THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON is one of the_Library of the best American literature Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers

countrymen should be most proud. He has taken a noble part in the

battles on behalf of freedom, which the last half-century has seen,

and everywhere has borne himself with a nobility, a devotion and a

courage worthy of all praise. The man who was driven from his church

because he preached the freedom of the slaves, who sat with Parker

and Phillips under indictment for murder for their part in attempting

to rescue a fugitive slave, who was colonel of the first regiment of

freed slaves mustered into the army of the United States, who bravely

fought and patiently suffered for the cause of the Union; surely this

man, if he had no other claims upon our respect and attention, should

hold a high place in the hearts of his fellows.

Colonel Higginson is a native of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in 1847,

when he was twenty-four years old, became pastor of a Congregational

Church in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Here his anti-slavery preaching

allowed him to remain but three years. From 1852 until 1858 he was

pastor of a free church in Worcester, after which he left the ministry

and devoted himself to literature. During all this time his activity

in the anti-slavery agitation was frequently getting him into trouble,

and, with his friends who participated in the attempted rescue of

Anthony Burns, he was discharged from custody only through a flaw

in the indictment. He took part in the organization of the bands of

free-state, emigrants to Kansas, and was personally acquainted with

John Brown. With his regiment of colored troops, he took possession

of Jacksonville, Florida; but was wounded in 1863 and was compelled

to resign from the army. He has been an earnest advocate of equal

suffrage for men and women and of the higher education for both sexes.

He has served in his State Legislature and as a member of the State

Board of Education.

Colonel Higginson’s contributions to literature consist largely of

volumes of essays that originally appeared in the “Atlantic Monthly”

or other periodicals, and historical and biographical work. Some of

his best known books are “Atlantic Essays;” “Young Folk’s History

of the United States;” “Young Folk’s Book of American Explorers;”

“Short Stories of American Authors;” “A Larger History of the United

States;” “The Monarch of Dreams;” and “Brief Biographies of European

Statesmen.” Besides these, he has translated his “Young Folk’s History

of the United States” into German and French for publication in those

languages, and has also published a number of English translations

of modern and ancient classics. Colonel Higginson is one of our most

popular writers, particularly upon American history, and his service

to the cause of American letters has been no less distinguished than

his share in the great victory which made our country in truth the

land of the free.

* * * * *

“A PURITAN SUNDAY MORNING.”¹

FROM “ATLANTIC ESSAYS.”

¹ Copyright, Geo. R. Shepard.

IT is nine o’clock upon a summer Sunday morning, in the year sixteen

hundred and something. The sun looks down brightly on a little

forest settlement, around whose expanding fields the great American

wilderness recedes each day, withdrawing its bears and wolves and

Indians into an ever remoter distance――not yet so far removed but

a stout wooden gate at the end of the village street indicates that

there is danger outside. It would look very busy and thriving in this

little place to-day but for the Sabbath stillness which broods over

everything with almost an excess of calm. Even the smoke ascends

more faintly than usual from the chimneys of the numerous log-huts

and these few framed houses, and since three o’clock yesterday

afternoon not a stroke of this world’s work has been done. Last night

a Preparatory Lecture was held, and now comes the consummation of the

whole week’s life, in the solemn act of worship. In which settlement

of the great Massachusetts Colony is the great ceremonial to pass

before our eyes? If it be Cambridge village, a drum is sounding

its peaceful summons to the congregation. If it be Salem village,

a bell is sounding its more ecclesiastic peal, and a red flag

is simultaneously hung forth from the meeting-house, like the

auction-flag of later periods. If it be Haverhill village, then

Abraham Tyler has been blowing his horn assiduously for half an

hour――a service for which Abraham, each year, receives a half pound

of pork from every family in town.

Be it drum, bell, or horn that gives the summons, we will draw near

to this important building, the centre of the village, the one public

edifice: meeting-house, town-house, schoolhouse, watch-house, all in

one. So important is it, that no one can legally dwell more than half

a mile from it. And yet the people ride to “meeting,” short though the

distance be, for at yonder oaken block a wife dismounts from behind

her husband; and has it not, moreover, been found needful to impose a

fine of forty shillings on fast trotting to and fro? All sins are not

modern ones, young gentlemen.

We approach nearer still, and come among the civic institutions. This

is the pillory, yonder are the stocks, and there is a large wooden

cage, a terror to evil-doers, but let us hope empty now. Round the

meeting-house is a high wooden paling, to which the law permits

citizens to tie their horses, provided it be not done too near the

passageway. For at that opening stands a sentry, clothed in a suit of

armor which is painted black, and cost the town twenty-four shillings

by the bill. He bears also a heavy match-lock musket; his rest, or

iron fork, is stuck in the ground, ready to support the weapon; and he

is girded with his bandolier, or broad leather belt, which sustains a

sword and a dozen tin cartridge-boxes.

* * * * *

O the silence of this place of worship, after the solemn service sets

in! “People do not sneeze or cough here in public assemblies,” says

one writer triumphantly, “so much as in England.” The warning caution,

“Be short,” which the minister has inscribed above his study-door,

claims no authority over his pulpit. He may pray his hour, unpausing,

and no one thinks it long; for, indeed, at prayer-meetings four

persons will sometimes pray an hour each――one with confession, one

with private petitions, a third with petitions for Church and Kingdom,

and a fourth with thanksgiving――each theme being conscientiously

treated by itself. Then he may preach his hour, and, turning his

hour-glass, may say――but that he cannot foresee the levity to be born

in a later century with Mather Byles――“Now, my hearers, we will take

another glass.”

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

HAMILTON W. MABIE.

THE MODERN CRITIC.

IN the modern school of literary critics, whose best representatives

are Coleridge, Carlyle, Arnold, Lowell and Stedman, Hamilton W. Mabie

has a prominent place. His aim has been, as is the aim of all great

criticism, not only to give an estimate of a man’s work, but to show

the man’s soul. He was born at Cold Springs, on the banks of the

Hudson, of a family of culture. He was prepared for college under

a private tutor, and graduated at Williams College in the Class of

’67――a class which numbered many men of fame.

From boyhood ♦Mabie has been a great reader, and he is familiar

with the classics of all literatures, as well as a student of

contemporaneous literature.

♦ ‘Maybie’ replaced with ‘Mabie’

After a course of law at Columbia University his literary tendencies

drew him into his natural field and away from a profession uncongenial

to him. In 1879 he took a position on the staff of the “Christian

Union,” which under its new name, the “Outlook,” under the joint

editorship of Mabie and Lyman Abbott, has taken a prominent place

among the foremost religious journals of the world. “My Study Fire,”

which expresses our author’s ideas of the function of literature,

and the attitude and spirit of the literary man, first appeared as

a series of articles in this religious journal.

In the last few years Mr. Mabie has taken a prominent place on the

platform on literary and educational subjects, though he scrupulously

keeps his public speaking subordinate to his writing. His addresses

are marked with elegance, grace, and all the fruits of culture, and

they show a profound study of the problems of life and spirit. He has

a beautiful home at Summit, New Jersey, an enviable site for a writer,

with the multitudinous charms of nature without and the gathered

wisdom of the world’s great thinkers within.

He is a man of robust life, of clear, healthy mind and of high faith.

He has declared that “Skepticism is the root of all evil in us and in

our arts. We do not believe enough in God, in ourselves, and in the

divine laws under which we live. Great art involves great faith――a

clear, resolute, victorious insight into and grasp of things, a belief

real enough in

‘The mighty hopes which make us men’

to inspire and sustain heroic tasks,” a declaration quite typical of

all his thought.

* * * * *

COUNTRY SIGHTS AND SOUNDS

BY HAMILTON W. MABIE

_Illustrated from original photographs by Conrad Baer._

AT the end of February the observer begins to see the faint

forerunners of spring. The willow shows signs of renewing its

freshness, and the long stretch of cold, with brilliant or steely

skies, is interrupted by days full of an indescribable softness.

It is almost pathetic to note with what joy the spirit of man takes

cognizance of these first hints of the color, the bloom and the warmth

slowly creeping up to the southern horizon-line. For we are children

of the sun, and, much as we love our hearthstones, we are never quite

at home unless we have the freedom of the out-of-door world. Winter

finds its great charm in the ingathering of the memories of the summer

that is gone and in the anticipation of the summer that is at hand.

Half the cheer of the blazing log lies in the air of the woods which

it brings into the narrow room.

Illustration: ON THE FARM IN CANADA

To be out of doors is the normal condition of the natural man. At some

period of our ancestral life, so dim in our thought but so potential

in our temper, disposition and physique, we have all lived, so to

speak, in the open air; and although city-born and city-bred, we turn

to the country with an instinctive feeling that we belong there. There

are a few cockneys to whom the sound of Bow Bells is sweeter than

the note of the bluebird, the resonant clarion of chanticleer or

the far-off bleating of sheep; but to the immense majority of men

these noises are like sounds that were familiar in childhood. I have

sometimes thought that the deepest charm of the country lies in the

fact that it was the home and play-ground of the childhood of the

race, and, however long some of us have been departed from it, it

stirs within us rare memories and associations which are imperishable.

The lowing of cattle coming home at nightfall; the bleating of sheep

on the hillside pastures; the crowing of the cock, are older than any

human speech which now exists. They were ancient sounds before our

oldest histories were written. I know of nothing sweeter to the man

who comes out of the heat and noise and dust of the city in midsummer

than to be awakened on the first morning by that irregular tinkle of

bells which accompanies the early processions of the cows. One may

never have come nearer a farm than his great-grandfather, but that

sound makes him feel as if he were at home after some long and arduous

absence.

Illustration: THE OLD WELL-CURB

And one has but to put into his pocket a few of those clever

newspapers which satirize society people in spirited and well-drawn

lines, and carry them into the country, to discover that the

picturesque flees the city and loves the country; so far, that is,

as people are concerned. There is certainly something wrong with our

modern dress; it is impossible to discover anything suggestive or

poetic in it, or to make any thing artistic out of it. Well-dressed

individual men and women are often attractive to the eye; but when

this is true it is because the charm of the person survives the

monotonous uniformity of good clothes. Nothing can make the evening

dress in which man extinguishes his personality either significant

or artistic; but the man in overalls and shirt-sleeves is often a

strikingly picturesque figure. Country life as a whole is steeped

in the picturesque, in spite of the machines which so largely take

the place of the old-time hand labor. One must go to the fields to

find the poetry of human occupation; the man in the street is often

interesting but he rarely stirs the imagination; the man in the fields

constantly sets the imagination loose. What elemental strength and

meaning are expressed in those peasant-figures of Millet? They belong

to the world in which they toil; they disclose their identity with it;

they express something of its meaning in their vigorous or bent forms.

Illustration: IMMIGRANT WOMEN HOEING POTATOES

Illustration: WAITING FOR MILKING-TIME

The entire life of the field is poetic in the true sense; from the

hour when the last snow begins to melt to the hour when the last sheaf

of grain goes creaking through the bars. The sower, moving across the

open furrows, has a kind of antique picturesqueness; he seems to have

stepped out of that ancient frieze with which the earliest habits

encircled the oldest days. He expresses freedom, virility, personality

in every movement; the eye follows him with a deepening impression

that here is something native and original: a man in first-hand

relations with his world. The reaper who follows him when sun and

cloud have done their share, is not less striking and effective; and

when the sheaves lie in rows or piles on the freshly cut stubble, the

slow-moving, noisily creaking wagon, constantly pausing to take on its

ripe load, seems a fit accessory in the staging of this pastoral drama.

The fact that this poetry of motion is bound to toil so arduous and

exacting that it often becomes a kind of relentless drudgery, is

full of significance to those who believe that beauty is not esoteric,

but the affluence of universal life in its normal relations and

occupations.

Illustration: AFTER WORK

The sights and sounds of the farm are not only full of interest, but

that interest is deepened by their constant recurrence. The horses

at the trough; the sheep beside the stream as placid as themselves,

or on the green uplands; the cows stolidly biding the coming of

afternoon under the trees, or standing knee-deep in the cool brooks;

the clucking of hens and their bustling leisure; the going out of the

workers, with implements, seed, machines, wagons, and their return at

sunset; the stir of the morning, the hush of the evening; what a world

of homely, wholesome life is revealed in these old-time doings and

happenings of the seasons and the life on the farm.

Illustration: A WINTER EVENING ON THE FARM

But the farm is often only a unit of measurement, a term of individual

possession; there is something greater; there is the country. Beyond

the fields there is the landscape, and above them there is the sky;

and every farm fits into these wider relations and is part of the

larger whole. The woods, cool and silent; the spring hidden from the

sun by overhanging trees and from strange feet by moss-grown rocks;

the brook where it runs noiselessly in a shadow so deep at noon

that one bathes his eyes in it after the glare of the world; the old

mill, deserted by man but loyally served by the stream that flows

through the decaying sluice and over the wheel that turns no more;

the quiet hilltop, above which the whole country sleeps on summer

afternoons;――these are all simply extensions of the farm.

Illustration: SUNDAY AFTERNOON

The boys know them on holidays; the older people are drawn to them in

those infrequent hours when the pressure of work is lightened; the man

who is getting city sights and sounds out of head and heart knows and

loves them. The very thought of them brings refreshment and repose;

for they are, one and all, places of silence and solitude.

Illustration: A SUNNY PLAY-GROUND

The fever of this our life, and the tumult of it, vanish on the

invisible boundaries of these ancient sanctuaries of nature. It is

not difficult to understand the charm of these places for tired and

worn souls; for it is to such places that exhausted men and women

invariably turn. No one with a rich intellectual and spiritual nature,

can keep in perfect health without a good deal of solitude and silence.

Illustration: CHURNING IN THE BARN

We come to know ourselves and the world in the deeper ways only when

we are apart from the rush of things. It is only when traffic ceases

and the dust is laid that the landscape becomes clear and complete to

the pedestrian. The quiet of the woods, the cool note of the mountain

streams, the silence of the summits, represent, not the luxuries and

pleasures of a rich life, but its necessities. To the townsman these

outlying provinces of the farm are even more important than are the

well-tilled acres.

Illustration: THE OLD MILL

Some day some man or woman will write a luminous book on the education

of country life; the training of the eye, the ear, the hand, the

unconscious enrichment of the senses and of the mind which are

effected by its sights and sounds. There has never been in the long

history of education, a better school for the open-minded, imaginative

boy or girl than the farm. Every day sets its tasks, every task

teaches its lessons; and nature stands looking over the student’s

shoulder and quietly whispering some of her deepest secrets to her

fortunate child.

Illustration: AFTER A WET SNOW-STORM

For surely it is a great piece of good fortune to grow up in a

wise, generous home in the country; to be young with all manner of

four-footed beasts and fowls of the air, and grow up with them; to

stumble over the roots of trees when one is beginning to walk; to hear

the brooks chatter before one knows how to chatter himself; to awake

in the stir of the morning, when the whole world seems to be going to

work, and to fall asleep when the world comes trooping home, dusty and

tired.

Illustration: MAPLE-SUGAR TIME

To see and hear these outdoor sights and sounds is to be born

into vital relations with man’s natural background and to come

unconsciously into possession of some of the greatest truths which

life has to teach. It is also to be born on intimate terms with

bluebirds and cherries!

Illustration: THE BLACK SHEEP

“If you want to know where the biggest cherries are to be found,”

said Goethe, “consult the boys and the blackbirds.” There is a natural

affinity between the two, and the boy who does not grow up in natural

relationship with birds and trees suffers a loss of privilege which

can never be entirely made up. For it is a great deal easier to

make the acquaintance of nature in childhood than in those later

years which bring “the philosophic mind,” but which leave the senses

untrained for that instinctive observation which enables the boy to

see without knowing that he sees.

Illustration: THE MILL-POND

John Burroughs has given us a charming description of the joys of

boyhood on a farm, and has perhaps unconsciously betrayed the secret

of his own extraordinary familiarity with the out-of-doors world. No

knowledge is quite so much a part of ourselves as that which we gain

without conscious effort; which we breathe in with the morning air of

life.

Illustration: NOON IN THE SHEEP-LOT

The Hindoos have an idiomatic word or phrase for a walk before

breakfast, which may be translated, “eating the morning air.”

The boy on the farm sees nature before breakfast, when senses and

mind and heart are on the alert, when experience has not brought

sophistication with it, and when sensation still keeps its pristine

freshness.

Illustration: FEEDING THE CHICKENS

The healthy boy is one great appetite for sights and sounds, and

nothing escapes him. He knows every path through the woods, every

pool in the brook, every cavern in the hills, every sequestered hollow

where the noise of the world is softened into the silence of rustling

leaves and murmuring streams. One of the most erudite of American

scholars, whose large learning has not smothered the instincts of

his youth, declares that he is never entirely happy until he stands

barefooted in the old fields.

Illustration: PICKING DAISIES

Nature’s true lovers perceive this, and demand that the companion whom

he takes into the wilderness with him shall be of the right sort; one

who, as Burroughs says, will not “stand between you and that which you

seek.”

“I want for companion,” he continues, “a dog or a boy, or a person who

has the virtues of dogs and boys――transparency, good-nature, curiosity,

open sense, and a nameless quality that is akin to trees, and growths,

and the inarticulate forces of nature. With him you are alone and

yet you have company; you are free; you feel no disturbing element;

the influences of nature stream through and around him; he is a good

conductor of the subtle fluid.

“The quality or qualification I refer to belongs to most persons

who spend their lives in the open air――to soldiers, hunters, fishers,

laborers, and to artists and poets of the right sort.”

Illustration: MAKING FRIENDS

There is something incommunicable in such a fellowship with nature,

which dates back to the time when the boy found in her his chosen

playmate, and which still keeps up the old game of hide and seek even

when his methods have become scientific and the result of his search

is a contribution to knowledge.

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN.

POET AND CRITIC; AUTHOR OF “THE ♦VICTORIAN POETS.”

♦ ‘VICRTORIAN’ replaced with ‘VICTORIAN’

DURING the year 1859, two poems were published in the New York

_Tribune_ which made genuine sensations. They were so unlike in

subject and treatment that no one would have guessed they emanated

from the same brain and were penned by the same hand. The first,

entitled “The Diamond Wedding,” was a humorous thrust of ridicule at

the “parade” made in the papers over the lavish and expensive jewels

and other gifts presented by a wealthy Cuban to his bride――a young

lady of New York. This poem, when published, called forth a challenge

from the irate father of the lady; but, fortunately, a duel was

somehow averted.

The other poem, “How Old Brown Took Harper’s Ferry,” recounted the

incident of that stern old abolitionist boldly marching with a few

men into Virginia and capturing the town of Harper’s Ferry. There was

no American poet who might not have felt proud of this production.

Bayard Taylor was so pleased with the genius manifested in both these

poems that he sought the author’s acquaintance and introduced him

to R. H. Stoddard, who in turn, after examining a collection of his

verses, recommended them for publication to Charles Scribner, who

issued them the next year (1860) under the title of “Poems, Lyric and

Idylic.”――Thus was Mr. Stedman introduced into the literary world.

Edmund Clarence Stedman is a native of Connecticut. He was born in the

city of Hartford on the eighth day of October, 1833,――and comes of a

good family of some poetic reputation. Rev. Aaron Cleveland, one of

his ancestors, is said to have been a poet. Arthur Cleveland Cox, well

known as a religious writer of verse, was his cousin. His mother was

herself a poet, and also the author of the tragedy “Bianco Caprello.”

When Stedman was two years of age he was sent to live with his

grand-uncle, James Stedman, a jurist and scholar, who looked carefully

after the early education of his nephew. At the age of sixteen, he

was sent to Yale College, where he was among the foremost in English

composition and Greek. But it is said that for some disobedience

of the discipline of the institution, he fell under the censure of

the college management and left without graduating. The University

afterward, however, enrolled him among the alumni of 1853 with the

degree of Master of Arts.

Upon leaving Yale, at the age of nineteen, Stedman took the management

of a newspaper at Norwich, and the next year married a Connecticut

girl and became owner of the Winsted _Herald_, when he was only

twenty-one. Under his management, this paper soon rose to be one of

the most important of the political papers of the State. Three years

later we find him writing on the “New York Tribune,” where he obtained

a foot-hold in literature, as we have already indicated by the

publication of the two poems above mentioned.

When the “World” was started, in the winter of 1860, Mr. Stedman

engaged with that journal and was editor of it when the news came over

the wires that Fort Sumter had been fired upon. He wrote a poem on

the occasion which was, perhaps, the first poem inspired by the war

between the states. Soon after this Mr. Stedman went to Washington

as the army correspondent of the “World.” He was at the first battle

of Bull’s Run and published a long and graphic letter in the “World”

about the defeat of the Union troops which he witnessed. This letter

was the talk of the town for days and altogether has been pronounced

the best single letter written during the whole war.

Before the close of the war, Mr. Stedman resigned his position as

editor and entered the office of Attorney General Bates at Washington;

but in January, 1864, he returned with his family to New York and

published his second volume of poems entitled, “Alice of Monmouth, An

Idyl of the Great War, and Other Poems,” which may be described as a

little poetic novel. The opening scene is laid in Monmouth County, New

Jersey; the later ones on the battle fields of Virginia.

The titles and dates of Mr. Stedman’s other books are as follows: “The

Blameless Prince, and other Poems” (1869); “Poetical Works” (1873);

“Victorian Poets” (1875); “Hawthorne and Other Poems” (1877); “Lyrics

and Idyls, with Other Poems” (1879); the “Poems of Austin Dobson,”

with an introduction (1880); “Poets of America” (1886), and with

Ellen Mackay Hutchinson, he edited “A Library of American Literature”

(11 vols., 1888–1890).

Many people entertain the notion that a man cannot be at one and

the same time, a poet and a man of business. This is a mistake.

♦Fitz-Green Halleck was for many years a competent clerk of John Jacob

Astor; Charles Sprague was for forty years teller and cashier in a

Boston bank; Samuel Rodgers, the English poet, was all his life a

successful banker; Charles Follen Adams, the humorous and dialectic

poet, is a prosperous merchant in Boston; and Edmund Clarence Stedman

has been for many years the head of a firm of stock brokers with a

♣suite of offices in Exchange Place, New York, dealing in government

securities and railway stocks and bonds, and also petroleum, in

which fortunes were at one time made and lost with great rapidity.

Nevertheless, Mr. Stedman, the stock-broker and banker is still Mr.

Stedman, the poet. The most of his splendid verses have been produced

while he was depending for a living upon journalistic work or upon

some business for support. Mr. Stedman also illustrates the fact, as

Edgar Allen Poe had done before him, that a poet may be a practical

critic. And why not? If poets are not the best critics of poetry,

musicians are not the best critics of music, architects are not the

best critics of architecture and painters of painting. Mr. Stedman’s

“Victorian Poets” is, perhaps, the most important contribution of all

our American writers to the critical literature on the English Poets.

♦ ‘Fitz Green Hallack’ replaced with ‘Fitz-Green Halleck’

♣ ‘suit’ replaced with ‘suite’

The home-life of Mr. Stedman is described as being an ideally happy

one. One of his poems entitled “Laura, My Darling,” addressed to his

wife, gives us a delightful glimpse into the heart and home of the

poet.

* * * * *

BETROTHED ANEW.

“The sunshine of the outer world beautifully illustrates

the sunshine of the heart in the ‘Betrothed Anew’ of Edmund

Clarence Stedman.”――_Morris._

THE sunlight fills the trembling air,

And balmy days their guerdons bring;

The Earth again is young and fair,

And amorous with musky spring.

The golden nurslings of the May

In splendor strew the spangled green,

And hues of tender beauty play,

Entangled where the willows lean.

Mark how the rippled currents flow;

What lustres on the meadows lie!

And, hark! the songsters come and go,

And trill between the earth and sky.

Who told us that the years had fled,

Or borne afar our blissful youth?

Such joys are all about us spread,

We know the whisper was not truth.

The birds that break from grass and grove

Sing every carol that they sung

When first our veins were rich with love

And May her mantle round us flung.

O fresh-lit dawn! immortal life!

O Earth’s betrothal, sweet and true,

With whose delights our souls are rife!

And aye their vernal vows renew!

Then, darling, walk with me this morn;

Let your brown tresses drink its sheen;

These violets, within them worn,

Of floral fays shall make you queen.

What though there comes a time of pain

When autumn winds forebode decay?

The days of love are born again;

That fabled time is far away!

And never seemed the land so fair

As now, nor birds such notes to sing,

Since first within your shining hair

I wove the blossoms of the spring.

* * * * *

THE DOOR-STEP.

THE conference meeting through at last,

We boys around the vestry waited,

To see the girls come tripping past

Like snow-birds willing to be mated.

Not braver he that leaps the wall,

By level musket-flashes litten,

Than I, who stepped before them all

Who longed to see me get the mitten.

But no, she blushed and took my arm!

We let the old folks have the highway,

And started toward the Maple Farm,

Along a kind of lovers’ by-way.

I can’t remember what we said,

’Twas nothing worth a song or story,

Yet that rude path by which we sped

Seemed all transformed and in a glory.

The snow was crisp beneath our feet,

The moon was full, the fields were gleaming;

By hood and tippet sheltered sweet

Her face with youth and health was beaming.

The little hand outside her muff――

O sculptor, if you could but mould it!

So slightly touched my jacket-cuff,

To keep it warm I had to hold it.

To have her with me there alone,

’Twas love and fear and triumph blended:

At last we reached the foot-worn stone

Where that delicious journey ended.

She shook her ringlets from her hood,

And with a “Thank you Ned,” dissembled,

But yet I knew she understood

With what a daring wish I trembled.

A cloud passed kindly overhead,

The moon was slyly peeping through it,

Yet hid its face, as if it said,

“Come, now or never, do it, do it!”

My lips till then had only known

The kiss of mother and of sister,

But somehow full upon her own

Sweet, rosy, darling mouth――I kissed her!

Perhaps ’twas boyish love, yet still,

O listless woman! weary lover!

To feel once more that fresh wild thrill,

I’d give――But who can live youth over!

GREAT AMERICAN HISTORIANS AND BIOGRAPHERS.

Illustration: GREAT AMERICAN HISTORIANS AND BIOGRAPHERS

JOHN L. MOTLEY • WM. H. PRESCOTT

GEO. H. BANCROFT

JOHN B. McMASTER • JAMES PARTON

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

GEORGE BANCROFT.

“THE MOST FAMOUS AMERICAN HISTORIAN.”

THE chief historians who have added lustre to American literature

during the nineteenth century are Bancroft, Prescott, Motley, Parkman,

McMaster and John Fiske; and, when we add to these James Parton, the

American biographer, we present an array of talent and scholarship

on which any nation might look with patriotic pride. They have

been excelled by the historians of no other nation of our time, if,

indeed――taken from a national standpoint――they have not produced the

best historical literature of the present century.

Though Prescott is the oldest, George Bancroft, in the estimation

of the great majority, stands first, perhaps, among all the American

historians. This eminent writer was born at Worcester, Massachusetts,

in October, 1800, the same month and year in which ♦Macaulay, the

great English historian, first saw the light, and,――after living one

of the most laborious public and literary lives in the history of

the world,――died at the ripe old age of ninety-one years (1891).

His father, the Reverend Aaron Bancroft, was a minister of the

Congregational Church in Worcester for more than a half century and

had the highest reputation as a theologian of learning and piety.

♦ ‘Macauley’ replaced with ‘Macaulay’

At the early age of thirteen, George Bancroft entered Harvard College

from which he graduated at the age of seventeen with the highest

honors of his class. His first inclinations were to study theology;

but in 1818, he went to Germany where he spent two years in the study

of history and philology, and it was there that he obtained his degree

of Doctor of Philosophy. During the next two years, he visited in

succession, Berlin, Heidelberg, Rome, Paris, and London, returning

home in 1822, the most accomplished scholar for his age which our

country, at that time, had produced.

Soon after his return to the United States, Mr. Bancroft was appointed

to the chair of Greek in Harvard College and those who had the benefit

of his instruction spoke of his zeal, faithfulness and varied learning

as a teacher. He afterward established, in conjunction with Joseph

G. Cogswell, a school of high classical character at ♦Northampton,

Massachusetts. While engaged here, he prepared a number of Latin text

books for schools, which were far in advance of anything then used in

the country. In the meantime, he had given some attention to politics

and had been engaged for several years, incidentally, upon his

“History of the United States.”

♦ ‘Northhampton’ replaced with ‘Northampton’

In 1828 Mr. Bancroft joined the Democratic Party, having formerly

been a Whig, and began to take an active interest in politics, where

his great historic learning and broad statesmanship placed him quickly

on the high road to political preferment. He was elected to the

Massachusetts Legislature in 1830, but declined, as he was then so

much engaged upon his “History of the United States” that he was

unwilling to turn aside, at least until the first volume was issued,

which appeared in 1834. The first and second and third volumes of this

work, comprising the Colonial history of the country, were received

with great satisfaction by the public on both sides of the Atlantic,

being in brilliancy of style, picturesque sketches of character and

incidents, compass of learning and generally fair reasoning far in

advance of anything that had been written on the subject.

“Bancroft, the Historian,” was now the recognition he was accorded,

and his fame began to spread. He was made Collector of the Port

of Boston in 1838 by President Van Buren, which position he held

until 1841. In 1844 he ran as Democratic candidate for Governor of

Massachusetts, but was defeated. During 1845 and 1846 he served his

country as Secretary of the Navy under President Polk, and while in

this office he planned and established the Naval Academy at Annapolis

and issued the orders by which California was annexed to the United

States. In 1846 President Polk further honored the historian by

appointing him Minister-Plenipotentiary to Great Britain, where he

represented the United States until 1849. The first three volumes

of Mr. Bancroft’s histories had preceded him to England. “The London

Monthly Review” spoke in the highest terms of his quality as a

historian, praising the sustained accuracy and dignity of his style,

referring to him as a philosopher, a legislator, and a historian. He

was also honored with the degree of D. C. L., by Oxford University in

1849, and was enrolled as a member of many learned societies.

Thus laden with honors, he returned this same year to his country,

made New York his place of residence, and resumed, with renewed energy,

the prosecution of his historical labors. The fourth volume of his

“History of the United States” appeared in 1852, and the next year

the fifth volume was published, which was succeeded by the sixth and

seventh, the latter appearing in 1858, bringing the history of our

country down into the stirring scenes of the Revolution.

President Andrew Johnson made Mr. Bancroft United States Minister to

Russia in 1867, and he was our national representative at the North

German Confederation in 1868. General Grant appointed him as our

Minister to the German Empire from 1871 to 1874, during which time he

enjoyed the closest friendship of Prince Bismarck. Bismarck declares

that Bancroft was the foremost representative of American grit that

he had ever met. “Think,” said he to Minister Phelps many years

afterwards, “of a Secretary of the Navy, a literary man by profession,

taking it upon himself to issue orders for the occupation of a vast

foreign territory as Bancroft did in the case of California. Again

he caused the earliest seizure of Texas by the United States troops,

while temporarily holding the portfolio of Minister of War. Only a

really great man would undertake such responsibilities.”

Bancroft’s “History of the United States” was completed in 1874;

but the last and final revised edition of it was published in 1885,

fifty-one years after the first volume had been issued. This great

work comprises ten volumes and comes down only to the close of the

Revolution. It is a monumental work within itself――a fit monument to

the greatest of American historians. The patriotism and eloquence of

its author are manifest in nearly every page, and the work has been

criticised as a Fourth-of-July oration in ten volumes. It is generally

regarded as a standard history of America up to the time of the

Constitution.

Other works of Mr. Bancroft are “The Necessity, the Reality, and

the Promises of the Human Race” (1854); “Literary and Historical

Miscellanies” (1855), and “A Plea for the Constitution of the United

States of America, Wounded in the House of its Guardians” (1886),

written when the author was eighty-six years of age.

Mr. Bancroft was an orator as well as a historian and politician, one

of the best-known of his addresses being the famous oration on Lincoln,

delivered before Congress in 1866. During the latter part of his life

he had a winter home in Washington, where the national archives and

the Library of Congress were always at his hand, and a summer home at

Newport, where he had a wonderful garden of roses, which was a great

attraction. Rose-growing and horseback riding were his recreations,

and the erect and striking form of the historian, with his long gray

beard, mounted on a fine horse, was for years a familiar figure at

Newport and on the streets of Washington.

It is beautiful to contemplate so long and useful a life as that of

George Bancroft. When the old historian was nearly ninety years of

age, he journeyed all the way from his northern home to Nashville,

Tennessee, to make certain investigations, for historical data, among

the private papers of President Polk. The writer of this sketch had

the pleasure of witnessing the meeting between him and the venerable

wife of James K. Polk at the old mansion which stands near the Capitol.

It was a beautiful and impressive sight to see this grand old woman,

who had been the first lady of the land forty-five years before,

conducting this venerable historian, who had been her husband’s

Secretary of War, about the premises. President Polk’s library with

all the papers piled upon the table had remained just as he had left

it, and into its sacred precincts Mr. Bancroft was admitted, with

perfect liberty to select and take away whatever would be of service

in his historical labors. What he did with these papers is unknown to

the writer. Perhaps his death occurred too soon after to render them

of practical service; but that the old historian died in the harness

may well be supposed from the following extract taken from a letter

written when he was more than eighty years of age: “I was trained to

look upon life here as a season for labor. Being more than fourscore

years old, I know the time for my release will soon come. Conscious

of being near the shore of eternity, I wait without impatience and

without dread the beckoning of the hand which will summon me to rest.”

The beckoning hand appeared several years later――in 1891――and he

passed quietly “over the river,” only nine years in advance of the

death of the century with which he was born, having spent altogether

one of the busiest, one of the most honorable, one of the most

useful and _the very longest life of all the celebrities in American

literature_. His fame is secure. His works will live after him――a

proud and lasting monument.

* * * * *

CHARACTER OF ROGER WILLIAMS.

WHILE the State was thus connecting by the closest bonds the energy of

its faith with its form of government, there appeared in its midst one

of those clear minds which sometimes bless the world by their power

of receiving moral truth in its purest light, and of reducing the just

conclusions of their principles to a happy and consistent practice. In

February of the first year of the colony, but a few months after the

arrival of Winthrop, and before either Cotton or Hooker had embarked

for New England, there arrived at Nantasket, after a stormy passage of

sixty-six days, “a young minister, godly and zealous, having precious”

gifts. It was Roger Williams. He was then but a little more than

thirty years of age; but his mind had already matured a doctrine

which secures him an immortality of fame, as its application has

given religious peace to the American world. He was a Puritan, and

a fugitive from English persecution; but his wrongs had not clouded

his accurate understanding; in the capacious recesses of his mind he

had revolved the nature of intolerance, and he, and he alone, had

arrived at the great principle which is its sole effectual remedy. He

announced his discovery under the simple proposition of the sanctity

of conscience. The civil magistrate should restrain crime, but never

control opinion; should punish guilt, but never violate the freedom of

the soul. The doctrine contained within itself an entire reformation

of theological jurisprudence; it would blot from the statute-book the

felony of non-conformity; would quench the fires that persecution had

so long kept burning; would repeal every law compelling attendance on

public worship; would abolish tithes and all forced contributions to

the maintenance of religion; would give an equal protection to every

form of religious faith; and never suffer the authority of the civil

government to be enlisted against the mosque of the Mussulman or the

altar of the fire-worshipper, against the Jewish synagogue or the

Roman cathedral. It is wonderful with what distinctness Roger Williams

deduced these inferences from his great principle; the consistency

with which, like Pascal and Edwards,――those bold and profound

reasoners on other subjects,――he accepted every fair inference from

his doctrines; and the circumspection with which he repelled every

unjust imputation. In the unwavering assertion of his views he never

changed his position; the sanctity of conscience was the great tenet

which, with all its consequences, he defended, as he first trod the

shores of New England; and in his extreme old age it was the last

pulsation of his heart. But it placed the young emigrant in direct

opposition to the whole system on which Massachusetts was founded; and,

gentle and forgiving as was his temper, prompt as he was to concede

everything which honesty permitted, he always asserted his belief with

temperate firmness and unbending benevolence.

* * * * *

DESTRUCTION OF THE TEA IN BOSTON HARBOR.

On the 28th day of November, 1773, the ship Dartmouth appeared

in Boston Harbor, with one hundred and fourteen chests of

tea. The ship was owned by Mr. Rotch, a Quaker merchant. In a

few days after, two more tea-ships arrived. They were all put

under strict guard by the citizens, acting under the lead of

a committee of correspondence, of which Samuel Adams was the

controlling spirit. The people of the neighboring towns were

organized in a similar manner, and sustained the spirit of

Boston. The purpose of the citizens was to have the tea sent

back without being landed; but the collector and comptroller

refused to give the ships a clearance unless the teas were

landed, and Governor Hutchinson also refused his permit,

without which they could not pass the “Castle,” as the fort at

the entrance of Boston Harbor was called. The ships were also

liable to seizure if the teas were not landed on the twentieth

day after their arrival, and the 16th day of December was the

eighteenth day after.

THE morning of Thursday, the 16th of December, 1773, dawned upon

Boston,――a day by far the most momentous in its annals. Beware, little

town; count the cost, and know well if you dare defy the wrath of

Great Britain, and if you love exile, and poverty, and death, rather

than submission. At ten o’clock, the people of Boston, with at least

two thousand men from the country, assembled in the Old South. A

report was made that Rotch had been refused a clearance from the

collector. “Then,” said they to him, “protest immediately against the

custom-house, and apply to the Governor for his pass, so that your

vessel may this very day proceed on her voyage to London.”

The Governor had stolen away to his country-house at Milton. Bidding

Rotch make all haste, the meeting adjourned to three in the afternoon.

At that hour Rotch had not returned. It was incidentally voted, as

other towns had done, to abstain wholly from the use of tea; and

every town was advised to appoint its committee of inspection, to

prevent the detested tea from coming within any of them. Then, since

the governor might refuse his pass, the momentous question recurred,

whether it be the sense and determination of this body to abide by

their former resolutions with respect to not suffering the tea to

be landed. On this question, Samuel Adams and Young¹ addressed the

meeting, which was become far the most numerous ever held in Boston,

embracing seven thousand men. There was among them a patriot of

fervent feeling; passionately devoted to the liberty of his country;

still young, his eye bright, his cheek glowing with hectic fever. He

knew that his strength was ebbing. The work of vindicating American

freedom must be done soon, or he will be no party to the great

achievement. He rises, but it is to restrain; and, being truly brave

and truly resolved, he speaks the language of moderation: “Shouts

and hosannas will not terminate the trials of this day, nor popular

resolves, harangues, and acclamations vanquish our foes. We must be

grossly ignorant of the value of the prize for which we contend, of

the power combined against us, of the inveterate malice and insatiable

revenge which actuate our enemies, public and private, abroad and

in our bosom, if we hope that we shall end this controversy without

the sharpest conflicts. Let us consider the issue before we advance

to those measures which must bring on the most trying and terrible

struggle this country ever saw.” Thus spoke the younger Quincy.

“Now that the hand is to the plough,” said others, “there must be

no looking back;” and the whole assembly of seven thousand voted

unanimously that the tea should not be landed.

¹ Dr. Thomas Young, a physician, and afterwards an

army-surgeon, was a zealous patriot, and a leading

speaker and writer of the time.

It had been dark for more than an hour. The church in which they met

was dimly lighted; when, at a quarter before six, Rotch appeared, and

satisfied the people by relating that the governor had refused him

a pass, because his ship was not properly cleared. As soon as he

had finished his report, Samuel Adams rose and gave the word: “This

meeting can do nothing more to save the country.” On the instant, a

shout was heard at the porch; the war-whoop resounded; a body of men,

forty or fifty in number, disguised as Indians, passed by the door,

and, encouraged by Samuel Adams, Hancock, and others, repaired to

Griffin’s Wharf, posted guards to prevent the intrusion of spies, took

possession of the three tea-ships, and in about three hours, three

hundred and forty chests of tea――being the whole quantity that had

been imported――were emptied into the bay, without the least injury

to other property. “All things were conducted with great order,

decency, and perfect submission to government.” The people around,

as they looked on, were so still that the noise of breaking open the

tea-chests was distinctly heard. A delay of a few hours would have

placed the tea under the protection of the admiral at the Castle.

After the work was done, the town became as still and calm as if it

had been holy time. The men from the country that very night carried

back the great news to their villages.

* * * * *

CHIVALRY AND PURITANISM.

HISTORIANS have loved to eulogize the manners and virtues, the glory

and the benefits, of chivalry. Puritanism accomplished for mankind

far more. If it had the sectarian crime of intolerance, chivalry had

the vices of dissoluteness. The knights were brave from gallantry of

spirit; the Puritans, from the fear of God. The knights were proud of

loyalty; the Puritans, of liberty. The knights did homage to monarchs,

in whose smile they beheld honor, whose rebuke was the wound of

disgrace; the Puritans, disdaining ceremony, would not bow at the

name of Jesus, nor bend the knee to the King of kings. Chivalry

delighted in outward show, favored pleasure, multiplied amusement,

and degraded the human race by an exclusive respect for the privileged

classes; Puritanism bridled the passions, commanded the virtues of

self-denial, and rescued the name of man from dishonor. The former

valued courtesy; the latter, justice. The former adorned society

by graceful refinements; the latter founded national grandeur on

universal education. The institutions of chivalry were subverted

by the gradually increasing weight, and knowledge, and opulence of

the industrious classes; the Puritans, rallying upon those classes,

planted in their hearts the undying principles of democratic liberty.

* * * * *

THE POSITION OF THE PURITANS.

TO the colonists the maintenance of their unity seemed essential

to their cordial resistance to English attempts at oppression. And

why, said they, should we not insist upon this union? We have come

to the outside of the world for the privilege of living by ourselves:

why should we open our asylum to those in whom we can repose no

confidence? The world cannot call this persecution. We have been

banished to the wilderness: is it an injustice to exclude our

oppressors, and those whom we dread as their allies, from the place

which is to shelter us from their intolerance? Is it a great cruelty

to expel from our abode the enemies of our peace, or even the doubtful

friend? Will any man complain at being driven from among banished

men, with whom he has no fellowship? of being refused admittance

to a gloomy place of exile? The wide continent of America invited

colonization; they claimed their own narrow domains for “the

brethren.” Their religion was their life: they welcomed none but

its adherents; they could not tolerate the scoffer, the infidel, or

the dissenter; and the presence of the whole people was required in

their congregation. Such was the system inflexibly established and

regarded as the only adequate guarantee of the rising liberties of

Massachusetts.

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

JAMES PARTON.

WRITER OF BIOGRAPHY.

THERE can be no higher public service than that of the man who gives

to his fellows, and particularly to the rising generation, good

biographies of noble men. If this be true, then James Parton must be

ranked among those who have done most for Americans, for the series

of books which began many years ago with a life of Horace Greeley

and which ended, only two months before the author’s death with the

biography of Andrew Jackson, has made the heroes of American history

real live men for thousands of readers, has stirred the patriotism and

aroused the ambition of many a boyish student, and has won for himself

the respect and esteem which belong to literary achievements.

The ancestry of James Parton was French; his family having emigrated

to England after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685.

He was born in Canterbury, England, in 1822, and could just remember

walking across the fields, in black clothes, at his father’s funeral.

The solemn memory which thus took a strong hold upon his mind, was,

perhaps, partly responsible for his dislike for ecclesiastical forms

and particularly for the practice of formal “mourning.” His mother

brought her little family to New York a year after her husband’s

death, and James was educated in the schools of that city and at White

Plains, New York. At the latter place he was in a boarding school

where so much attention was paid to religion that nearly every boy

who passed through it was a member of the church. He seems to have

found something repellent in the manner of presenting Christianity,

and although he became a teacher in the school and later held for some

years a similar position in Philadelphia, he sympathized less and less

with it until he came avowedly to give up all belief in supernatural

religion. He was a very successful teacher and took great delight in

his work and would probably have devoted his life to the schoolroom,

had he not found himself unable to continue the custom of opening

the sessions of school with prayer and on this account been compelled

to give up his position. Returning to New York he became associated

with N. P. Willis in conducting the “Home Journal” and thus began his

career as a literary man. While so employed he remarked one day to a

New York publisher, that a most interesting book could be made of the

career of Horace Greeley, then at the summit of his power and fame as

an editor.

The suggestion resulted in his being commissioned to prepare such a

biography, the publisher advancing the funds which enabled Mr. Parton

to spend several months in collecting materials among the people in

New Hampshire and Vermont, who had known Mr. Greeley in his early

life. The book made a great sensation and at once gave its author high

standing in the literary world. He began to contribute to a number

of leading periodicals on political and literary topics, and soon

appeared as a public lecturer and found himself one of the most

notable men of the day.

Mr. Parton was married in 1856 to Mrs. Sara Payson Willis Eldredge,

whose brother, the poet, N. P. Willis, was his former associate. Mrs.

Willis was a popular contributor to “The New York Ledger” and other

papers, under the pen-name of “Fanny Fern,” and Mr. Parton was soon

engaged in similar work, and later became a member of the editorial

staff of the “Ledger” and closely associated with Mr. Robert Bonner.

This was of the greatest advantage to him, as it furnished a steady

income, while allowing him leisure in which to devote himself to the

more serious works which were his real contribution to literature and

upon which his fame rests. His next book was “The Life and Times of

Aaron Burr,” which was prepared from original sources, and which made

Burr a somewhat less offensive character than he was at that time

generally thought to be. He next prepared a “Life of Andrew Jackson,”

which finally met with great success, but which, being published

at the beginning of the War of the Rebellion and being subscribed

for largely in the South, involved both author and publisher in

considerable immediate loss. For twenty years he labored upon a

“Life of Voltaire,” giving to the study of the great European Liberal

of the last century all the time and energy he could spare from the

contributions which he must regularly supply to the “Ledger” and “The

Youth’s Companion.” The “Life of Voltaire” was his only biography of

a European character, and while he thought it his best work, and while

it is a wonderful picture, not only of the life and character of the

great Frenchman, but of manners and morals in Europe in the eighteenth

century, the public interest in its subject was not so great, and its

success by no means so complete as that which greeted his American

biographies. He was greatly interested in the robust character of Gen.

Benjamin Butler, and his next book was the story of the administration

of the city of New Orleans, by him. He then offered to the public the

first comprehensive study of the “Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin”

that had appeared. This is, by many, thought to be his best book.

It was followed by a “Life of Jefferson,” and later by three books

drawn from his contributions to periodicals, “Famous Americans of

Recent Times,” “Noted Women of Europe and America,” and “Captains of

Industry.” His last work was a volume upon “Andrew Jackson” for the

“Great Commanders” series.

After the death of “Fanny Fern” Mr. Parton took up his residence in

Newburyport, Massachusetts, with Miss Eldredge, his wife’s daughter,

who was charged with the care of an orphaned niece. This child had

for several years been a member of his family, and had closely engaged

his affection. The relations thus established resulted presently in

the marriage of Mr. Parton to Miss Eldredge, a union, which, until his

death in 1892, filled his life with joy and happiness. Mr. Parton took

an active interest in the social life about him, joining frankly in

every village enterprise and gradually acquiring very great influence

in the community.

* * * * *

OLD VIRGINIA.

WHEN John Rolfe, not yet husband of Pocahontas, planted the first

tobacco seed in Jamestown, in 1612, good tobacco sold in London

docks at five shillings a pound, or two hundred and fifty pounds

sterling for a hogshead of a thousand pounds’ weight. Fatal facility

of money-making! It was this that diverted all labor, capital and

enterprise into one channel, and caused that first ship-load of

Negroes in the James to be so welcome. The planter could have but one

object,――to get more slaves in order to raise more tobacco. Hence the

price was ever on the decline, dropping first from shillings to pence,

and then going down the scale of pence, until it remained for some

years at an average of about two pence a pound in Virginia and three

pence in London. In Virginia it often fell below two pence; as, during

brief periods of scarcity, it would rise to six and seven pence.

Old Virginia is a pathetic chapter in political economy. OLD Virginia,

indeed! She reached decrepitude while contemporary communities were

enjoying the first vigor of youth; while New York was executing the

task which Virginia’s George Washington had suggested and foretold,

that of connecting the waters of the great West with the sea; while

New England was careering gayly over the ocean, following the whale

to his most distant retreat, and feeding belligerent nations with

her superabundance. One little century of seeming prosperity; three

generations of spendthrifts; then the lawyer and sheriff! Nothing was

invested, nothing saved for the future. There were no manufactures,

no commerce, no towns, no internal trade, no great middle class. As

fast as that virgin richness of soil could be converted into tobacco,

and sold in the London docks, the proceeds were spent in vast,

ugly mansions, heavy furniture, costly apparel, Madeira wine, fine

horses, huge coaches, and more slaves. The planters lived as though

virgin soil were revenue, not capital. They tried to maintain in

Virginia the lordly style of English grandees, WITHOUT any Birmingham,

♦Staffordshire, Sheffield or London docks to pay for it. Their

short-lived prosperity consisted of three elements,――virgin soil,

low-priced slaves, high-priced tobacco. The virgin soil was rapidly

exhausted; the price of negroes was always on the increase; and the

price of tobacco was always tending downward. Their sole chance of

founding a staple commonwealth was to invest the proceeds of their

tobacco in something that would absorb their labor and yield them

profit when the soil would no longer produce tobacco.

♦ ‘Stafordshire’ replaced with ‘Staffordshire’

But their laborers were ignorant slaves, the possession of whom

destroyed their energy, swelled their pride, and dulled their

understandings. Virginia’s case was hopeless from the day on which

that Dutch ship landed the first twenty slaves; and, when the time

of reckoning came, the people had nothing to show for their long

occupation of one of the finest estates in the world, except great

hordes of negroes, breeding with the rapidity of rabbits; upon whose

annual increase Virginia subsisted, until the most glorious and

beneficial of all wars set the white race free and gave Virginia her

second opportunity.

All this was nobody’s fault. It was a combination of circumstances

against which the unenlightened human nature of that period could not

possibly have made head.

Few men saw anything wrong in slavery. No man knew much about the laws

that control the prosperity of States. No man understood the science

of agriculture. Every one with whom those proud and thoughtless

planters dealt plundered them, and the mother country discouraged

every attempt of the colonists to manufacture their own supplies.

There were so many charges upon tobacco, in its course from the

planter’s packing-house to the consumer’s pipe, that it was no very

uncommon thing, in dull years, for the planter to receive from

his agent in London, in return for his hogsheads of tobacco, not

a pleasant sum of money, nor even a box of clothes, but a bill of

charges which the price of the tobacco had not covered. One of the

hardships of which the clergy complained was, that they did not “dare”

to send their tobacco to London, for fear of being brought into debt

by it, but had to sell it on the spot to speculators much below the

London price. The old Virginia laws and records so abound in tobacco

information that we can follow a hogshead of tobacco from its native

plantation on the James to the shop of the tobacconist in London.

In the absence of farm vehicles――many planters who kept a coach had

no wagon――each hogshead was attached to a pair of shafts with a horse

between them, and “rolled” to a shed on the bank of the stream. When

a ship arrived in the river from London, it anchored opposite each

plantation which it served, and set ashore the portion of the cargo

belonging to it, continuing its upward course until the hold was empty.

Then, descending the river, it stopped at the different plantations,

taking from each its hogsheads of tobacco, and the captain receiving

long lists of articles to be bought in London with the proceeds of

the tobacco. The rivers of Virginia, particularly the James and the

Potomac, are wide and shallow, with a deep channel far from either

shore, so that the transfer of the tobacco from the shore to the ship,

in the general absence of landings, was troublesome and costly. To

this day, as readers remember, the piers on the James present to the

wondering passenger from the North a stretch of pine planks from an

eighth to half a mile long. The ship is full at length, drops down

past Newport News, salutes the fort upon Old Point Comfort, and glides

out between the capes into the ocean.

* * * * *

How little the planters foresaw the desolation of their Province is

affectingly attested by many of the relics of their brief affluence.

They built their parish churches to last centuries, like the churches

to which they were accustomed “at home.” In neighborhoods where now

a congregation of fifty persons could not be collected, there are

ruins of churches that were evidently built for the accommodation

of numerous and wealthy communities; a forest, in some instances,

has grown up all around them, making it difficult to get near the

imperishable walls. Sometimes the wooden roof has fallen in, and one

huge tree, rooted among the monumental slabs of the middle aisle, has

filled all the interior. Other old churches long stood solitary in

old fields, the roof sound, but the door standing open, in which the

beasts found nightly shelter, and into which the passing horseman

rode and sat on his horse before the altar till the storm passed.

Others have been used by farmers as wagon-houses, by fishermen to hang

their seines in, by gatherers of turpentine as storehouses. One was a

distillery, and another was a barn. A poor drunken wretch reeled for

shelter into an abandoned church of Chesterfield County――the county

of the first Jeffersons――and he died in a drunken sleep at the foot

of the reading-desk, where he lay undiscovered until his face was

devoured by rats. An ancient font was found doing duty as a tavern

punch-bowl; and a tombstone, which served as the floor of an oven,

used to print memorial words upon loaves of bread. Fragments of

richly-colored altar-pieces, fine pulpit-cloths, and pieces of old

carving used to be preserved in farm-houses and shown to visitors.

When the late Bishop Meade began his rounds, forty years ago, elderly

people would bring to him sets of communion-plate and single vessels

which had once belonged to the parish church, long deserted, and beg

him to take charge of them.

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

FRANCIS PARKMAN.

HISTORIAN OF THE FRENCH AND INDIAN CONFLICT.

TO FRANCIS PARKMAN, as much as to any one man, we owe the revival of

interest in American history. His story of “The Pioneers of France

in the New World,” “The Jesuits in North America,” “La Salle and the

Discovery of the Great West,” “The Old Régime in Canada,” “Frontenac

and New France under Louis XIV.” “A Half-Century of Conflict,”

“Montcalm and Wolf,” and “The Conspiracy of Pontiac,” form a connected

account of the rise and fall of the French power in America. They

may well be described as one work, almost as one book. It was a

great design formed when he was still a Harvard student, and held so

tenaciously that no trials or disappointments could discourage him and

no mountain of labor be too great for his untiring powers.

He was born in Boston in 1823, and was so fortunate as to inherit

wealth which not only set him free to devote himself to his vocation,

but enabled him to command an amount and kind of assistance absolutely

essential to his peculiar work, and in his peculiar circumstances, and

which could be secured only by large expenditure. He had traveled a

year abroad before he graduated in 1844 and had made himself master of

the French language and familiar with French history and institutions.

By repeated summer journeys into the wilderness of northern New

England, he had acquainted himself with the conditions of pioneer life

and, to some extent of Indian warfare. He pursued the study of law

for two years, but it may well be supposed that these studies yielded

larger results in a knowledge of the history of Europe during the

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and of the facts in that history

bearing upon the great conflict in the new world, than in any definite

grasp of the intricacies of the law itself.

In the spring of 1846, he joined his cousin, Quincy A. Shaw, in

the hazardous experiment of spending the summer with the Dacotah

Indians, then living in an entirely savage condition east of the Rocky

mountains. The two young men carried out their undertaking at the

continuous risk of their lives, but it supplied Parkman with a minute

knowledge of Indian thoughts and Indian ways which equipped him, as

probably no other man was ever equipped, for writing the history in

which Indians were among the chief actors. But the cost was very great.

While among the Indians he was attacked by serious illness and it

was one of the savage customs of his Indian companions that he who

confessed sickness was to be immediately tomahawked. There was nothing

for it, therefore, but to fight off his disease as best he could and

make what show was possible, of health and vigor. He succeeded, but

the strain was so great that it left him apparently disabled. His

physicians assured him that he could not live, and for three years

he was compelled to suspend all intellectual work and live a life

as absolutely quiet as was possible. The remainder of his life was

devoted to the books which we have named. For the greater portion

of this fifty years he could not use his eyes for more than five

continuous minutes, and he was compelled to exercise the greatest

care not to bring on final collapse by exceeding the few hours per

day which he could safely devote to mental labor. Every one of his

books was dictated to a relative, who cared for every detail of

its preparation for the press. In gathering the materials for his

histories he visited Europe seven times, and constantly employed

a number of experts in copying important documents for his use. He

very early became master of everything that had been printed which

bore upon his subject, and realized that his main dependence must

be upon manuscripts――private letters, public documents, official

reports――scattered through public and private libraries in Europe

and America, often unknown and frequently almost inaccessible. An

interesting example of his persistency is in his continuing to search

for fifteen years for a volume of letters from Montcalm in Canada,

which Montcalm had requested to have burned, but which Parkman

believed to exist, and which was finally discovered in a private

collection of manuscripts.

The Massachusetts Historical Society possesses an oaken cabinet in

which are stored some two hundred folio volumes of manuscript copies

of important documents, the gift of Mr. Parkman; to Harvard College he

gave a most interesting collection of fac-simile maps.

Mr. Parkman was not a recluse, but on the contrary delighted in

society, and indulged his liking as far as was possible with a due

regard to saving his strength for his beloved work. He took the most

lively interest in public affairs, and for a number of years was one

of the corporation of Harvard University.

An interesting side of Mr. Parkman’s life was his interest in

horticulture. He became the owner in 1854 of a property on the shore

of Jamaica Pond, and in this beautiful place devoted himself in the

intervals of literary labor, and during the several periods of two

or three years when he was absolutely compelled to abstain, to the

culture of flowers. He made long continued and careful experiments

in hybridizing lillies and other flowers and produced a number of new

varieties one of which, a magnificent lilly was given his name by the

English horticulturist who undertook to put the beautiful plant upon

the market. He published “The Book of Roses,” held a professorship in

the Bussey Institution, and was in 1886 president of the Massachusetts

Horticultural Society. But his principal workshop was a plain,

comfortable room at the top of his sister’s house on Beacon Hill,

in Boston, where with an open fire and convenient bookshelves and

the willing help of friends and relatives he completed his task in

1892. It was at his suburban home which had supplied occupation and

entertainment when driven from his work and whose beauties were so

largely his own creation, that, two years later, he passed away.

This, in brief, is the life of the man who has made La Salle and

Montcalm live again for delighted thousands of nineteenth century

readers. The study of our nation’s history is coming to take its

proper position in our colleges and schools, our libraries are

compelled to set apart more and more shelf-room for books which tell

the story of the making of America and of our national life. There is

no chapter in all this history more vivid, more full of action, more

crowded with the conflict between high and ignoble purpose, nor one

which bears a more important relation to our national development than

that which tells how the Frenchman came, how he made friends with the

Indian, how he contended for empire and was defeated. And no one of

these chapters has been written with more absolute fidelity to the

actual facts in their proper relation. It is written in a style whose

grace and elegance of diction, clearness and dignity of expression,

completeness and accuracy of statement bring back the Indian and

the Frenchman, the priest and the _voyageur_ and make them live and

move before our eyes. It was a field unoccupied, a period of history

interesting, inviting, and complete in itself. Few historians have

embraced such an opportunity, of still fewer can it be said that their

work is so well done that it need never be done again.

He was half a century at his work, untiringly; as has been well said,

“Nowhere can we find a better illustration of the French critic’s

definition of a great life――a thought conceived in youth and realized

in later years.”

* * * * *

THE NEW ENGLAND COLONIES.

THE four northern colonies were known collectively as New England;

Massachusetts may serve as a type of all. It was a mosaic of little

village republics, firmly cemented together, and formed into a single

body politic through representatives sent to the “General Court,”

at Boston. Its government, originally theocratic, now tended towards

democracy, ballasted as yet by strong traditions of respect for

established worth and ability, as well as by the influence of certain

families prominent in affairs for generations. Yet there were no

distinct class-lines, and popular power, like popular education, was

widely diffused.

Practically Massachusetts was almost independent of the Mother

Country. Its people were purely English, of good ♦yeoman stock,

with an abundant leaven drawn from the best of the Puritan gentry;

but their original character had been somewhat modified by changed

conditions of life. A harsh and exacting creed, with its stiff

formalism, and its prohibition of wholesome recreation; excess in the

pursuit of gain――the only resource left to energies robbed of their

natural play; the struggle for existence on a hard and barren soil;

and the isolation of a narrow village life――joined to produce in the

meaner sorts qualities which were unpleasant, and sometimes repulsive.

♦ ‘yoeman’ replaced with ‘yeoman’

Puritanism was not an unmixed blessing. Its view of human nature was

dark, and its attitude was one of repression. It strove to crush out

not only what is evil, but much that is innocent and salutary. Human

nature so treated will take its revenge, and for every vice that it

loses find another instead. Nevertheless, while New England Puritanism

bore its peculiar crop of faults, it also produced many sound and

good fruits. An uncommon vigor, joined to the hardy virtues of a

masculine race, marked the New England type. The sinews, it is true,

were hardened at the expense of blood and flesh――and this literally

as well as figuratively; but the staple of character was a sturdy

conscientiousness, an understanding courage, ♦patriotism, public

sagacity and a strong good sense.

♦ ‘partiotism’ replaced with ‘patriotism’

The New England Colonies abounded in high examples of public and

private virtue, though not always under prepossessing forms. There

were few New Englanders, however personally modest, who could

divest themselves of the notion that they belonged to a people

in an especial manner the object of divine approval; and thus

self-righteousness――along with certain other traits――failed to

commend the Puritan colonies to the favor of their fellows. Then, as

now, New England was best known to her neighbors by her worst side.

* * * * *

THE HEIGHTS OF ABRAHAM.¹

(FROM MONTCALM AND WOLFE, 1884.)

¹ By Permission of Little, Brown & Co.

FOR full two hours the procession of boats, borne on the current,

steered silently down the St. Lawrence. The stars were visible, but

the night was moonless and sufficiently dark. The General was in

one of the foremost boats, and near him was a young midshipman, John

Robinson, afterwards professor of natural philosophy in the University

of Edinburgh. He used to tell in his later life how Wolfe, with a

low voice, repeated Gray’s “Elegy in a Country Church-yard” to the

officers about him. Probably it was to relieve the intense strain of

his thoughts. Among the rest was the verse which his own fate was soon

to illustrate.――“The paths of glory lead but to the grave.”

“Gentlemen,” he said, as his recital ended, “I would rather have

written those lines than take Quebec.” None were there to tell him

that the hero is greater than the poet.

* * * * *

Montcalm had passed a troubled night. Through all the evening the

cannon bellowed from the ships of Saunders, and the boats of the

fleet hovered in the dusk off Beauport shore, threatening every moment

to land. Troops lined the entrenchments till day, while the general

walked the field that adjoined his headquarters till one in the

morning, accompanied by the Chevalier Johnstone and Colonel Poulariez.

Johnstone says that he was in great agitation, and took no rest all

night. At daybreak he heard the sound of cannon above the town. It

was the battery at Samos firing on the English ships. He had sent

an officer to the headquarters of Vaudreuil, which was much nearer

Quebec, with orders to bring him word at once should anything unusual

happen. But no word came, and about six o’clock he mounted and rode

thither with Johnstone. As they advanced, the country behind the town

opened more and more upon their sight; till at length, when opposite

Vaudreuil’s house, they saw across the St. Charles, some two miles

away, the red ranks of British soldiers on the heights beyond.

“This is a serious business,” Montcalm said, and sent off Johnstone

at full gallop to bring up the troops from the centre and left of the

camp. Those on the right were in motion already, and doubtless by the

Governor’s order. Vaudreuil came out of the house. Montcalm stopped

for a few words with him; then set spurs to his horse, and rode over

the bridge of the St. Charles to the scene of danger. He rode with a

fixed look, uttering not a word.

* * * * *

Montcalm was amazed at what he saw. He had expected to see a

detachment, and he found an army. Full in sight before him stretched

the lines of Wolfe; the close ranks of English infantry, stretched

a silent wall of red, and the wild array of Highlanders, with their

waving tartans, and bagpipes screaming defiance. Vaudreuil had not

come; but not the less was felt the evil of divided authority and

the jealousy of the rival chiefs. Montcalm waited long for the forces

he had ordered to join him from the left wing of the army. He waited

in vain. It is said the Governor had detained them lest the English

should attack the Beauport shore. Even if they did so, and succeeded,

the French might defy them, could they but put Wolfe to route on the

Plains of Abraham. Neither did the garrison of Quebec come to the

aid of Montcalm. He sent to Ramesay, its commander, for twenty-five

field-pieces which were on the palace battery. Ramesay would give him

only three, saying that he wanted them for his own defence. There were

orders and counter-orders; misunderstandings, haste, delay, perplexity.

Montcalm and his chief officers held a council of war. It is said

that he and they alike were for immediate attack. His enemies declared

that he was afraid lest Vaudreuil should arrive and take command;

but the Governor was not the man to assume responsibility at such a

crisis. Others say his impetuosity overcame his better judgment; and

of this charge it is hard to acquit him. Bougainville was but a few

miles distant and some of his troops were much nearer; a messenger

sent by way of Old Lorette could have reached him in an hour and

a-half at most, and a combined attack in front and rear might have

been concerted with him. If, moreover, Montcalm could have come

to an understanding with Vaudreuil, his own forces might have been

strengthened by two or three thousand additional men from the town

and the camp of Beauport; but he felt that there was no time to lose,

for he imagined that Wolfe would soon be reinforced, which was no less

an error. He has been blamed not only for fighting too soon, but for

fighting at all. In this he could not choose. Fight he must, for Wolfe

was now in a position to cut off all his supplies. His men were full

of ardor, and he resolved to attack before their ardor cooled. He

spoke a few words to them in his keen, vehement way. “I remember very

well how he looked,” one of the Canadians, then a boy of eighteen,

used to say in his old age. “He rode a black or dark bay horse along

the front of our lines, brandishing his sword, as if to excite us to

do our duty. He wore a coat with wide sleeves, which fell back as he

raised his arm, and showed the white linen of the wristband.”

The English waited the result with a composure which, if not quite

real, was well feigned. The three field-pieces sent by Ramesay plied

them with canister-shot, and fifteen hundred Canadians and Indians

fusilladed them in front and flank.

Wolfe was everywhere. How cool he was, and why his followers loved

him is shown by the following incident that happened in the course

of the morning. One of his captains was shot through the lungs; and

on recovering consciousness he saw the general standing by his side.

Wolfe pressed his hand, told him not to despair, praised his services,

promised him early promotion, and sent an aide-de-camp to Monckton to

beg that officer to keep the promise if he himself should fall.

It was toward ten o’clock when, from the high ground on the right

of the line, Wolfe saw that the crisis was near. The French on the

ridge had formed themselves into three bodies, regulars in the centre,

regulars and Canadians on right and left. Two field-pieces, which

had been dragged up the heights at Anse du Foulon, fired on them with

grapeshot, and the troops, rising from the ground, prepared to receive

them. In a few moments more they were in motion. They came on rapidly,

uttering loud shouts, and firing as soon as they were within range.

Their ranks, ill-ordered at best, were further confused by a number

of Canadians who had been mixed among the regulars, and who, after

hastily firing, threw themselves on the ground to reload. The British

advanced a few rods; then halted and stood still. When the French

were within forty paces the word of command rang out, and a crash of

musketry answered all along the line. The volley was delivered with

remarkable precision. In the battalions of the centre, which had

suffered least from the enemy’s bullets, the simultaneous explosion

was afterwards said by French officers to have sounded like a

cannon-shot.

Another volley followed, and then a furious clattering fire that

lasted but a minute or two. When the smoke rose, a miserable sight

was revealed: the ground cumbered with dead and wounded; the advancing

masses stopped short and turned into a frantic mob, shouting, cursing,

gesticulating. The order was given to charge. Then over the field rose

the British cheer, mixed with the fierce yell of the Highland slogan.

Some of the corps pushed forward with the bayonet; some advanced

firing. The clansmen drew their broadswords and dashed on, keen and

swift as blood-hounds. At the English right, though the attacking

column was broken to pieces, a fire was still kept up, chiefly, it

seems, by sharpshooters from the bushes and cornfields, where they

had lain for an hour or more. Here Wolfe himself led the charge at

the head of the Louisbourg Grenadiers. A shot shattered his wrist. He

wrapped his handkerchief about it and kept on. Another shot struck him

and he still advanced, when a third lodged in his breast. He staggered,

and sat on the ground. Lieutenant Brown, of the Grenadiers, one

Henderson, a volunteer in the same company, and a private soldier,

aided by an officer of artillery who ran to join them, carried him in

their arms to the rear. He begged them to lay him down. They did so,

and asked if he would have a surgeon. “There’s no need,” he answered;

“it’s all over with me.” A moment after, one of them cried out: “They

run, see how they run!” “Who run?” Wolfe demanded, like a man roused

from sleep. “The enemy, sir. Egad, they give way everywhere!”

“Go, one of you, to Colonel Burton,” returned the dying man, “tell

him to march Webb’s Regiment down to Charles River to cut off their

retreat from the bridge.” Then, turning on his side, he murmured: “Now,

God be praised, I will die in peace!” and in a few moments his gallant

soul had fled.

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT.

HISTORIAN OF THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO AND PERU.

IT MAY well be doubted whether any other historian was ever so

loved both by those who knew him personally and by those who counted

themselves fortunate in knowing him through his books as was William H.

Prescott. Indeed that love promises to be perennial, for “The Conquest

of Mexico” and “The Conquest of Peru” continue to be the delight of

the intelligent schoolboy and bid fair to maintain their hold upon

public interest in succeeding generations.

Prescott was a native of Salem, Massachusetts, having been born in

that city on the 4th of May, 1796. His father was a lawyer, and he

inherited from him literary tastes, love of learning and great mental

vigor. He was accidentally struck, while a Junior at Harvard, by a

piece of hard bread, thrown by a fellow student, and the blow deprived

him forever of the use of his left eye, gave him many months of

tedious suffering in darkened rooms, and resulted in such serious

damage to the other eye as to make it of little and constantly

decreasing use to him. He had intended to be a lawyer, but this

accident made another choice necessary. He deliberately resolved upon

a literary career and prepared himself for it in the most thorough and

painstaking way imaginable. A memorandum dated October, 1821, lays out

a course of study which one might think unnecessary for a graduate of

Harvard College, but which he undertook for the purpose of perfecting

his style, and with what degree of success the universal admiration of

his works well testifies. It was as follows:

“1. Principles of Grammar, correct writing, etc.

2. Compendious history of North America.

3. Fine prose-writers of English.

4. Latin classics one hour a day.”

This course, omitting the American history, he faithfully pursued

for about a year, when he took up the study of French and, later, of

German. His study of Spanish and consequently his choice of the topics

of his great works came about almost accidentally. He had found the

study of German very difficult, so much so that he was in despair. His

friend George Ticknor had delivered to the Senior Class at Harvard a

series of lectures on Spanish literature, and, to divert and entertain

him during a period of discouragement and of suffering from his eyes,

proposed to read the lectures to him. He was so delighted with the

subject that he immediately began the study of the language with the

result that the remainder of his life was devoted to Spanish subjects.

Prescott had married, in 1820, to Miss Susan Amory, the daughter of a

cultivated and successful Boston merchant, and of the marriage he said,

near the close of his life, “contrary to the assertion of a French

philosopher who says that the most fortunate husband finds reason to

regret his condition at least once in twenty-four hours,――I may truly

say that I have found no such day in the quarter of a century that

Providence has spared us to each other.” Mrs. Prescott was devoted to

her husband, and until his death in 1859, was his continual support,

adviser and assistant.

Illustration: MR. PRESCOTT’S HOUSE AT PEPPERETT, MASS.

The account of his method of composition is told in one of his letters:

“In the Christmas of 1837 my first work, ‘The History of Ferdinand and

Isabella,’ was given to the world. I obtained the services of a reader

who knew no language but his own, (English). I taught him to pronounce

Castilian in a manner suited, I suspect, more to _my_ ear than to that

of a Spaniard, and we began our wearisome journey through Mariana’s

noble (Spanish) history. I cannot even now call to mind without a

smile the tedious hours in which, seated under some old trees in my

country residence, we pursued our slow and melancholy way over pages

which afforded no glimmering of light to him, and from which the light

came dimly struggling to me through a half intelligible vocabulary.

But in a few weeks the light became stronger, and I was cheered by

the consciousness of my own improvement, and when we had toiled our

way through seven quartos, I found I could understand the book when

read about two-thirds as fast as ordinary English. My reader’s office

required the more patience; he had not even this result to cheer him

in his labor. I now felt that the great difficulty could be overcome,

and I obtained the services of a reader whose acquaintance with modern

and ancient tongues supplied, as far as it could be supplied, the

deficiency of eyesight on my part. But though in this way I could

examine various authorities, it was not easy to arrange in my mind

the results of my reading drawn from different and often contradictory

accounts. To do this I dictated copious notes as I went along, and

when I had read enough for a chapter (from thirty to forty, and

sometimes fifty pages in length), I had a mass of memoranda in my own

language, which would easily bring before me in one view, the fruit

of my researches. These notes were carefully read to me, and while my

recent studies were fresh in my recollection, I ran over the whole of

any intended chapter in my mind. This process I repeated at least half

a dozen times, so that when I finally put my pen to paper it ran off

pretty glibly for it was an effort of memory rather than composition.

Writing presented me a difficulty even greater than reading. Thierry,

the famous blind historian of the Norman conquest, advised me to

cultivate dictation; but I usually preferred a substitute that I found

in a writing-case made for the blind which I procured in London, forty

years since. It consists of a frame of the size of a sheet of paper,

traversed by brass wires, as many as lines are wanted on the page,

and with a sheet of carbonated paper, such as is used for getting

duplicates, pasted on the reverse side. With an ivory or agate

stylus the writer traces his characters between the wires on the

carbonated sheet, making indelible marks, which he cannot see, on

the white page below. This treadmill operation has its defects; and

I have repeatedly supposed I had accomplished a good page, and was

proceeding in all the glow of composition to go ahead, when I found

I had forgotten to insert a sheet of writing-paper below, that my

labor had all been thrown away, and that the leaf looked as blank as

myself. Notwithstanding these and other whimsical distresses of the

kind, I have found my writing-case my best friend in my lonely hours,

and with it have written nearly all that I have sent into the world

the last forty years.”

Prescott’s writings were successful from the first. Translations of

the “History of Ferdinand and Isabella” appeared within a few years

in French, German, Spanish, Italian and Russian, and it is surely

no wonder that the author took up with a good heart the preparation

of a “History of the Conquest of Mexico,” and then a “History of

the Conquest of Peru,” both of which were received with the same

appreciation that had rewarded his first published work.

He had spent some time abroad before his marriage, partly in the hope

of benefitting his eyesight. In 1850 he again visited England and

spent some time on the continent. He wrote a number of miscellaneous

articles for magazines and reviews, and published in 1855, two, and

in 1858 the third volume of his uncompleted “History of the Reign of

Philip II., King of Spain.” This, had he lived to complete it, would

doubtless have been his greatest work. It was received with such favor

that six months after the publication of the first two volumes, eight

thousand copies had been sold and the sales of his other works had

been so stimulated as to bring the total up to thirty thousand volumes

during that time, which yielded the author the substantial royalty of

seventeen thousand dollars.

A slight stroke of paralysis had already enfeebled him, and a second

terminated his life on the 28th of January, 1859. His wife, one

daughter, and two sons survived him.

Few men have combined so many engaging qualities. His blindness had

made no change in his appearance, and he was thought to be one of the

handsomest men of his time. His cheerfulness of disposition was so

great that at the time of his most intense suffering he addressed

those who cared for him with such brightness and consideration that

one might have thought their positions reversed. The personal friends

who were won by his grace of manner and by the sterling worth of his

character have nearly all passed away, but the hope that he early

expressed, “to produce something which posterity would not willingly

let die,” was most abundantly realized.

* * * * *

THE GOLDEN AGE OF TEZCUCO.

(FROM HISTORY OF CONQUEST OF MEXICO, 1843.)

THE first measure of Nezahualcoyotl, on returning to his dominions,

was a general amnesty. It was his maxim “that a monarch might punish,

but revenge was unworthy of him.” In the present instance he was

averse even to punish, and not only freely pardoned his rebel nobles,

but conferred on some, who had most deeply offended, posts of honor

and confidence. Such conduct was doubtless politic, especially as

their alienation was owing probably, much more to fear of the usurper

than to any disaffection towards himself. But there are some acts of

policy which a magnanimous spirit only can execute.

The restored monarch next set about repairing the damages sustained

under the late misrule, and reviving, or rather remodelling,

the various departments of government. He framed a concise, but

comprehensive, code of laws, so well suited, it was thought, to the

exigencies of the times, that it was adopted as their own by the two

other members of the triple alliance. It was written in blood, and

entitled the author to be called the Draco rather than “the Solon of

Anahuac,” as he is fondly styled by his admirers. Humanity is one of

the best fruits of refinement. It is only with increasing civilization

that the legislator studies to economize human suffering, even for the

guilty; to devise penalties not so much by way of punishment for the

past as of reformation for the future.

He divided the burden of the government among a number of departments,

as the council of war, the council of finance, the council of justice.

This last was a court of supreme authority, both in civil and criminal

matters, receiving appeals from the lower tribunals of the provinces,

which were obliged to make a full report, every four months, or eighty

days, of their own proceedings to this higher judicature. In all these

bodies, a certain number of citizens were allowed to have seats with

the nobles and professional dignitaries. There was, however, another

body, a council of state, for aiding the king in the dispatch of

business, and advising him in matters of importance, which was drawn

altogether from the highest order of chiefs. It consisted of fourteen

members; and they had seats provided for them at the royal table.

Lastly, there was an extraordinary tribunal, called the council of

music, but which differing from the import of its name, was devoted to

the encouragement of science and art. Works on astronomy, chronology,

history or any other science, were required to be submitted to its

judgment, before they could be made public. This censorial power was

of some moment, at least with regard to the historical department,

where the wilful perversion of truth was made a capital offence by the

bloody code of Nezahualcoyotl. Yet a Tezcucan author must have been

a bungler, who could not elude a conviction under the cloudy veil of

hieroglyphics. This body, which was drawn from the best instructed

persons in the kingdom, with little regard to rank, had supervision of

all the productions of art, and the nicer fabrics. It decided on the

qualifications of the professors in the various branches of science,

on the fidelity of their instructions to their pupils, the deficiency

of which was severely punished, and it instituted examinations of

these latter. In short, it was a general board of education for the

country. On stated days, historical compositions, and poems treating

of moral or traditional topics, were recited before it by their

authors. Seats were provided for the three crowned heads of the empire,

who deliberated with the other members on the respective merits of the

pieces, and distributed prizes of value to the successful competitors.

The influence of this academy must have been most propitious to

the capital, which became the nursery not only of such sciences as

could be compassed by the scholarship of the period, but of various

useful and ornamental arts. Its historians, orators, and poets

were celebrated throughout the country. Its archives, for which

accommodations were provided in the royal palaces, were stored with

the records of primitive ages. Its idiom, more polished than the

Mexican, was, indeed, the purest of all the Nahuatlac dialects, and

continued, long after the Conquest, to be that in which the best

productions of the native races were composed. Tezcuco claimed the

glory of being the Athens of the Western world.

Among the most illustrious of her bards was the emperor himself,――for

the Tezcucan writers claim this title for their chief, as head of

the imperial alliance. He doubtless appeared as a competitor before

that very academy where he so often sat as a critic. Many of his odes

descended to a late generation, and are still preserved, perhaps,

in some of the dusty repositories of Mexico or Spain. The historian

Ixtlilxochitl has left a translation, in Castilian, of one of the

poems of his royal ancestor. It is not easy to render his version

into corresponding English rhyme, without the perfume of the original

escaping in this double filtration. They remind one of the rich

breathings of Spanish-Arab poetry, in which an ardent imagination

is tempered by a not unpleasing and moral melancholy. But, though

sufficiently florid in diction, they are generally free from the

meretricious ornaments and hyperbole with which the minstrelsy of

the East is usually tainted. They turn on the vanities and mutability

of human life,――a topic very natural for a monarch who had himself

experienced the strangest mutations of fortune. There is mingled in

the lament of the Tezcucan bard, however, an Epicurean philosophy,

which seeks relief from the fears of the future in the joys of the

present. “Banish care,” he says: “if there are bounds to pleasure,

the saddest of life must also have an end. Then weave the chaplet of

flowers, and sing thy songs in praise of the all-powerful God; for the

glory of this world soon fadeth away. Rejoice in the green freshness

of thy spring; for the day will come when thou shalt sigh for these

joys in vain; when the sceptre shall pass from thy hands, thy servants

shall wander desolate in thy courts, thy sons, and the sons of thy

nobles, shall drink the dregs of distress, and all the pomp of thy

victories and triumphs shall live only in their recollection. Yet the

remembrance of the just shall not pass away from the nations, and the

good thou hast done shall ever be held in honor. The goods of this

life, its glories and its riches, are but lent to us, its substance is

but an illusory shadow, and the things of to-day shall change on the

coming of the morrow. Then gather the fairest flowers from thy gardens,

to bind round thy brow, and seize the joys of the present ere they

perish.”

But the hours of the Tezcucan monarch were not all passed in idle

dalliance with the Muse, nor in the sober contemplations of philosophy,

as at a later period. In the freshness of youth and early manhood

he led the allied armies in their annual expeditions, which were

certain to result in a wider extent of territory to the empire. In

the intervals of peace he fostered those productive arts which are the

surest sources of public prosperity. He encouraged agriculture above

all; and there was scarcely a spot so rude, or a steep so inaccessible,

as not to confess the power of cultivation. The land was covered with

a busy population, and towns and cities sprang up in places since

deserted or dwindled into miserable villages.

* * * * *

THE BANQUET OF THE DEAD.

(FROM “HISTORY OF THE CONQUEST OF PERU,” 1847.)

THE wealth displayed by the Peruvian princes was only that which each

had amassed individually for himself. He owed nothing to inheritance

from his predecessors. On the decease of an Inca, his palaces were

abandoned; all his treasures, except what were employed in his

obsequies, his furniture and apparel, were suffered to remain as he

had left them, and his mansions, save one, were closed up forever. The

new sovereign was to provide himself with everything new for his royal

state. The reason of this was the popular belief that the soul of the

departed monarch would return after a time to reanimate his body on

earth; and they wished that he should find everything to which he had

been used in life prepared for his reception.

When an Inca died, or, to use his own language, “was called home to

the mansions of his father, the Sun,” his obsequies were celebrated

with great pomp and solemnity. The bowels were taken from the body and

deposited in the temple of Tampu, about five leagues from the capital.

A quantity of his plate and jewels was buried with them, and a number

of his attendants and favorite concubines, amounting sometimes, it is

said, to a thousand, were immolated on his tomb. Some of them showed

the natural repugnance to the sacrifice occasionally manifested by the

victims of a similar superstition in India. But these were probably

the menials and more humble attendants; since the women have been

known, in more than one instance, to lay violent hands on themselves,

when restrained from testifying their fidelity by this act of conjugal

martyrdom. This melancholy ceremony was followed by a general mourning

throughout the empire. At stated intervals, for a year, the people

assembled to renew the expressions of their sorrow; processions

were made, displaying the banner of the departed monarch; bards and

minstrels were appointed to chronicle his achievements, and their

songs continued to be rehearsed at high festivals in the presence

of the reigning monarch, thus stimulating the living by the glorious

example of the dead.

The body of the deceased Inca was skilfully embalmed, and removed to

the great temple of the Sun at Cuzco. There the Peruvian sovereign, on

entering the awful sanctuary, might behold the effigies of his royal

ancestors, ranged in opposite files, the men on the right, and their

queens on the left of the great luminary which blazed in refulgent

gold on the walls of the temple. The bodies, clothed in the princely

attire which they had been accustomed to wear, were placed on chairs

of gold, and sat with their heads inclined downward, their hands

placidly crossed over their bosoms, their countenances exhibiting

their natural dusky hue――less liable to change than the fresher

coloring of an European complexion――and their hair of raven black,

or silvered over with age, according to the period at which they died!

It seemed like a company of solemn worshippers fixed in devotion,

so true were the forms and lineaments to life. The Peruvians were as

successful as the Egyptians in the miserable attempt to perpetuate the

existence of the body beyond the limits assigned by nature.

They cherished a still stranger illusion in the attentions which they

continued to pay to those insensible remains, as if they were instinct

with life. One of the houses belonging to the deceased Inca was kept

open and occupied by his guard and attendants with all the state

appropriate to royalty. On certain festivals the revered bodies of the

sovereigns were brought out with great ceremony into the public square

of the capital. Invitations were sent by the captains of the guard of

the respective Incas to the different nobles and officers of the court;

and entertainments were provided in the names of their masters, which

displayed all the profuse magnificence of their treasures, and “such

a display,” says an ancient chronicler, “was there in the great square

of Cuzco, on this occasion, of gold and silverplate and jewels, as no

other city in the world ever witnessed.” The banquet was served by the

menials of the respective households, and the guests partook of the

melancholy cheer in the presence of the royal phantom with the same

attention to the forms of courtly etiquette as if the living monarch

had presided!

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY.

HISTORIAN AND DIPLOMATIST.

MOTLEY’S history of the “Rise of the Dutch Republic” is, in some

important respects, America’s greatest contribution to historical

literature. Its author was the son of a New England merchant of

literary tastes, and inherited through both parents some of the best

blood of New England. He was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, now a

part of Boston, April 15, 1814. He was a delicate boy, but vigorous,

vivacious, fond of outdoor sports and intellectual contests. He was

a boyish friend of Wendell Phillips, and was early associated with

many of that group of New England scholars who have done so much for

American literature during the past half-century. Motley was educated

at good schools near Boston, and entered Harvard at what would now

seem the ridiculously early age of thirteen. He cared too much for

general and voluminous reading to do thorough work in the prescribed

college course, but his wit, his brilliant mind and his impulsive

generosity made him a general favorite. After graduating from Harvard

he studied in Germany, becoming acquainted at Göttingen with Bismarck,

between whom and himself there sprang up an intimate friendship which

was renewed at every opportunity throughout his life. Bismarck said

of him that “The most striking feature of his handsome and delicate

appearance was uncommonly large and beautiful eyes. He never entered

a drawing-room without exciting the curiosity and sympathy of the

ladies.” He was married in 1837 to Mary, sister of Park Benjamin, a

most attractive and beautiful woman, and two years later he published

an historical novel called “Morton’s Hope.” Neither this book nor

another called “Merry Mount” proved a success, and both Motley and

his friends were convinced that his real field of work was that of the

historian. His first attempt in this direction was an essay published

in the “North American Review” on the “Polity of the Puritans,” which

not only demonstrated his skill and ability but gave expression to his

intense love of liberty and to his lofty patriotism.

An interesting episode in Motley’s life was his election in 1849 to

the Massachusetts House of Representatives. He does not seem to have

been well adapted for a legislator and never sought a re-election.

The incident which he most vividly remembered in this connection was

his careful preparation of a report from the Committee on Education,

of which he was chairman, proposing measures which he had convinced

himself were for the best, and the apparent ease with which a country

member, Geo. S. Boutwell, who afterwards distinguished himself in the

field of national politics, demolished his arguments, and convinced

everybody, including the author of the report of the opposite view.

Mr. Motley began the collection of materials for his “History of

Holland” about 1846. He devoted ten years to its preparation, making

careful researches at Berlin, Dresden, the Hague and Brussels. When

finally he had brought it to a conclusion he did not find it easy to

make satisfactory arrangements for its publication. The leading house

in London declined it, and it was finally published at the expense of

the author. It was another and most marked example of the occasional

lack of insight on the part of the wisest and best trained publishers,

for the book which had gone begging to be printed was received

everywhere with acclamations. Guizot, perhaps the foremost historian

of modern times, personally supervised the translation into French,

and wrote the introduction. The book had a large sale on both sides

of the Atlantic, and Mr. Motley was at once recognized as a great

historian. Mr. Froude has very justly said that this history is as

“complete as industry and genius can make it,” and “one which will

take its place among the finest stories in this or any other language.”

Motley lived for the next two years in Boston, taking much interest

in the “Atlantic Monthly,” though he was too much engaged with

historical study to contribute very frequently to its columns. In

1858 he returned to England, where he lived for most of his remaining

life, visiting America only three times, and making on each occasion

a comparatively short stay. He found residence abroad more convenient

for historical research. His position in English society was an

enviable one, and his daughters were all married to Englishmen, one

of them to Sir William Vernon Harcourt. This residence in England,

however, did not wean his heart from America or its institutions or

make him any less an ardent patriot, and perhaps he never rendered

his country a more signal service than when, on finding that the

higher classes in England sympathized with the South, he addressed two

letters to the London “Times,” which did much to bring about a change

of sentiment, and which remained as monuments to his loyalty and to

his ability as an advocate.

Mr. Motley had been appointed Secretary of the American Legation

at St. Petersburg in 1841, but had found the climate too rigorous

and had continued at his post only a few months before tendering his

resignation. He was now to undertake a more serious task in diplomacy.

President Lincoln appointed him, in 1861, Minister to Austria. He was

so absorbed in the great struggle going on in his own country that he

gave up for the time the historical studies which made so large a part

of his ordinary life, and “lived only in the varying fortunes of the

day, his profound faith and enthusiasm sustaining him and lifting him

above the natural influence of a by no means sanguine temperament.”

He continued Minister to Austria, performing the difficult service

of that office with discretion and with credit until 1867, when,

in consequence of a letter received by President Johnson from some

obscure source, inquiries were made which Mr. Motley considered

insulting, and he at once tendered his resignation.

He had published in 1860 two volumes of his “History of the United

Netherlands,” and they had been received with all the favor that

had greeted his former great work. The American war had delayed the

completion of the book, but in 1868 he published the other two volumes.

An article from the “Edinburgh Review” discussing the first two

volumes says: “Mr. Motley combines as an historian two qualifications

seldom found united――to a great capacity for historical research he

adds much power of pictorial representation.”

This is the secret of his great success. Men who excel in the use

of language are too often unwilling to undertake the drudgery which

research entails, while those who are able and willing to read

voluminous correspondence and con over numberless dispatches in order

to establish some historical fact, are frequently unable to clothe the

fact in words which will so illumine and illustrate the truth as to

make it really live in the mind of the reader. That Motley possessed

both of these abilities along with those others which made him to

a very wide circle in both Europe and America a much loved man, is

sufficient reason for the place that has been given him in the history

of men of letters.

Probably, at the request of Senator Sumner, Mr. Motley was in 1869

appointed Minister to England. The position was in many respects most

agreeable to him. It gave him a post of great influence in a society

in which he was known and admired, and opened possibilities of high

service to the country which he loved with an ardor that amounted

to enthusiasm. The Alabama claims were being urged upon the British

Government, and the difficulties and responsibilities were very great.

He was suddenly recalled in 1870 under circumstances that wounded

him so deeply that it may be said he never recovered from the cruel

surprise. The most probable explanation of President Grant’s course

seems to be that it was the outcome of his difficulty with Mr. Sumner

over his San Domingo policy, and that Mr. Motley’s tastes and the

pursuits to which he had devoted his life made him a man with whom

the President could not in any large measure sympathize. When,

therefore, the President found his favorite measure defeated largely

by the influence of Mr. Sumner, he ceased to have cause to retain

Mr. Sumner’s friend in so responsible a post. The whole matter looks,

at this distance, discreditable, but it was probably the system of

political favoritism then in vogue rather than either the President or

his Secretary of State that was to blame.

Mr. Motley had intended to devote his last years to a “History of the

Thirty Years’ War,” but before undertaking it he wrote “The Life and

Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland, with a View of the

Primary Causes and Movements of the Thirty Years’ War,” which has been

recognized as the most classical of his productions. It was his last

work. Even before the death of Mrs. Motley in 1874, he was in somewhat

feeble health, and while he did not abandon literary labor, he gave up

at this time any hope of being able to engage in protracted effort. He

spent a part of the year 1875 in Boston, returning to his daughter’s

residence in Devonshire, where he died in 1877. Dean Stanley spoke

of him as “one of the brightest lights of the Western Hemisphere,

the high-spirited patriot, the faithful friend of England’s best

and purest spirits; the brilliant, the indefatigable historian.” A

distinguished countryman of his own had once introduced him to an

audience as one “whose name belongs to no single country and to no

single age: as a statesman and diplomatist and patriot, ♦he belongs

to America; as a scholar, to the world of letters; as a historian, all

ages will claim him in the future.”

♦ ‘be’ replaced with ‘he’

* * * * *

BISMARCK.¹

GLIMPSES OF NOTED PEOPLE FROM THE CORRESPONDENCE OF

JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY, D.C.L. EDITED BY GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS, 1889.

¹ Copyright, Harper & Bros.

WHEN I called, Bismarck was at dinner, so I left my card and said I

would come back in half an hour. As soon as my card had been carried

to him (as I learned afterwards) he sent a servant after me to the

hotel, but I had gone another way. When I came back I was received

with open arms. I can’t express to you how cordially he received me.

If I had been his brother, instead of an old friend, he could not have

shown more warmth and affectionate delight in seeing me. I find I like

him even better than I thought I did, and you know how high an opinion

I always expressed of his talents and disposition. He is a man of

very noble character and of very powerful mind. The prominent place

which he now occupies as a statesman sought _him_. He did not seek

it, or any other office. The stand which he took in the Assembly from

conviction, on the occasion of the outbreak of 1848, marked him at

once to all parties as one of the leading characters of Prussia. Of

course, I don’t now go into the rights and wrongs of the matter, but

I listened with great interest, as you may suppose, to his detailed

history of the revolutionary events of that year, and his share in

them, which he narrated to me in a long conversation which we had last

night. He wanted me to stay entirely in his house, but as he has his

wife’s father and mother with him, and as I saw that it was necessary

to put up a bed in a room where there was none, I decidedly begged off.

I breakfasted there this morning, and am to dine there, with a party,

to-day. To-morrow, I suppose, I shall dine there _en famille_. I am

only afraid that the landlord here will turn me into the streets for

being such a poor _consommateur_ for him, and all I can do is to order

vast quantities of seltzer water.

The principal change in Bismarck is that he has grown stouter, but,

being over six feet, this is an improvement. His voice and manner are

singularly unchanged. His wife I like very much indeed; very friendly,

intelligent and perfectly unaffected, and treats me like an old friend.

In short, I can’t better describe the couple than by saying that they

are as unlike M. and Mme. de ―――― as it is possible to be.

In the summer of 1851 he told me that the Minister, Manteuffel, asked

him one day abruptly if he would accept the post of Ambassador at

Frankfort, to which (although the proposition was as unexpected a one

to him as if I should hear by the next mail that I had been chosen

Governor of Massachusetts) he answered, after a moment’s deliberation,

yes, without another word. The King, the same day, sent for him, and

asked him if he would accept the place, to which he made the same

brief answer, “Ja.” His Majesty expressed a little surprise that he

made no queries or conditions, when Bismarck replied that anything

the King felt strong enough to propose to him he felt strong enough

to accept. I only write these details that you may have an idea of the

man. Strict integrity and courage of character, a high sense of honor,

a firm religious belief, united with remarkable talents, make up

necessarily a combination which cannot be found any day in any court,

and I have no doubt that he is destined to be Prime Minister, unless

his obstinate truthfulness, which is apt to be a stumbling-block for

politicians, stands in his way....

Well, he accepted the post, and wrote to his wife next day, who was

preparing for a summer’s residence in a small house on the sea-coast,

that he could not come because he was already Minister in Frankfort.

The result, as he said, was three days of tears on her part. He had

previously been leading the life of a plain country ’squire, with a

moderate income, had never held any position in the government or in

diplomacy, and had hardly ever been to court. He went into the office

with a holy horror of the mysterious nothings of diplomacy, but soon

found how little there was in the whole “galimatias.” Of course, my

politics are very different from his, although not so antipodal as

you might suppose, but I can talk with him as frankly as I could with

you, and I am glad of an opportunity of hearing the other side put by

a man whose talents and character I esteem, and who so well knows _le

dessous des cartes_.

* * * * *

THE SIEGE OF LEYDEN.¹

¹ Copyright, J. Lewis Stackpole.

MEANTIME, the besieged city was at its last gasp. The burghers had

been in a state of uncertainty for many days; being aware that the

fleet had set forth for their relief, but knowing full well the

thousand obstacles which it had to surmount. They had guessed its

progress by the illumination from the blazing villages; they had

heard its salvos of artillery on its arrival at North Aa; but since

then all had been dark and mournful again, hope and fear, in sickening

alternation, distracting every breast. They knew that the wind

was unfavorable, and at the dawn of each day every eye was turned

wistfully to the vanes of the steeples. So long as the easterly breeze

prevailed, they felt, as they anxiously stood on towers and housetops,

that they must look in vain for the welcome ocean. Yet, while thus

patiently waiting, they were literally starving; for even the misery

endured at Harlem had not reached that depth and intensity of agony

to which Leyden was now reduced. Bread, malt-cake, horseflesh, had

entirely disappeared; dogs, cats, rats and other vermin were esteemed

luxuries. A small number of cows, kept as long as possible for their

milk, still remained; but a few were killed from day to day, and

distributed in minute proportions, hardly sufficient to support life

among the famishing population. Starving wretches swarmed daily around

the shambles where these cattle were slaughtered, contending for

any morsel which might fall, and lapping eagerly the blood as it ran

along the pavement; while the hides, chopped and boiled, were greedily

devoured. Women and children, all day long, were seen searching

gutters and dunghills for morsels of food, which they disputed

fiercely with the famishing dogs. The green leaves were stripped

from the trees, every living herb was converted into human food; but

these expedients could not avert starvation. The daily mortality was

frightful; infants starved to death on the maternal breasts which

famine had parched and withered; mothers dropped dead in the streets,

with their dead children in their arms. In many a house the watchmen,

in their rounds, found a whole family of corpses――father, mother,

children, side by side; for a disorder called the plague, naturally

engendered of hardship and famine, now came, as if in kindness, to

abridge the agony of the people. The pestilence stalked at noonday

through the city, and the doomed inhabitants, fell like grass beneath

its scythe. From six thousand to eight thousand human beings sank

before this scourge alone; yet the people resolutely held out,――women

and men mutually encouraging each other to resist the entrance of

their foreign foe,――an evil more horrible than pest or famine.

Leyden was sublime in its despair. A few murmurs were, however,

occasionally heard at the steadfastness of the magistrates, and a dead

body was placed at the door of the burgomaster, as a silent witness

against his inflexibility. A party of the more faint-hearted even

assailed the heroic Adrian Van der Werf with threats and reproaches

as he passed through the streets. A crowd had gathered around him as

he reached a triangular place in the centre of the town, into which

many of the principal streets emptied themselves, and upon one side of

which stood the church of Saint Pancras. There stood the burgomaster,

a tall, haggard, imposing figure, with dark visage and a tranquil but

commanding eye. He waved his broad-leaved felt hat for silence, and

then exclaimed, in language which has been almost literally preserved,

“What would ye, my friends? Why do ye murmur that we do not break our

vows and surrender the city to the Spaniards?――a fate more horrible

than the agony which she now endures. I tell you I have made an oath

to hold the city; and may God give me strength to keep my oath! I

can die but once, whether by your hands, the enemy’s, or by the hand

of God. My own fate is indifferent to me; not so that of the city

intrusted to my care. I know that we shall starve if not soon relieved;

but starvation is preferable to the dishonored death which is the only

alternative. Your menaces move me not; my life is at your disposal;

here is my sword, plunge it into my breast, and divide my flesh among

you. Take my body to appease your hunger, but expect no surrender so

long as I remain alive.”...

On the 28th of September a dove flew into the city, bringing a letter

from Admiral Boisot. In this dispatch the position of the fleet at

North Aa was described in encouraging terms, and the inhabitants were

assured that, in a very few days at furthest, the long-expected relief

would enter their gates. The tempest came to their relief. A violent

equinoctial gale on the night of the 1st and 2d of October came

storming from the northwest, shifting after a few hours full eight

points, and then blowing still more violently from the southwest. The

waters of the North Sea were piled in vast masses upon the southern

coast of Holland, and then dashed furiously landward, the ocean rising

over the earth and sweeping with unrestrained power across the ruined

dykes. In the course of twenty-four hours the fleet at North Aa,

instead of nine inches, had more than two feet of water.... On it

went, sweeping over the broad waters which lay between Zoeterwoude

and Zwieten; as they approached some shallows which led into the great

mere, the Zealanders dashed into the sea, and with sheer strength

shouldered every vessel through.... On again the fleet of Boisot still

went, and, overcoming every obstacle entered the city on the morning

of the 3d of October. Leyden was relieved.

* * * * *

ASSASSINATION OF WILLIAM OF ORANGE.

(FROM “RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC.”)

ON Tuesday, the 10th of July, 1584, at about half-past twelve, the

Prince, with his wife on his arm, and followed by the ladies and

gentlemen of his family, was going to the dining-room. William the

Silent was dressed upon that day, according to his usual custom, in

a very plain fashion. He wore a wide-leaved hat of dark felt, with a

silken cord round the crown, such as had been worn by the “Beggars”

in the early days of the revolt. A high ruff encircled his neck

from which also depended one of the Beggars’ medals with the motto,

“_Fidèle jusqu’ à la besace_;” while a loose surcoat of gray frieze

cloth, over a tawny leather doublet, with wide-slashed underclothes,

completed his costume. Gérard presented himself at the doorway, and

demanded a passport, which the Prince directed his secretary to make

out for him....

At two o’clock the company rose from the table. The Prince led the way,

intending to pass to his private apartments above. The dining-room,

which was on the ground floor, opened into a little, square vestibule,

which communicated through an arched passage-way with the main

entrance into the courtyard. The vestibule was also directly at

the foot of the wooden staircase leading to the next floor, and was

scarcely six feet in width. Upon its left side, as one approached the

stairway, was an obscure arch sunk deep in the wall, and completely

in shadow of the door. Behind this arch a portal opened to the narrow

lane at the side of the house. The stairs themselves were completely

lighted by a large window half-way up the flight.

The Prince came from the dining-room, and began leisurely to ascend.

He had only reached the second stair, when a man emerged from the

sunken arch, and, standing within a foot or two of him, discharged a

pistol full at his heart. Three balls entered his body, one of which,

passing quite through him, struck with violence upon the wall beyond.

The Prince exclaimed in French, as he felt the wound: “O my God,

have mercy upon my soul! O my God, have mercy upon this poor people!”

These were the last words he ever spake, save that when his sister

immediately afterwards asked him if he commended his soul to Jesus

Christ, he faintly answered, “Yes.” His master-of-horse had caught him

in his arms as the fatal shot was fired.

The Prince was then placed on the stairs for an instant, when he

immediately began to swoon. He was afterwards laid upon a couch in the

dining-room, where in a few minutes he breathed his last in the arms

of his wife and sister.

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

JOHN FISKE.

DISTINGUISHED LECTURER AND HISTORIAN.

IT may be doubted whether even Macaulay exhibited more precocious

ability than did the man who for thirty years has held a foremost

place among the philosophers and historians of our country. The

boy who read Cæsar and Rollin and Josephus at seven, who translated

Greek at twelve by the aid of a dictionary which gave only the Latin

equivalents of Greek words, who at seventeen had read the whole of

Virgil, Horace, Tacitus, Sallust, Suetonius, and much of Livy, Cicero,

Ovid, Catullus, and Juvenal, and at the same time knew his mathematics

up to and including much of the work of the sophomore year in college,

could read the Greek of Plato and Herodotus at sight, kept a diary

in Spanish, and read German, French, Italian and Portuguese easily,

surely this was one of the boys remarkable in the history of the

world. Not only was John Fiske able to work for twelve hours a day

and for twelve months in the year at his studies, but in spite of this

strenuous application he was able to maintain vigorous health and to

enter with enthusiasm into outdoor life.

Mr. Fiske was born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1842. His original

name was Edmund Fiske Green, but when his widowed mother became

the wife of Edwin W. Stoughton, he took the name of one of his

maternal ancestors and was henceforth known as John Fiske. Until he

entered Harvard in 1860 he was an inmate of his grandmother’s home

in Middletown, Connecticut. But since that time he has lived almost

continuously in Cambridge. After being graduated from Harvard College

he spent two years in the law school and opened an office in Boston.

He never devoted much attention to the practice of law, however,

and used his office mainly as a convenient literary workshop. He had

been married while in the law school, and from the first his family

depended for support upon his diligence and success as a writer.

His literary work has taken two main directions, his most noted books

being studies in evolutionary philosophy and treatises upon special

features of American history. For a number of years he was connected

with the faculty at Harvard, as lecturer or instructor, and he was

for seven years Assistant Librarian, but since 1879 he has only been

associated with the University as a member of its Board of Overseers.

Thirty-five lectures on the Doctrine of Evolution, delivered at

Harvard in 1871, were afterwards expanded and published under the

title of “Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy.” Two of his most notable

papers are “The Destiny of Man” and “The Idea of God,” but Mr. Fiske

is best known for the fresh and vigorous delightful and philosophical

way in which he has written of American history. His principal books

in this department are “The Beginnings of New England;” “The American

Revolution;” “The Discovery of America,” and “The Critical Period of

American History.” He has written somewhat for young people, notably

“The War of Independence,” and perhaps has conferred no greater favor

on his youthful countrymen than in the preparation of two school books,

“Civil Government in the United States” and “A History of the United

States.” Certainly there could be no more delightful innovation than

the way in which he introduces his young student to the philosophy of

government. He tells a lively story of the siege and final surrender

of a mediæval town, and how the citizen delegated to make the

capitulation, a lean, lank, half-starved stuttering fellow, replied

to the question of why they had rebelled, with the significant phrase,

“Tut-tut-tut-too much taxes.”

The boy who reads this at the opening of his text-book is not likely

to imagine that his subject is a dry and uninteresting one, and

is ready to accept the author’s definition of government as the

power that lays taxes. These books of Mr. Fiske’s, with his numerous

contributions to periodicals and his lectures before large audiences

in many cities, have done more than perhaps is due to any other one

man to make the study of American history popular, and to spread

among our people sound ideas on the theory of our government. With

his vigorous health and wonderful activity it would seem that very

much more is still to be expected from a man who has already done so

much, and it is entirely safe to predict that the name of John Fiske

will stand in the literary history of this time as one of the most

remarkable, most fertile, and most useful men of his age.

* * * * *

LAND DISCOVERED.¹

FROM “THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA.”

¹ Copyright, Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

BY September 25th, the Admiral’s chief difficulty had come to be the

impatience of his crews at not finding land. On that day there was a

mirage, or some such illusion, which Columbus and all hands supposed

to be a coast in front of them, and hymns of praise were sung, but at

dawn next day they were cruelly undeceived. Flights of strange birds

and other signs of land kept raising hopes which were presently dashed

again, and the men passed through alternately hot and cold fits of

exultation and dejection. Such mockery seemed to show that they were

entering a realm of enchantment. Somebody, perhaps one of the released

jail-birds, hinted that if a stealthy thrust should happen some night

to push the Admiral overboard, it could be plausibly said that he had

slipped and fallen while star-gazing. His situation grew daily more

perilous, and the fact that he was an Italian commanding Spaniards

did not help him. Perhaps what saved him was their vague belief in his

superior knowledge; they may have felt that they should need him in

going back....

At daybreak the boats were lowered and Columbus, with a large part of

his company, went ashore. Upon every side were trees of unknown kinds,

and the landscape seemed exceedingly beautiful. Confident that they

must have attained the object for which they set sail, the crews were

wild with exultation. Their heads were dazed with fancies of princely

fortunes close at hand. The officers embraced Columbus or kissed his

hands, while the sailors threw themselves at his feet, craving pardon

and favor.

These proceedings were watched with unutterable amazement and awe by

a multitude of men, women and children of cinnamon hue, different from

any kind of people the Spaniards had ever seen. All were stark naked

and most of them were more or less greased and painted. They thought

that the ships were sea-monsters and the white men supernatural

creatures descended from the sky. At first they fled in terror as

these formidable beings came ashore, but presently, as they found

themselves unmolested, curiosity began to overcome fear, and they

slowly approached the Spaniards, stopping at every few paces to

prostrate themselves in adoration. After a time, as the Spaniards

received them with encouraging nods and smiles, they waxed bold

enough to come close to the visitors and pass their hands over them,

doubtless to make sure that all this marvel was reality and not a mere

vision. Experiences in Africa had revealed the eagerness of barbarians

to trade off their possessions for trinkets, and now the Spaniards

began exchanging glass beads and hawks’ bells for cotton yarn, tame

parrots, and small gold ornaments.

Some sort of conversation in dumb show went on, and Columbus naturally

interpreted everything in such wise as to fit his theories. Whether

the natives understood him or not when he asked them where they got

their gold, at any rate they pointed to the south, and thus confirmed

Columbus in his suspicion that he had come to some island a little to

the north of the opulent Cipango. He soon found that it was a small

island, and he understood the name of it to be Guanahani. He took

formal possession of it for Castile, just as the discoverers of the

Cape Verde islands and the Guinea coasts had taken possession of those

places for Portugal; and he gave it a Christian name, San Salvador.

* * * * *

THE FEDERAL CONVENTION.¹

FROM “THE CRITICAL PERIOD OF AMERICAN HISTORY.”

¹ Copyright, Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

THE Federal Convention did wisely in withholding its debates from the

knowledge of the people. It was felt that discussion would be more

untrammeled, and that its result ought to go before the country as the

collective and unanimous voice of the convention.

There was likely to be wrangling enough among themselves; but should

their scheme be unfolded, bit by bit, before its parts could be viewed

in their mutual relations, popular excitement would become intense,

there might be riots, and an end would be put to that attitude of

mental repose so necessary for the constructive work that was to

be done. It was thought best that the scheme should be put forth as

a completed whole, and that for several years, even, until the new

system of government should have had a fair trial, the traces of the

individual theories and preferences concerned in its formation should

not be revealed.

For it was generally assumed that a system of government new in some

important respects would be proposed by the convention, and while the

people awaited the result the wildest speculations and rumors were

current. A few hoped, and many feared, that some scheme of monarchy

would be established. Such surmises found their way across the ocean,

and hopes were expressed in England that, should a king be chosen, it

might be a younger son of George III. It was even hinted, with alarm,

that, through gratitude to our recent allies, we might be persuaded

to offer the crown to some member of the royal family of France.

No such thoughts were entertained, however, by any person present

in the convention. Some of the delegates came with the design of

simply amending the articles of confederation by taking away from the

States the power of regulating commerce, and intrusting this power

to Congress. Others felt that if the work were not done thoroughly

now another chance might never be offered; and these men thought

it necessary to abolish the confederation and establish a federal

republic, in which the general government should act directly upon

the people. The difficult problem was how to frame a plan of this sort

which people could be made to understand and adopt. At the very outset

some of the delegates began to exhibit symptoms of that peculiar kind

of moral cowardice which is wont to afflict free governments, and of

which American history furnishes many instructive examples. It was

suggested that palliatives and half-measures would be far more likely

to find favor with the people than any thoroughgoing reform, when

Washington suddenly interposed with a brief but immortal speech, which

ought to be blazoned in letters of gold and posted on the wall of

every American assembly that shall meet to nominate a candidate, or

declare a policy, or pass a law, so long as the weakness of human

nature endures. Rising from his President’s chair, his tall figure

drawn up to its full height, he exclaimed in tones unwontedly solemn

with suppressed emotion: “It is too probable that no plan we propose

will be adopted. Perhaps another dreadful conflict is to be sustained.

If, to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how

can we afterward defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the

wise and the honest can repair; the event is in the hand of God.”

This outburst of noble eloquence carried conviction to every one,

and henceforth we do not hear that any attempt was avowedly made to

avoid the issues as they came up. It was a most wholesome tonic. It

braced up the convention to high resolves, and impressed upon all the

delegates that they were in a situation where faltering and trifling

were both wicked and dangerous. From that moment the mood in which

they worked caught something from the glorious spirit of Washington.

There was need of such high purpose, for two plans were presently

laid before the meeting, which, for a moment, brought out one of the

chief elements of antagonism existing between the States, and which at

first seemed irreconcilable. It was the happy compromise which united

and harmonized these two plans that smoothed the further work of the

convention, and made it possible for a stable and powerful government

to be constructed.

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

Library of the best American literature Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers · 第 9 / 16 章

THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON is one of the group of men of whom their