mr. Easelmann can tell, as he has had

occasion to send her a few letters.

The personages of our drama are all dismissed; the curtain begins to

fall; but a voice is heard, "What became of the Bulls and Bears?" What

became of Mars and Minerva after the siege of Troy? Men die; but the

deities, infernal as well as celestial, live on. Fortunes may rise like

Satan's _chef d'oeuvre_ of architecture, may be transported from city to

city like the palace of Aladdin, or may sink into salt-water lots as did

the Cities of the Plain; success may wait upon commerce and the arts,

or desolation may cover the land; still, surviving all change, and

profiting alike by prosperity and by calamity, the secret, unfathomable

agents in all human enterprises will remain the BULLS AND BEARS.

* * * * *

THE SPHINX.

Go not to Thebes. The Sphinx is there;

And thou shalt see her beauty rare,

And thee the sorcery of her smile

To read her riddle shall beguile.

Oh! woe to those who fail to read!

And woe to him who shall succeed!

For he who fails the truth to show

The terror of her wrath shall know:

But should'st thou find her mystery,

Not less is Death assured to thee;

For she shall cease, and thou shalt sigh

That she no longer is, and die.

A CHARGE WITH PRINCE RUPERT.

"Thousands were there, in darker fame that dwell,

Whose deeds some nobler poem shall adorn;

And though to me unknown, they sure fought well,

Whom Rupert led, and who were British-born."

DRYDEN.

I.

THE MARCH. JUNE 17, 1643.

Last night the Canary wine flashed in the red Venice glasses on the

oaken tables of the hall; loud voices shouted and laughed till the

clustered hawk-bells jingled from the rafters, and the chaplain's fiddle

throbbed responsive from the wall; while the coupled stag-hounds fawned

unnoticed, and the watchful falcon whistled to himself unheard. In the

carved chairs lounged groups of revellers, dressed in scarlet, dressed

in purple, dressed in white and gold, gay with satins and ribbons,

gorgeous with glittering chains and jewelled swords: stern, manly faces,

that had been singed with powder in the Palatinate; brutal, swarthy

faces, knowing all that sack and sin could teach them; beautiful, boyish

faces, fresh from ancestral homes and high-born mothers; grave, sad

faces,--sad for undoubted tyranny, grave against the greater wrong of

disloyalty. Some were in council, some were in strife, many were in

liquor; the parson was there with useless gravity, and the jester with

superfluous folly; and in the outer hall men more plebeian drained the

brown October from pewter cans, which were beaten flat, next moment, in

hammering the loud drinking-chorus on the wall; while the clink of the

armorer still went on, repairing the old head-pieces and breastplates

which had hung untouched since the Wars of the Roses; and in the

doorway the wild Welsh recruits crouched with their scythes and their

cudgels, and muttered in their uncouth dialect, now a prayer to God; and

now a curse for their enemy.

But to-day the inner hall is empty, the stag-hounds leap in the doorway,

the chaplain prays, the maidens cluster in the windows, beneath the soft

beauty of the June afternoon. The streets of Oxford resound with many

hoofs; armed troopers are gathering beside chapel and quadrangle,

gateway and tower; the trumpeter waves his gold and crimson trappings,

and blows, "To the Standard,"--for the great flag is borne to the

front, and Rupert and his men are mustering for a night of danger

beneath that banner of "Tender and True."

With beat of drum, with clatter of hoof, and rattle of spur and

scabbard, tramping across old Magdalen Bridge, cantering down the

hill-sides, crashing through the beech-woods, echoing through the chalky

hollows, ride leisurely the gay Cavaliers. Some in new scarfs and

feathers, worthy of the "show-troop,"--others with torn laces, broken

helmets, and guilty red smears on their buff doublets;--some eager for

their first skirmish,--others weak and silent, still bandaged from the

last one;--discharging now a rattle of contemptuous shot at some closed

Puritan house, grim and stern as its master,--firing anon as noisy a

salute, as they pass some mansion where a high-born beauty dwells,--on

they ride. Leaving the towers of Oxford behind them, keeping the ancient

Roman highway, passing by the low, strong, many-gabled farmhouses, with

rustic beauties smiling at the windows and wiser fathers scowling at

the doors,--on they ride. To the Royalists, these troopers are "Prince

Robert and the hope of the nation";--to the Puritans, they are only

"Prince Robber and his company of rake-shames."

Riding great Flanders horses, a flagon swung on one side of the large

padded saddle, and a haversack on the other,--booted to the thigh,

and girded with the leathern bandoleer, supporting cartridge-box and

basket-hilted sword, they are a picturesque and a motley troop. Some

wear the embroidered buffcoat over the coat of mail, others beneath

it,--neither having yet learned that the buffcoat alone is sabre-proof

and bullet-proof also. Scantily furnished with basinet or breastplate,

pot, haqueton, cuirass, pouldron, taslets, vambraces, or cuisses,--each

with the best piece of iron he could secure when the ancestral armory

was ransacked,--they yet care little for the deficit, remembering, that,

when they first rode down the enemy at Worcester, there was not a piece

of armor on their side, while the Puritans were armed to a man. There

are a thousand horsemen under Percy and O'Neal, armed with swords,

pole-axes, and petronels; this includes Rupert's own lifeguard of chosen

men. Lord Wentworth, with Innis and Washington, leads three hundred and

fifty dragoons,--dragoons of the old model, intended to fight either

on foot or on horseback, whence the name they bear, and the emblematic

dragon which adorns their carbines. The advanced guard, or "forlorn

hope," of a hundred horse and fifty dragoons, is commanded by Will

Legge, Rupert's life-long friend and correspondent; and Herbert Lunsford

leads the infantry, "the inhuman cannibal foot," as the Puritan journals

call them. There are five hundred of these, in lightest marching order,

and carrying either pike or arquebuse,--this last being a matchlock

musket with an iron rest to support it, and a lance combined, to resist

cavalry,--the whole being called "Swine (Swedish) feathers,"--a weapon

so clumsy, that the Cavaliers say a Puritan needs two years' practice to

discharge one without winking. And over all these float flags of every

hue and purport, from the blue and gold with its loyal "_Ut rex, sit

rex_" to the ominous crimson, flaming with a lurid furnace and the

terrible motto, "_Quasi ignis conflatoris_."

And foremost rides Prince Rupert, darling of fortune and of war, with

his beautiful and thoughtful face of twenty-three, stern and bronzed

already, yet beardless and dimpled, his dark and passionate eyes, his

long love-locks drooping over costly embroidery, his graceful scarlet

cloak, his white-plumed hat, and his tall and stately form, which,

almost alone in the army, has not yet known a wound. His high-born

beauty is preserved to us forever on the canvas of Vandyck, and as the

Italians have named the artist "Il Pittore Cavalieresco," so will

this subject of his skill remain forever the ideal of Il Cavaliere

Pittoresco. And as he now rides at the head of this brilliant array, his

beautiful white dog bounds onward joyously beside him, that quadruped

renowned in the pamphlets of the time, whose snowy skin has been stained

by many a blood-drop in the desperate forays of his master, but who has

thus far escaped so safely that the Puritans believe him a familiar

spirit, and try to destroy him "by poyson and extempore prayer, which

yet hurt him no more than the plague plaster did Mr. Pym." Failing in

this, they pronounce the pretty creature to be "a divell, not a very

downright divell, but some Lapland ladye, once by nature a handsome

white ladye, now by art a handsome white dogge."

The Civil War is begun. The King has made his desperate attempt to

arrest the five members of Parliament, and been checkmated by Lucy

Carlisle. So the fatal standard was reared, ten months ago, on that

dismal day at Nottingham,--the King's arms, quartered with a bloody

hand pointing to the crown, and the red battle-flag above;--blown down

disastrously at night, replaced sadly in the morning, to wave while the

Cavaliers rallied, slowly, beneath its folds. During those long months,

the King's fortunes have had constant and increasing success,--a success

always greatest when Rupert has been nearest. And now this night-march

is made to avenge a late attack, of unaccustomed audacity, from Essex,

and to redeem the threat of Rupert to pass in one night through the

whole country held by the enemy, and beat up the most distant quarters

of the Roundheads.

II.

THE CONDITION OF THE TIMES.

It is no easy thing to paint, with any accurate shadings, this opening

period of the English Revolution. Looking habitually, as we do, at the

maturer condition of the two great parties, we do not remember how

gradual was their formation. The characters of Cavalier and Roundhead

were not more the cause than the consequence of civil strife. There is

no such chemical solvent as war; where it finds a mingling of two

alien elements, it leaves them permanently severed. At the opening

of hostilities, the two parties were scarcely distinguishable, in

externals, from each other. Arms, costume, features, phrases, manners,

were as yet common to both sides. On the battlefield, spies could pass

undetected from one army to the other. At Edgehill, Chalgrove, and

even Naseby, men and standards were captured and rescued, through the

impossibility of distinguishing between the forces. An orange scarf, or

a piece of white paper, was the most reliable designation. True, there

was nothing in the Parliamentary army so gorgeous as Sir John Suckling's

troop in Scotland, with their white doublets and scarlet hats and

plumes; but that bright company substituted the white feather for the

red one, in 1639, and rallied no more. Yet even the Puritans came to

battle in attire which would have seemed preposterously gaudy to the

plain men of our own Revolution. The London regiment of Hollis wore

red, in imitation of the royal colors, adopted to make wounds less

conspicuous. Lord Say's regiment wore blue, in imitation of the

Covenanters, who took it from Numbers, xv. 38; Hampden's men wore green;

Lord Brooke's purple; Colonel Ballard's gray. Even the hair afforded far

less distinction than we imagine, since there is scarcely a portrait of

a leading Parliamentarian which has not a display of tresses such as

would now appear the extreme of foppery; and when the remains of Hampden

himself were disinterred within twenty-five years, the body was at first

taken for a woman's, from the exceeding length and beauty of the hair.

But every year of warfare brought a change. On the King's side, the

raiment grew more gorgeous amid misfortunes; on the Parliament's, it

became sadder with every success. The Royalists took up feathers and

oaths, in proportion as the Puritans laid them down; and as the tresses

of the Cavaliers waved more luxuriantly, the hair of the Roundheads

was more scrupulously shorn. And the same instinctive exaggeration was

constantly extending into manners and morals also. Both sides became

ostentatious; the one made the most of its dissoluteness, and the other

of its decorum. The reproachful names applied derisively to the two

parties became fixed distinctions. The word "Roundhead" was first used

early in 1642, though whether it originated with Henrietta Maria or with

David Hyde is disputed. And Charles, in his speech before the battle of

Edgehill, in October of the same year, mentioned the name "Cavalier" as

one bestowed "in a reproachful sense," and one "which our enemies have

striven to make odious."

And all social as well as moral prejudices gradually identified

themselves with this party division. As time passed on, all that was

high-born in England gravitated more and more to the royal side, while

the popular cause enlisted the Londoners, the yeomanry, and those

country-gentlemen whom Mrs. Hutchinson styled the "worsted-stocking

members." The Puritans gradually found themselves excluded from the

manorial halls, and the Cavaliers (a more inconvenient privation)

from the blacksmiths' shops. Languishing at first under aristocratic

leadership, the cause of the Parliament first became strong when the

Self-denying Ordinance abolished all that weakness. Thus the very

sincerity of the civil conflict drew the lines deeper; had the battles

been fought by mercenaries, like the contemporary Continental wars,

there would have grown up a less hearty mutual antipathy, but a far more

terrible demoralization. As it was, the character of the war was, on the

whole, a humane one; few towns were sacked or destroyed, the harvests

were bounteous and freely gathered, and the population increased during

the whole period. But the best civil war is fearfully injurious. In this

case, virtues and vices were found on both sides; and it was only the

gradual preponderance which finally stamped on each party its own

historic reputation. The Cavaliers confessed to "the vices of men,--love

of wine and women"; but they charged upon their opponents "the vices of

devils,--hypocrisy and spiritual pride." Accordingly, the two verdicts

have been recorded in the most delicate of all registers,--language. For

the Cavaliers added to the English vocabulary the word _plunder_, and

the Puritans the word _cant_.

Yet it is certain that at the outset neither of these peculiarities was

monopolized by either party. In abundant instances, the sins changed

places,--Cavaliers canted, and Puritans plundered. That is, if by cant

we understand the exaggerated use of Scripture language which originated

with the reverend gentleman of that name, it was an offence in which

both sides participated. Clarendon, reviewing the Presbyterian

discourses, quoted text against text with infinite relish. Old Judge

Jenkins, could he have persuaded the "House of Rimmon," as he called

Parliament, to hang him, would have swung the Bible triumphantly to his

neck by a ribbon, to show the unscriptural character of their doings.

Charles himself, in one of his early addresses to his army, denounced

the opposing party as "Brownists, Anabaptists, and Atheists," and in

his address to the city of London pleaded in favor of his own "godly,

learned, and painfull preachers." Every royal regiment had its chaplain,

including in the service such men as Pearson and Jeremy Taylor, and

they had prayers before battle, as regularly and seriously as their

opponents. "After solemn prayers at the head of every division, I led my

part away," wrote the virtuous Sir Bevill Grenvill to his wife, after

the battle of Bradock. Rupert, in like manner, had prayers before every

division at Marston Moor. To be sure, we cannot always vouch for the

quality of these prayers, when the chaplain happened to be out of the

way and the colonel was his substitute. "O Lord," petitioned stout Sir

Jacob Astley, at Edgehill, "thou knowest how busy I must be this day; if

I forget thee, do not thou forget me!"--after which, he rose up, crying,

"March on, boys!"

And as the Puritans had not the monopoly of prayer, so the Cavaliers did

not monopolize plunder. Of course, when civil war is once begun, such

laxity is mere matter of self-defence. If the Royalists unhorsed the

Roundheads, the latter must horse themselves again, as best they could.

If Goring "uncattled" the neighborhood of London, Major Medhope must

be ordered to "uncattle" the neighborhood of Oxford. Very possibly

individual animals were identified with the right side or the wrong

side, to be spared or confiscated in consequence;--as in modern Kansas,

during a similar condition of things, one might hear men talk of a

pro-slavery colt, or an anti-slavery cow. And the precedent being

established, each party could use the smallest excesses of the other

side to palliate the greatest of its own. No use for the King to hang

two of Rupert's men for stealing, when their commander could urge in

extenuation the plunder of the house of Lady Lucas, and the indignities

offered by the Roundheads to the Countess of Rivers. Why spare the

churches as sanctuaries for the enemy, when rumor accused that enemy

(right or wrong) of hunting cats in those same churches with hounds, or

baptizing dogs and pigs in ridicule of the consecrated altars? Setting

aside these charges as questionable, we cannot so easily dispose of

the facts which rest on actual Puritan testimony. If, even after the

Self-denying Ordinance, the "Perfect Occurrences" repeatedly report

soldiers of the Puritan army, as cashiered for drunkenness, rudeness to

women, pilfering, and defrauding innkeepers, it is inevitable to infer

that in earlier and less stringent times they did the same undetected or

unpunished. When Mrs. Hutchinson describes a portion of the soldiers on

her own side as "licentious, ungovernable wretches,"--when Sir Samuel

Luke, in his letters, depicts the glee with which his men plunder

the pockets of the slain,--when poor John Wolstenholme writes to

head-quarters that his own compatriots have seized all his hay and

horses, "so that his wife cannot serve God with the congregation but

in frosty weather,"--when Vicars in "Jehovah Jireh" exults over the

horrible maiming and butchery wrought by the troopers upon the officers'

wives and female camp-followers at Naseby,--it is useless to attribute

exaggeration to the other side. In civil war, even the humanest, there

is seldom much opening for exaggeration,--the actual horrors being

usually quite as vivid as any imaginations of the sufferers, especially

when, as in this case, the spiritual instructors preach, on the one

side, from "Curse ye Meroz," and, on the other side, from "Cursed be he

that keepeth back his sword from blood."

We mention these things, not because they are deliberately denied by

anybody, but because they are apt to be overlooked by those who take

their facts at secondhand. All this does not show that the Puritans had,

even at the outset, worse men or a cause no better; it simply shows

that war demoralizes, and that right-thinking men may easily, under its

influence, slide into rather reprehensible practices. At a later period

the evil worked its own cure, among the Puritans, and the army of

Cromwell was a moral triumph almost incredible; but at the time of which

we write, the distinction was but lightly drawn. It would be easy to go

farther and show that among the leading Parliamentary statesmen there

were gay and witty debauchees,--that Harry Marten deserved the epithet

with which Cromwell saluted him,--that Pym succeeded to the regards of

Stafford's bewitching mistress,--that Warwick was truly, as Clarendon

describes him, a profuse and generous profligate, tolerated by the

Puritans for the sake of his earldom and his bounty, at a time when

bounty was convenient and peers scarce. But it is hardly worth while

farther to demonstrate the simple and intelligible fact, that there were

faults on both sides. Neither war nor any other social phenomenon can

divide infallibly the sheep from the goats, or collect all the saints

under one set of staff-officers and all the sinners under another.

But, on the other hand, the strength of both sides, at this early day,

was in a class of serious and devoted men, who took up the sword so

sadly, in view of civil strife, that victory seemed to them almost as

terrible as defeat. In some, the scale of loyalty slightly inclined,

and they held with the King; in others, the scale of liberty, and they

served the Parliament; in both cases, with the same noble regrets at

first, merging gradually into bitter alienation afterwards. "If there

could be an expedient found to solve the punctilio of honor, I would not

be hero an hour," wrote Lord Robert Spencer to his wife, from the

camp of the Cavaliers. Sir Edmund Verney, the King's standard-bearer,

disapproved of the royal cause, and adhered to it only because he "had

eaten the King's bread." Lord Falkland, Charles's Secretary of State,

"sitting among his friends, often, after a deep silence and frequent

sighs, would, with a shriek and sad accent, ingeminate the words, Peace!

Peace!" and would prophesy for himself that death which soon came. And

these words show close approximation to the positions of men honored

among the Puritans, as when Sir William Waller wrote from his camp to

his chivalrous opponent, Sir Ralph Hopton,--"The great God, who is

the searcher of my heart, knows with what reluctance I go upon this

service."

As time passed on, the hostility between the two parties exceeded all

bounds of courteous intercourse. The social distinction was constantly

widening, and so was the religious antagonism. Waller could be allowed

to joke with Goring and sentimentalize with Hopton,--for Waller was a

gentleman, though a rebel; but it was a different thing when the Puritan

gentlemen were seen to be gradually superseded by Puritan clowns.

Strafford had early complained of "your Prynnes, Pims, and Bens, with

the rest of that generation of odd names and natures." But what were

these to the later brood, whose plebeian quality Mr. Buckle has so

laboriously explored,--Goffe the grocer and Whalley the tailor, Pride

the drayman and Venner the cooper, culminating at last in Noll Cromwell

the brewer? The formidable force of these upstarts only embittered

the aversion. If odious when vanquished, what must they have been as

victors? For if it be disagreeable to find a foeman unworthy of your

steel, it is much more unpleasant when your steel turns out unworthy of

the foeman; and if sad-colored Puritan raiment looked absurd upon the

persons of fugitives, it must have been very particularly unbecoming

when worn by conquerors.

And the growing division was constantly aggravated by very acid satire.

The Court, it must be remembered, was more than half French in its

general character and tone, and every Frenchman of that day habitually

sneered at every Englishman as dull and inelegant. The dazzling wit that

flashed for both sides in the French civil wars flashed for one only in

the English; the Puritans had no comforts of that kind, save in some

caustic repartee from Harry Marten, or some fearless sarcasm from Lucy

Carlisle. But the Cavaliers softened labor and sweetened care with their

little jokes. It was rather consoling to cover some ignominious retreat

with a new epigram on Cromwell's red nose, that irresistible member

which kindled in its day as much wit as Bardolph's,--to hail it as "Nose

Immortal," a beacon, a glow-worm, a bird of prey,--to make it stand as a

personification of the rebel cause, till even the stately Montrose asked

newcomers from England, "How is Oliver's nose?" It was very entertaining

to christen the Solemn League and Covenant "the constellation on the

back of Aries," because most of the signers could only make their marks

on the little bits of sheepskin circulated for that purpose. It was

quite lively to rebaptize Rundway Down as Run-away-down, after a royal

victory, and to remark how Hazlerig's regiment of "lobsters" turned to

crabs, on that occasion, and crawled backwards. But all these pleasant

follies became whips to scourge them, at last,--shifting suddenly into

very grim earnest when the Royalists themselves took to running away,

with truculent saints, in steeple-hats, behind them.

Oxford was the stronghold of the Cavaliers, in these times, as that

of the Puritans was London. The Court itself (though here we are

anticipating a little) was transferred to the academic city. Thither

came Henrietta Maria, with what the pamphleteers called "her

Rattle-headed Parliament of Ladies," the beautiful Duchess of Richmond,

the merry Mrs. Kirke, and brave Kate D'Aubigny. In Merton College the

Queen resided; at Oriel the Privy Council was held; at Christ Church

the King and Rupert were quartered; and at All Souls Jeremy Taylor was

writing his beautiful meditations, in the intervals of war. In the New

College quadrangle, the students were drilled to arms "in the eye of

Doctor Pink," while Mars and Venus kept undisturbed their ancient reign,

although transferred to the sacred precincts of Magdalen. And amidst the

passion and the pomp, the narrow streets would suddenly ring with the

trumpet of some foam-covered scout, bringing tidings of perilous

deeds outside; while some traitorous spy was being hanged, drawn, and

quartered in some other part of the city, for betraying the secrets of

the Court. And forth from the outskirts of Oxford rides Rupert on the

day we are to describe, and we must still protract our pause a little

longer to speak of him.

Prince Rupert, Prince Robert, or Prince Robber,--for by all these names

was he known,--was the one formidable military leader on the royal side.

He was not a statesman, for he was hardly yet a mature man; he was

not, in the grandest sense, a hero, yet he had no quality that was not

heroic. Chivalrous, brilliant, honest, generous,--neither dissolute, nor

bigoted, nor cruel,--he was still a Royalist for the love of royalty,

and a soldier for the love of war, and in civil strife there can hardly

be a more dangerous character. Through all the blunt periods of his

military or civil proclamations, we see the proud, careless boy,

fighting for fighting sake, and always finding his own side the right

one. He could not have much charity for the most generous opponents; he

certainly had none at all for those who (as he said) printed malicious

and lying pamphlets against him "almost every morning," in which he

found himself saluted as a "nest of perfidious vipers," "a night-flying

dragon prince," "a flapdragon," "a caterpillar," "a spider," and "a

_butterbox_."

He was the King's own nephew,--great-grandson of William the Silent, and

son of that Elizabeth Stuart from whom all the modern royal family of

England descends. His sister was the renowned Princess Palatine, the

one favorite pupil of Descartes, and the chosen friend of Leibnitz,

Malebranche, and William Penn. From early childhood he was trained to

war; we find him at fourteen pronounced by his tutors fit to command

an army,--at fifteen, bearing away the palm in one of the last of the

tournaments,--at sixteen, fighting beside the young Turenne in the Low

Countries,--at nineteen, heading the advanced guard in the army of the

Prince of Orange,--and at twenty-three, appearing in England, the day

before the Royal Standard was reared, and the day after the King lost

Coventry, because Wilmot, not Rupert, was commander of the horse.

This training made him a general,--not, as many have supposed, a mere

cavalry-captain;--he was one of the few men who have shown great

military powers on both land and sea; he was a man of energy unbounded,

industry inexhaustible, and the most comprehensive and systematic

forethought. It was not merely, that, as Warwick said, "he put that

spirit into the King's army that all men seemed resolved,"--not merely,

that, always charging at the head of his troops, he was never wounded,

and that, seeing more service than any of his compeers, he outlived them

all. But even in these early years, before he was generalissimo, the

Parliament deliberately declared the whole war to be "managed by his

skill, labor, and industry," and his was the only name habitually

printed in capitals in the Puritan newspapers. He had to create soldiers

by enthusiasm, and feed them by stratagem,--to toil for a king

who feared him, and against a queen who hated him,--to take vast

responsibilities alone,--accused of negligence, if he failed, reproached

with license, if he succeeded. Against him he had the wealth of London,

intrusted to men who were great diplomatists, though new to power, and

great soldiers, though they had never seen a battle-field till middle

life; on his side he had only unmanageable lords and penniless

gentlemen, who gained victories by daring, and then wasted them by

license. His troops had no tents, no wagons, no military stores; they

used those of the enemy. Clarendon says, that the King's cause labored

under an incurable disease of want of money, and that the only cure for

starvation was a victory. To say, therefore, that Rupert's men never

starved is to say that they always conquered,--which, at this early

period, was true.

He was the best shot in the army, and the best tennis-player among the

courtiers, and Pepys calls him "the boldest attacker in England for

personal courage." Seemingly without reverence or religion, he yet

ascribed his defeats to Satan, and, at the close of a letter about a

marauding expedition, requested his friend Will Legge to pray for him.

Versed in all the courtly society of the age, chosen interpreter for the

wooing of young Prince Charles and La Grande Mademoiselle, and mourning

in purple, with the royal family, for Marie de Médicis, he could yet

mingle in any conceivable company and assume any part. He penetrated the

opposing camp at Dunsmore Heath as an apple-seller, and the hostile town

of Warwick as a dealer in cabbage-nets, and the pamphleteers were never

weary of describing his disguises. He was charged with all manner of

offences, even to slaying children with cannibal intent, and only very

carelessly disavowed such soft impeachments. But no man could deny that

he was perfectly true to his word; he never forgot one whom he had

promised to protect, and, if he had promised to strip a man's goods, he

did it to the uttermost farthing. And so must his pledge of vengeance

be redeemed to-night; and so, riding eastward, with the dying sunlight

behind him and the quiet Chiltern hills before, through air softened by

the gathering coolness of these midsummer eves, beside clover fields,

and hedges of wild roses, and ponds white with closing water-lilies, and

pastures sprinkled with meadow-sweet, like foam,--he muses only of the

clash of sword and the sharp rattle of shot, and all the passionate joys

of the coming charge.

III.

THE FORAY.

The long and picturesque array winds onward, crossing Chiselhampton

Bridge, (not to be re-crossed so easily,) avoiding Thame with its church

and abbey, where Lord-General Essex himself is quartered, unconscious of

their march; and the Cavaliers are soon riding beneath the bases of

the wooded hills towards Postcombe. Near Tetsworth, the enemy's first

outpost, they halt till evening; the horsemen dismount, the flagon and

the foraging-bag are opened, the black-jack and the manchet go round,

healths are drunk to successes past and glories future, to "Queen Mary's

eyes," and to "Prince Rupert's dog." A few hours bring darkness; they

move on eastward through the lanes, avoiding, when possible, the Roman

highways; they are sometimes fired upon by a picket, but make no return,

for they are hurrying past the main quarters of the enemy. In the

silence of the summer night, they stealthily ride miles and miles

through a hostile country, the renegade Urry guiding them. At early

dawn, they see, through the misty air, the low hamlet of Postcombe,

where the "beating up of the enemy's quarters" is to begin. A hurried

word of command; the infantry halt; the cavalry close, and sweep down

like night-hawks upon the sleeping village,--safe, one would have

supposed it, with the whole Parliamentary army lying between it and

Oxford, to protect from danger. Yet the small party of Puritan troopers

awake in their quarters with Rupert at the door; it is well for

them that they happen to be picked men, and have promptness, if not

vigilance; forming hastily, they secure a retreat westward through the

narrow street, leaving but few prisoners behind them. As hastily the

prisoners are swept away with the stealthy troop, who have other work

before them; and before half the startled villagers have opened their

lattices the skirmish is over. Long before they can send a messenger up,

over the hills, to sound the alarm-bells of Stoken Church, the swift

gallop of the Cavaliers has reached Chinnor, two miles away, and the

goal of their foray. The compact, strongly-built village is surrounded.

They form a parallel line behind the houses, on each side, leaping

fences and ditches to their posts. They break down the iron chains

stretched nightly across each end of the street, and line it from end to

end. Rupert, Will Legge, and the "forlorn hope," dismounting, rush in

upon the quarters, sparing those alone who surrender.

In five minutes the town is up. The awakened troopers fight as

desperately as their assailants, some on foot, some on horseback. More

and more of Rupert's men rush in; they fight through the straggling

street of the village, from the sign of the Ram at one end to that of

the Crown at the other, and then back again. The citizens join against

the invaders, the 'prentices rush from their attics, hasty barricades

of carts and harrows are formed in the streets, long musket-barrels are

thrust from the windows, dark groups cluster on the roofs, and stones

begin to rattle on the heads below, together with phrases more galling

than stones, hurled down by women, "cursed dogs," "devilish Cavaliers,"

"Papist traitors." In return, the intruders shoot at the windows

indiscriminately, storm the doors, fire the houses; they grow more

furious, and spare nothing; some towns-people retreat within the

church-doors; the doors are beaten in; women barricade them with

wool-packs, and fight over them with muskets, barrel to barrel. Outside,

the troopers ride round and round the town, seizing or slaying all who

escape; within, desperate men still aim from their windows, though the

houses each side are in flames. Melting lead pours down from the blazing

roofs, while the drum still beats and the flag still goes on. It is

struck down presently; tied to a broken pike-staff, it rises again,

while a chaos of armor and plumes, black and orange, blue and red, torn

laces and tossing feathers, powder-stains and blood-stains, fills the

dewy morning with terror, and opens the June Sunday with sin.

Threescore and more of the towns-people are slain, sixscore are led

away at the horses' sides, bound with ropes, to be handed over to

the infantry for keeping. Some of these prisoners, even of the armed

troopers, are so ignorant and unwarlike as yet, that they know not the

meaning of the word "quarter," refusing it when offered, and imploring

"mercy" instead. Others are little children, for whom a heavy ransom

shall yet be paid. Others, cheaper prisoners, are ransomed on the spot.

Some plunder has also been taken, but the soldiers look longingly on

the larger wealth that must be left behind, in the hurry of

retreat,--treasures that, otherwise, no trooper of Rupert's would have

spared: scarlet cloth, bedding, saddles, cutlery, ironware, hats, shoes,

hops for beer, and books to sell to the Oxford scholars. But the daring

which has given them victory now makes their danger;--they have been

nearly twelve hours in the saddle and have fought two actions; they have

twenty-five miles to ride, with the whole force of the enemy in their

path; they came unseen in the darkness, they must return by daylight and

with the alarm already given; Stoken Church-bell has been pealing for

hours, the troop from Postcombe has fallen back on Tetsworth, and

everywhere in the distance videttes are hurrying from post to post.

The perilous retreat begins. Ranks are closed; they ride silently; many

a man leads a second horse beside him, and one bears in triumph the

great captured Puritan standard, with its five buff Bibles on a black

ground. They choose their course more carefully than ever, seek the

by-lanes, and swim the rivers with their swords between their teeth. At

one point, in their hushed progress, they hear the sound of rattling

wagons. There is a treasure-train within their reach, worth twenty-one

thousand pounds, and destined for the Parliamentary camp, but the thick

woods of the Chilterns have sheltered it from pursuit, and they have

not a moment to waste; they are riding for their lives. Already the

gathering parties of Roundheads are closing upon them, nearer and

nearer, as they approach the most perilous point of the wild expedition,

their only return-path across the Cherwell, Chiselhampton Bridge. Percy

and O'Neal with difficulty hold the assailants in check; the case grows

desperate at last, and Rupert stands at bay on Chalgrove Field.

It is Sunday morning, June 18th, 1643. The early church-bells are

ringing over all Oxfordshire,--dying away in the soft air, among the

sunny English hills, while Englishmen are drawing near each other with

hatred in their hearts,--dying away, as on that other Sunday, eight

months ago, when Baxter, preaching near Edgehill, heard the sounds of

battle, and disturbed the rest of his saints by exclaiming, "To the

fight!" But here there are no warrior-preachers, no bishops praying in

surplices on the one side, no dark-robed divines preaching on horseback

on the other, no king in glittering armor, no Tutor Harvey in peaceful

meditation beneath a hedge, pondering on the circulation of the blood,

with hotter blood flowing so near him; all these were to be seen at

Edgehill, but not here. This smaller skirmish rather turns our thoughts

to Cisatlantic associations; its date suggests Bunker's Hill,--and its

circumstances, Lexington. For this, also, is a marauding party, with a

Percy among its officers, brought to a stand by a half-armed and angry

peasantry.

Rupert sends his infantry forward, to secure the bridge, and a

sufficient body of dragoons to line the mile-and-a-half of road

between,--the remainder of the troops being drawn up at the entrance of

a corn-field, several hundred acres in extent, and lying between the

villages and the hills. The Puritans take a long circuit, endeavoring to

get to windward of their formidable enemy,--a point judged as important,

during the seventeenth century, in a land fight as in a naval

engagement. They have with them some light field-pieces, artillery

being the only point of superiority they yet claim; but these are not

basilisks, nor falconets, nor culverins, (_colubri_, _couleuvres_,) nor

drakes, (_dracones_,) nor warning-pieces,--they are the leathern guns

of Gustavus Adolphus, made of light cast-iron and bound with ropes and

leather. The Roundhead dragoons, dismounted, line a hedge near the

Cavaliers, and plant their "swine-feathers"; under cover of their fire

the horse advance in line, matches burning. As they advance, one or two

dash forward, at risk of their lives, flinging off the orange scarfs

which alone distinguish them, in token that they desert to the royal

cause. Prince Rupert falls back into the lane a little, to lead the

other forces into his ambush of dragoons. These tactics do not come

naturally to him, however; nor does he like the practice of the time,

that two bodies of cavalry should ride up within pistol-shot of each

other, and exchange a volley before they charge. He rather anticipates,

in his style of operations, the famous order of Frederick the Great:

"The King hereby forbids all officers of cavalry, on pain of being broke

with ignominy, ever to allow themselves to be attacked in any action by

the enemy; but the Prussians must always attack them." Accordingly he

restrains himself for a little while, chafing beneath the delay, and

then, a soldier or two being suddenly struck down by the fire, he

exclaims, "Yea! this insolency is not to be endured." The moment is

come.

"God and Queen Mary!" shouts Rupert; "Charge!" In one instant that mass

of motionless statues becomes a flood of lava; down in one terrible

sweep it comes, silence behind it and despair before; no one notices the

beauty of that brilliant chivalrous array,--all else is merged in the

fury of the wild gallop; spurs are deep, reins free, blades grasped,

heads bent; the excited horse feels the heel no more than he feels the

hand; the uneven ground breaks their ranks,--no matter, they feel that

they can ride down the world: Rupert first clears the hedge,--he is

always first,--then comes the captain of his lifeguard, then the

whole troop "jumble after them," in a spectator's piquant phrase. The

dismounted Puritan dragoons break from the hedges and scatter for their

lives, but the cavalry "bear the charge better than they have done since

Worcester,"--that is, now they stand it an instant, then they did not

stand it at all; the Prince takes them in flank and breaks them in

pieces at the first encounter,--the very wind of the charge shatters

them. Horse and foot, carbines and petronels, swords and pole-axes, are

mingled in one struggling mass. Rupert and his men seem refreshed, not

exhausted, by the weary night,--they seem incapable of fatigue; they

spike the guns as they cut down the gunners, and, if any escape, it

is because many in both armies wear the same red scarfs. One Puritan,

surrounded by the enemy, shows such desperate daring that Rupert bids

release him at last, and sends afterwards to Essex to ask his name.

One Cavalier bends, with a wild oath, to search the pockets of a slain

enemy;--it is his own brother. O'Neal slays a standard-bearer, and thus

restores to his company the right to bear a flag, a right they lost at

Hopton Heath; Legge is taken prisoner and escapes; Urry proves himself

no coward, though a renegade, and is trusted to bear to Oxford the news

of the victory, being raised to knighthood in return.

For a victory of course it is. Nothing in England can yet resist these

high-born, dissolute, reckless Cavaliers of Rupert's. "I have seen them

running up walls twenty feet high," said the engineer consulted by the

frightened citizens of Dorchester: "these defences of yours may possibly

keep them out half an hour." Darlings of triumphant aristocracy, they

are destined to meet with no foe that can match them, until they recoil

at last before the plebeian pikes of the London train-bands. Nor can

even Rupert's men claim to monopolize the courage of the King's party.

The brilliant "show-troop" of Lord Bernard Stuart, comprising the young

nobles having no separate command,--a troop which could afford to

indulge in all the gorgeousness of dress, since their united incomes,

Clarendon declares, would have exceeded those of the whole Puritan

Parliament,--led, by their own desire, the triumphant charge at

Edgehill, and threescore of their bodies were found piled on the spot

where the Royal Standard was captured and rescued. Not less faithful

were the Marquis of Newcastle's "Lambs," who took their name from the

white woollen clothing which they refused to have dyed, saying that

their hearts' blood would dye it soon enough; and so it did: only thirty

survived the battle of Marston Moor, and the bodies of the rest were

found in the field, ranked regularly, side by side, in death as in life.

But here at Chalgrove Field no such fortitude of endurance is needed;

the enemy are scattered, and, as Rupert's Cavaliers are dashing on, in

their accustomed headlong pursuit, a small, but fresh force of Puritan

cavalry appears behind the hedges and charges on them from the

right,--two troops, hastily gathered, and in various garb. They are

headed by a man in middle life and of noble aspect: once seen, he cannot

easily be forgotten; but seen he will never be again, and, for the last

time, Rupert and Hampden meet face to face.

The foremost representative men of their respective parties, they

scarcely remember, perhaps, that there are ties and coincidences in

their lives. At the marriage of Rupert's mother, the student Hampden was

chosen to write the Oxford epithalamium, exulting in the prediction of

some noble offspring to follow such a union. Rupert is about to be made

General-in-chief of the Cavaliers; Hampden is looked to by all as the

future General-in-chief of the Puritans. Rupert is the nephew of the

King,--Hampden the cousin of Cromwell; and as the former is believed

to be aiming at the Crown, so the latter is the only possible rival of

Cromwell for the Protectorate,--"the eyes of all being fixed upon him as

their _pater patriae_." But in all the greater qualities of manhood, how

far must Hampden be placed above the magnificent and gifted Rupert! In

a congress of natural noblemen--for such do the men of the Commonwealth

appear--he must rank foremost. It is difficult to avoid exaggeration in

speaking of these men,--men whose deeds vindicate their words, and whose

words are unsurpassed by Greek or Roman fame,--men whom even Hume can

only criticize for a "mysterious jargon" which most of them did not use,

and for a "vulgar hypocrisy" which few of them practised. Let us not

underrate the self-forgetting loyalty of the Royalists,--the Duke of

Newcastle laying at the King's feet seven hundred thousand pounds,

and the Marquis of Worcester a million; but the sublimer poverty and

abstinence of the Parliamentary party deserve a yet loftier meed,--Vane

surrendering an office of thirty thousand pounds a year to promote

public economy,--Hutchinson refusing a peerage and a fortune as a bribe

to hold Nottingham Castle a little while for the King,--Eliot and Pym

bequeathing their families to the nation's justice, having spent their

all for the good cause. And rising to yet higher attributes, as they

pass before us in the brilliant paragraphs of the courtly Clarendon, or

the juster modern estimates of Forster, it seems like a procession of

born sovereigns; while the more pungent epithets of contemporary wit

only familiarize, but do not mar, the fame of Cromwell, (Cleaveland's

"Caesar in a Clown,")--"William the Conqueror" Waller,--"young Harry"

Vane,--"fiery Tom" Fairfax,--and "King Pym." But among all these there

is no peer of Hampden, of him who came not from courts or camps, but

from the tranquil study of his Davila, from that thoughtful retirement

which was for him, as for his model, Coligny, the school of all noble

virtues,--came to find himself at once a statesman and a soldier,

receiving from his contemporary, Clarendon, no affectionate critic, the

triple crown of historic praise, as being "the most able, resolute, and

popular person in the kingdom." Who can tell how changed the destiny of

England, had the Earl of Bedford's first compromise with the country

party succeeded, and Hampden become the tutor of Prince Charles,--or

could this fight at Chalgrove Field issue differently, and Hampden

survive to be general instead of Essex, and Protector in place of

Cromwell?

But that may not be. Had Hampden's earlier counsels prevailed, Rupert

never would have ventured on his night foray; had his next suggestions

been followed, Rupert never would have returned from it. Those

failing, Hampden has come, gladly followed by Gunter and his dragoons,

outstripping the tardy Essex, to dare all and die. In vain does Gunter

perish beside his flag; in vain does Crosse, his horse being killed

under him, spring in the midst of battle on another; in vain does "that

great-spirited little Sir Samuel Luke" (the original of Hudibras) get

thrice captured and thrice escape. For Hampden, the hope of the nation,

is fatally shot through the shoulder with two carbine-balls, in the

first charge; the whole troop sees it with dismay; Essex comes up, as

usual, too late, and the fight at Chalgrove Field is lost.

We must leave this picture, painted in the fading colors of a far-off

time. Let us leave the noble Hampden, weak and almost fainting, riding

calmly from the field, and wandering away over his own Chiltern meadows,

that he loves so well,--leave him, drooping over his saddle, directing

his horse first towards his father-in-law's house at Pyrton, where once

he wedded his youthful bride, then turning towards Thame, and mustering

his last strength to leap his tired steed across its boundary brook. A

few days of laborious weakness, spent in letter-writing to urge upon

Parliament something of that military energy which, if earlier adopted,

might have saved his life,--and we see a last, funereal procession

winding beneath the Chiltern hills, and singing the 90th Psalm as the

mourners approach the tomb of the Hampdens, and the 43d as they return.

And well may the "Weekly Intelligencer" say of him, (June 27, 1643,)

that "the memory of this deceased Colonel is such that in no age to

come but it will more and more be had in honor and esteem; a man so

religious, and of that prudence, judgment, temper, valor, and integrity,

that he hath left few his like behind him."

And we must leave Rupert to his career of romantic daring, to be made

President of Wales and Generalissimo of the army,--to rescue with

unequalled energy Newark and York and the besieged heroine of Lathom

House,--to fight through Newbury and Marston Moor and Naseby, and many a

lesser field,--to surrender Bristol and be acquitted by court-martial,

but hopelessly condemned by the King;--then to leave the kingdom,

refusing a passport, and fighting his perilous way to the seaside;--then

to wander over the world for years, astonishing Dutchmen by his

seamanship, Austrians by his soldiership, Spaniards and Portuguese by

his buccaneering powers, and Frenchmen by his gold and diamonds and

birds and monkeys and "richly-liveried Blackamoors";--then to reorganize

the navy of England, exchanging characters with his fellow-commander,

Monk, whom the ocean makes rash, as it makes Rupert prudent;--leave him

to use nobly his declining years, in studious toils in Windsor Castle,

the fulfilment of Milton's dream, outwatching the Bear with thrice-great

Hermes, surrounded by strange old arms and instruments, and maps of

voyages, and plans of battles, and the abstruse library which the

"Harleian Miscellany" still records;--leave him to hunt and play at

tennis, serve in the Hudson's Bay Company and the Board of Trade;--leave

him to experiment in alchemy and astrology, in hydraulics, metallurgy,

gunpowder, perspective, quadrants, mezzotint, fish-hooks, and

revolvers;--leave him to look from his solitary turret over hills and

fields, now peaceful, but each the scene of some wild and warlike memory

for him;--leave him to die a calm and honored death at sixty-three,

outliving every companion of his early days. The busy world, which has

no time to remember many, forgets him and remembers only the slain and

defeated Hampden. The brilliant renown of the Prince was like the glass

toys which record his ingenuity and preserve his name; the hammer and

the anvil can scarcely mar them, yet a slight pressure of the finger,

in the fatal spot, will burst them into glittering showers of dust. The

full force of those iron times beat ineffectual upon Rupert;--Death

touched him, and that shining fame sparkled and was shattered forever.

* * * * *

SPRING.

Ah! my beautiful violets,

Stirring under the sod,

Feeling, in all your being,

The breath of the spirit of God

Thrilling your delicate pulses,

Warming your life-blood anew,--

Struggle up into the Spring-light;

I'm watching and waiting for you.

Stretch up your white arms towards me,

Climb and never despair;

Come! the blue sky is above you,

Sunlight and soft warm air.

Shake off the sleep from your eyelids,

Work in the darkness awhile,

Trust in the light that's above you,

Win your way up to its smile.

Ah! do you know how the May-flowers,

Down on the shore of the lake.

Are whispering, one to another,

All in the silence, "Awake!"

Blushing from under the pine-leaves,

Soon they will greet me anew,--

But still, oh, my beautiful violets,

I'll be watching and longing for you.

THE STEREOSCOPE AND THE STEREOGRAPH.

Democritus of Abdera, commonly known as the Laughing Philosopher,

probably because he did not consider the study of truth inconsistent

with a cheerful countenance, believed and taught that all bodies were

continually throwing off certain images like themselves, which subtile

emanations, striking on our bodily organs, gave rise to our sensations.

Epicurus borrowed the idea from him, and incorporated it into the famous

system, of which Lucretius has given us the most popular version. Those

who are curious on the matter will find the poet's description at the

beginning of his fourth book. Forms, effigies, membranes, or _films_,

are the nearest representatives of the terms applied to these

effluences. They are perpetually shed from the surfaces of solids, as

bark is shed by trees. _Cortex_ is, indeed, one of the names applied to

them by Lucretius.

These evanescent films may be seen in one of their aspects in any clear,

calm sheet of water, in a mirror, in the eye of an animal by one who

looks at it in front, but better still by the consciousness behind the

eye in the ordinary act of vision. They must be packed like the leaves

of a closed book; for suppose a mirror to give an image of an object a

mile off, it will give one at every point less than a mile, though this

were subdivided into a million parts. Yet the images will not be the

same; for the one taken a mile off will be very small, at half a mile as

large again, at a hundred feet fifty times as large, and so on, as long

as the mirror can contain the image.

Under the action of light, then, a body makes its superficial aspect

potentially present at a distance, becoming appreciable as a shadow or

as a picture. But remove the cause,--the body itself,--and the effect is

removed. The man beholdeth himself in the glass and goeth his way, and

straightway both the mirror and the mirrored forget what manner of man

he was. These visible films or membranous _exuviae_ of objects, which

the old philosophers talked about, have no real existence, separable

from their illuminated source, and perish instantly when it is

withdrawn.

If a man had handed a metallic speculum to Democritus of Abdera, and

told him to look at his face in it while his heart was beating thirty

or forty times, promising that one of the films his face was shedding

should stick there, so that neither he, nor it, nor anybody should

forget what manner of man he was, the Laughing Philosopher would

probably have vindicated his claim to his title by an explosion that

would have astonished the speaker.

This is just what the Daguerreotype has done. It has fixed the most

fleeting of our illusions, that which the apostle and the philosopher

and the poet have alike used as the type of instability and unreality.

The photograph has completed the triumph, by making a sheet of paper

reflect images like a mirror and hold them as a picture.

This triumph of human ingenuity is the most audacious, remote,

improbable, incredible,--the one that would seem least likely to be

regained, if all traces of it were lost, of all the discoveries man has

made. It has become such an everyday matter with us, that we forget its

miraculous nature, as we forget that of the sun itself, to which we owe

the creations of our new art. Yet in all the prophecies of dreaming

enthusiasts, in all the random guesses of the future conquests over

matter, we do not remember any prediction of such an inconceivable

wonder, as our neighbor round the corner, or the proprietor of the small

house on wheels, standing on the village common, will furnish any of us

for the most painfully slender remuneration. No Century of Inventions

includes this among its possibilities. Nothing but the vision of a

Laputan, who passed his days in extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers,

could have reached such a height of delirium as to rave about the time

when a man should paint his miniature by looking at a blank tablet, and

a multitudinous wilderness of forest foliage or an endless Babel of

roofs and spires stamp itself, in a moment, so faithfully and so

minutely, that one may creep over the surface of the picture with his

microscope and find every leaf perfect, or read the letters of distant

signs, and see what was the play at the "Variétés" or the "Victoria,"

on the evening of the day when it was taken, just as he would sweep the

real view with a spy-glass to explore all that it contains.

Some years ago, we sent a page or two to one of the magazines,--the

"Knickerbocker," if we remember aright,--in which the story was told

from the "Arabian Nights," of the three kings' sons, who each wished to

obtain the hand of a lovely princess, and received for answer, that he

who brought home the most wonderful object should obtain the lady's hand

as his reward. Our readers, doubtless, remember the original tale, with

the flying carpet, the tube which showed what a distant friend was

doing by looking into it, and the apple which gave relief to the

most desperate sufferings only by inhalation of its fragrance. The

railroad-car, the telegraph, and the apple-flavored chloroform could and

do realize, every day,--as was stated in the passage referred to, with

a certain rhetorical amplitude not doubtfully suggestive of the

lecture-room,--all that was fabled to have been done by the carpet, the

tube, and the fruit of the Arabian story.

All these inventions force themselves upon us to the full extent of

their significance. It is therefore hardly necessary to waste any

considerable amount of rhetoric upon wonders that are so thoroughly

appreciated. When human art says to each one of us, I will give you

ears that can hear a whisper in New Orleans, and legs that can walk six

hundred miles in a day, and if, in consequence of any defect of rail

or carriage, you should be so injured that your own very insignificant

walking members must be taken off, I can make the surgeon's visit a

pleasant dream for you, on awaking from which you will ask when he

is coming to do that which he has done already,--what is the use of

poetical or rhetorical amplification? But this other invention of _the

mirror with a memory_, and especially that application of it which has

given us the wonders of the stereoscope, is not so easily, completely,

universally recognized in all the immensity of its applications and

suggestions. The stereoscope, and the pictures it gives, are, however,

common enough to be in the hands of many of our readers; and as many of

those who are not acquainted with it must before long become as familiar

with it as they are now with friction-matches, we feel sure that a few

pages relating to it will not be unacceptable.

Our readers may like to know the outlines of the process of making

daguerreotypes and photographs, as just furnished us by Mr. Whipple, one

of the most successful operators in this country. We omit many of those

details which are everything to the practical artist, but nothing to

the general reader. We must premise, that certain substances undergo

chemical alterations, when exposed to the light, which produce a change

of color. Some of the compounds of silver possess this faculty to a

remarkable degree,--as the common indelible marking-ink, (a solution of

nitrate of silver,) which soon darkens in the light, shows us every day.

This is only one of the innumerable illustrations of the varied effects

of light on color. A living plant owes its brilliant hues to the

sunshine; but a dead one, or the tints extracted from it, will fade

in the same rays which clothe the tulip in crimson and gold,--as our

lady-readers who have rich curtains in their drawing-rooms know full

well. The sun, then, is a master of _chiaroscuro_, and, if he has a

living petal for his pallet, is the first of colorists.--Let us walk

into his studio, and examine some of his painting machinery.

* * * * *