1. THE DAGUERREOTYPE.--A silver-plated sheet of copper is resilvered by

electro-plating, and perfectly polished. It is then exposed in a glass

box to the vapor of iodine until its surface turns to a golden yellow.

Then it is exposed in another box to the fumes of the bromide of lime

until it becomes of a blood-red tint. Then it is exposed once more, for

a few seconds, to the vapor of iodine. The plate is now sensitive to

light, and is of course kept from it, until, having been placed in the

darkened camera, the screen is withdrawn and the camera-picture falls

upon it. In strong light, and with the best instruments, _three

seconds'_ exposure is enough,--but the time varies with circumstances.

The plate is now withdrawn and exposed to the vapor of mercury at 212°.

Where the daylight was strongest, the sensitive coating of the plate has

undergone such a chemical change, that the mercury penetrates readily to

the silver, producing a minute white granular deposit upon it, like

a very thin fall of snow, drifted by the wind. The strong lights are

little heaps of these granules, the middle lights thinner sheets of

them; the shades are formed by the dark silver itself, thinly sprinkled

only, as the earth shows with a few scattered snow-flakes on its

surface. The precise chemical nature of these granules we care less

for than their palpable presence, which may be perfectly made out by a

microscope magnifying fifty diameters or even less.

The picture thus formed would soon fade under the action of light, in

consequence of further changes in the chemical elements of the film

of which it consists. Some of these elements are therefore removed by

washing it with a solution of hyposulphite of soda, after which it is

rinsed with pure water. It is now permanent in the light, but a touch

wipes off the picture as it does the bloom from a plum. To fix it, a

solution of hyposulphite of soda containing chloride of gold is poured

on the plate while this is held over a spirit-lamp. It is then again

rinsed with pure water, and is ready for its frame.

2. THE PHOTOGRAPH.--Just as we must have a mould before we can make a

cast, we must get a _negative_ or reversed picture on glass before we

can get our positive or natural picture. The first thing, then, is to

lay a sensitive coating on a piece of glass,--crown-glass, which has a

natural surface, being preferable to plate-glass. _Collodion_, which is

a solution of gun-cotton in alcohol and ether, mingled with a solution

of iodide and bromide of potassium, is used to form a thin coating over

the glass. Before the plate is dry, it is dipped into a solution of

nitrate of silver, where it remains from one to three or four minutes.

Here, then, we have essentially the same chemical elements that we

have seen employed in the daguerreotype,--namely, iodine, bromine, and

silver; and by their mutual reactions in the last process we have formed

the sensitive iodide and bromide of silver. The glass is now placed,

still wet, in the camera, and there remains from three seconds to one

or two minutes, according to circumstances. It is then washed with a

solution of sulphate of iron. Every light spot in the camera-picture

becomes dark on the sensitive coating of the glass-plate. But where the

shadows or dark parts of the camera-picture fall, the sensitive coating

is less darkened, or not at all, if the shadows are very deep, and

so these shadows of the camera-picture become the lights of the

glass-picture, as the lights become the shadows. Again, the picture is

reversed, just as in every camera-obscura where the image is received on

a screen direct from the lens. Thus the glass plate has the right part

of the object on the left side of its picture, and the left part on its

right side; its light is darkness, and its darkness is light. Everything

is just as wrong as it can be, except that the relations of each wrong

to the other wrongs are like the relations of the corresponding rights

to each other in the original natural image. This is a _negative_

picture.

Extremes meet. Every given point of the picture is as far from truth as

a lie can be. But in travelling away from the pattern it has gone round

a complete circle, and is at once as remote from Nature and as near it

as possible.--"How far is it to Taunton?" said a countryman, who was

walking exactly the wrong way to reach that commercial and piscatory

centre.--"'Bäout twenty-five thäousan' mild,"--said the boy he

asked,--"'f y' go 'z y' 'r' goin' näow, 'n' 'bäout häaf a mild 'f y' turn

right räoun' 'n' go t'other way."

The negative picture being formed, it is washed with a solution of

hyposulphite of soda, to remove the soluble principles which are liable

to decomposition, and then coated with shellac varnish to protect it.

This _negative_ is now to give birth to a _positive_,--this mass of

contradictions to assert its hidden truth in a perfect harmonious

affirmation of the realities of Nature. Behold the process!

A sheet of the best linen paper is dipped in salt water and suffered to

dry. Then a solution of nitrate of silver is poured over it and it is

dried in a dark place. This paper is now sensitive; it has a conscience,

and is afraid of daylight. Press it against the glass negative and lay

them in the sun, the glass uppermost, leaving them so for from three to

ten minutes. The paper, having the picture formed on it, is then washed

with the solution of hyposulphite of soda, rinsed in pure water, soaked

again in a solution of hyposulphite of soda, to which, however, the

chloride of gold has been added, and again rinsed. It is then sized or

varnished.

Out of the perverse and totally depraved negative,--where it might

almost seem as if some magic and diabolic power had wrenched all things

from their proprieties, where the light of the eye was darkness, and the

deepest blackness was gilded with the brightest glare,--is to come the

true end of all this series of operations, a copy of Nature in all her

sweet gradations and harmonies and contrasts.

We owe the suggestion to a great wit, who overflowed our small

intellectual home-lot with a rushing freshet of fertilizing talk

the other day,--one of our friends, who quarries thought on his

own premises, but does not care to build his blocks into books and

essays,--that perhaps this world is only the _negative_ of that better

one in which lights will be turned to shadows and shadows into light,

but all harmonized, so that we shall see why these ugly patches, these

misplaced gleams and blots, were wrought into the temporary arrangements

of our planetary life.

For, lo! when the sensitive paper is laid in the sun under the negative

glass, every dark spot on the glass arrests a sunbeam, and so the spot

of the paper lying beneath remains unchanged; but every light space of

the negative lets the sunlight through, and the sensitive paper

beneath confesses its weakness, and betrays it by growing dark just in

proportion to the glare that strikes upon it. So, too, we have only

to turn the glass before laying it on the paper, and we bring all the

natural relations of the object delineated back again,--its right to the

right of the picture, its left to the picture's left.

On examining the glass negative by transmitted light with a power of a

hundred diameters, we observe minute granules, whether crystalline or

not we cannot say, very similar to those described in the account of

the daguerreotype. But now their effect is reversed. Being opaque, they

darken the glass wherever they are accumulated, just as the snow darkens

our skylights. Where these particles are drifted, therefore, we have our

shadows, and where they are thinly scattered, our lights. On examining

the paper photographs, we have found no distinct granules, but diffused

stains of deeper or lighter shades.

Such is the sun-picture, in the form in which we now most commonly meet

it,--for the daguerreotype, perfect and cheap as it is, and admirably

adapted for miniatures, has almost disappeared from the field of

landscape, still life, architecture, and _genre_ painting, to make room

for the photograph. Mr. Whipple tells us that even now he takes a much

greater number of miniature portraits on metal than on paper; and yet,

except occasionally a statue, it is rare to see anything besides

a portrait shown in a daguerreotype. But the greatest number of

sun-pictures we see are the photographs which are intended to be looked

at with the aid of the instrument we are next to describe, and to the

stimulus of which the recent vast extension of photographic copies of

Nature and Art is mainly owing.

3. THE STEREOSCOPE.--This instrument was invented by Professor

Wheatstone, and first described by him in 1838. It was only a year after

this that M. Daguerre made known his discovery in Paris; and almost

at the same time Mr. Fox Talbot sent his communication to the Royal

Society, giving an account of his method of obtaining pictures on paper

by the action of light. Iodine was discovered in 1811, bromine in 1826,

chloroform in 1831, gun-cotton, from which collodion is made, in 1846,

the electro-plating process about the same time with photography; "all

things, great and small, working together to produce what seemed at

first as delightful, but as fabulous, as Aladdin's ring, which is now as

little suggestive of surprise as our daily bread."

A stereoscope is an instrument which makes surfaces look solid. All

pictures in which perspective and light and shade are properly managed,

have more or less of the effect of solidity; but by this instrument that

effect is so heightened as to produce an appearance of reality which

cheats the senses with its seeming truth.

There is good reason to believe that the appreciation of solidity by the

eye is purely a matter of education. The famous case of a young man who

underwent the operation of couching for cataract, related by Cheselden,

and a similar one reported in the Appendix to Müller's Physiology, go to

prove that everything is seen only as a superficial extension, until

the other senses have taught the eye to recognize _depth_, or the third

dimension, which gives solidity, by converging outlines, distribution

of light and shade, change of size, and of the texture of surfaces.

Cheselden's patient thought "all objects whatever touched his eyes, as

what he felt did his skin." The patient whose case is reported by Müller

could not tell the form of a cube held obliquely before his eye from

that of a flat piece of pasteboard presenting the same outline. Each of

these patients saw only with one eye,--the other being destroyed, in one

case, and not restored to sight until long after the first, in the

other case. In two months' time Cheselden's patient had learned to

know solids; in fact, he argued so logically from light and shade and

perspective that he felt of pictures, expecting to find reliefs and

depressions, and was surprised to discover that they were flat surfaces.

If these patients had suddenly recovered the sight of _both_ eyes,

they would probably have learned to recognize solids more easily and

speedily.

We can commonly tell whether an object is solid, readily enough with one

eye, but still better with two eyes, and sometimes _only_ by using both.

If we look at a square piece of ivory with one eye alone, we cannot tell

whether it is a scale of veneer, or the side of a cube, or the base of

a pyramid, or the end of a prism. But if we now open the other eye, we

shall see one or more of its sides, if it have any, and then know it to

be a solid, and what kind of a solid.

We see something with the second eye which we did not see with the

first; in other words, the two eyes see different pictures of the same

thing, for the obvious reason that they look from points two or three

inches apart. By means of these two different views of an object, the

mind, as it were, _feels round it_ and gets an idea of its solidity. We

clasp an object with our eyes, as with our arms, or with our hands, or

with our thumb and finger, and then we know it to be something more than

a surface. This, of course, is an illustration of the fact, rather than

an explanation of its mechanism.

Though, as we have seen, the two eyes look on two different pictures, we

perceive but one picture. The two have run together and become blended

in a third, which shows us everything we see in each. But, in order that

they should so run together, both the eye and the brain must be in a

natural state. Push one eye a little inward with the forefinger, and the

image is doubled, or at least confused. Only certain parts of the two

retinae work harmoniously together, and you have disturbed their natural

relations. Again, take two or three glasses more than temperance

permits, and you see double; the eyes are right enough, probably, but

the brain is in trouble, and does not report their telegraphic messages

correctly. These exceptions illustrate the every-day truth, that, when

we are in right condition, our two eyes see two somewhat different

pictures, which our perception combines to form one picture,

representing objects in all their dimensions, and not merely as

surfaces.

Now, if we can get two artificial pictures of any given object, one as

we should see it with the right eye, the other as we should see it with

the left eye, and then, looking at the right picture, and that only,

with the right eye, and at the left picture, and that only, with the

left eye, contrive some way of making these pictures run together as we

have seen our two views of a natural object do, we shall get the sense

of solidity that natural objects give us. The arrangement which effects

it will be a _stereoscope_, according to our definition of that

instrument. How shall we attain these two ends?

1. An artist can draw an object as he sees it, looking at it only with

his right eye. Then he can draw a second view of the same object as he

sees it with his left eye. It will not be hard to draw a cube or an

octahedron in this way; indeed, the first stereoscopic figures were

pairs of outlines, right and left, of solid bodies, thus drawn. But the

minute details of a portrait, a group, or a landscape, all so nearly

alike to the two eyes, yet not identical in each picture of our natural

double view, would defy any human skill to reproduce them exactly.

And just here comes in the photograph to meet the difficulty. A first

picture of an object is taken,--then the instrument is moved a couple

of inches or a little more, the distance between the human eyes, and a

second picture is taken. Better than this, two pictures are taken at

once in a double camera.

We were just now stereographed, ourselves, at a moment's warning, as

if we were fugitives from justice. A skeleton shape, of about a man's

height, its head covered with a black veil, glided across the floor,

faced us, lifted its veil, and took a preliminary look. When we had

grown sufficiently rigid in our attitude of studied ease, and got

our umbrella into a position of thoughtful carelessness, and put our

features with much effort into an unconstrained aspect of cheerfulness

tempered with dignity, of manly firmness blended with womanly

sensibility, of courtesy, as much as to imply,--"You honor me, Sir,"

toned or sized, as one may say, with something of the self-assertion of

a human soul which reflects proudly, "I am superior to all this,"--when,

I say, we were all right, the spectral Mokanna dropped his long veil,

and his waiting-slave put a sensitive tablet under its folds. The veil

was then again lifted, and the two great glassy eyes stared at us once

more for some thirty seconds. The veil then dropped again; but in the

mean time, the shrouded sorcerer had stolen our double image; we were

immortal. Posterity might thenceforth inspect us, (if not otherwise

engaged,) not as a surface only, but in all our dimensions as an

undisputed _solid_ man of Boston.

2. We have now obtained the double-eyed or twin pictures, or

STEREOGRAPH, if we may coin a name. But the pictures are two, and we

want to slide them into each other, so to speak, as in natural vision,

that we may see them as one. How shall we make one picture out of two,

the corresponding parts of which are separated by a distance of two or

three inches?

We can do this in two ways. First, by _squinting_ as we look at them.

But this is tedious, painful, and to some impossible, or at least very

difficult. We shall find it much easier to look through a couple of

glasses that _squint for us_. If at the same time they _magnify_ the

two pictures, we gain just so much in the distinctness of the picture,

which, if the figures on the slide are small, is a great advantage. One

of the easiest ways of accomplishing this double purpose is to cut a

convex lens through the middle, grind the curves of the two halves

down to straight lines, and join them by their thin edges. This is a

_squinting magnifier_, and if arranged so that with its right half we

see the right picture on the slide, and with its left half the left

picture, it squints them both inward so that they run together and form

a single picture.

Such are the stereoscope and the photograph, by the aid of which _form_

is henceforth to make itself seen through the world of intelligence, as

thought has long made itself heard by means of the art of printing. The

_morphotype_, or form-print, must hereafter take its place by the side

of the _logotype_, or word-print. The _stereograph_, as we have called

the double picture designed for the stereoscope, is to be the card of

introduction to make all mankind acquaintances.

The first effect of looking at a good photograph through the stereoscope

is a surprise such as no painting ever produced. The mind feels its way

into the very depths of the picture. The scraggy branches of a tree in

the foreground run out at us as if they would scratch our eyes out. The

elbow of a figure stands forth so as to make us almost uncomfortable.

Then there is such a frightful amount of detail, that we have the same

sense of infinite complexity which Nature gives us. A painter shows us

masses; the stereoscopic figure spares us nothing,--all must be there,

every stick, straw, scratch, as faithfully as the dome of St. Peter's,

or the summit of Mont Blanc, or the ever-moving stillness of Niagara.

The sun is no respecter of persons or of things.

This is one infinite charm of the photographic delineation.

Theoretically, a perfect photograph is absolutely inexhaustible. In a

picture you can find nothing which the artist has not seen before you;

but in a perfect photograph there will be as many beauties lurking,

unobserved, as there are flowers that blush unseen in forests and

meadows. It is a mistake to suppose one knows a stereoscopic picture

when he has studied it a hundred times by the aid of the best of our

common instruments. Do we know all that there is in a landscape

by looking out at it from our parlor-windows? In one of the glass

stereoscopic views of Table Rock, two figures, so minute as to be

mere objects of comparison with the surrounding vastness, may be seen

standing side by side. Look at the two faces with a strong magnifier,

and you could identify their owners, if you met them in a court of law.

Many persons suppose that they are looking on _miniatures_ of the

objects represented, when they see them in the stereoscope. They will be

surprised to be told that they see most objects as large as they appear

in Nature. A few simple experiments will show how what we see in

ordinary vision is modified in our perceptions by what we think we see.

We made a sham stereoscope, the other day, with no glasses, and an

opening in the place where the pictures belong, about the size of one of

the common stereoscopic pictures. Through this we got a very ample view

of the town of Cambridge, including Mount Auburn and the Colleges, in a

single field of vision. We do not recognize how minute distant objects

really look to us, without something to bring the fact home to our

conceptions. A man does not deceive us as to his real size when we see

him at the distance of the length of Cambridge Bridge. But hold a common

black pin before the eyes at the distance of distinct vision, and

one-twentieth of its length, nearest the point, is enough to cover him

so that he cannot be seen. The head of the same pin will cover one of

the Cambridge horse-cars at the same distance, and conceal the tower of

Mount Auburn, as seen from Boston.

We are near enough to an edifice to see it well, when we can easily

read an inscription upon it. The stereoscopic views of the arches

of Constantine and of Titus give not only every letter of the old

inscriptions, but render the grain of the stone itself. On the pediment

of the Pantheon may be read, not only the words traced by Agrippa, but a

rough inscription above it, scratched or hacked into the stone by some

wanton hand during an insurrectionary tumult.

This distinctness of the lesser details of a building or a landscape

often gives us incidental truths which interest us more than the central

object of the picture. Here is Alloway Kirk, in the churchyard of which

you may read a real story by the side of the ruin that tells of more

romantic fiction. There stands the stone "Erected by James Russell,

seedsman, Ayr, in memory of his children,"--three little boys, James,

and Thomas, and John, all snatched away from him in the space of three

successive summer-days, and lying under the matted grass in the shadow

of the old witch-haunted walls. It was Burns's Alloway Kirk we paid

for, and we find we have bought a share in the griefs of James Russell,

seedsman; for is not the stone that tells this blinding sorrow of real

life the true centre of the picture, and not the roofless pile which

reminds us of an idle legend?

We have often found these incidental glimpses of life and death running

away with us from the main object the picture was meant to delineate.

The more evidently accidental their introduction, the more trivial they

are in themselves, the more they take hold of the imagination. It is

common to find an object in one of the twin pictures which we miss in

the other; the person or the vehicle having moved in the interval of

taking the two photographs. There is before us a view of the Pool of

David at Hebron, in which a shadowy figure appears at the water's edge,

in the right-hand farther corner of the right-hand picture only. This

muffled shape stealing silently into the solemn scene has already

written a hundred biographies in our imagination. In the lovely glass

stereograph of the Lake of Brienz, on the left-hand side, a vaguely

hinted female figure stands by the margin of the fair water; on the

other side of the picture she is not seen. This is life; we seem to see

her come and go. All the longings, passions, experiences, possibilities

of womanhood animate that gliding shadow which has flitted through our

consciousness, nameless, dateless, featureless, yet more profoundly

real than the sharpest of portraits traced by a human hand. Here is

the Fountain of the Ogre, at Berne. In the right picture two women are

chatting, with arms akimbo, over its basin; before the plate for the

left picture is got ready, "one shall be taken and the other left";

look! on the left side there is but one woman, and you may see the blur

where the other is melting into thin air as she fades forever from your

eyes.

Oh, infinite volumes of poems that I treasure in this small library of

glass and pasteboard! I creep over the vast features of Rameses, on the

face of his rock-hewn Nubian temple; I scale the huge mountain-crystal

that calls itself the Pyramid of Cheops. I pace the length of the three

Titanic stones of the wall of Baalbee,--mightiest masses of quarried

rock that man has lifted into the air; and then I dive into some mass

of foliage with my microscope, and trace the veinings of a leaf so

delicately wrought in the painting not made with hands, that I can

almost see its down and the green aphis that sucks its juices. I

look into the eyes of the caged tiger, and on the scaly train of the

crocodile, stretched on the sands of the river that has mirrored a

hundred dynasties. I stroll through Rhenish vineyards, I sit under Roman

arches, I walk the streets of once buried cities, I look into the chasms

of Alpine glaciers, and on the rush of wasteful cataracts. I pass, in

a moment, from the banks of the Charles to the ford of the Jordan, and

leave my outward frame in the arm-chair at my table, while in spirit I

am looking down upon Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives.

"Give me the full tide of life at Charing Cross," said Dr. Johnson. Here

is Charing Cross, but without the full tide of life. A perpetual stream

of figures leaves no definite shapes upon the picture. But on one side

of this stereoscopic doublet a little London "gent" is leaning pensively

against a post; on the other side he is seen sitting at the foot of the

next post;--what is the matter with the little "gent"?

The very things which an artist would leave out, or render imperfectly,

the photograph takes infinite care with, and so makes its illusions

perfect. What is the picture of a drum without the marks on its head

where the beating of the sticks has darkened the parchment? In three

pictures of the Ann Hathaway Cottage, before us,--the most perfect,

perhaps, of all the paper stereographs we have seen,--the door at the

farther end of the cottage is open, and we see the marks left by the

rubbing of hands and shoulders as the good people came through the

entry, or leaned against it, or felt for the latch. It is not impossible

that scales from the epidermis of the trembling hand of Ann Hathaway's

young suitor, Will Shakspeare, are still adherent about the old latch

and door, and that they contribute to the stains we see in our picture.

Among the accidents of life, as delineated in the stereograph, there is

one that rarely fails in any extended view which shows us the details of

streets and buildings. There may be neither man nor beast nor vehicle to

be seen. You may be looking down on a place in such a way that none of

the ordinary marks of its being actually inhabited show themselves. But

in the rawest Western settlement and the oldest Eastern city, in

the midst of the shanties at Pike's Peak and stretching across the

court-yards as you look into them from above the clay-plastered roofs of

Damascus, wherever man lives with any of the decencies of civilization,

you will find the _clothes-line_. It may be a fence, (in Ireland,)--it

may be a tree, (if the Irish license is still allowed us,)--but

clothes-drying, or a place to dry clothes on, the stereoscopic

photograph insists on finding, wherever it gives us a group of houses.

This is the city of Berne. How it brings the people who sleep under that

roof before us to see their sheets drying on that fence! and how real it

makes the men in that house to look at their shirts hanging, arms down,

from yonder line!

The reader will, perhaps, thank us for a few hints as to the choice

of stereoscopes and stereoscopic pictures. The only way to be sure of

getting a good instrument is to try a number of them, but it may be well

to know which are worth trying. Those made with achromatic glasses may

be as much better as they are dearer, but we have not been able to

satisfy ourselves of the fact. We do not commonly find any trouble from

chromatic aberration (or false color in the image). It is an excellent

thing to have the glasses adjust by pulling out and pushing in, either

by the hand, or, more conveniently, by a screw. The large instruments,

holding twenty-five slides, are best adapted to the use of those who

wish to show their views often to friends; the owner is a little apt

to get tired of the unvarying round in which they present themselves.

Perhaps we relish them more for having a little trouble in placing them,

as we do nuts that we crack better than those we buy cracked. In optical

effect, there is not much difference between them and the best ordinary

instruments. We employ one stereoscope with adjusting glasses for the

hand, and another common one upon a broad rosewood stand. The stand may

be added to any instrument, and is a great convenience.

Some will have none but glass stereoscopic pictures; paper ones are not

good enough for them. Wisdom dwells not with such. It is true that

there is a brilliancy in a glass picture, with a flood of light pouring

through it, which no paper one, with the light necessarily falling _on_

it, can approach. But this brilliancy fatigues the eye much more than

the quiet reflected light of the paper stereograph. Twenty-five glass

slides, well inspected in a strong light, are _good_ for one headache,

if a person is disposed to that trouble.

Again, a good paper photograph is infinitely better than a bad glass

one. We have a glass stereograph of Bethlehem, which looks as if the

ground were covered with snow,--and paper ones of Jerusalem colored and

uncolored, much superior to it both in effect and detail. The Oriental

pictures, we think, are apt to have this white, patchy look; possibly we

do not get the best in this country.

A good view on glass or paper is, as a rule, best uncolored. But some

of the American views of Niagara on glass are greatly improved by being

colored; the water being rendered vastly more suggestive of the reality

by the deep green tinge. _Per contra_, we have seen some American views

so carelessly colored that they were all the worse for having been

meddled with. The views of the Hathaway Cottage, before referred to, are

not only admirable in themselves, but some of them are admirably colored

also. Few glass stereographs compare with them as real representatives

of Nature.

In choosing stereoscopic pictures, beware of investing largely in

_groups_. The owner soon gets tired to death of them. Two or three

of the most striking among them are worth having, but mostly they

detestable,--vulgar repetitions of vulgar models, shamming grace,

gentility, and emotion, by the aid of costumes, attitudes, expressions,

and accessories worthy only of a Thespian society of candle-snuffers. In

buying brides under veils, and such figures, look at the lady's _hands_.

You will very probably find the young countess is a maid-of-all-work.

The presence of a human figure adds greatly to the interest of all

architectural views, by giving us a standard of size, and should often

decide our choice out of a variety of such pictures. No view pleases the

eye which has glaring patches in it,--a perfectly white-looking river,

for instance,--or trees and shrubs in full leaf, but looking as if they

were covered with snow,--or glaring roads, or frosted-looking stones and

pebbles. As for composition in landscape, each person must consult his

own taste. All have agreed in admiring many of the Irish views, as those

about the Lakes of Killarney, for instance, which are beautiful alike in

general effect and in nicety of detail. The glass views on the Rhine,

and of the Pyrenees in Spain, are of consummate beauty. As a specimen of

the most perfect, in its truth and union of harmony and contrast, the

view of the Circus of Gavarni, with the female figure on horseback in

the front ground, is not surpassed by any we remember to have seen.

* * * * *

What is to come of the stereoscope and the photograph we are almost

afraid to guess, lest we should seem extravagant. But, premising that we

are to give a _colored_ stereoscopic mental view of their prospects,

we will venture on a few glimpses at a conceivable, if not a possible

future.

_Form is henceforth divorced from matter._ In fact, matter as a visible

object is of no great use any longer, except as the mould on which form

is shaped. Give us a few negatives of a thing worth seeing, taken from

different points of view, and that is all we want of it. Pull it down or

burn it up, if you please. We must, perhaps, sacrifice some luxury in

the loss of color; but form and light, and shade are the great things,

and even color can be added, and perhaps by and by may be got direct

from Nature.

There is only one Coliseum or Pantheon; but how many millions of

potential negatives have they shed,--representatives of billions of

pictures,--since they were erected! Matter in large masses must always

be fixed and dear; form is cheap and transportable. We have got the

fruit of creation now, and need not trouble ourselves with the core.

Every conceivable object of Nature and Art will soon scale off its

surface for us. Men will hunt all curious, beautiful, grand objects, as

they hunt the cattle in South America, for their _skins_, and leave the

carcasses as of little worth.

The consequence of this will soon be such an enormous collection

of forms that they will have to be classified and arranged in vast

libraries, as books are now. The time will come when a man who wishes

to see any object, natural or artificial, will go to the Imperial,

National, or City Stereographic Library and call for its skin or form,

as he would for a book at any common library. We do now distinctly

propose the creation of a comprehensive and systematic stereographic

library, where all men can find the special forms they particularly

desire to see as artists, or as scholars, or as mechanics, or in any

other capacity. Already a workman has been travelling about the country

with stereographic views of furniture, showing his employer's patterns

in this way, and taking orders for them. This is a mere hint of what is

coming before long.

Again, we must have special stereographic collections, just as we have

professional and other special libraries. And as a means of facilitating

the formation of public and private stereographic collections, there

must be arranged a comprehensive system of exchanges, so that there may

grow up something like a universal currency of these bank-notes, or

promises to pay in solid substance, which the sun has engraved for the

great Bank of Nature.

To render comparison of similar objects, or of any that we may wish to

see side by side, easy, there should be a stereographic _metre_ or

fixed standard of focal length for the camera lens, to furnish by its

multiples or fractions, if necessary, the scale of distances, and the

standard of power in the stereoscope-lens. In this way the eye can

make the most rapid and exact comparisons. If the "great elm" and the

Cowthorpe oak, if the State-House and St. Peter's, were taken on the

same scale, and looked at with the same magnifying power, we should

compare them without the possibility of being misled by those

partialities which might tend to make us overrate the indigenous

vegetable and the dome of our native Michel Angelo.

The next European war will send us stereographs of battles. It is

asserted that a bursting shell can be photographed. The time is perhaps

at hand when a flash of light, as sudden and brief as that of the

lightning which shows a whirling wheel standing stock still, shall

preserve the very instant of the shock of contact of the mighty armies

that are even now gathering. The lightning from heaven does actually

photograph natural objects on the bodies of those it has just

blasted,--so we are told by many witnesses. The lightning of clashing

sabres and bayonets may be forced to stereotype itself in a stillness

as complete as that of the tumbling tide of Niagara as we see it

self-pictured.

We should be led on too far, if we developed our belief as to the

transformations to be wrought by this greatest of human triumphs over

earthly conditions, the divorce of form and substance. Let our readers

fill out a blank check on the future as they like,--we give our

indorsement to their imaginations beforehand. We are looking into

stereoscopes as pretty toys, and wondering over the photograph as a

charming novelty; but before another generation has passed away, it will

be recognized that a new epoch in the history of human progress dates

from the time when He who

----never but in uncreated light

Dwelt from eternity--

took a pencil of fire from the hand of the "angel standing in the sun,"

and placed it in the hands of a mortal.

THE MINISTER'S WOOING.

[Continued.]

CHAPTER XIV.

At the period of which we are speaking, no name in the New Republic was

associated with ideas of more brilliant promise, and invested with a

greater _prestige_ of popularity and success, than that of Colonel Aaron

Burr.

Sprung of a line distinguished for intellectual ability, the grandson of

a man whose genius has swayed New England from that day to this, the son

of parents eminent in their day for influential and popular talents, he

united in himself the quickest perceptions and keenest delicacy of

fibre with the most diamond hardness and unflinching steadiness of

purpose;--apt, subtle, adroit, dazzling, no man in his time ever began

life with fairer chances of success and fame.

His name, as it fell on the ear of our heroine, carried with it the

suggestion of all this; and when, with his peculiarly engaging smile, he

offered his arm, she felt a little of the flutter natural to a modest

young person unexpectedly honored with the notice of one of the great

ones of the earth, whom it is seldom the lot of humble individuals to

know, except by distant report.

But, although Mary was a blushing and sensitive person, she was not

what is commonly called a diffident girl;--her nerves had that healthy,

steady poise which gave her presence of mind in the most unwonted

circumstances.

The first few sentences addressed to her by her new companion were in a

tone and style altogether different from any in which she had ever been

approached,--different from the dashing frankness of her sailor lover,

and from the rustic gallantry of her other admirers.

That indescribable mixture of ease and deference, guided by refined

tact, which shows the practised, high-bred man of the world, made

its impression on her immediately, as the breeze on the chords of a

wind-harp. She felt herself pleasantly swayed and breathed upon;--it was

as if an atmosphere were around her in which she felt a perfect ease and

freedom, an assurance that her lightest word might launch forth safely,

as a tiny boat, on the smooth, glassy mirror of her listener's pleased

attention.

"I came to Newport only on a visit of business," he said, after a few

moments of introductory conversation. "I was not prepared for its many

attractions."

"Newport has a great deal of beautiful scenery," said Mary.

"I have heard that it was celebrated for the beauty of its scenery, and

of its ladies," he answered; "but," he added, with a quick flash of his

dark eye, "I never realized the fact before."

The glance of the eye pointed and limited the compliment, and, at the

same time, there was a wary shrewdness in it;--he was measuring how deep

his shaft had sunk, as he always instinctively measured the person he

talked with.

Mary had been told of her beauty since her childhood, notwithstanding

her mother had essayed all that transparent, respectable hoaxing by

which discreet mothers endeavor to blind their daughters to the real

facts of such cases; but, in her own calm, balanced mind, she had

accepted what she was so often told, as a quiet verity; and therefore

she neither fluttered nor blushed on this occasion, but regarded her

auditor with a pleased attention, as one who was saying obliging things.

"Cool!" he thought to himself,--"hum!--a little rustic belle, I

suppose,--well aware of her own value;--rather piquant, on my word!"

"Shall we walk in the garden?" he said,--"the evening is so beautiful."

They passed out of the door and began promenading the long walk. At the

bottom of the alley he stopped, and, turning, looked up the vista of box

ending in the brilliantly-lighted rooms, where gentlemen, with powdered

heads, lace ruffles, and glittering knee-buckles, were handing ladies in

stiff brocades, whose towering heads were shaded by ostrich-feathers and

sparkling with gems.

"Quite court-like, on my word!" he said. "Tell me, do you often have

such brilliant entertainments as this?"

"I suppose they do," said Mary. "I never was at one before, but I

sometimes hear of them."

"And _you_ do not attend?" said the gentleman, with an accent which made

the inquiry a marked compliment.

"No, I do not," said Mary; "these people generally do not visit us."

"What a pity," he said, "that their parties should want such an

ornament! But," he added, "this night must make them aware of their

oversight;--if you are not always in society after this, it will surely

not be for want of solicitation."

"You are very kind to think so," replied Mary; "but even if it were

to be so, I should not see my way clear to be often in such scenes as

this."

Her companion looked at her with a glance a little doubtful and amused,

and said, "And pray, why not? if the inquiry be not too presumptuous."

"Because," said Mary, "I should be afraid they would take too much time

and thought, and lead me to forget the great object of life."

The simple gravity with which this was said, as if quite assured of the

sympathy of her auditor, appeared to give him a secret amusement. His

bright, dark eyes danced, as if he suppressed some quick repartee; but,

drooping his long lashes deferentially, he said, in gentle tones, "I

should like to know what so beautiful a young lady considers the great

object of life."

Mary answered reverentially, in those words then familiar from infancy

to every Puritan child, "To glorify God, and enjoy Him forever."

"_Really?_" he said, looking straight into her eyes with that

penetrating glance with which he was accustomed to take the gauge of

every one with whom he conversed.

"Is it _not_?" said Mary, looking back, calm and firm, into the

sparkling, restless depths of his eyes.

At that moment, two souls, going with the whole force of their being in

opposite directions, looked out of their windows at each other with a

fixed and earnest recognition.

Burr was practised in every art of gallantry,--he had made womankind

a study,--he never saw a beautiful face and form without a sort of

restless desire to experiment upon it and try his power over the

interior inhabitant; but, just at this moment, something streamed into

his soul from those blue, earnest eyes, which brought back to his mind

what pious people had so often told him of his mother, the beautiful

and early-sainted Esther Burr. He was one of those persons who

systematically managed and played upon himself and others, as a skilful

musician, on an instrument. Yet one secret of his fascination was the

_naïveté_ with which, at certain moments, he would abandon himself to

some little impulse of a nature originally sensitive and tender. Had the

strain of feeling which now awoke in him come over him elsewhere, he

would have shut down some spring in his mind, and excluded it in a

moment; but, talking with a beautiful creature whom he wished to please,

he gave way at once to the emotion:--real tears stood in his fine eyes,

and he raised Mary's hand to his lips, and kissed it, saying--

"Thank you, my beautiful child, for so good a thought. It is truly a

noble sentiment, though practicable only to those gifted with angelic

natures."

"Oh, I trust not," said Mary, earnestly touched and wrought upon, more

than she herself knew, by the beautiful eyes, the modulated voice, the

charm of manner, which seemed to enfold her like an Italian summer.

Burr sighed,--a real sigh of his better nature, but passed out with all

the more freedom that he felt it would interest his fair companion, who,

for the time being, was the one woman of the world to him.

"Pure and artless souls like yours," he said, "cannot measure the

temptations of those who are called to the real battle of life in a

world like this. How many nobler aspirations fall withered in the fierce

heat and struggle of the conflict!"

He was saying then what he really felt, often bitterly felt,--but

_using_ this real feeling advisedly, and with skilful tact, for the

purpose of the hour.

What was this purpose? To win the regard, the esteem, the tenderness of

a religious, exalted nature shrined in a beautiful form,--to gain and

hold ascendency. It was a life-long habit,--one of those forms of

refined self-indulgence which he pursued, thoughtless and reckless of

consequences. He had found now the key-note of the character; it was a

beautiful instrument, and he was well pleased to play on it.

"I think, Sir," said Mary, modestly, "that you forget the great

provision made for our weakness."

"How?" he said.

"They that _wait on the Lord_ shall renew their strength," she replied,

gently.

He looked at her, as she spoke these words, with a pleased, artistic

perception of the contrast between her worldly attire and the simple,

religious earnestness of her words.

"She is entrancing!" he thought to himself,--"so altogether fresh and

_naive_!"

"My sweet saint," he said, "such as you are the appointed guardians of

us coarser beings. The prayers of souls given up to worldliness and

ambition effect little. You must intercede for us. I am very orthodox,

you see," he added, with that subtle smile which sometimes irradiated

his features. "I am fully aware of all that your reverend doctor tells

you of the worthlessness of unregenerate doings; and so, when I see

angels walking below, I try to secure 'a friend at court.'"

He saw that Mary looked embarrassed and pained at this banter, and

therefore added, with a delicate shading of earnestness,--

"In truth, my fair young friend, I hope you _will_ sometimes pray for

me. I am sure, if I have any chance of good, it will come in such a

way."

"Indeed I will," said Mary, fervently,--her little heart full, tears

in her eyes, her breath coming quick,--and she added, with a deepening

color, "I am sure, Mr. Burr, that there should be a covenant blessing

for you, if for any one, for you are the son of a holy ancestry."

"_Eh, bien, mon ami, qu'est ce que tu fais ici_?" said a gay voice

behind a clump of box; and immediately there started out, like a French

picture from its frame, a dark-eyed figure, dressed like a Marquise of

Louis XIV.'s time, with powdered hair, sparkling with diamonds.

"_Rien que m'amuser_," he replied, with ready presence of mind, in the

same tone, and then added,--"Permit me, Madame, to present to you a

charming specimen of our genuine New England flowers. Miss Scudder,

I have the honor to present you to the acquaintance of Madame de

Frontignac."

"I am very happy," said the lady, with that sweet, lisping accentuation

of English which well became her lovely mouth. "Miss Scudder, I hope, is

very well."

Mary replied in the affirmative,--her eyes resting the while with

pleased admiration on the graceful, animated face and diamond-bright

eyes which seemed looking her through.

"_Monsieur la trouve bien séduisante apparemment_" said the stranger,

in a low, rapid voice, to the gentleman, in a manner which showed a

mingling of pique and admiration.

"_Petite jalouse! rassure-toi_," he replied, with a look and manner into

which, with that mobile force which was peculiar to him, he threw the

most tender and passionate devotion. "_Ne suis-je pas à toi tout à

fait_?"--and as he spoke, he offered her his other arm. "Allow me to be

an unworthy link between the beauty of France and America."

The lady swept a proud curtsy backward, bridled her beautiful neck, and

signed for them to pass her. "I am waiting here for a friend," she said.

"Whatever is your will is mine," replied Burr, bowing with proud

humility, and passing on with Mary to the supper-room.

Here the company were fast assembling, in that high tide of good-humor

which generally sets in at this crisis of the evening.

The scene, in truth, was a specimen of a range of society which in those

times could have been assembled nowhere else but in Newport. There stood

Dr. H. in the tranquil majesty of his lordly form, and by his side, the

alert, compact figure of his contemporary and theological opponent, Dr.

Stiles, who, animated by the social spirit of the hour, was dispensing

courtesies to right and left with the debonair grace of the trained

gentleman of the old school. Near by, and engaging from time to time in

conversation with them, stood a Jewish Rabbin, whose olive complexion,

keen eye, and flowing beard gave a picturesque and foreign grace to the

scene. Colonel Burr, one of the most brilliant and distinguished men of

the New Republic, and Colonel de Frontignac, who had won for himself

laurels in the corps of La Fayette, during the recent revolutionary

struggle, with his brilliant, accomplished wife, were all unexpected and

distinguished additions to the circle.

Burr gently cleared the way for his fair companion, and, purposely

placing her where the full light of the wax chandeliers set off her

beauty to the best advantage, devoted himself to her with a subserviency

as deferential as if she had been a goddess.

For all that, he was not unobservant, when, a few moments after, Madame

de Frontignac was led in, on the arm of a Senator, with whom she was

presently in full flirtation.

He observed, with a quiet, furtive smile, that, while she rattled and

fanned herself, and listened with apparent attention to the flatteries

addressed to her, she darted every now and then a glance keen as a steel

blade towards him and his companion. He was perfectly adroit in playing

off one woman against another, and it struck him with a pleasant sense

of oddity, how perfectly unconscious his sweet and saintly neighbor was

of the position in which she was supposed to stand by her rival; and

poor Mary, all this while, in her simplicity, really thought that she

had seen traces of what she would have called the "strivings of the

spirit" in his soul. Alas! that a phrase weighed down with such

mysterious truth and meaning should ever come to fall on the ear as mere

empty cant!

With Mary it was a living form,--as were all her words; for in nothing

was the Puritan education more marked than in the earnest _reality_ and

truthfulness which it gave to language; and even now, as she stands by

his side, her large blue eye is occasionally fixed in dreamy reverie as

she thinks what a triumph of Divine grace it would be, if these inward

movings of her companion's mind _should_ lead him, as all the pious of

New England hoped, to follow in the footsteps of President Edwards, and

forms wishes that she could see him some time when she could talk to him

undisturbed.

She was too humble and too modest fully to accept the delicious flattery

which he had breathed, in implying that her hand had had power to unseal

the fountains of good in his soul; but still it thrilled through all the

sensitive strings of her nature a tremulous flutter of suggestion.

She had read instances of striking and wonderful conversions from words

dropped by children and women,--and suppose some such thing should

happen to her! and that this so charming and distinguished and powerful

being should be called into the fold of Christ's Church by her means!

No! it was too much to be hoped,--but the very possibility was

thrilling.

When, after supper, Mrs. Scudder and the Doctor made their adieus,

Burr's devotion was still unabated. With an enchanting mixture

of reverence and fatherly protection, he waited on her to the

last,--shawled her with delicate care, and handed her into the small,

one-horse wagon,--as if it had been the coach of a duchess.

"I have pleasant recollections connected with this kind of

establishment," he said, as, after looking carefully at the harness,

he passed the reins into Mrs. Scudder's hands. "It reminds me of

school-days and old times. I hope your horse is quite safe, Madam."

"Oh, yes," said Mrs. Scudder, "I perfectly understand him."

"Pardon the suggestion," he replied;--"what is there that a New England

matron does _not_ understand? Doctor, I must call by-and-by and have

a little talk with you,--my theology, you know, needs a little

straightening."

"We should all be happy to see you, Colonel Burr," said Mrs. Scudder;

"we live in a very plain way, it is true,"--

"But can always find place for a friend,--that, I trust, is what you

meant to say," he replied, bowing, with his own peculiar grace, as the

carriage drove off.

"Really, a most charming person is this Colonel Burr," said Mrs.

Scudder.

"He seems a very frank, ingenuous young person," said the Doctor; "one

cannot but mourn that the son of such gracious parents should be left to

wander into infidelity."

"Oh, he is not an infidel," said Mary; "he is far from it, though I

think his mind is a little darkened on some points."

"Ah," said the Doctor, "have you had any special religious conversation

with him?"

"A little," said Mary, blushing; "and it seems to me that his mind is

perplexed somewhat in regard to the doings of the unregenerate,--I fear

that it has rather proved a stumbling-block in his way; but he showed so

much feeling!--I could really see the tears in his eyes!"

"His mother was a most godly woman, Mary," said the Doctor. "She was

called from her youth, and her beautiful person became a temple for the

indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Aaron Burr is a child of many prayers,

and therefore there is hope that he may yet be effectually called. He

studied awhile with Bellamy," he added, musingly, "and I have often

doubted whether Bellamy took just the right course with him."

"I hope he _will_ call and talk with you," said Mary, earnestly; "what

a blessing to the world, if such talents as his could become wholly

consecrated!"

"Not many wise, not many mighty, not many noble are called," said the

Doctor; "yet if it would please the Lord to employ my instrumentality

and prayers, how much should I rejoice! I was struck," he added,

"to-night, when I saw those Jews present, with the thought that it was,

as it were, a type of that last ingathering, when both Jew and Gentile

shall sit down lovingly together to the gospel feast. It is only by

passing over and forgetting these present years, when so few are called

and the gospel makes such slow progress, and looking unto that

glorious time, that I find comfort. If the Lord but use me as a dumb

stepping-stone to that heavenly Jerusalem, I shall be content."

Thus they talked while the wagon jogged soberly homeward, and the

frogs and the turtles and the distant ripple of the sea made a drowsy,

mingling concert in the summer-evening air.

Meanwhile Colonel Burr had returned to the lighted rooms, and it was not

long before his quick eye espied Madame de Frontignac standing pensively

in a window-recess, half hid by the curtain. He stole softly up behind

her and whispered something in her ear.

In a moment she turned on him a face glowing--with anger, and drew back

haughtily; but Burr remarked the glitter of tears, not quite dried even

by the angry flush of her eyes.

"In what have I had the misfortune to offend?" he said, crossing his

arms upon his breast. "I stand at the bar, and plead, Not guilty."

He spoke in French, and she replied in the same smooth accents,--

"It was not for her to dispute Monsieur's right to amuse himself."

Burr drew nearer, and spoke in those persuasive, pleading tones which he

had ever at command, and in that language whose very structure in its

delicate _tutoiment_ gives such opportunity for gliding on through shade

after shade of intimacy and tenderness, till gradually the haughty fire

of the eyes was quenched in tears, and, in the sudden revulsion of a

strong, impulsive nature, she said what she called words of friendship,

but which carried with them all the warmth of that sacred fire which is

given to woman to light and warm the temple of home, and which sears and

scars when kindled for any other shrine.

And yet this woman was the wife of his friend and associate!

Colonel de Frontignac was a grave and dignified man of forty-five.

Virginie de Frontignac had been given him to wife when but eighteen,--a

beautiful, generous, impulsive, wilful girl. She had accepted him

gladly, for very substantial reasons. First, that she might come out of

the convent where she was kept for the very purpose of educating her in

ignorance of the world she was to live in. Second, that she might wear

velvet, lace, cashmere, and jewels. Third, that she might be a Madame,

free to go and come, ride, walk, and talk, without surveillance.

Fourth,--and consequent upon this,--that she might go into company and

have admirers and adorers.

She supposed, of course, that she loved her husband;--whom else should

she love? He was the only man, except her father and brothers, that she

had ever known; and in the fortnight that preceded their marriage did he

not send her the most splendid _bons-bons_ every day, with bouquets of

every pattern that ever taxed the brain of a Parisian _artiste_?--was

not the _corbeille de mariage_ a wonder and an envy to all her

acquaintance?--and after marriage had she not found him always a steady,

indulgent friend, easy to be coaxed as any grave papa?

On his part, Monsieur de Frontignac cherished his young wife as a

beautiful, though somewhat absurd little pet, and amused himself with

her frolics and gambols, as the gravest person often will with those of

a kitten.

It was not until she knew Aaron Burr that poor Virginie de Frontignac

came to that great awakening of her being which teaches woman what

she is, and transforms her from a careless child to a deep-hearted,

thinking, suffering human being.

For the first time, in his society she became aware of the charm of a

polished and cultivated mind, able with exquisite tact to adapt itself

to hers, to draw forth her inquiries, to excite her tastes, to stimulate

her observation. A new world awoke around her,--the world of literature

and taste, of art and of sentiment; she felt, somehow, as if she had

gained the growth of years in a few months. She felt within herself the

stirring of dim aspiration, the uprising of a new power of self-devotion

and self-sacrifice, a trance of hero-worship, a cloud of high ideal

images,--the lighting up, in short, of all that God has laid, ready to

be enkindled, in a woman's nature, when the time comes to sanctify her

as the pure priestess of a domestic temple. But, alas! it was kindled

by one who did it only for an experiment, because he felt an artistic

pleasure in the beautiful light and heat, and cared not, though it

burned a soul away.

Burr was one of those men willing to play with any charming woman the

game of those navigators who give to simple natives glass beads and

feathers in return for gold and diamonds,--to accept from a woman her

heart's blood in return for such odds and ends and clippings as he can

afford her from the serious ambition of life.

Look in with us one moment, now that the party is over, and the busy

hum of voices and blaze of lights has died down to midnight silence and

darkness; we make you clairvoyant, and you may look through the walls of

this stately old mansion, still known as that where Rochambeau held his

head-quarters, into this room, where two wax candles are burning on a

toilette table, before an old-fashioned mirror. The slumberous folds

of the curtains are drawn with stately gloom around a high bed, where

Colonel de Frontignac has been for many hours quietly asleep; but

opposite, resting with one elbow on the toilette table, her long black

hair hanging down over her night-dress, and the brush lying listlessly

in her hand, sits Virginie, looking fixedly into the dreamy depths of

the mirror.

Scarcely twenty yet, all unwarned of the world of power and passion that

lay slumbering in her girl's heart, led in the meshes of custom and

society to utter vows and take responsibilities of whose nature she was

no more apprised than is a slumbering babe, and now at last fully awake,

feeling the whole power of that mysterious and awful force which we call

love, yet shuddering to call it by its name, but by its light beginning

to understand all she is capable of, and all that marriage should have

been to her! She struggles feebly and confusedly with her fate, still

clinging to the name of duty, and baptizing as friendship this strange

new feeling which makes her tremble through all her being. How can she

dream of danger in such a feeling, when it seems to her the awakening

of all that is highest and noblest within her? She remembers when she

thought of nothing beyond an opera-ticket or a new dress; and now she

feels that there might be to her a friend for whose sake she would try

to be noble and great and good,--for whom all self-denial, all high

endeavor, all difficult virtue would become possible,--who would be to

her life, inspiration, order, beauty.

She sees him as woman always sees the man she loves,--noble, great, and

good;--for when did a loving woman ever believe a man otherwise?--too

noble, too great, too high, too good, she thinks, for her,--poor,

trivial, ignorant coquette,--poor, childish, trifling Virginie! Has he

not commanded armies? she thinks,--is he not eloquent in the senate?

and yet, what interest he has taken in her, a poor, unformed, ignorant

creature!--she never tried to improve herself till since she knew him.

And he is so considerate, too,--so respectful, so thoughtful and kind,

so manly and honorable, and has such a tender friendship for her, such

a brotherly and fatherly solicitude! and yet, if she is haughty or

imperious or severe, how humbled and grieved he looks! How strange that

she could have power over such a man!

It is one of the saddest truths of this sad mystery of life, that woman

is, often, never so much an angel as just the moment before she falls

into an unsounded depth of perdition. And what shall we say of the man

who leads her on as an experiment,--who amuses himself with taking

woman after woman up these dazzling, delusive heights, knowing, as he

certainly must, where they lead?

We have been told, in extenuation of the course of Aaron Burr, that he

was not a man of gross passions or of coarse indulgence, but, in the

most consummate and refined sense, _a man of gallantry_. This, then, is

the descriptive name which polite society has invented for the man who

does this thing!

Of old, it was thought that one who administered poison in the

sacramental bread and wine had touched the very height of impious

sacrilege; but this crime is white, by the side of his who poisons

God's eternal sacrament of love and destroys a woman's soul through her

noblest and purest affections.

We have given you the after-view of most of the actors of our little

scene to-night, and therefore it is but fair that you should have a peep

over the Colonel's shoulder, as he sums up the evening in a letter to a

friend.

"MY DEAR ----

"As to the business, it gets on rather slowly. L---- and S---- are away,

and the coalition cannot be formed without them; they set out a week ago

from Philadelphia, and are yet on the road.

"Meanwhile, we have some providential alleviations,--as, for example,

a wedding-party to-night, at the Wilcoxes', which was really quite an

affair. I saw the prettiest little Puritan there that I have set eyes on

for many a day. I really couldn't help getting up a flirtation with her,

although it was much like flirting with a small copy of the 'Assembly's

Catechism,'--of which last I had enough years ago, Heaven knows.

"But, really, such a _naïve_, earnest little saint, who has such real

deadly belief, and opens such pitying blue eyes on one, is quite a

stimulating novelty. I got myself well scolded by the fair Madame, (as

angels scold,) and had to plead like a lawyer to make my peace;--after

all, that woman really enchains me. Don't shake your head wisely,--'

What's going to be the end of it?' I'm sure I don't know; we'll see,

when the time comes.

"Meanwhile, push the business ahead with all your might. I shall not be

idle. D---- must canvass the Senate thoroughly. I wish I could be in two

places at once,--I would do it myself. _Au revoir_.

"Ever yours,

"Burr."

CHAPTER XV.

"And now, Mary," said Mrs. Scudder, at five o'clock the next morning,

"to-day, you know, is the Doctor's fast; so we won't get any regular

dinner, and it will be a good time to do up all our little odd jobs.

Miss Prissy promised to come in for two or three hours this morning, to

alter the waist of that black silk; and I shouldn't be surprised if we

should get it all done and ready to wear by Sunday."

We will remark, by way of explanation to a part of this conversation,

that our Doctor, who was a specimen of life in earnest, made a practice,

through the greater part of his pulpit course, of spending every

Saturday as a day of fasting and retirement, in preparation for the

duties of the Sabbath.

Accordingly, the early breakfast things were no sooner disposed of than

Miss Prissy's quick footsteps might have been heard pattering in the

kitchen.

"Well, Miss Scudder, how do you do this morning? and how do you do,

Mary? Well, if you a'n't the beaters! up just as early as ever, and

everything cleared away! I was telling Miss Wilcox there didn't ever

seem to be anything done in Miss Scudder's kitchen, and I did verily

believe you made your beds before you got up in the morning.

"Well, well, wasn't that a party last night?" she said, as she sat down

with the black silk and prepared her ripping-knife.--"I must rip this

myself, Miss Scudder; for there's a great deal in ripping silk so as not

to let anybody know where it has been sewed.--You didn't know that I was

at the party, did you? Well, I was. You see, I thought I'd just step

round there, to see about that money to get the Doctor's shirt with, and

there I found Miss Wilcox with so many things on her mind, and says she,

'Miss Prissy, you don't know how much it would help me if I had somebody

like you just to look after things a little here.' And says I, 'Miss

Wilcox, you just go right to your room and dress, and don't you give

yourself one minute's thought about anything, and you see if I don't

have everything just right.' And so, there I was, in for it; and I just

staid through, and it was well I did,--for Dinah, she wouldn't have put

near enough egg into the coffee, if it hadn't been for me; why, I just

went and beat up four eggs with my own hands and stirred 'em into the

grounds.

"Well,--but, really, wasn't I behind the door, and didn't I peep into

the supper-room? I saw who was a-waitin' on Miss Mary. Well, they do say

he's the handsomest, most fascinating man. Why, they say all the ladies

in Philadelphia are in a perfect quarrel about him; and I heard he said

he hadn't seen such a beauty he didn't remember when."

"We all know that beauty is of small consequence," said Mrs. Scudder. "I

hope Mary has been brought up to feel that."

"Oh, of course," said Miss Prissy, "it's just like a fading flower; all

is to be good and useful,--and that's what she is. I told 'em that her

beauty was the least part of her; though I must say, that dress did fit

like a biscuit,--if 'twas my own fitting.

"But, Miss Scudder, what do you think I heard 'em saying about the good

Doctor?"

"I'm sure I don't know," said Mrs. Scudder; "I only know they couldn't

say anything bad."

"Well, not bad exactly," said Miss Prissy,--"but they say he's getting

such strange notions in his head. Why, I heard some of 'em say, he's

going to come out and preach against the slave-trade; and I'm sure I

don't know what Newport folks will do, if that's wicked. There a'n't

hardly any money here that's made any other way; and I hope the Doctor

a'n't a-going to do anything of that sort."

"I believe he is," said Mrs. Scudder; "he thinks it's a great sin, that

ought to be rebuked;--and I think so too," she added, bracing herself

resolutely; "that was Mr. Scudder's opinion when I first married him,

and it's mine."

"Oh,--ah,--yes,--well,--if it's a sin, of course," said Miss Prissy;

"but then--dear me!--it don't seem as if it could be. Why, just think

how many great houses are living on it;--why, there's General Wilcox

himself, and he's a very nice man; and then there's Major Seaforth; why,

I could count you off a dozen,--all our very first people. Why, Doctor

Stiles doesn't think so, and I'm sure he's a good Christian. Doctor

Stiles thinks it's a dispensation for giving the light of the gospel

to the Africans. Why, now I'm sure, when I was a-workin' at Deacon

Stebbins', I stopped over Sunday once 'cause Miss Stebbins she was

weakly,--'twas when she was getting up, after Samuel was born,--no, on

the whole, I believe it was Nehemiah,--but, any way, I remember I staid

there, and I remember, as plain as if 'twas yesterday, just after

breakfast, how a man went driving by in a chaise, and the Deacon he went

out and stopped him ('cause you know he was justice of the peace) for

travelling on the Lord's day, and who should it be but Tom Seaforth?--he

told the Deacon his father had got a ship-load of negroes just come

in,--and the Deacon he just let him go; 'cause I remember he said that

was a plain work of necessity and mercy.[A] Well, now who would 'a'

thought it? I believe the Doctor is better than most folks, but then the

best people may be mistaken, you know."

[Footnote A: A fact.]

"The Doctor has made up his mind that it's his duty," said Mrs. Scudder.

"I'm afraid it will make him very unpopular; but I, for one, shall stand

by him."

"Oh, certainly, Miss Scudder, you are doing just right exactly. Well,

there's one comfort, he'll have a great crowd to hear him preach;

'cause, as I was going round through the entries last night, I heard 'em

talking about it,--and Colonel Burr said he should be there, and so did

the General, and so did Mr. What's-his-name there, that Senator from

Philadelphia. I tell you, you'll have a full house."

It was to be confessed that Mrs. Scudder's heart rather sunk than

otherwise at this announcement; and those who have felt what it is to

stand almost alone in the right, in the face of all the first families

of their acquaintance, may perhaps find some compassion for her,--since,

after all, truth is invisible, but "first families" are very evident.

First families are often very agreeable, undeniably respectable,

fearfully virtuous, and it takes great faith to resist an evil principle

which incarnates itself in the suavities of their breeding and

amiability; and therefore it was that Mrs. Scudder felt her heart heavy

within her, and could with a very good grace have joined in the Doctor's

Saturday fast.

As for the Doctor, he sat the while tranquil in his study, with his

great Bible and his Concordance open before him, culling, with that

patient assiduity for which he was remarkable, all the terrible texts

which that very unceremonious and old-fashioned book rains down so

unsparingly on the sin of oppressing the weak.

First families, whether in Newport or elsewhere, were as invisible to

him as they were to Moses during the forty days that he spent with God

on the mount; he was merely thinking of his message,--thinking only how

he should shape it, so as not to leave one word of it unsaid,--not even

imagining in the least what the result of it was to be. He was but a

voice, but an instrument,--the passive instrument through which an

almighty will was to reveal itself; and the sublime fatalism of his

faith made him as dead to all human considerations as if he had been a

portion of the immutable laws of Nature herself.

So, the next morning, although all his friends trembled for him when he

rose in the pulpit, he never thought of trembling for himself; he had

come in the covered way of silence from the secret place of the Most

High, and felt himself still abiding under the shadow of the Almighty.

It was alike to him, whether the house was full or empty,--whoever were

decreed to hear the message would be there; whether they would hear or

forbear was already settled in the counsels of a mightier will than

his,--he had the simple duty of utterance.

The ruinous old meeting-house was never so radiant with station and

gentility as on that morning. A June sun shone brightly; the sea

sparkled with a thousand little eyes; the birds sang all along the

way; and all the notables turned out to hear the Doctor. Mrs. Scudder

received into her pew, with dignified politeness, Colonel Burr and

Colonel and Madame de Frontignac. General Wilcox and his portly dame,

Major Seaforth, and we know not what of Vernons and De Wolfs, and other

grand old names, were represented there; stiff silks rustled, Chinese

fans fluttered, and the last court fashions stood revealed in bonnets.

Everybody was looking fresh and amiable,--a charming and respectable set

of sinners, come to hear what the Doctor would find to tell them about

their transgressions.

Mrs. Scudder was calculating consequences; and, shutting her eyes on the

too evident world about her, prayed that the Lord would overrule all for

good. The Doctor prayed that he might have grace to speak the truth,

and the whole truth. We have yet on record, in his published works, the

great argument of that day, through which he moved with that calm appeal

to the reason which made his results always so weighty.

"If these things be true," he said, after a condensed statement of the

facts of the case, "then the following terrible consequences, which may

well make all shudder and tremble who realize them, force themselves

upon us, namely: that all who have had any hand in this iniquitous

business, whether directly or indirectly, or have used their influence

to promote it, or have consented to it, or even connived at it, or have

not opposed it by all proper exertions of which they are capable,--all

these are, in a greater or less degree, chargeable with the injuries and

miseries which millions have suffered and are suffering, and are guilty

of the blood of millions who have lost their lives by this traffic in

the human species. Not only the merchants who have been engaged in this

trade, and the captains who have been tempted by the love of money to

engage in this cruel work, and the slave-holders of every description,

are guilty of shedding rivers of blood, but all the legislatures who

have authorized, encouraged, or even neglected to suppress it to the

utmost of their power, and all the individuals in private stations who

have in any way aided in this business, consented to it, or have not

opposed it to the utmost of their ability, have a share in this guilt.

"This trade in the human species has been the first wheel of commerce in

Newport, on which every other movement in business has chiefly depended;

this town has been built up, and flourished in times past, at the

expense of the blood, the liberty, and the happiness of the poor

Africans; and the inhabitants have lived on this, and by it have gotten

most of their wealth and riches. If a bitter woe is pronounced on him

'that buildeth his house by unrighteousness and his chambers by wrong,'

Jer. xxii. 13,--to him 'that buildeth a town with blood, and stablisheth

a city by iniquity,' Hab. ii. 12,--to 'the bloody city,' Ezek. xxiv.

6,--what a heavy, dreadful woe hangs over the heads of all those

whose hands are defiled by the blood of the Africans, especially the

inhabitants of this State and this town, who have had a distinguished

share in this unrighteous and bloody commerce!"

He went over the recent history of the country, expatiated on the

national declaration so lately made, that all men are born equally free

and independent and have natural and inalienable rights to liberty, and

asked with what face a nation declaring such things could continue to

hold thousands of their fellowmen in abject slavery. He pointed out

signs of national disaster which foreboded the wrath of Heaven,--the

increase of public and private debts, the spirit of murmuring and

jealousy of rulers among the people, divisions and contentions and

bitter party alienations, the jealous irritation of England constantly

endeavoring to hamper our trade, the Indians making war on the

frontiers, the Algerines taking captive our ships and making slaves

of our citizens,--all evident tokens of the displeasure and impending

judgment of an offended Justice.

The sermon rolled over the heads of the gay audience, deep and dark as a

thunder-cloud, which in a few moments changes a summer sky into heaviest

gloom. Gradually an expression of intense interest and deep concern

spread over the listeners; it was the magnetism of a strong mind, which

held them for a time under the shadow of his own awful sense of God's

almighty justice.

It is said that a little child once described his appearance in the

pulpit by saying, "I saw God there, and I was afraid."

Something of the same effect was produced on his audience now; and it

was not till after sermon, prayer, and benediction were all over, that

the respectables of Newport began gradually to unstiffen themselves

from the spell, and to look into each other's eyes for comfort, and to

reassure themselves that after all they were the first families, and

going on the way the world had always gone, and that the Doctor, of

course, was a radical and a fanatic.

When the audience streamed out, crowding the broad aisle, Mary descended

from the singers, and stood with her psalm-book in hand, waiting at the

door to be joined by her mother and the Doctor. She overheard many

hard words from people who, an evening or two before, had smiled so

graciously upon them. It was therefore with no little determination of

manner that she advanced and took the Doctor's arm, as if anxious to

associate herself with his well-earned unpopularity,--and just at

this moment she caught the eye and smile of Colonel Burr, as he bowed

gracefully, yet not without a suggestion of something sarcastic in his

eye.

[To be continued.]

THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.

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

You don't look so dreadful poor in the face as you did a while back.

Bloated some, I expect.

This was the cheerful and encouraging remark with which the Poor

Relation greeted the divinity-student one morning.

Of course every good man considers it a great sacrifice on his part to

continue living in this transitory, unsatisfactory, and particularly

unpleasant world. This is so much a matter of course, that I was

surprised to see the divinity-student change color. He took a look at a

small and uncertain-minded glass which hung slanting forward over the

chapped sideboard. The image it returned to him had the color of a very

young pea somewhat over-boiled. The scenery of a long tragic drama

flashed through his mind as the lightning-express-train _whishes_ by a

station: the gradual dismantling process of disease; friends looking on,

sympathetic, but secretly chuckling over their own stomachs of iron and

lungs of caoutchouc; nurses attentive, but calculating their crop, and

thinking how soon it will be ripe, so that they can go to your neighbor,

who is good for a year or so longer; doctors assiduous, but giving

themselves a mental shake, as they go out of your door, that throws

off your particular grief as a duck sheds a rain-drop from his oily

feathers; undertakers solemn, but happy; then the great subsoil

cultivator, who plants, but never looks for fruit in his garden; then

the stone-cutter, who finds the lie that has been waiting for you on a

slab ever since the birds or beasts made their tracks on the new red

sandstone; then the grass and the dandelions and the buttercups,--Earth

saying to the mortal body, with her sweet symbolism, "You have scarred

my bosom, but you are forgiven"; then a glimpse of the soul as a

floating consciousness without very definite form or place, but dimly

conceived of as an upright column of vapor or mist several times larger

than life-size, so far as it could be said to have any size at all,

wandering about and living a thin and half-awake life for want of good

old-fashioned solid _matter_ to come down upon with foot and fist,--in

fact, having neither foot nor fist, nor conveniences for taking the

sitting posture.

And yet the divinity-student was a good Christian, and those heathen

images which remind one of the childlike fancies of the dying Adrian

were only the efforts of his imagination to give shape to the formless

and position to the placeless. Neither did his thoughts spread

themselves out and link themselves as I have displayed them. They came

confusedly into his mind like a heap of broken mosaics,--sometimes a

part of the picture complete in itself, sometimes connected fragments,

and sometimes only single severed stones.