The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Bay State Monthly, Volume III, No. 2, May, 1885, by Various.

There were few settlers in the Pemigewasset Valley when John Marsh of East Haddam, Connecticut, at the close of the last century, with his wife, Mehitable Percival Marsh, travelling up the valley of the Merrimack, selected the town of Campton, New Hampshire, as their future home. It was a humble home. Around them was the forest with its lofty pines, gigantic oaks, and sturdy elms, to be leveled by the stalwart blows of the vigorous young farmer. The first settlers of the region endured many hardships—toiled early and late, but industry brought its rewards. The forest disappeared; green fields appeared upon the broad intervales and sunny hillsides. A troop of children came to gladden the home. The ninth child of a family of eleven received the name of Sylvester, born September 30, 1803.

The home was located among the foot-hills on the east bank of the Pemigewasset; it looked out upon a wide expanse of meadow lands, and upon mountains as delectable as those seen by the Christian pilgrim from the palace Beautiful in Bunyan's matchless allegory.

It was a period ante-dating the employment of machinery. Advancement was by brawn, rather than by brains. Three years before the birth of Sylvester Marsh an Englishman, Arthur Scholfield, determined to make America his home. He was a machinist. England was building up her system of manufactures, starting out upon her great career as a manufacturing nation determined to manufacture goods for the civilized world, and especially for the United States. Parliament had enacted a law prohibiting the carrying of machinist's tools out of Great Britain. The young mechanic was compelled to leave his tools behind. He had a retentive memory and active mind; he settled in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and set himself to work to construct a machine for the carding of wool, which at that time was done wholly by hand. The Pittsfield Sun of November 2, 1801, contained an advertisement of the first carding machine constructed in the United States. Thus it read:

"Arthur Scholfield respectfully informs the inhabitants of Pittsfield and the neighboring towns that he has a carding machine, half a mile west of the meeting-house, where they may have [66] their wool carded into rolls for twelve and a half cents per pound; mixed, fifteen cents per pound. If they find the grease and pick the grease in it will be ten cents per pound, and twelve and a half mixed."

The first broadcloth manufactured in the United States was by Scholfield in 1804, the wool being carded in his machine and woven by hand.

In 1808 Scholfield manufactured thirteen yards of black broadcloth, which was presented to James Madison, and from which his inaugural suit was made. A few Merino sheep had been imported from France, and Scholfield, obtaining the wool, and mixing it with the coarse wool of the native sheep, produced what at that time was regarded as cloth of superior fineness. The spinning was wholly by hand.

The time had come for a new departure in household economies. Up to 1809 all spinning was done by women and girls. This same obscure county paper, the Pittsfield Sun, of January 4, 1809, contained an account of a meeting of the citizens of that town to take measures for the advancement of manufactures. The following resolution was passed: "Resolved that the introduction of spinning-jennies, as is practiced in England, into private families is strongly recommended, since one person can manage by hand the operation of a crank that turns twenty-four spindles."

This was the beginning of spinning by machinery in this country. This boy at play—or rather, working—on the hill-side farm of Campton, was in his seventh year. Not till he was nine did the first wheeled vehicle make its appearance in the Pemigewasset valley. Society was in a primitive condition. The only opportunity for education was the district school, two miles distant—where, during the cold and windy winter days, with a fire roaring in the capacious fire-place, he acquired the rudiments of education. A few academies had been established in the State, but there were not many farmer's sons who could afford to pay, at that period, even board and tuition, which in these days would be regarded as but a pittance.

Very early in life this Campton boy learned that Pemigewassett valley, though so beautiful, was but an insignificant part of the world. Intuitively his expanding mind comprehended that the tides and currents of progress were flowing in other directions, and in April, 1823, before he had attained his majority, he bade farewell to his birthplace, made his way to Boston—spending the first night at Concord, New Hampshire, having made forty miles on foot; the second at Amoskeag, the third in Boston, stopping at the grandest hotel of that period in the city—Wildes', on Elm street, where the cost of living was one dollar per day. He had but two dollars and a half, and his stay at the most luxurious hotel in the city of thirty-five thousand inhabitants was necessarily brief. He was a rugged young man, inured to hard labor, and found employment on a farm in Newton, receiving twelve dollars a month. In the fall he was once more in Campton. The succeeding summer found him at work in a brick yard. In 1826 he was back in Boston, doing business as a provision dealer in the newly-erected Quincy market.

But there was a larger sphere for this young man, just entering manhood, than a stall in the market house. In common with multitudes of young men and men in middle age he was turning his thoughts towards the boundless West. Ohio was the bourne for emigrants at that period. Thousands of [67] New Englanders were selecting their homes in the Western Reserve. At Ashtabula the young man from Quincy market began the business of supplying Boston and New York with beef and pork, making his shipments via the Erie Canal.

But there was a farther West, and in the Winter of 1833-4 he proceeded to Chicago, then a village of three hundred inhabitants, and began to supply them, and the company of soldiers garrisoning Fort Dearborn, with fresh beef; hanging up his slaughtered cattle upon a tree standing on the site now occupied by the Court House.

This glance at the condition of society and the mechanic arts during the boyhood of Sylvester Marsh, and this look at the struggling village of Chicago when he was in manhood's prime, enables us to comprehend in some slight degree the mighty trend of events during the life time of a single individual; an advancement unparalleled through all the ages.

For eighteen years, the business begun under the spreading oak upon what is now Court House square, in Chicago, was successfully conducted,—each year assuming larger proportions. He was one of the founders of Chicago, doing his full share in the promotion of every public enterprise. The prominent business men with whom he associated were John H. Kuisie, Baptiste Bounier, Deacon John Wright, Gurdon S. Hubbard, William H. Brown, Dr. Kimberly, Henry Graves, the proprietor of the first Hotel, the Mansion house, the first framed two-story building erected, Francis Sherman, who arrived in Chicago the same year and became subsequent builder of the Sherman House.

Mr. Marsh was the originator of meat packing in Chicago, and invented many of the appliances used in the process—especially the employment of steam.

In common with most of the business men of the country, he suffered loss from the re-action of the speculative fever which swept over the country during the third decade of the century; but the man whose boyhood had been passed on the Campton hills was never cast down by commercial disaster. His entire accumulations were swept away, leaving a legacy of liability; but with undaunted bravery he began once more, and by untiring energy not only paid the last dollar of liability, but accumulated a substantial fortune—engaging in the grain business.

His active mind was ever alert to invent some method for the saving of human muscle by the employment of the forces of nature. He invented the dried-meal process, and "Marsh's Caloric Dried Meal" is still an article of commerce.

While on a visit to his native state in 1852, he ascended Mount Washington, accompanied by Rev. A.C. Thompson, pastor of the Eliot Church, Roxbury, and while struggling up the steep ascent, the idea came to him that a railroad to the summit was feasable and that it could be made a profitable enterprise. He obtained a charter for such a road in 1858, but the breaking out of the war postponed action till 1866, when a company was formed and the enterprise successfully inaugurated and completed.

Leaving Chicago he returned to New England, settling in Littleton, New Hampshire, in 1864; removing to Concord, New Hampshire, in 1879, where the closing years of his life were passed.

Mr. Marsh was married, first, April 4, 1844, to Charlotte D. Bates, daughter of James Bates of Munson, Massachusetts. The union was blessed with three children, of whom but one, Mary E. [68] Marsh, survives. She resides in New York. Mrs. Marsh died August 20, 1852, at the age of thirty-six years. She was a woman of the finest mental qualities, highly educated, and very winning in her person and manners.

Mr. Marsh married, second, March 23, 1855, Cornelia H. Hoyt, daughter of Lumas T. Hoyt of St. Albans, Vermont. Three daughters of the five children born of this marriage live and reside with their mother in Concord, New Hampshire. Mr. Marsh died December 30, 1884, in Concord, and was buried in Blossom Hill Cemetery.

Mr. Marsh was to the very last years of his life a public-spirited citizen, entering heartily into any and every scheme which promised advantage to his fellow man. His native State was especially dear to him. He was very fond of his home and of his family. He was a devout Christian, and scrupulous in every business transaction not to mislead his friends by his own sanguine anticipations of success. His faith and energy were such that men yielded respect and confidence to his grandest projects; and capital was always forthcoming to perfect his ideas.

He had a wonderful memory for dates, events, and statistics, always maintaining his interest in current events. Aside from the daily newspapers, his favorite reading was history. The business, prosperity, and future of this country was an interesting theme of conversation with him. In business he not only possessed good judgment, wonderful energy, and enthusiasm, but caution.

He was philosophical in his desire to acquire wealth, knowing its power to further his plans, however comprehensive and far-reaching. Immense wealth was never his aim. He was unselfish, thinking ever of others. He had a strong sense of justice, and desired to do right—not to take advantage of another. He was generous and large in his ideas. He was benevolent, giving of his means in a quiet and unostentatious way. He took a great interest in young men, helping them in their struggles, with advice, encouragement, and pecuniary assistance. Students, teachers, helpless women, colored boys and girls, in early life slaves, came in for a share of his large-hearted bounty, as well as the Church with its many charities and missions.

Mr. Marsh was a consistent Christian gentleman, for many years identified with the Congregational denomination. He was a Free Mason; in politics he was an anti-slavery Whig, and later a Republican. In private life he was a kind, generous, and indulgent husband and father, considerate of those dependent on him, relieving them of every care and anxiety.

He was a typical New Englander, a founder of institutions, a promoter of every enterprise beneficial to society.

BARNABAS BRODT DAVID.

By Rev. J.G. Davis, D.D.

In the early records of the French Protestant Church of New York City, appears the name of John David, a Huguenot, an emigrant, who married Elizabeth Whinehart. They settled in Albany, and had eleven children, of whom only five attained majority. Peter David, the sixth child, born March 11, 1764, married Elizabeth Caldwell, born May 24, 1764, the only child of Joseph Caldwell, an officer in the British navy. They also lived in Albany and had a large family of eleven children; Barnabas Brodt David, born August 8, 1802, the subject of the following sketch, was the ninth child and fifth son. On the death of his mother, which occurred September 17, 1808, the family was widely scattered, and the lad Barnabas found a home for the next five years with a family named Truax, in Hamilton Village, New York. At the end of this period he was taken into the family of an older brother, Noble Caldwell David, who resided in Peterborough, New York. Of his previous opportunities of instruction we are not informed, but during his stay of two years in Peterborough he was permitted to attend school part of the time. The death of Caldwell David's wife became the occasion of a third removal, which brought him to Keene, New Hampshire, into the care of an older sister, Mrs. David Holmes. The journey was made in the winter, in an open sleigh, without robes, and being poorly clad, the hardship and exposure were vividly remembered. He was interested in his studies, and enjoyed the privileges of the schools in Keene, so far as they were open to the children of the town. The question of an employment coming up for decision, it was determined by his friends that the lad should go to Boston and enter the shop of his eldest brother, John David, as an apprentice to the art of whip making. At that time no machinery was employed in the business, and the apprentice was taught every part of the craft.

Before the termination of his apprenticeship, his brother John David, was removed by death and an opportunity was presented of taking the stock and tools and carrying on the business. He was ambitious and his early experiences had made him self-reliant and courageous. The opening was promising, but he had neither money nor credit. In this exigency a partnership was formed with Mr. Samuel B. Melendy, who had some knowledge of the craft. With the beginning of the year 1821, the firm of Melendy and David raised a sign in Dock Square. The young men were willing to labor and they determined by industry and economy to win success. For a time the room, which they hired, served a two-fold use as they worked and slept in the same apartment. They lived cheaply and the work benches were cleared at night to furnish a place whereon to rest. Having no one to endorse a note for the firm in Boston, they had recourse to Mr. William Melendy, who had recently retired from business in the city and returned to Amherst, New Hampshire. By the most direct route, the distance from Boston must have been over forty-five miles, but Mr. Melendy, starting in the early morning [70] on foot, reached his destination at night, and securing the signature of his brother returned the next day.

Such pluck insured success. The business became profitable, the firm had a reputation for promptitude, and were soon able to command capital. Retaining the store in Dock Square as a salesroom, the young men adopted a more comfortable style of living. They were unlike in their tastes and temperaments, the staid, cautious and steadfast conservatism of the older partner, making an admirable combination with the enterprising and hopeful spirit of the younger. Mr. David was sagacious and ready to employ every advantage that would enlarge the manufacture, or perfect the workmanship, or promote the sale of whips; while his associate had a practical oversight of the shop and materials which prevented any waste. The demand for their goods increased rapidly, and with a view to larger facilities for the manufacture, and diminished expenses, Mr. Melendy came to Amherst and commenced work in the Manning Shop, so called, about a mile south of the village, and a larger number of hands were employed. In the course of three years, a salesman was placed in Boston, an agency started in New York, and the business of manufacturing wholly transfered to this town. There was an element of romance leavening these various transactions, as in December on the twenty-second, 1825, Mr. Melendy was married to Miss Eveline Boutelle of Amherst, and on the twenty-fifth of the same month, Mr. David was married to Elizabeth Welch Melendy, a sister of his partner. These were fortunate marriages. The parties were not only happy in each other, but what is worthy special notice, a few years later in 1831, very eligible houses were bought, one for each family, at joint expense, which were occupied without interruption till both couples had commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of their marriage. During all this period, the property was held in common, and the expenses of each family, however enlarged, were paid from the common fund.

In 1830, stimulated by a desire to perfect his knowledge of the business and secure any improvements in methods or machinery to be found in England, Mr. David sailed for Liverpool.

As might be anticipated, in subordination to this main interest Mr. David sought to enlarge his knowledge of English men and English institutions. He became familiar with their commercial habits, visiting public buildings and places of historical importance, so that fifty years afterwards he could speak of parks, streets, and sections of the city of London in which any recent event occured as if he had been an eye witness. He was present at the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway when Lord Huskinson was killed, being crushed by the wheels of the locomotive. At this time he saw the Duke of Wellington, with other distinguished men, members of Parliament, and nobility. On his return to America, he brought a machine for winding whip-stocks, the first ever used in this country. The machine was subsequently duplicated, and proved a valuable accession to the trade. He also introduced some new materials, and enlarged the variety of fashions. In other respects the manufacture was unchanged. The prosperity of the firm had no serious checks; they had agencies for the sale of goods in Boston, New York, New Orleans, and large orders came from other cities. They bought materials for cash, so that when the commercial crash of 1837 carried disaster to multitudes, they [71] survived. "We did not fail," said Mr. David, "for we owed no one anything, but we lost nearly all we had by the failure of others." The result of this experiment was a contraction of the system of credits and selling goods for cash or by guaranteed commissions.

For many years, the manufacture of whips was the most important business in Amherst. It gave employment to several persons and furnished the means of support to ten or twelve families. The purchases of ivory, whalebone, and other raw material, were usually made from first hands and in such quantities as often gave the firm control of the market; while in the style and workmanship of their handmade whips, they had few competitors.

With the enlargement of their resources, Messrs. Melendy & David became interested in other enterprises. They held real estate and buildings. They bought shares in the railways which were finding their location in New Hampshire. Mr. David belonged to the Board of Directors that laid out and constructed the Northern Railroad. Subsequently this property was sold, and with the proceeds they joined in new undertakings at the West, which subjected the firm to very serious losses. The business was entrusted to others, and unforeseen difficulties arose, attended by material disasters, which no precaution will certainly avert; and failing in the support which was supposed sure, defeat ensued. But these reverses were not without their uses, as subsequent events clearly demonstrated. Accepting the conditions, which were most disheartening, Mr. David and his partner addressed themselves to the work of securing their creditors and restoring their fortunes. It was a long and weary struggle, demanding persistent application, economy, and careful management. They were subjected to painful imputations and occasional rebuffs, but they also found sympathy, and at the end of nine years, in which they sought no relief from the usual claims of social and religious obligations, every debt was discharged and their real estate freed from all incumbrance. The example was most commendable, illustrating the sterling virtue and high determination of the men in circumstances where weak minds would have faltered, and unconscientious persons would have evaded payment.

Going back in this history to the period of their increasing business, we shall find that a strong religious element controlled the lives of both of these men. In the years from 1830 to 1836, which were so memorable in large accessions to the Churches of New Hampshire, the power of the gospel was manifested in Amherst, and these men with many others were persuaded to act upon their religious convictions and avow their faith in Christ. Mr. Melendy united with the Congregational Church in 1832, and Mr. David and several of his workmen followed the example in 1835; the character of all these men for integrity and steady habits had been good, but from this date a higher standard of conduct prevailed. A new direction was given to their thoughts, and the tone of the establishment was elevated by superior motives. While resident in Boston. Mr. David had been attentive to the vigorous doctrinal discussion which divided the community sixty years ago. He had listened approvingly to the preaching of Wayland and Beecher, then in the fulness of their strength. He was persuaded that the doctrines to which these divines gave such prominence were in harmony with the teachings of the New Testament; accordingly, when Mr. David accepted [72] the Evangelical system of faith as the ground of his own hope of God's favor, he acted intelligently. He acknowledged his dependence on the grace of God in Christ Jesus. He recognized the sacredness of the Christian calling. He became a student of the Scriptures, entered the Sabbath School as a teacher, and assumed the responsibilities of sustaining the ordinances of public and local religious worship. In 1846, he was elected deacon in the Congregational Church. He accepted the office with some reluctance, being distrustful of himself, but his counsel and service were of great value to the brotherhood. Intent on improving himself in all the qualities of Christian manhood, he was observant of the great movements of society, and deeply interested in the new and enlarged applications of Chistianity. He followed the operations of the American Board, as new fields opened to the missionaries of the Cross; keeping informed as to the changing phases of Evangelical effort in this and in foreign lands. In this particular he manifested the same accuracy which marked his knowledge of current affairs. He was familiar with the history of the United States and Great Britain, and having a lively admiration of learned men, statesmen, scholars, and divines, he was a reader of biographies. While emulating the excellence which he admired, these stores of information were employed to enliven conversation and to furnish material for public discourses. In the gathering of the people, whether for secular or religious purposes, he was often called upon to speak. His remarks were received with attention, and had weight with his audience, because they embodied the fruits of his study and reflection.

In the meetings of the Church for conference and prayer, he was often very helpful. He had too much reverence for the place and object of the assembly, to indulge in crude and repetitious utterances. He prepared himself for the duty, by recalling the lessons of his own experience or citing illustrations from the wide stores of his reading. His words were well chosen, and his thoughts seldom common-place. In the exigencies of the missionary cause, or on some occasion of special peril to the truth he would bring forward an instance of signal deliverance from similar trial, in the previous history of the Church, or in the lives of her servants. There were those, who might speak with more fluency, or employ a more impassioned manner, but no one spoke more to edification. His prayers also were marked by the same evident thoughtfulness and spirituality. He was not hasty to offer his desires before God. You felt, in following his petitions, that he had a message, and his voice would often be tremulous with emotion as he made supplication in behalf of the sick or the sorrowful; as he prayed for the youth of the congregation, or interceded in behalf of the Church and the country. As an officer of the Church, he was considerate of the feelings and wants of his brethren; visiting the sick, searching out the poor, and practicing a generous hospitality. Ministers of all denominations were welcome to his house, and among his chosen friends there were none held in higher esteem than the ministers whom he loved for their works' sake.

Deacon David was averse to strife and controversy; the convictions which he cherished had been matured by careful study, and he was ready to give them expression on all suitable occasions; but he avoided personal disputes, and the imputations that accompany heated [73] discussion. He knew that these controversies were unprofitable, and he consequently sought "the things that make for peace." When differences arose and bad feelings were likely to be stirred, he was happy if he could remove or allay the cause of alienation.

As a citizen, Deacon David exhibited a hearty interest in the prosperity of the town, and he did not shrink from the duties by which the community is served. He wished to have good schools, well made roads, and all public buildings convenient and in good repair. A modest man, not seeking office for himself, and always ready to commend good service when rendered by others, he did not decline when called to take office. He accordingly acted as a select-man, representative to the Legislature, member of the School Committee, in addition to special services when some interest or enterprise affecting the community was given in charge to a committee to act in behalf of the town.

Socially, his influence was constantly exerted in the promotion of whatever would elevate and improve the aims and habits of his townsmen. He was active in the movement for the establishment of a Library which should be open to all; in the absence of an Academy, he favored the introduction of a High School.

He constructed sidewalks, and along the streets, so far as he had control, shade trees were planted by his direction. He was also careful to maintain the amenities of life, prompt in meeting and reciprocating all social obligations. Somewhat above the medium height, erect but spare in figure, there was a mingling of dignity and sweetness in his expression which won your confidence. The promptness and despatch, which distinguished his methods of business, were manifest in the general ordering of his affairs. The practical forecast, which, anticipates the crowding of engagements, and maps out the work, was seen in the distribution of his occupations. The materials were in readiness for every workman's alloted task. Without formal designation, there was time for study, or the performance of civil or social duty, in the busiest season. It entered into his plans to maintain an order in his reading and recreations. His farm, his buildings, tools, equipage, and the whole estate, were kept in excellent condition. Without lavish expenditure, his premises wore an air of neatness and thrift. He was uneasy if his animals were exposed to ill treatment, and he tolerated no waste. With such habits, it was pleasant to be associated with him in any service. You had not to wait for him. He remembered his appointments. He was in his seat in the sanctuary before the opening of the service. No special message was required to secure his attendance at town meeting. The power of his example was elevating and wholesome, and as we review his life and deplore the loss of his presence and cooperation, it is interesting to hear the frequent and hearty testimonials to his kindness, and fairmindedness coming from men who were long in his employment; while others gratefully acknowledge his friendly counsel and assistance in their youthful days.

In politics, Deacon David was Whig and Republican; he believed in the policy of protecting American manufactures, and, during the most active period of his life, his opinions were in harmony with the sentiments of Mr. Webster. With the dissolution of the Whig party, and the undeniable intention on the part of the South to extend the area of slavery, he became a staunch Republican. On the election of Lincoln he [74] put forth his best endeavors to maintain the government, and when the call was made for troops, he was among the foremost to pledge himself and all that he had to sustain the imperilled cause of Liberty. He encouraged his sons to enlist in the army and two of them entered the military service of the country.

Deacon David had seven children, of whom five attained majority and became heads of families; three of this number are now living, two sons and a daughter; and there are fifteen grandchildren. He retired from active business in 1875, but interested himself in the affairs of the Church, and in the business of a son in Boston. But his health, never very robust, became impaired with the advance in years, and he withdrew more and more from public notice. His wife and children were constant with their grateful ministrations, and, under the oversight of attentive physicians, his life was prolonged beyond expectation. He retained his mental powers in great activity until the end, his memory of recent, as well as remote occurrences, serving him with unusual accuracy. He was seldom depressed, and had none of the "melancholy damp of cold and dry," of which Milton speaks, to weigh his spirits down. Being able to see friends, he conversed with the animation and intelligence of one in middle life.

The change came at length, and sustained by an unfaltering trust in the Lord Jesus, whom he had publicly confessed for nearly half a century, he fell asleep on the third of September, 1883. He had lived with his wife fifty-seven years, and in the same house for fifty-two years. Soon after his death, the Church adopted formal resolutions, setting forth the grounds of their gratitude to God for his valuable life and services as an officer, and expressing the sincere affection with which they cherished his memory as a citizen and friend.

THE BOSTON LATIN SCHOOL.

The one educational institution in this country which has the honor of ante-dating Harvard College by a few years, and of thus being the very oldest in the land, is the Boston Latin School. For two hundred and fifty years it has been a part, and an important part, of the town and city of Boston, influencing all its other institutions, social, literary, moral, political, and religious, and largely giving to the metropolis, directly or indirectly, its wide-spread fame as the "Athens of America."

The establishment of this School has its origin in a vote of which the following is a transcript:

"... 13th of the 2d moneth 1635 ... att a General meeting upon public notice ... it was generally agreed upon, that our brother Philemon Pormout shall be intreated to become scholemaster for the teaching and nourtering of children with us."

At this time, Boston was a village of perhaps, fifteen hundred inhabitants, and it was a hundred years later before it had reached as many thousands.

The first school-house was on the north side of School street, close by the burying-ground which had already received the mortal dust of several of the early settlers. It was a century before King's Chapel was built, but at the foot of School street, near the site of the Old South meeting-house, was Governor Winthrop's imposing mansion; and nearly opposite this, was the Blue Lion Tavern.

The foundation of this school was soon followed by several others. Charlestown had a school in 1636, Salem and Ipswich in 1637, and the Eliot school in Roxbury was established in 1645. The Latin school was alone in Boston, however, for nearly fifty years, and it was wisely cherished and nurtured by the [75] town. Mr. Pormout was paid a salary of sixty pounds a year, a sum considered comportable to the talent employed, and the grave responsibilities of the position.

The masters who succeeded to Mr. Pormout are, in their order: Rev. Daniel Maude, Rev. John Woodbridge, Robert Woodmansie, Benjamin Thompson, Ezekiel Cheever, Rev. Nathaniel Williams, and John Lovell, whose rule continued for forty-two years, or until the Revolutionary war. Among Lovell's pupils was Harrison Gray Otis. During the excitement of the war, the school was closed for a short time, but was again opened in June, 1776, under the rule of Mr. Samuel Hunt. He was in authority for twenty-nine years and was then succeeded by William Bigelow of Salem, who held the sceptre until 1813, when it passed to Benjamin Apthorp Gould, and in 1828 to Frederick P. Leverett. The later masters have been Charles K. Dilloway, who succeeded in 1831, Epes Sargent Dixwell in 1836, Francis Gardner in 1851, Augustine W. Gay in 1876, and in 1877 Moses Merrill, the present efficient master. Among these many school teachers, some have been famous for their marked abilities. This is especially true of Ezekiel Cheever, John Lovell, and Francis Gardner.

"Cheever and Lovell and Gardner, the Puritan, the Tory, and shall not we say, in some fuller sense, the man—are they not characteristic figures? One belongs to the century of Milton, one to the century of Johnson, one to the century of Carlisle. One's eye is on the New Jerusalem; one's soul is all wrapped up in Boston; one has caught sight of humanity. One is of the century of faith, one of the century of common-sense, one of the century of conscience. One leaches his boys the Christian doctrine, one bids them keep the order of the school, one inspires them to do their duty. The times they represent are great expanses in the sea of time. One shallower, one deeper than the other; through them all sails on the constant school with its monotonous routine, like the clattering machine of a great ship which over many waters of different depths, feeling now the deepness and now the shallowness under its keel, presses along to some sea of the future which shall be better than them all."1

The first school-house stood until 1748. Another was then erected on the opposite side of School street, where the Parker House now stands. In 1812 a new building was erected here. The Latin school was moved in 1844 to Bedford street, where it occupied the building recently torn down, until 1881, when the magnificent structure on Warren Avenue became its home.

A glance over the list of those who have graduated reveals the names of John Hull, Benjamin Franklin and his four fellow-signers of the Declaration of Independence, John Hancock, Sam Adams, Robert Treat Paine, William Hooper; Presidents Leverett, Langdon, Everett and Eliot of Harvard, and Pynchon of Trinity College; Governors James Bowdoin and William Eustis; Lieutenant-Governors Cushing and Winthrop; James Lovell; Adino Paddock, who planted the "Paddock Elms"; Judges Francis Dana, Thomas Dawes, and Charles Jackson; Drs. John C. Warren, James Jackson and Henry I. Bowditch; Professors William D. Peck, Henry W. Torrey, Francis J. Child, Josiah P. Cooke, and William R. Dimmock; Mayors Harrison G. Otis, Samuel A. Eliot and Frederick O. Prince; Honorables Robert C. Winthrop, Charles Francis Adams, George S. Hillard, Charles Sumner, William M. Evarts and Charles Devens; such writers as Ralph Waldo Emerson and John Lothrop Motley, and divines as Right Rev. John B. Fitzpatrick, Roman Catholic bishop of Boston, Right Rev. Theodore Dehon, bishop of South Carolina, and Revs. Cotton Mather, Benjamin Colman, Andrew Eliot, Joseph Tuckerman, William Jenks, Samuel Cooper Thacher, Francis Parkman, N.L. Frothingham, William H. Furness, Alexander Young, Frederick A. Farley, James Freeman Clarke, William Henry Channing, Henry Ward Beecher, John F.W. Ware, Edward E. Hale and Phillips Brooks.

THE WHITE AND FRANCONIA MOUNTAINS.

By Fred Myron Colby.

What would the world be without mountains? Geographically, one vast monotony of unchanging surface; geologically, a desert waste. Mountains are the rib-bones of the great skeleton of nature, and they hold together the gorgeous outline of river, valley, lake, and savannah that gives the earth all its varied beauty. Beautiful and grand as they are, they are as useful as ornamental, and serve a momentous necessity in mundane affairs. They are grand landmarks of the Almighty's power and mercy and goodness, and historically occupy a high position in the lives of nations.

The seers and saints of the old time speak of the strength of the hills as if they were the special gifts of the Creator to his favored people for their defence. The history of later nations has shown us that they have found more in the strength of the hills than defences against the attacks of outside enemies; that they have drawn from them a moral vigor of character, a keenness and activity of intellect, and a love of country, which has produced the most enduring and elevated patriotism. And, indeed, we must bless God for mountains; those who live near them are larger, better, nobler than the denizens [77] of the plains. "Flee to the mountains," cried the angel to Lot. Ah! there was meaning in the command. Men stagnate upon the plain; they grow indolent, sensual, mediocre there, and are only vivified as they seek the great alphabet of nature, as they pulsate with her in her wondrous heart-beats. It has been the mountain men who have ruled the world.

New Hampshire is a land of mountains. She is indeed throned among the hills, and well deserves the title of the "Switzerland of America." Her cloud-capped peaks, even in mid-summer, glisten with frosts and snows of winter, and they stand watchful sentinels over the liberties of her children. Our Alps are the White Mountains, and they hold no mean place beside their rivals in the old world. Their lofty elevation, their geological formation, the wild and romantic scenery in their vicinity, and their legends of white and red men, all concur to render them peculiarly interesting.

The White Mountain range is located in Coos, Grafton, and Carroll Counties, covering an area of about two thousand square miles, or nearly a third of the northern section of the State. Four of the largest rivers of New England receive tributaries from its streams, and one has its principal source in this region. The peaks cluster in two groups, the eastern or White Mountain group proper, and the Franconia group, separated from each other by a tableland varying from ten to twenty miles in breadth. These mountains differ from [78] most others in being purely of a primitive origin. They are probably the most ancient mountains in the world; not even the organic remains of the transition period have ever been discovered near them; and they are essentially of granitic formation. Underneath these coherent and indurate ledges the most valuble ores exist, but coal and fossils are searched for in vain. Many a change during the geological periods have these granite mountains looked upon. They have seen fire and water successively sweep over the surface of our globe. Devastating epochs passed, continents sunk and rose, and mountains were piled on mountains in the dread chaos, but these stood firm and undaunted, though scarred and seamed by glaciers, and washed by the billows of a primeval sea, presenting nearly the same contour that they do to-day. They are the Methuselahs among mountains.

The Indians generally called these mountains Agiocochook, though one of the eastern tribes bestowed upon them the name of Waumbek Ketmetha, which signifies White Mountains. A mythic obscurity shadows the whole historical life of this region till the advent of the white men. The red man held the mountains in reverence and awe. What Olympus and Ida were to the ancient Greeks, what Ararat and Sinai were to the Jews, what Popocatapetl and Orizaba were to the Aztecs, so were the summits of the White Mountains to the simple natives of this section. An ancient tradition prevailed among them that a deluge once overspread the land and destroyed every human being but a [79] single powwow and his wife, who fled for safety to these elevated regions, and thus preserved the race from extermination. Their fancy peopled the mountains with invisible beings, who indicated their presence and manifested their power by storms and tempests, which they were believed to control with absolute authority. The savages, therefore, never attempted to ascend the summits, deeming the undertaking perilous, and success impossible. But, though thus cherishing a superstitious respect for their utmost elevations, they still frequented the environs and mountain defiles, and propogated many marvelous stories of what they alleged could there be seen. Among other things, they gave accounts of immense carbuncles seen far up the steep and inaccessible sides, which shone in the darkness of night with the most brilliant and dazzling splendor.

The first white men who visited these mountains, were Messrs. Neal, Jocelyn, and Field, who explored the region carefully in the year 1632. They were incited partly, no doubt, by curiosity, but more probably by the hope of finding mineral treasure. They were disappointed in finding gold, however, but they gave a glowing account of their adventures, and of the extent and grandeur of the mountains, which they [80] called Crystal Hills. A few years later, Captain Richard Vines and others were attracted there by the reports they heard. They remained some time in their vicinity, but returned without anything more than a knowledge of their romantic scenery and the fine facilities they afforded for game. Since then, they have been frequented by hunters and men of science, and within a number of years they have become one of the most fashionable places of summer resort in the United States.

The White Mountain plateau is approached by travellers from four directions, namely: from the east by the Grand Trunk, Eastern, and Ogdensburg Railroads; from the south by Lake Winnipiseogee and the Pemigewassett rivers; from the south-west by way of Connecticut River and White Mountain Railroad at Littleton, and from the north by the Grand Trunk at Northumberland. The approach is grand from all sides, and the mountain combinations picturesque and beautiful. From five to six thousand feet above the plain, these mountains rise presenting every variety of mountain scenery, slopes, ravines, precipices, towering cliffs, and overhanging summits.

To the south of the mountains and nestling among the foot hills, lies Lake Winnipiseogee—"Pleasant Water in a High Place," or "The Smile of the Great Spirit," as the aborigines termed it, with its surface broken by hundreds of islands: one, they say, for every day of the calendar year; and its shores the delight of artists in search of the picturesque, as well as of the sojourner after pleasure. Its waters smile eternally pleasant, and the visitor will not find the fountain of perpetual youth of the swart old navigator a fable; for here he will regain lost youth and strength in the contemplation of scenes as beautiful as poets' dreams. O! Lake Winnipiseogee, we recall the sails across thy bright waters with delight, and long to see thy rippling tide once more murmuring beneath the keel of our boat.

What haunts form a magic chain along the verdant shores of this charming lake! The Wiers, Wolfborough, Alton Bay, Centre Harbor, each a name that moves the heart to thrill it. A voyage across the lake will be remembered a life-time. Says Edward Everett, commenting upon a sail from Wiers up the lake: "I have been something of a traveller in my own country, though far less than I could wish—and in Europe have seen all that is most attractive, but my eye has yet to rest upon a lovelier scene." A climb to the summit of Red Hill, at Centre Harbor, Starr King's favorite haunt, well repays for the labor. The lake presents a charming picture from its crest. Across its waters can be seen the domes of Belknap and more distant Kearsage and Monadnock. In the east are the Ossipee Mountains and bold Mount Chocorua. Toward the north is a throng of lofty mountains overtopped on a clear day by distant Mount Washington, which towers king-like over all his neighbors. In the west one has a view of Squam Lake, with its many islands bordered by beaches of white sand, the little village of Centre Harbor, Meredith, and that popular lakeside resort, the Weirs.

At the Weirs, which is a way-station of the Boston and Montreal Road on the borders of the lake, is a cottage city. Here in front of each domicile is built the miniature wharf off which is moored the row boat or yacht, dancing feather like on the waves. Lofty trees with dense foliage grow to the water's edge, affording grateful shade. Within the grove is an auditorium in one of nature's amphitheatres where the weary people, assembled from their homes in the dusty city, listen to words of eloquence or exhortation while fanned by lake breezes. On the sides of the hill the veterans of the Grand Army have erected barracks, and there they [82] annually assemble, build their camp fires, recount old scenes, fight mimic battles, and close up their ranks thinned by time. The approach to their camp is guarded by cannon, used to salute some honored comrade, and overlooked by an observatory on which stands no sentinel.

We had made up our minds "to do" the White Mountains, Molly, Fritz and I, the latter being an indefinite person, and we calculated on going prepared. We had spent a fortnight reading Starr King's "White Hills," studying handbooks and Hitchcock's Geology of New Hampshire, Then it took us a week to do the packing. One bright summer day we started; night found us at Plymouth on the banks of the Pemigewasset, at the very gateway of the mountains. We slept at the Pemigewasset House, where we were shown the room in which Hawthorne died twenty years ago, while on an excursion for health with his friend Franklin Pierce. That will be what Plymouth will be famous for one hundred years hence—the place where Hawthorne died. "It is a pleasant place at which to die," said Fritz, "but I had rather have been born there."

Following up the valley by the river-road through the towns of Campton, Thornton, and Woodstock, one sees himself surrounded on either hand by towering mountains and the most exquisite rural scenery. Another road following the Indian trail from Canada to the coast, over which the weary feet of many a captive passed in the old time, driven ruthlessly from their homes to the wilderness by their savage captors, passes through Rumney and Wentworth to Warren summit, the lowest land in the "divide" between the Connecticut and Merrimack valleys, yet a thousand feet above the ocean. Moosilauke, the ancient Moosehillock, here stands sentry, almost five thousand feet above the sea level. It is the western outpost of the mountain region and deserves a visit. A good carriage road leads from the station to Breezy Point House, at its base, where buck-boards are chartered for the ascent. At first the road leads through rocky pastures, thence into primeval woods in which the way becomes more and more precipitous; [83] and as we go up the trees become dwarfed to bushes, until as one emerges to the open space on the shoulder of the mountain a most impressive scene breaks upon him. An immense gulf lies beneath him, while before him towers the lofty summit.

The morning or evening view from Moosilauke is grand in the extreme. The valley of the Connecticut for many miles is in view, through which winds the "long river" like a blue ribbon. Over in Vermont are the Green Mountains, commanded by Mount Mansfield, while across the State and over Lake Champlain one catches a glimpse of the distant Adirondacks. In the south can be seen Ascutney and the mountains and lakes of central New Hampshire, while a distant peak beyond Monadnock may be Mount Wachuset in Massachusetts. To the eastward is massed an ocean of mountains, of which Mounts Washington and Lafayette are monarchs. To the north lies the Gardner range, and in the valley near at hand the sheltered community incorporated by the name of Benton and overlooked by Mount Kinsman.

As the sun sinks below the western mountains, one stands in brilliant daylight, while the valleys below him are shrouded in the gloom of night; when the sun has disappeared, darkness has come. One can well spend a night on the summit if only to behold the glorious sunrise in the morning. Before the dawn comes, one is on an island in an ocean of foam. The sun springs gladly from behind the hills on the eastern horizon, and scatters the early mists as by an enchanter's wand. As a matter of course there is a Tip Top House on Moosilauke, and a genial landlord.

Owl's Head the traveller passes on the right as he leaves Warren summit. Between [84] Owl's Head and Moosilauke there is a deep valley through which winds a road leading from Warren to Benton and Dansville, affording a lonely but pleasant route through the mountains.

"That road," said Molly, "looks as if it might be haunted by Claude Duval and his ilk; I suppose there are robbers among the mountains."

Fritz smiled. "We find them at the hotels now and then, and they wear diamond studs generally," he said. "Our modern highwaymen do not haunt lonesome defiles and cry 'Stand and Deliver.' That style is obsolete; nor are there any romantic stories told of their dancing on the green with the victims they have plundered. They are not gallant enough for that."

"I don't care," declared Molly. "I like the modern way best; besides we get our money's worth Why! any one of these views is worth, oh,—'ever so much,' which includes hotel bills and all," laughed the cynical Fritz.

At Wells River a very high bridge spans the Connecticut. Here the waters of the tumbling Ammonoosuc, the wildest and most rapid stream in New Hampshire, joins the Connecticut in its journey to the sea. The highlands of Bath repay attention as we journey northward. Littleton is a thriving village, which controls the business of this section, and promises to be a northern metropolis.

A few miles from Littleton is Bethlehem, a regular mountain village, with an altitude higher than that of any other village east of the Mississippi. This is one of the most charming resorts in the [85] White Mountain region. The long, main street of the town runs along the side of Mount Agassiz, and its elevation is such as to banish hay fever and all kindred complaints.

After we had dined, Fritz, Molly, and I, proceeded to investigate the place by carriage. The day was warm, but Bethlehem has the luxury of admirably-shaded streets; and although tropic heat may flood the outer world, they lie temptingly cool beneath the great boughs; delightful breezes sweeping from the mountains, so that a ride is always enjoyable. There are regulation drives, and there are other drives, for one can take a different route every day for a month, and each drive will seem to surpass the other. In fact, the drives, walks, and woodland paths about this village, rival those of Central Park in New York City. The hotels of the village are palatial, and compare favorably with the best in much older communities. Their accommodations are fully appreciated by the army of health and pleasure seekers who annually visit them.

This village has lately been directly connected with the outside world by a narrow-gauge road, which runs parallel with the street and joins the main line at Bethlehem Junction. In laying the track very little attention was paid to the grade, and the train follows the undulating surface. The train after leaving the junction seems fairly to climb to the upper level.

Southerly from Bethlehem Junction a narrow-gauge railway extends into the heart of the Franconia Notch, having its terminus at the celebrated Profile House, which is a considerable village in itself. At the end of the route the road skirts the shores of Echo Lake, a gem [86] of water surrounded by lofty mountains, a fit home for nymphs and naiads.

"I should like to read 'Manfred' here," said Molly one morning (Byron was one of her favorites) "It is just the place, mountains, forests and all, and who knows—the wizzard."

"There is the Old Man of the Mountain; perhaps he would volunteer," suggested Fritz.

"Well, it matters not which it was," said Molly, seeing that we were attempting to badger her. "Here is the hour and the scene."

"The truth is, we cannot appreciate Byron till we come here," pursued Molly. "If we could only have a tempest now. Ah, I can imagine those mountain Alps. How beautiful and grand it is. Within this wide domain romance, science, and nature, murmur an eternal anthem, which wooes for every soul that finds itself herein a new aspiration, and a realization that, after all our study and care, we have appreciated creation so lightly!"

That afternoon Molly had her wished-for tempest. The heat had been sultry, but by five o'clock a heavy wind began to blow and huge billows of clouds began to appear above the tops of the mountains. The sky grew blacker every moment. By and by a mighty river of clouds began to pour itself down over the peaks into the valley below; one by one each haughty crest disappeared beneath the flood. In a few moments every ravine was filled with rolling masses of clouds and the rain was falling in sheets. We could trace its rapid flight over the space between the hotel and the distant mountains. A gentleman who has been at the Profile House for several summers said that he had never seen so grand a storm-cloud as the one just described. When the storm was past and the clouds began to melt away, it was natural enough that we should call to mind the following passage from "Lucile:"

A whole host of natural beauties and attractive scenes lie at hand near this great mountain caravansary. Turn in any and all directions, at every point a view greets the vision which rivals the touches of an almost divine brush on Oriental canvas. Avenues lead through a perfect labyrinth of forests in all directions, and many are the famous sights to be seen. Profile Lake lies close by at the base of Cannon or Profile Mountain and Mount Lafayette. From its shore can be seen that inspiring curiosity known the world over as the "Old Man of the Mountain," about which much good prose and passable poetry has been written. The profile is produced by the peculiar combination of the surfaces and angles of five huge granite blocks, and when viewed from one spot the resemblance is perfect. Colossal as it is in its proportions, being seventy feet from chin to forehead, the lines are softened by distance, and the sphynx itself is not carved more justly. There it stands, calm, grand, majestic, wearing from age to age the same undisturbed expression of sovereign and hoary dignity—the guardian spirit of the region. No wonder the simple red man, as he roamed these wilds, should pause as he caught sight of this great stone face gazing off through the mountain openings into the distant valley, and worship it as the countenance of his Manitou. All are impressed with it, and its influence is magnetic.

To climb Mount Lafayette will be scarcely less interesting than the ascent of Mount Washington, though it is more tedious, as it has to be made wholly on foot. But the charming views from its sides and summit will repay the labor of the tourist. A fine view of the Franconia Mountains can be obtained from the summit of Bald Mountain, to [88] the top of which a carriage road has been constructed.

Following down the outlet of Profile Lake, the headwaters of the Pemigewasset, one may visit with profit and pleasure Walker's Falls, the Basin, the Cascades, and the Flume. The Flume is one of those rifts in the solid rock caused by some titanic force in ages long since. For many years there hung suspended far up above the path a huge granite boulder. In 1883 a sudden mountain storm caused a torrent to dash through the chasm, and the boulder became a subject for history. It disappeared, thus partially explaining how it was originally lodged in its former resting place. A short distance below the Flume are the Georgiana Falls, where the water descends for more than a hundred feet over a sheer precipice.

Franconia is a fairyland of wonderful fascination; and the weary of body and mind, or the despondent and languid invalid, and no less the strong and healthy, will find their physical faculties invigorated, and the mind and soul elevated by a sojourn among the attractions of that lovely town. It was with the deepest regret that we turned from those delightful regions. Our time was not lost, for as we pant and struggle in "life's ceaseless toil and endeavor," a thousand memories come to cheer us from those sojourns in this romantic and magnificent mountain land.

Again at Bethlehem Junction we follow the main thoroughfare through the mountains to the great chain of hotels of world-wide fame known as the Twin Mountain House, Fabyan's, and the [89] Crawford House. Up the valley of the Ammonoosuc to the Twin Mountain House, which takes its name from two prominent peaks of the Franconia range, is a delightful ride. We are now in the midst of the mountain region, the White Mountain plateau. Here nature, en dishabille, with locks unkempt and loosened zone, reclines at Ease in her most secret chamber, beyond the reach of intrusion, and neither thinking of, nor caring for, the critical philosophy of the outside world; an emerald-crowned Cleopatra, revelling in the midst of her great vassals.

The Twin Mountain House, like Fabyan's and the Crawford House, is a post-office. It is a hostelry, also, that is not surpassed in its management, cuisine or in magnificence by any in the chain.

"It is good to be here," said Molly, lying back in her chair on the long piazza, "while the wind blows fair, as in Indian myth blew the breeze from the Land of Souls."

"Do you remember the other time we were here, Molly?" asked Fritz, "and the beautiful moonlight evenings we enjoyed?"

"Oh, yes. How many nights we sat here or promenaded among the trees. It was in September and the moon was full. As she arose over the eastern hills and threw her light upon the valley beneath, I never saw her more majestic. The soft, mellow radiance of the queen of night filled every nook and crevice with light. The trees waved their branches, and beckoned the woodland nymphs forth to a dance on the green. Surely, it seems as if Shakespeare must have had just such evenings in his mind when he wrote 'Midsummer Night's Dream.'"

"Ah, that was a 'Lover's Pilgrimage,'" observed Fritz, grimly, "now it is a pilgrimage for—"

What days those were we passed in the upland region. Fabyan's is situated in the very heart of the White Hills and is the objective point for all tourists. From the verandas of this spacious hotel, one obtains an uninterrupted view of the whole Presidential Range, and can watch the course of the train of cars as it creeps slowly up the precipitous sides of Mount Washington.

Taking the train at Fabyan's, one glides rapidly up the steepest practical grade to the Base station, where he leaves the ordinary passenger coach and takes his seat in a car designed to be pushed up the Mount Washington Railroad. After the warning whistle the train starts slowly on its journey—the grandest sensation of the whole trip to the ordinary traveller. The most magnificent scenery is soon spread before the tourist. No other three miles of railway in the world affords such a succession of wild and startling views as the passenger has on his mountain ride on this iron line up the steep inclination of this mighty summit of the great northern range. We get glimpses of the wide valley below, the bold landscape ever changing, yet always filled with grand and startling outlines. Up and up we go. We pass Gulf station, Naumbet station, Jacob's Ladder, and the monument of stones which marks the spot where, in 1855, Miss Lizzie Bourne of Maine died from exposure. At last we are at the summit, in front of the hospitable looking Tip Top House. We are standing at an altitude of over six thousand feet above the sea, or to be exact, 6,293 feet, according to Professor Guyot, on the highest point of land with one exception east of the Rocky Mountains.

"Isn't the thought inspiring," I remarked to my companions, "that we are on the highest land for which our fathers fought a century ago?"

"And is it not the theme the ultima [91] thule of grandeur in an artist's pilgrimage?" said Molly. "What a prospect! The plains of Canada, the forests of Maine, the mountains of New York, and I really believe the sea, if I mistake not that faint blue line in the far distance over the billowy land! What a grand spectacle a sunrise or a sunset would be, viewed from this height!"

The next morning we saw the sun start from its bed in the Orient, swathed in radiant clouds and vapors, and rise up behind the eastern range of hills; we had never seen anything so beautiful and striking before, and the scene is one which neither pen can describe nor pencil portray. Our memory will not fail to cherish it as the choicest revelation to be seen in a life time.

"Do you know it was just one hundred years ago this very year, 1784, Mount Washington received its name?" asked Fritz. "Well it was, and eight years later Captain Eleazar Rossbrook penetrated into the heart of the mountains and made a clearing where the Fabyan House now stands. His son-in-law, Abel Crawford, the patriarch of the mountains, settled the next season in the Notch, in the vicinity of Bemis station. Captain Rossbrook built the first house for the reception of visitors in 1803. Ethan Allen Crawford, son of Abel Crawford, took Captain Rossbrook's house in 1817, and [92] two years later opened the first footpath to the summit of this mountain, where he soon after built a stone cabin. There, I give all that information to you gratis."

"Very kind of you, I am sure," said Molly, "but who will vouch for its authenticity?" you used to be a terrible story-teller."

"You would have us believe the staid muse very modest," said Molly. But I remember some one has said history is a great liar."

"Only absolute truth. Do you believe in the Trojan war? Do you believe that Marshal Ney said at Waterloo, 'Up guards and at them?'"

"Do you believe there is a Mt. Washington? Your iconoclasts would destroy everything. There are White Mountain legends, of course, but there is also White Mountain history, and the time is not so remote but that the data can be relied upon."

"No one can argue with you, Fritz," answered Molly. "I accept your data in this case. You are welcome to wear the wreath of victory."

A night spent at the White Mountain House, one of the old-fashioned hostelries, cheery, hospitable, and with an excellent cuisine, cool, airy chambers, where one is made to feel at home by the urbane landlord, Mr. R.D. Rounsend, and we turned from this section.

The Crawford House, four miles below Fabyan's, is one of the finest in its plans of the mountain houses, its wide piazzas extending the entire length of the buildings. It is magnificently situated upon a little plateau, just north of the gate of the White Mountain, or Crawford Notch. The Saco River has its source not far from the house, its birthplace being a picturesque little lake. At the right hand Mount Willard rears its shapely mass, from whose summit a glorious view can be obtained. The ascent is easily accomplished by carriage, and the prospect, though not so grand and wild as that from Mount Washington, exceeds it in picturesque beauty. The whole valley of the Saco, river of the oak and elm, lies spread before the vision. The grand outlines of the gorge, the winding road through the whole extent, the leaping cascades flashing in the sunshine, all appear before the eye as in a picture. One feels like exclaiming with Cowper:

"Heavens! what a goodly prospect spreads around,

Of hills, and dales, and woods, and lawns, and spires,

And glittering towers and gilded streams,

The stretching landscape into smoke till all decays."

One of the beauties of the Notch is the Flume, a brook that goes leaping through its curious zigzag channel of rock on the side of Mount Webster, hastening on its way to join the deeper current of the Saco. Then here is "Silver Cascade," which is above the Flume, a series of leaping, dashing, turning waterfalls, descending now in a broad sheet of whitened foam, then separating into several streams, and again narrowing to a swift current through the rocky confined channel. The visitor will pause by its whitened torrent, loth to depart from the scene.

The White Mountain Notch, after Mount Washington, is the great natural feature of the range. For three miles the road follows the bottom of a chasm between overhanging cliffs, in some places two thousand feet in height, and at others not more than twenty-five feet apart. This is the great thoroughfare of travel, from the northern towns on the Connecticut to Conway and the Saco valley, and vice versa; and through it pass the headwaters of the Saco, which afterwards broadens out into a great river, and flows with rapid course through the loveliest of valleys to the sea. Much of the natural wildness and grandeur of the pass has been destroyed by laying the line of the Portland and Ogdensburg Railroad, which has been graded through the ravine. Railroads serve a great utilitarian purpose, but they have their defects; it seems out of place to ride across Egypt or the Holy Land behind a locomotive; a prancing steed or a camel with tinkling bells seems the most fitting motive power. There is nothing sentimental about a railroad, but after all who would care to return to the old methods of locomotion?

The Willey House, famous in story, stands upon the Notch road nestling under the steep acclivity of Mount Willey, which rises some two thousand feet behind the house.

"Why don't some of our authors use more of the historical material of this region in story writing than they do?" asked Fritz.

"The material is so romantic that romance can add nothing to it," answered Molly. "But you forget Hawthorne. His Ambitious Guest has imparted a weird interest to the event. He makes a young man, travelling through the Notch, partake of the hospitality of the family on the fatal night. At the fireside [94] they fall to talking of their individual plans, the guest expressing himself as desirious of achieving fame. It seemed a terrible thing to him to die and to be forgotten, to leave no name behind and no monument to mark his resting place. In the midst of the conversation the ruin came, and the ambitious guest, flying with the family, found his burial with the others. The story will live in Hawthorne long after the true facts have been forgotten; or they will live because Hawthorne's narrative will have conferred immortality upon them."

This memorable event happened on the night of Monday, the twenty-eighth of August, 1826. A terrible storm of wind and rain prevailed, the mountain branches of the Saco and the Ammonoosuc speedily overfilled their rocky channels, and the steep sides of hills loosened by the rain swept down upon the valleys, destroying many an ancient landmark. One of these slides swept down toward the Willey House, then occupied by Samuel Willey, his wife, and family. The frightened inmates, seeking safety by flight from the impending ruin, were overwhelmed by the avalanche and perished, while the house remained untouched. The bodies of two sons and one daughter were never found; the rest of the Willey household lie buried in a small cemetery enclosure near the mansion house of Willey Farm at North Conway.

A most charming ride is that down the line of the Saco river to North Conway, whether by rail or stage. The beauty and boldness of the scenery on either side alternately enchants and awes.

"It reminds me of Switzerland," said Fritz, who had travelled on the continent, "only there are more rocks and [95] ledges visible. The lower Alps are clothed in green and the upper ones in perennial snow. The Simplon Pass is not nearly so rugged as the Notch. Only in the West among the Rockies is there anything to compare with this. But below, a few miles, we have a view as pleasant as Christian and Hopeful saw from the Delectable Mountains."

"And do we have to pass Doubting castle, as they did?" asked Molly. "I don't think I should care for their experience with giants and giantesses."

"Here are castles and strongholds, but the giants, if there are any, are as helpless as Giant Pope was, who could only sit in the sun and gnaw his finger nails."

The towering cliffs on either side smile like the walls of a prison. We felt a relief when once they were passed, and we found ourselves in the broader valley below, stretching wide and green and beautiful in the summer sunshine—the famous meadows of the Saco. All of the savage aspects disappeared or were seen only at a distance. Glimpses were caught now and then of charming vistas, with the waters of the Saco gleaming brightly between the trees. No fairer valley can be found in our land than that of the Saco; and as for skies and sunsets, stop at North Conway and see what cannot be matched in Italy or the Orient.

That is what we did. A broad, level plain, five miles long by three wide, is the site of the village, which is a quiet and picturesque rural hamlet of the average size of country towns. Far in the north towers the lofty Presidential Range, in full sight, the distance softening all harsh and rugged outlines into beautiful curves and combinations, Mount Washington wearing a snowy forehead often through the entire heated term. The swelling summit of Mount Pequakett rises at the north-east of the village, a lone sentinel, guarding the gateway of the mountains with bold and unchanging brow. On the western side extends a long range of rocky hills, [96] with the single spire-like summit of Chocorua far beyond, piercing the blue vault of heaven.

Sitting on the cheerful piazzas of any of the many hotels, one can breath the mountain air as freely as if they sat under the tower of Fabyan's or the French roof of the Twin Mountain House, but much of the grandeur of course is missed. The mountains do not seem to frown down upon you; they smile rather, and seem to beckon and wave as if desiring to gain your closer acquaintance. To know the mountains you must visit them, press their scarred rocky sides, feel their cool breezes on your forehead, then you will love them, reverence them. And this privilege is free to every one. Great railroads penetrate into the very heart of the hilly region, and the cost of travel is reduced to such a minimum that the poorest man can once in a while take his family for a pleasant sojourn among the mountains. One can start from Boston in the morning, take a dinner at the Pemigewasset House, Plymouth, and at night eat his supper at Fabyan's. And even a short visit is so refreshing, so invigorating to mind and body, that it repays when even the sight is not a novel one.

Glorious, grand, old mountain, lifting thy brow among the eternal snows; thou needst not the presence of Jove, nor the voice of a Homer to consecrate thee; and although Greeks and Trojans have never battled at thy base, still to us art thou dearer than Ida's wooded height where the gods sat enthroned to witness that divinely-recorded combat. Thy hoary peaks bear the names of chiefs and heroes who are not myths, and in the hearts of the people they are an everlasting memory.

THE PAST AND FUTURE OF SILVER.

By David M. Balfour.

Silver, next to iron and gold, is the most extensively diffused metal upon our planet. It is found frequently in a natural state, though never chemically pure, being invariably mixed with gold or copper, or sometimes antimony, arsenic, bismuth, quick-silver, or iron. It is distinguished by its whiteness, its brilliant lustre when polished, its malleability, and its indifference to atmospheric oxygen. It is remarkable for its beauty, and is ten times heavier than water. It does not appear to have been in use before the deluge. Moses does not allude to it before that event, but mentions only brass and iron; but in Abraham's time it had become common, and traffic was carried on with it, and its value was eight to one of gold. "He was rich in silver and gold, and bought a sepulchre for his wife Sarah for four hundred shekels of silver" ($250.) It was not coined, but circulated only in bars or ingots, and was always weighed. Silver usually takes precedence in the Scriptures, whenever the two metals are mentioned conjunctively. "Silver and gold have I none," said Peter to the importunate beggar, "but such as I have, I give unto thee." Silver is first mentioned in Genesis xxiii: 15; but where it was first found is unknown to us.

Silver was extremely abundant in ancient times. "And Solomon made silver to be in Jerusalem as stones." (I Kings x: 27.) "Cyrus heaped up silver as the dust." (Zacariah ix: 3.) In the earliest times the Greeks obtained silver from the Phoceans and Laurians. The chief mines were in Siphnos, Thessaly, and Attica. In the latter country the silver mines of Laurion furnished an abundant supply, and were generally regarded as the chief source of the wealth of Athens. They ceased to be worked in the second century of the Christian Era. At the period B.C. 500, the relative value of silver to gold was eighteen to one. The Romans obtained most of their silver from the very rich mines of Spain, which had previously been worked by the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, and which, though abandoned for those of Mexico, are still not exhausted. The most important use for silver, among the Greeks, was for money. At Rome, on the contrary, silver was not coined until B.C. 260.

Silver, as regards its mines, is represented in every portion of our planet. The richest silver mine in the world is Potosi; it is situated on an elevation thirteen thousand feet above the level of the sea, in a region of perpetual snow; it has always been worked in a very rude manner, yet it has already produced $250,000,000, and shows no signs of exhaustion. The annual product of the silver mines of South America, at the present time, is estimated to be $22,000,000. Their total product, to the present time, has amounted to $2,430,000,000. The silver mines of Mexico were wrought long before Cortez revealed them to the eyes of Europe, in 1513. Their annual product, at the present time, is estimated to be $30,000,000. The total product, to the present time, has amounted to $3,834,000,000. In 1850 Nevada was not reckoned among the silver-producing countries of the world. In 1867 she could proudly point to an annual product of $13,000,000; but it has declined to $6,000,000 [98] at the present time. The total product of silver in Nevada has amounted to $340,000,000. The largest nugget of silver yet obtained was dug up in Arizona, and weighed 43,200 ounces, valued at the same number of dollars. The highest silver deposit in the world is on King Solomon's mountain, in Colorado, fourteen thousand feet above the Pacific Ocean. The annual product of the silver mines of North America is estimated to be $76,480,000. Their total product has amounted to $4,783,000,000, more than one-third of the entire product of the world from the earliest times to the present day. The annual product of the silver mines of America at the present time is estimated to be $98,480,000, and their total product has amounted to $7,170,000,000, more than three-fifths of the entire product of the world, from the earliest times to the present day. The export of silver from the United States, since 1848, has amounted to $413,292,757. The annual product of the mines of Europe at the present time is estimated to be $15,000,000; and their total product has amounted to $2,600,000,000. The annual product of the silver mines of Asia (including Australia, New Zealand, and Oceanica), at the present time is estimated to be $480,000; and their total product has amounted to $1,685,000,000. India has often been represented as destitute of silver, but we have statements from Sir Roderic Murchison that the Kulu valley is so rich in silver ore that it could yield a large product for future ages. The silver country of Vasours comprises the mountainous regions between the Beas, Sainji and Parbutti rivers. The mines, though previously worked, are now almost forgotten. The same is the case with the Manikarn mines, hitherto known to be incalculably rich. The annual product of the silver mines of Africa is estimated at the present time to be $40,000; and their total product to the present time has amounted to $389,000,000.

Silver, to the amount of $2,913,000,000, is estimated to have been obtained from the mines of the earth from the earliest times to the commencement of the Christian Era; from the date of the latter event to the discovery of America $521,000,000 were obtained; thence to the close of 1847, an addition of $6,025,000,000 was made; thence to the close of 1884, there was added $2,344,000,000; making a grand total of $11,803,000,000. The average loss by abrasion of coin is estimated by Professor Bowen at one per cent. per annum; and the loss by consumption in the arts, and fire, and shipwreck at $5,000,000 per annum. A cubic inch of silver is worth, at 48 3-4d., or 97 1-2 cents per ounce, $9.75; a cubic foot, $16.848; a cubic yard, $454,896.

Silver, to the amount of $900,000,000, is estimated to have been in existence at the commencement of the Christian Era; at the period of the discovery of America it had diminshed to $135,000,000; after the latter event it gradually increased, and in 1600 it attained to $391,000,000; in 1700, to $1,410,000,000; in 1800, to $3,622,000,000; in 1842, to 4,998,000,000; in 1853, to $4,945,000,000; and at the present the amount of silver in existence is estimated to be $5,504,000,000; which, melted into one mass, could be contained in a cube of seventy feet. Of the amount of silver in existence $3,800,000,000 is estimated to be in coin and bullion, $1,200,000,000 in watches, and the remainder in plate, jewelry, and ornaments. Of the amount now in existence $4,722,000,000 has been obtained from North America; $613,000,000 from South America; $59,000,000 [99] from Europe; $50,000,000 from Asia (including Australia, New Zealand, and Oceanica); and $60,000,000 from Africa. The amount of the precious metals in existence is estimated to be $13,670,000,000.

Silver, so far as its annual product is concerned, has varied greatly at different periods. At the commencement of the Christian Era it is estimated to have been $4,200,000; at the period of the discovery of America it had diminished to $150,000; after that event it gradually increased, and in 1600 it attained to $9,000,000; in 1700, to $18,000,000; in 1800, to $38,000,000; in 1848, to $47,000,000; in 1863, to $63,000,000; and at the present time it is $114,000,000.

Silver, in performing the function of money, is of great antiquity. Asia was a commercial country when Europe was a wilderness; and as the East has not changed her habits since the remotest ages, silver alone is the money of that continent, inhabited by more than one-half of the human race, and among whom paper-money is unknown. The drachma was the principal silver coin among the Greeks, containing sixty-six grains of pure metal, worth about seventeen and a half cents. It furnished the type of the Roman denarius, containing fifty-eight grains of pure metal, worth about fifteen and a half cents. The silver mark was imported into England from Denmark by Alfred in A.D. 870; the penny was next issued in 1070; the groat in 1280; then came the shilling in 1503; and the crown made its appearance in 1607. The earliest silver coin issued in France was the livre, which appeared in 800, of the value of eighty cents. It steadily depreciated, until, in 1643, it was worth only sixty cents; it then, fell rapidly, until the epoch of the Revolution, when its value was only nineteen cents, and the franc took its place. The Henri was issued in 1012; the teston appeared in 1499; and the couronne followed in 1610. The first silver coin issued in the American colonies was in 1652, by Massachusetts, in the shape of pine-tree shillings; silver coins were also issued, at a later period, by the colony of Maryland. Silver half-dimes were issued by the United States in 1792; dimes appeared in 1793; and half-dollars in 1794.

Silver, in regard to coinage, has exchanged places with gold since 1848. Since 1726, to the present time, the silver coinage of the French mint has amounted to 7,500,000,000 francs, of which 4,000,000,000 has been issued since 1850; since 1664 the silver coinage of the Russian mint has amounted to 488,000,000 roubles, of which 188,000,000 has been issued since 1850; since 1792 the silver coinage of the United States mint has amounted to $325,968,571, of which $352,741,869 has been issued since 1850; since 1603, the silver coinage of the British mint has amounted to £40,000,000, of which £16,000,000 has been issued since 1850. The silver coinage of the United States, within the last decade, has amounted to $271,954,638.

Silver, since the commencement of the present century, has trebled its annual product, but its price has declined but twenty-two per cent. The causes of the depreciation of silver may be thus briefly stated:

1. The increased production of the metal; it having increased from $47,000,000 in 1848 to $114,000,000 at the present time.

2. "Council Drafts," or bills drawn by Great Britain upon India, have proved a most potent cause in the decline in the value of silver. The materials which the Indian railways, or the [100] Indian governments require, in order to conduct business, have to be largely imported from England, and therefore, payments are largely liquidated in these bills, which now average $60,000,000 per annum, while formerly they did not average one-fifth of that sum. These bills supersede silver, and the effect is the same as though the silver mines had been equally increased. The export of silver to the East has decreased from $80,000,000 in 1847 to $20,000,000 in 1884.

3. The demonetization of silver, which has taken place in various countries. In 1865 Italy adopted unconvertible paper-money, its previous metallic currency, nearly all silver, having been about $90,000,000, Doubtless, nearly all this amount was thrown upon the markets of the world. But this produced no appreciable effect upon the price of silver, which remained as formerly (62 3-4d.) until 1872; after which it fell rapidly, reaching its lowest point in 1876, when it stood at 46 3-4d. During the same period $30,000,000 were also thrown upon the markets of the world by Germany, and $10,000,000 more by the Scandinavian kingdoms. These direct effects of the demonetization of silver down to 1876 did not of themselves, produce any appreciable effect upon its price, as undoubtedly its very low price in 1876 was greatly due to panic. In resuming specie payments in 1879 the United States adopted a gold standard; Italy resumed specie payments in gold on the twelfth day of April, 1883; and in Europe, the previous annual absorption of silver in the leading countries has entirely ceased. The Occident, led by England, is abandoning silver as money, thereby reducing it to a mere metal; and thus depriving it of the chief source of that value, which it has possessed since the beginning of civilized society. Germany has discarded silver, and adopted a single gold standard; so have the Scandinavian kingdoms; and France has closed her mint, since 1877, against silver, to avoid being deluged with the metal, discarded by her neighbors.

Silver, owing to the lesser amount in existence, and its less convenient portability, is fast being superseded by gold in monetary circles. Of the amount of the precious metals in existence, $8,166,000,000 are furnished by gold; and of their annual product $98,000,000 are furnished by it. The ratio of silver to gold has risen from fifteen and one-half, which it has maintained since 1700, to nineteen and one-half, at the present time, and with a still rising tendency. Owing to the great loss by abrasion of coin the amount of silver in existence has gained but little within the last forty-two years, it having increased but nine per cent, while that of gold has increased three hundred and thirteen per-cent. The price of the precious metals follow the great politico-economic law of supply and demand. Gold, owing to its great demand for international exchanges, has maintained its present price for the last one hundred and sixty years, while silver has declined twenty-two per cent. within thirteen. The prestige enjoyed for centuries, as the instrument and measure of commerce in all the civilized and trading parts of the world, and its normal currency, has been gradually lost since 1843, and will probably never be recovered by silver.

RAMBLES AMONG MASSACHUSETTS HILLS.

By Atherton P. Mason, M.D.

In the old Bay State there is no elevation of surface that really deserves the name of mountain, but yet some of the more lofty eminences rejoice in this appellation which serves to distinguish them from their lesser brethren, the hills. In this paper, however, let us start on the assumption that all the elevated points in the State that are worthy of having received a name, from Saddle Mountain downwards, are hills. This uniformity of nomenclature surely will not detract from the almost sublime grandeur of Greylock and Wachusett any more than it will enhance the picturesque beauty of Sugar Loaf, or the Blue Hills of Milton.

There are three rather lofty and extensive ranges of hills crossing Massachusetts. The most western of the three is the Taconic range, which is upon the very border of the State. East of this, across a valley several miles wide, is the Hoosac range, which occupies eastern Berkshire and the territory between this almost Alpine county and the winding Connecticut. Still east of this is the hilly belt of country comprising eastern Franklin, Hampshire, and Hampden Counties, and the whole of Worcester County, to which range no particular name has been given. The Hoosac and Taconic ranges may be considered as a portion of the great Appalachian system of eastern North America, of which the Green Mountains of Vermont are a continuation; while the third hilly belt may be regarded as a side-show, so to speak, to the main exhibition of nature's mighty upheavals. In this belt Wachusett is by far the grandest elevation, and Worcester County may well be proud of the majestic pile in her midst; but as it has been so recently described in the Bay State Monthly, nothing need be said of it in this paper.

Scenery, in order to be truly mountainous, must present to the spectator's eye towering peaks, bristling crags and beetling cliffs, overhanging deep ravines and foaming torrents. Such objects rivet the attention and produce a feeling of deep awe and reverence as one gazes upon them and endeavors to contemplate the mighty forces of nature that gave them being. Taking the word in this sense it may truly be said that the scenery of Berkshire County closely approximates to mountainous. In other parts of the State the isolated hills generally present a rounded outline, and with a few exceptions do not inspire those strong emotions which one must necessarily experience while standing like a pigmy among the piled-up, craggy hills of northern Berkshire. Here is found the most lofty elevation in the State—Saddle Mountain—whose summit is three thousand six hundred feet above tide water. Its name originated from the alleged resemblance of its top to a saddle, and is certainly neither poetical nor romantic.

This is true of the majority of the names of our hills, and Professor Edward Hitchcock, in commenting on their uncouthness, concluded his disapproval with a pun worth preserving, by saying, "Fortunately there are some summits in the State yet unnamed. It is to be hoped that men of taste will see to it that neither Tom, nor Toby, [102] nor Bears, nor Rattlesnakes, nor Sugar Loaves shall be Saddled upon them." The highest point of this great mass is appropriately named Greylock on account of its hoary appearance in winter. As the cold increases the line of frostwork creeps down the sides, producing fantastic changes in the aspect of the hill. Saddle Mountain lies near Williamstown and is between the Hoosac and Taconic ranges. It is insulated, being almost entirely surrounded by valleys, and forms a very imposing object in the scenery of that region. It consists essentially of three distinct ridges, separated by two valleys, called respectively the Hopper and the Bellows. Greylock is the middle ridge, and from its lofty summit a grand view can be obtained, and it is much frequented by sight-seers during the summer. To the west is seen the beautiful valley in which nestles Williamstown, with its fine college grounds and buildings, and beyond rises the slope of the Taconic range, stretching from north to south in an almost continuous chain, while to the north-west are the lofty hills beyond the Hudson. The thriving town of North Adams lies in an adjacent valley to the east, and beyond is the Hoosac range. Looking towards the north or south one sees ridge after ridge, rising in constant succession, until the peaks vanish in the distant horizon. It is indeed a sublime sight, and may well inspire feelings of deepest reverence for the Power that controls those mighty forces that produced these everlasting hills.

Though loth to leave this grand pinnacle, we must not tarry longer upon Greylock. Let us now take a trip down the Housatonic valley, close beside the Taconic range. This forms an almost continuous ridge across the State, and its summit is nearly upon the line between our State and New York. There are no peaks of consequence until we get south of Pittsfield. The range is bold and precipitous on its western side, and fine views may be obtained from almost any part of the ridge. The highest point of the old stage road between Pittsfield and Albany affords a good prospect, though a view from an old road between Hancock and Lanesboro is perhaps more striking. On either side are the valleys of the Hudson and Housatonic, the cities of Albany and Pittsfield, the distant Catskills and the Hoosac range. A little south of Pittsfield is a spur from the Taconic range, parting from it at Egremont. The various portions have received different names—the northern being called Lenox Mountain, the middle Stockbridge Mountain, and the southern Tom Ball. The last named is the highest part of the spur, and is located in the township of Alford. The view from Tom Ball is very fine. A perfect panorama of hills, with handsome towns and villages nestling in the valleys, is spread out before the eyes, while the southern horizon is filled by the giant piles in the township of Mount Washington.

Going still further south we find just north-east of Great Barrington a vast mass to which the ugly name of Beartown Mountain was applied by our forefathers. Its altitude is nearly equal to that of the other great hills of Berkshire, but being quite gradual in ascent, and much rounded, does not impress the traveller as much as it might, and there are no peaks from which a good view is obtainable. Just west of this is a hill that deserves mention. It is called Monument Mountain, and was so named because of a great pile of stones found at its southern extremity, and supposed to have been placed there by the aborigines to commemorate some important [103] event. This hill rises only about five hundred feet above the plain, but its eastern side presents an imposing appearance, being an almost perpendicular wall of quartz. From the top there is an excellent view. Saddle Mountain can be seen, and portions of the Green Mountains, while to the west the Catskills, blue and dim in the distance, appear through a depression in the Taconic range. Near the highest part of the cliff a pinnacle of quartz has been parted from the main mass, and forms a tower fifty feet high, called Pulpit Rock. It was standing not long ago, but the frost may have toppled it over ere this.

Before leaving this portion of Berkshire we must visit the township of Mount Washington, near Sheffield. It consists wholly of an immense hill, and the few inhabitants dwell in a valley that is two thousand feet above tide water. This valley is bounded on the west by the Taconic range, which a little farther south rises nearly one thousand feet above the valley, and is there called Alender Mountain, and on the east by an imposing peak, originally called Ball, or Bald, Mountain, but which Professor Hitchcock named Mount Everett, in honor of Edward Everett, at that time Governor of Massachusetts. Mount Washington is not as well known as it should be. Comparatively few people in the State, outside of Berkshire, are even aware that such a town exists. But it would be a delightful place in which to spend a quiet summer. It is cool and healthy, the air is clear and bracing, and the scenery simply superb. The view from Mount Everett fully equals, if it does not surpass, that from Greylock. In whatever direction the spectator looks a most glorious display greets his eyes. Peak rises above peak on all sides, and the blue surfaces of lakes and ponds in the vicinity greatly enhance the beauty of the scene; while the charming valley through which winds the Hoosatonic River stretches far to the north and south.

One more locality must be visited before leaving this Alpine county of Berkshire, and that is Hoosac Mountain. Before the tunnel was completed a stage ran from the east side over the mountain and down into North Adams; so there is a good road all the way over. The walk is by no means difficult, and one feels well repaid for his labor. The road runs quite near the three main shafts that go down to the tunnel beneath. The woody growth is scanty, and hence the view is unobscured the greater part of the way. After reaching the summit the prospect towards the east is especially beautiful. The surface slopes off towards the Connecticut and is dotted with innumerable hills and ridges, among which winds the romantic valley of the Deerfield River. This is but a meagre account of the scenery of Berkshire, than which there is certainly none grander in the State, though in beauty it is inferior to that of the Connecticut valley.

In regard to geological formation it need only be remarked that the Berkshire valleys are almost wholly composed of limestone, and the supply for architectural and agricultural purposes being practically unlimited, will prove a source of great wealth to that region for many years to come. The hills, however, are all composed of quartz, gneiss, talcose slate, or mica slate.

We will now visit the valley of the Connecticut, where is to be found some of the boldest, and by all odds the most beautiful scenery in Massachusetts. The broad and fertile plains through which the river gently flows are, in themselves, charming, but when [104] we add to them the bordering hills, the scene is one of surpassing loveliness.

Between Hadley and Easthampton, the river runs through a gorge in a greenstone ridge nearly one thousand feet high. The portion of the ridge east of the river is called Mount Holyoke, and the portion west of it Mount Tom. This gorge is very interesting because of showing the amount of erosion that can be performed by water in long periods of time. In all probability the bed of the Connecticut was, in remote time, much higher than it is at present, and the river itself much larger, and the rich, alluvial plains that border it at the present day were once beneath its broad waters.

At one point in the gorge a mass of greenstone projects some rods into the river from the west side of Holyoke, having a perpendicular face twenty to one hundred feet high. This mass exhibits a columnar structure similar to that of the Giant's Causeway. The structure is not very evident above the level of the river, but at low water, by rowing along the face of this rock one can find the tops of regular columns reaching nearly to the water's surface. On the opposite side of Holyoke, not far from the road going to the summit, is another interesting example of these greenstone columns. Professor Hitchcock named these respectively Titan's Pier and Titan's Piazza; and any lover of geology is well repaid for the labor spent in getting a view of them.

Holyoke, though two hundred feet lower than Tom, is more frequented by visitors. The ascent is not very difficult, and the view from the summit is both grand and beautiful. The river is of course the most attractive feature in the landscape. Far to the north and south it stretches, like a silver, sinuous thread, gradually becoming narrower until it is lost in the distance. Owing to an optical illusion the river seems to ascend in both directions, and at the points where it is lost to view, seems on a level with the eye. It is one of the best examples of this species of optical illusion to be found in this part of the country.

A half century ago the river between this gorge and a point about a quarter of a mile north of it made a most magnificent curve, three miles long; but during the flood in the spring of 1840 a straight channel was cut across, and the water continuing to flow in the old bed as well as the new, there existed for some years what may be called an island in the river.

At least three educational institutions of importance can be seen from the summit of Holyoke—Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley, Smith College in Northampton, and Amherst College. Of the towns seen from here Northampton presents the most beautiful aspect. Its fine public and private edifices and grand old elms show to great advantage. One cannot tire of looking at the level plain stretching along on either side of the river, its surface divided into rectangular plats, covered in summer by the various luxuriant crops. The view to the south includes, of course, the river, and also the pleasant village of South Hadley with its Seminary. Springfield is not very plainly visible, but the spires of Hartford, Connecticut, can be seen on a clear day. To the south-west, and at one's very feet, is the wide gorge, with Tom rising directly across, its top being nearly two hundred feet above the position of the observer. To the north-west Greylock is seen shooting up its head beyond the Hoosac. To the north-east Monadnock looms up in the distance, while Wachusett lies low in [105] the eastern horizon. Close to the observer are Toby and Sugar Loaf, each presenting rather peculiar and fantastic outlines. The view from Tom is essentially the same as that from Holyoke, and embracing as it does a radius of at least seventy-five miles in every direction, over the most fertile and charming region in New England, is one of rare beauty.

The ridge forming Tom and Holyoke is, as has been said, composed of greenstone. All the other hills of consequence about the valley of the Connecticut are sandstone, and this is distinctively a sandstone region. Of the other three hills to be spoken of, Toby and Sugar Loaf hold about the same relation to each other as do Holyoke and Tom, the Connecticut flowing between Toby on the east and Sugar Loaf on the west. The former is nearly one thousand feet high, and lies in the northern part of Sunderland village. It is of irregular shape, being indented by a number of valleys, and is densely wooded, so that until within the last few years it has not been a very desirable place from which to obtain a view; but there are now accommodations for sight-seers, and some of the obstructing forest having been removed, interesting views may now be obtained from several parts of the hill. The view of the valley of the Connecticut from the southern part of the highest ridge is perhaps even finer than that from Holyoke.

Sugar Loaf, on the other side of the river, in South Deerfield, is one of the most picturesque objects to be found in this region. It is an isolated peak of red sandstone rising, on the riverside, by an almost perpendicular cliff, to the height of five hundred feet. From the river it looks wholly inaccessible, but on the opposite side is a very good path, rather steep, to be sure, by which one can gain the summit with comparative ease. Upon the top there is a house in which is a good telescope that visitors can use for a small fee, and a very extensive view may thus be obtained. But the most interesting feature of a visit to this hill is to stand upon the brink of the precipice on the eastern side, and look down to the river and green plain five hundred feet below. One feels an almost irresistible desire to take a plunge into the blue waters of the Connecticut.

This hill overlooks the place where one of the most inhuman atrocities was perpetrated by the Indians, and a scene of carnage enacted that will long be remembered by the people of New England. The Bloody Brook massacre occurred in 1675 on a spot about a mile north-west of this hill, and eighty young men, "the very flower of Essex County," while engaged in transporting grain from Deerfield to Hadley, were suprised by the Indians and murdered almost to a man.

A little north of Sugar Loaf is Deerfield Mountain, or, as it is often called in that region by the original Indian name, Pocumtuck, which is the last eminence to be visited in this locality. Its summit is about seven hundred feet above the village of Old Deerfield, and the bold sandstone brow overlooks the valley of the Deerfield River. This brow is bare and level for quite a space upon its top, and is called Pocumtuck Rock. It is a favorite place for picnic parties, and if there were a good road to the summit it would be more extensively patronized. It is certainly a most lovely spot in which to eat your evening meal, and gaze down upon the waters of the Deerfield, glittering in the rays of the setting sun; and as the sun descends towards the western hills, it is delightful to watch the shadows creeping along the plain [106] below, until at last the brilliancy of the river is snuffed out, and the shades of evening gather fast within the peaceful valley. An excellent view of Old Deerfield, or Deerfield Street, as it is often called, is also obtained from the Rock. But very few of the houses can be seen owing to the magnificent elm trees that line either side of the street, and form in summer a continuous arch of greenness above it; and beneath the shade of these old patriarchs of nature nestle many a quaint dwelling. There is much in Deerfield to interest the antiquarian, historian, and lover of nature; and all admirers of art will take an interest in it because it was the birthplace, and for many years the residence, of George Fuller, the painter, who recently died in Boston. Deerfield is one of the best places in which to pass the summer, but is not so much frequented by visitors as it once was, as there are at present no sufficient hotel accommodations. A hotel of considerable size was burned there two years ago, and has not been rebuilt.

We depart from the hills of the Connecticut and Deerfield valleys with perhaps greater reluctance than was experienced on leaving the Berkshire hills, for the reason that the scenery in these valleys is toned down and mellowed into a uniformity of beauty, which can be appreciated not alone in a single locality, but as a whole. The river forms a centre about which all these beauties are aggregated; while in Berkshire one is impressed more by single and somewhat startling evidences of nature's beauty and grandeur.

Between the Connecticut and the Atlantic coast are many beautiful eminences, a few of which may be alluded to. Big Watatic and Little Watatic are two prominent hills situated in Ashburnham on very high land, but are densely wooded and little visited. In Fitchburg there is a hill which, though inconsiderable in size, being only about three hundred feet high, is worthy of mention. It is a rounded mass of solid granite, and, though extensively quarried for many years, seems to have suffered very little diminution in size. It is called Rollstone Hill, and the name is said to have originated from an event that occurred over two centuries ago. When, in 1676, the Indians sacked Lancaster, among the captives carried off by them towards Canada was Mrs. Rowlandson, the wife of the minister at Lancaster. It is claimed that the party encamped during the second night of their march upon the top of this hill, which was afterwards called Rowlandson hill, and since has degenerated into Rollstone. This origin is uncertain, however.

This sketch would be incomplete without a brief mention of a few of the eminences about Boston. The Blue Hills of Milton form the most conspicuous range in the vicinity, reaching an altitude of over seven hundred feet in the south-western part of Milton, and afford a fine view of Boston and its suburbs, and the harbor.

Corey Hill, in Brookline, is easily accessible, and offers the best and most complete view that could possibly be desired. One sees Brookline, with its handsome residences and public buildings just below him; Beacon street extends in a straight line towards the north-east, and leads the eye to the Common and the State House. To the north, beyond the Charles, lies the great university city of Massachusetts, with the tower of Memorial Hall overtopping all other buildings, and to the south, and near at hand, are the sparkling waters of Chestnut Hill reservoir.

We have spent but a brief time skipping over some of the principal elevations in the State, and what has been said gives but an imperfect picture of the reality; for views from elevated points do not, by any manner of means, show one all that is interesting and beautiful in the scenery of adjacent country. There are deep ravines, romantic gorges, and wooded valleys that require individual inspection to obtain a true idea of their picturesqueness. But this sketch, such as it is, is offered to the readers of the Bay State Monthly, in the hope that it may, to some slight degree, lead to a more complete recognition and appreciation of the vast amount of natural beauty contained within the limits of our beloved Bay State.

ELIZABETH.2

A ROMANCE OF COLONIAL DAYS.

By Frances C. Sparhawk, Author of "A Lazy Man's Work."

CHAPTER XVII.

DESSERT.

At dinner Elizabeth was between Sir Temple Dacre and Major Vaughan. The former devoted himself especially to her. Opposite sat Katie, Lord Bulchester on one hand, while on the other was placed the guest last arrived, the one whose coming had been doubtful because it had not been certain that he would reach the city in time to accept his invitation. Lord Bulchester so far forgot his manners as to pay very little attention to the pretty young lady who had been assigned to him; his thoughts were all for Katie Archdale, his ears were for her, and his eyes, except for the defiant glances which shot past her at Kenelm Waldo, this last arrival, to whom had fallen the place on her other hand. Katie's air of pensiveness as she took her seat seemed to her aunt suitable and very becoming. But it was impossible to the girl's nature not to enjoy the situation, and the smile that often lurked slyly in the depths of her dimples and brought a light beneath the grave droop of her eyelids made her only the handsomer. Her dress of white India muslin was simple and beautiful; it heightened the effect of her gravity of demeanor, and by making her seem even more youthful than she was, softened any expression of enjoyment that flashed across her pensiveness. Elizabeth in her brocade thought how little the girl needed ornament. Edmonson, watching the high-bred air of the latter, her attentiveness and tact where she used to be dreamy, her face full of indications of strength and refinement, felt that in ten years, when Katie's attractions had waned, Elizabeth would have an added charm of presence, and an added power. He admired intellect, although he so readily adapted himself to people with tastes, and pursuits differing from intellectual, and secretly he had his ambitions. When he should marry well, as he intended to do, the wealth thus gained would give him the place to which his birth entitled him, and then he looked forward to political eminence. Supposing, only supposing, that one day he should be premier he mused, studying Elizabeth,—stranger things had happened—what a help a wife like this would be to him; her pride, her self-control, her graciousness, her wit would then come into play excellently. She belonged to him by right, and——. Again there came that ominous flash in his eyes as they turned furtively in another direction, and the shadow that lurked in his heart leaped forward again and clutched at its victim. Then Edmonson turned with a smile to Colonel Pepperell beside him, and asked some further particulars about the hostility of the Indian tribes.

Archdale, glancing at Elizabeth, saw that she looked extremely well. He was grateful for her courage and her helpfulness, and he understood better than she dreamed of his doing the distress that the present state of affairs caused her. He liked her in a spirit of comradeship. She seemed to him sensitive, yet he felt that in an emergency she would prove as strong to act as to endure. [108] In no case, he told himself, could he ever be in love with her; she was too cold, too intellectual, she had not enough softness or sweetness to charm him even if his fair cousin had never existed. But when there was need of a woman with pride and resolution enough to deny strenuously the force of a marriage ceremony that had never been intended, nobody could answer the need better than Mistress Royal. And it really was not necessary for that purpose that she should feel him such an ogre as he believed she did. However, that was of no consequence. He brought himself back forcibly from a gloomy study of possibilities. There was enough for a man to do in this new world if love were denied him. He began to talk to those next him about the war already going on at the North.

"Young Archdale has caught the infection," said Pepperell, soon after to his listener. "He will be in harness before we know it." Edmonson smiled musingly.

"The very thing," he answered, "the very thing, Colonel Pepperell, for a young man to do. If he go, I have no doubt I shall catch the fever, too, being in the same house with him; Lord Bulchester may also, who knows? there are three soldiers for you."

"For me, indeed!" echoed the Colonel with a laugh. "I should not refuse you, though; I should be proud to pass you over to our commander, whoever he may be."

Lord Bulchester at the moment looked as if his struggles for the coming months were more likely to be personal than political. Katie had turned to him with the kindest attention; her eyes looked into his with a shy interest in the devotion that she found there. She was answering some remark of his, more at length, it may be, than she need have done, but with a most graceful amendment of an opinion doubtfully expressed, when Waldo broke in with some question to her, and she finished in haste and turned to him. Bulchester turned to him also, and in the eyes of the two men as they met was war. Waldo had come back with the determination that while there was life there should be hope. He had until this time regarded Bulchester's marked attentions with the amusement that the nobleman's unattractive exterior was likely to meet with in a rival. Added to that was Waldo's conceit, which made him look through the large end of the telescope in viewing others. But now he had heard Katie's dallying—why hadn't she finished the fellow up quickly?—he had read the determination in Bulchester's face, and had remembered his title. Katie, meanwhile, with admirable unconsciousness, talked, now with one, now with the other, giving most attention to Waldo, and yet making Bulchester feel that if she had been assigned to him at dinner the greater share would without effort from her have been his.

The dinner went on. Sir Temple Dacre's comments were so kind that they could not be offensive. Most of them were made to Elizabeth. He admired Madam Archdale, and thought that her son resembled her; he thought that Colonel Pepperell had the air of a leader of men. "One born so," he said. "He seems always to know what he means, that's it, and he doesn't always tell you. On the whole, perhaps, the last is as great a point, because men don't take ideas readily; they never half look at them; they have too many crotchets of their own; or if not that, too much thick-headedness. The only way to do is to send out the result of one's conclusions in the form of an order, and say nothing about how it was come at."

"Then it wouldn't do in our part of the Colonies," she said. "I once heard of a little boy who was called 'Whatfor Winship' because he was perpetually asking the reasons of things. That is like us. We think a great deal of an aristocracy, provided we can all be aristocrats. Everybody is sure that he can decide any matter that comes up, and then from a sense of fairness we put it to vote. That's the way we manage here."

"Yes," answered Sir Temple, "we across the water know that you people are deuced fond of managing—Beg pardon.—But let me tell you what Walpole, our former minister, said one day when I dined with him. 'Going to America, I understand?' he asked. I said I was. 'Well, I hope over there they'll let you travel in the way it pleases you, it's more than they did to our orders; there is such an ado if those people are not handled with velvet gloves, and the thickest velvet we have, too. I would like you to tell me if you can make out what it all means,' he said."

"And so you're taking notes to see what sort of a set we are? One thing, Sir Temple, you'll find us loyal to our mother, though she does domineer sometimes. And tell Sir Robert that children old enough to contribute to the support of the family, as we do, ought to be allowed to put in a word now and then as to its management."

Sir Temple looked at her, not having an answer ready and little dreaming that a generation later this truth that the beautiful lips had uttered so simply, yet with a proud curve through their merriment, would be forced upon the English ministry at the point of the bayonet. But he lived to see it. Then he thought more than once of this day, of Elizabeth, with her dignity and her brightness, who had seen into the heart of one of the world's great struggles and had spoken the thought that later the cannon of a nation thundered through the earth. Now, however, he looked at her without a full idea of her meaning, thinking her only clever, and ready, and a trifle wanting in respect toward the powers that be, and that this lack came from her youth and should be treated with indulgence. It was a woman's way of looking at things, he said to himself, for he recognized sometimes the same spirit in Lady Dacre.

"Florence seems well entertained," he said aloud, looking at his wife, who was laughing at one of Edmonson's sallies. "That's a brilliant fellow, Mistress Royal; he will make his mark in the world; it's a pity, though, he hasn't a fortune to help him forward; he ought to be in Parliament."

"So he thinks, perhaps," she answered, remembering something that he had said to her one day on his first visit to the country, and understanding more clearly than ever the use that she might have been in the world.

"Very possibly he does. He appreciates himself, that is certain. It's half the battle to know one's own power; sometimes I think it's three-quarters of it. Because, you see, when a man knows his strong points he's always meeting others at his best, and as for his worst,—why, I imagine Edmonson would rather keep those dark." Elizabeth looked up inquiringly, but she said nothing, and Sir Temple added, "In fact, most of us would; we don't expect that charity from men which we find from Heaven." She did not answer, and he talked on, for theorizing was a favorite amusement, but his wife always [110] snubbed him when he attempted it, and most men either showed weariness or had theories of their own which they were in such haste to air that his had only half a chance. Now, here was a young lady ready to listen, and, since it was not because she was unable to talk well herself, her listening was a compliment that he felt.

At first Elizabeth did listen. But her companion fairly launched, went on excellently by himself, and involuntarily her eyes turned upon Edmonson. He was very handsome; she wondered if it was his conversation with Lady Dacre that gave him so much animation. Since circumstances had roused Elizabeth from the dreamy state in which she used to indulge, she had lost something of her belief in his intellectual superiority, for the things that had once seemed so difficult as to be almost impossible to her had suddenly become simple enough; now that, they being required of her, she found herself doing them. That was the way with Elizabeth; whatever she could do she thought easy; it was the things that she believed lay beyond her for which she had the reverence. She was not much used to praise; the little that occasionally fell to her surprised and embarrassed her, so that she seemed to receive it coldly, or else the thing itself appeared to her so trivial that doing it well was a matter of course. She learned with remarkable quickness, for her mind was in good working order and grasped strongly whatever it laid hold of. A few months ago Edmonson's social accomplishments had seemed a marvel to her. Already she was beginning to see that, after all, they did not require a very high order of mind, though she was far from undervaluing them or thinking it possible that she could ever have such power of being agreeable. She was wondering that day as she watched him how much better ambitions he had, and what life would bring him. She could not understand him.

But in a few moments she was watching another face that had now a stronger fascination for her than ever—Katie's. How lovely she looked. Her demureness was giving way under the assaults that fate was making upon it, and she was becoming more and more like her old self—with a difference, however, toward Elizabeth, if toward no one else. It was true, she had greeted her with effusive warmth, but even then Elizabeth had felt the change and drawn back humbly in response to it. But if more proof had been needed, it had been given. For, as they stood together a moment before dinner, Katie said, "How much pleasure it must have given you to meet these guests of Stephen's; no wonder they seem agreeable to you; it may be that you owe so much to them." Elizabeth looked at her in amazement. "You know," continued Katie, "that these are the people whose romantic story Master Harwin related to us one memorable evening?" "No, indeed, I never dreamed of it, Katie," she added, her voice trembling. "Why are you like this? You know how it all came about; you know that—" "Mistress Archdale," Waldo's voice broke in, and the young man came forward to be welcomed by a touch of Katie's hand and a smile that gave him some excuse for lingering at her side. Elizabeth, after responding briefly to his greeting, turned away. Her heart was heavy. It made very little difference about the Dacres, but she had lost Katie, that was a great deal. Last night she had thought that she might find the girl's resentment gone and her sense of justice, if not her affection, ruling her. At least there [111] was this comfort, thought the watcher, she had not broken Katie's heart, it had only been her own—that was better, after all, than breaking anyone's else. Yet a sudden choking came into her throat, she found her eyes grown dim, steadied her vision, heard a few words of what Sir Temple was saying about English rule, assented by a monosyllable, and went back to watching Katie, who seemed above sad fortunes as she sat so unmistakably enjoying herself. She talked a little with Bulchester, and smiled upon him until he beamed with delight; then leaving him full of a secret conviction that she found him more congenial than the neighbor on her other hand, she devoted herself to Waldo, whose fierce suspicions had died out so that he was tranquilly enjoying his dinner, or exchanging remarks with some other guest, secretly delighted with the skill which Katie showed in making herself agreeable to bores. Her bright brown hair would have gleamed in the sunlight without the gold-dust it was powdered with. Her complexion, one of Titian's warm blondes, was at its perfection; her eyes were grave enough for steady expression, and at times for a touch of pathos; it was at the sudden curving of her lips they filled with light, which was gone again directly, making the beholder feel that the sunshine had flashed over her face. As Elizabeth looked at her, and admired her, and felt her heart still going out toward her and tried to find excuse for her cruelty, the wish not to meet Katie's glance made her turn her eyes away for a moment. They fell upon Archdale, who sat motionless, looking at Katie. At that moment his mind, stung by jealousy, made one of those maddened leaps against the slowness of the age that prophesied the railroad and the telegraph by showing the necessity for them. The second man who had been sent off to England the day that Archdale had told Elizabeth of the misadventure of the first was clear in head and as quick in movement as means of locomotion at that time permitted, but it seemed to Archdale at that instant that the very sun had stood still in the heavens to make the summer days run longer, and that the most welcome certainty with such a messenger as had been chosen would come too late. When he should be free, let rivals do their best; but now——. He seemed to have lost himself and to be living in a dream of the girl, as if her presence and her beauty and a sudden sense of distance from her filled him with agony. Suddenly he stirred and his eyes met Elizabeth's and fell. He turned away quickly and began to talk.

For the moment she had no power at all. She was pierced by a sharper sense of her situation than had ever come to her before, and that had been enough. She was one too many in the world. She must give place, and she must not be long about it. A ringing was in her ears; a darkness was around her. But she called back her forces with an effort; she must not think until she should be alone. She turned back to Sir Temple, caught his last words, and answered him in haste, beginning at random and going on with a fluency which even he had not expected.

Colonel Pepperell, who was able to do more things at once than carry on his dinner and a conversation with his neighbor, looked down hard at his plate a moment and muttered under his breath, "Poor thing! Poor thing!"

CHAPTER XVIII.

LANDMARKS.

When the ladies had left the table and gone into the garden Elizabeth [112] moved restlessly from one to another. Before very long the gentlemen joined them, when Edmonson, after a little engineering, a few moments of detention here and there, came up to her as she was sauntering with several others on the bank of the little river. He contrived to separate her from the rest and walked with her a few steps behind them. His vivacity had not deserted him, and she felt that it would be no effort to talk to him, and that in listening she should be enough interested not to forget herself.

"Yes, but I don't care much for landscape when I can get anything better, and a woman who knows life and understands how to make herself entertaining is a great deal better. Therefore, at present I have no eyes for scenery."

"Well, what is it?" cried Elizabeth, with a smile that was a flash, possibly of annoyance, rather than a gleam of pleasure. "As the saying goes, what axe have you to grind, Master Edmonson? All this flattery must be for some object. Can I do anything for you? If only I had influence with the Grand Mogul, or any other high official, I would speak to him for you with pleasure. You see your cause is already won, so don't waste any more powder." And she turned to him with a little laugh that was both bitter and defiant. It was a bad time to tell Elizabeth Royal that she had powers of fascination. It was possible that Edmonson understood her, for his observations, though not openly expressed like Sir Temple Dacre's, were more pertinent. But this seemed to him an opportunity not to be lost. "The voice that soothes the wounds of vanity is always welcome," he mused. "I only meant that it pleased me to talk with you," he answered. "I had no intention of gilding refined gold. As you so frankly conclude I have an axe to grind, there is no reason why I should hide the fact. But you can not grind it, else I should come to you. I am equal to that. And he looked at her, first with a cool audacity in his eyes, which he knew she would meet; and then as he held her gaze with a sudden softening from which she turned away.

"Then, if I can not, why don't you ask some one who can, Colonel Archdale, for instance? He likes to be obliging—that is, I take it for granted he does."

"Perhaps I shall." They had left the water now and were following the path up toward the house. There was a pause. "The air of this place does not agree with you," he began abruptly, "You are much paler than when you came."

"I am happy to say it is quite the contrary with you," she answered. "Our sea breezes have given you the hue of health."

"Yes, that—and other things. You turn away from any reference to your self, but you can never prevent my caring more for your welfare than for anything else in the world." He was speaking softly in tones that were deep with earnestness. There was no doubt that in some way she did fascinate him.

She came to a halt and looked him full in the face without a blush, an added pallor, or any sign of emotion. At that moment she felt herself Archdale's wife, and felt, too, that Edmonson considered her so.

"You can't have any great objects in your life, then, if you fritter away your interest on an idle acquaintance whom you will forget as soon as you are out of her sight, and, if you'll pardon me, who will forget you, except when something [113] calls up your name, or a reminiscence of you." Even Edmonson as he stood staring at her drew his breath like one recovering from a shock. Then as he looked her face changed and he saw tears on her lashes. She reached out her hand toward him and raised her eyes to his with a pathetic appeal. "I know it's the habit of gentlemen to make gallant speeches," she said, "probably more in your own country than here; we are more simple, and as for me, I'm ignorant, I know that very well. I am not as quick as other people, I suppose, but I don't like this sort of thing, I never shall. Somehow, it hurts me, it seems as if one despised me. Well, never mind, it's not that, of course; you are in the habit of doing it, because it's the fashion. But why won't you talk to me naturally, just as other people do?"

Edmonson looked at her with absorbed attention. He was convinced. The thing was incredible, but it was true. She was not feigning, she did not understand him. Her blindness came from one of two causes, either she was incapable of passion, or her heart was not yet aroused. For he argued that if she had loved any one she must have read him.

"I will do as you ask me," he said simply, taking the only course that was open to him unless he had wished to banish himself entirely. But as he walked slowly on beside her again the evil look came into his downcast eyes, and the shadow darted out in his thoughts terrible and triumphant.

When they were near the house, and she was about to turn back again toward the others, still enjoying the summer air, he said. "Will you come with me into the hall? I want to ask you about something I noticed there." This was only so far true that he had found the antlers which he remembered hung there an excuse to stand face to face with her a few moments longer, and to talk with her, and have her answers even about these trivial things all to himself before the others came. It was of no use to pretend to himself now that disappointed ambition was the cause of his chagrin at losing Elizabeth; his feeling was not chagrin, it was something like fury. He had never denied himself anything, he would not deny himself now. As to this woman who the higher he found, and the more he admired her, the more she eluded him, and with every unconscious movement drew tighter the chain that bound him; he had a purpose concerning her. He was not capable of deep or continued devotion, but when he had an object in view nothing mattered to him but that. If he gained it, doubtless something else would absorb him; if he lost—blackness filled this blank, but here he had resolved not to lose.

As he stood in the hall with Elizabeth beside the open door and watched her delicate face and perceived the readiness with which she answered his questions in full, as if glad of so simple a subject, he said to himself, "That fancy of hers for me was lighter than I thought. She has not yet quaffed the nectar of love—not yet—not yet." He gave little attention to her story of the shooting of the stag, Stephen's feat when a boy of fourteen; she did not of course know as much of the history of the Archdales as did the petted young beauty to whom he had been talking before dinner, and she in the midst of her fluent account wondered in her own mind where she had heard it all, and remembered that it had been one of Katie's stories when they were at school together.

"You see how large a creature it [114] must have been," she finished, "the forehead hangs quite low, but I can't touch the tip of the under branch of this antler." She made the effort as she spoke, and reaching up on tiptoe, caught at the antler to steady herself. It swung a little on one side, and she stood looking at the hole torn in the tapestry by Stephen's gun on that day, when he had gone into the woods in desperate mood. It had been covered, and no one had noticed it, unless, possibly, the servants in dusting, but, if so, they had not told of the accident, not wishing to run the risk of being blamed for it.

"Did I do that?" asked Elizabeth. It seemed to her as if to have injured an Archdale to the value of a pin would be intolerable.

"No indeed," said Edmonson. "I saw it just as you moved. The antler is smooth here, see." And he made her pass her hand over the polished surface above the tear. "Perhaps there is some roughness in the wall," he added, "it may be a nail under the tapestry that somebody found out before we came."

"No," she said, "something must have struck against it and caught it, for so far from being rough here, it's hollow. I can put my finger into it; it is one of the openings between the beams." They went on talking while Elizabeth's finger was unconsciously tapping the wall through the torn hanging. All at once she broke off in the midst of what she was saying to cry, "Why, there certainly is something very strange here; it is like the canvas of a picture. Touch it, and see if it does not feel so to you."

Edmonson reached up his hand as she withdrew hers. His eyes seemed to scintillate as he felt the surface of the canvas under his finger; his face flushed deeply; it was with effort that he restrained a jubilant cry, and his tones betrayed a triumph that he could not hide, while excitement broke through his barriers of measured words.

"Really, we must look into this," he said. "This may be El Dorado to—some of us. Let us wager, Mistress Royal, whom it most concerns, you, or me."

"I suppose it's some old family portrait and belongs to the Colonel," she answered.

"Yes, I suppose so," he said, waiving the question of the wager as she had done. "Don't you propose to ask him?"

Elizabeth looked amazed, then flushed deeply as she realized her imprudence in having spoken of the canvas.

"Certainly not," she answered. "I don't see how what Colonel Archdale has on his walls concerns me."

"I should think a possible daughter-in-law would feel somewhat differently." She winced, then answered coolly; "She ought not."

"Well, at least, I am curious. I own it. I must see what we have unearthed here. Won't you ask the Colonel to show us his private portrait gallery? He will do anything for you, I notice."

"Certainly he won't do everything for you, or certainly you will not ask him—which?" insisted Edmonson.

"Both. I shall never test him, and I shall make no comments on what I may find on his walls. Nor will you, Master Edmonson, for no gentleman would."

"Why should I, if it were open? But I will tell you what I do object to, to my coming here and seeming to pry upon—the family. I wish it had been somebody else instead of me who had found it, or that it had never been found [115] at all. I beg you will spare me, Master Edmonson," And she looked at him with the rare entreaty of a proud nature.

"Perhaps it's not a picture after all," he said. "You may be mistaken. Don't you think so?"

"Don't fear that I shall speak one word," he cried as she hesitated. "I would sooner lose my life than annoy you, to say nothing of losing my amusement. If I can't see what is behind the hanging without doing that, why, I'll not see it at all."

"Thank you," she said gratefully, dwelling only upon the first part of his speech. "I was sure you would feel so."

"Yes, words and questions would be a clumsy way. I'll show you a better." And while she looked at him wondering what he meant, he turned from her and in an instant, bringing up a chair, had stepped upon it and made with his penknife a line across what he judged would be the top of the picture. Feeling along the length of this with his finger he cut a perpendicular line from each end of it, so that the tapestry fell down like the end of a broad ribbon, and showed that Elizabeth had not been at fault in her supposition. He had stepped down from the chair, replaced it, and returned to her side while she still stood in dumb consternation. He was smiling. "There!" he said. The thing had been done in a flash; he had scarcely glanced at the painting, until, as he spoke, he fell back a step. Then he caught her arm.

But he need not have told her to look, she was doing it with eyes wide open and lips parted and motionless. "I was right, you see. I had a right to do this," he said.

She drew away from the grasp that he still laid on her arm in his absorption. "Yes, I was right," he repeated. "Do you see?"

"No," she answered, "I understand nothing. Explain yourself. Or wait. It is time now to call Colonel Archdale. You will explain to him this liberty, and the meaning of this—this strange coincidence."

"Ah, ha!" he cried. "You see it? Everybody will see it; isn't it so? Tell me," he insisted.

"I suppose so," she faltered, looking at his triumphant face and feeling a presentiment that some evil was to fall upon the Archdale family. If so she would have helped to bring it.

"Let us send for him," repeated Edmonson. "Or, no. Let us surprise them all, give them an entertainment not planned by mine admirable host. Come, let us go out into the garden, and when we return, here will be a new face to greet us. That will be more as you wish it? I want it to be as you wish."

"The day will come when you will not say that," he answered, looking at her fixedly, then turning away with abruptness. "We must name our new friend," he added. "Suppose we call him Banquo's ghost? Banquo's ghost, you remember, existed to only one person. Did you ever see him on the stage? You must, some day in London. He rises up in solemn majesty from a secret trap door, and overwhelms Mac—Well! here's the trap door." And he touched the slashed tapestry with his finger. "Shall I tell you why I call him so?" he went on, coming close to her as if about to whisper some secret.

"No," she said, drawing back. "If you know any secrets belonging to this family, I don't want to hear them. [116] You will be obliged to apologize to the Colonel for defacing his wall, and whatever explanation you have to give, will be given to him."

"Do you know," he said, "that you have an exaggerated conscience? But you have the faculty of making it seem charming. As you please, then. I will give my explanation to the Colonel as soon as he is ready for it—as soon, and even before. Shall we go into the garden again until somebody comes?"

Elizabeth did not answer immediately. She stopped on the threshold where she had been standing and looked at the speaker with an expression he could not read. She had thought well of this young man. Was it going to be that she could no longer believe in him? She did not care so much for that in itself, but it seemed as if all the world in which she had moved, the ideal world founded on beauty and nobleness, even if, indeed, one cornerstone of it were pain, had fallen to pieces about her. Among so many ruins the ruin of another ideal would not be so very much, but it would give more pain than was due to itself. As she looked up at him Edmonson's face lost its exultation. "Perhaps I am mistaken; I ought to hear before I judge," she thought.

"I would rather stay here," she said at last. "There are footsteps now—it is Master Archdale." She thought as she spoke that the girlish figure walking beside him was Katie's, but when the two came nearer she saw that it was not his cousin to whom Stephen was talking so merrily, but another of his mother's guests. Katie was in the distance with Kenelm Waldo. Bulchester had disappeared for the moment—no, he was with Madam Archdale. As these and others sauntered up to the hall, Edmonson partially closing the opening by pushing the tapestry behind the antlers, retreated, and occupied himself with an examination of these long branches that like a personal weapon had divided the thick underbrush of his way before him. It was not until most of the party were in the hall, not until the Colonel had come in with Madam Pepperell, that he suddenly went forward and drew down the cut tapestry, and at the moment put himself into the same attitude with the man in the picture, and in this attitude stood with his eyes glancing keenly from one to another of the spectators.

There was a murmur, not rising to articulateness, which seemed to be surprise at the sight of the portrait so unexpectedly disclosed. Then followed a breathless hush. It was in the hush that Edmonson's eyes were busiest. But that, too, was short. For, a cry of astonishment rose from nearly every one in the hall. This, though coming from many throats, had but one import.

"What a likeness! Perfect! Wonderful! How came it there? How came he here? What does it mean?"

From Edmonson, standing motionless, the assembly looked toward Stephen, and from him, plainly as much at a loss as themselves, they turned their eyes where his were already fixed, upon the face of his father. But the Colonel, pale and amazed, with a dark shadow fallen upon his face from the door near by him—or perhaps from some door opening in his own breast—seemed no more able than the others to read the riddle. Indeed, he was the first to ask the explanation that all were seeking.

"When and how did you bring that picture here?" he said. "And whose portrait is it?" For he had rejected the first suggestion of its being Edmonson [117] himself. The dress belonged to an earlier period, and the face was that of a man somewhat older; it could not be thought of as the portrait of the young man standing beside it; it was simply a marvellous likeness.

"I found it here," returned Edmonson with a bow. "I have seen the copy of it many times, this is the original painting by Lely. It came here—I mean to the Colonies—by one of those mistakes that one member of a family sometimes, perpetrates upon the others. How it ever got behind this hanging it is out of my province to tell. I yield the field to Colonel Archdale."

"I know nothing of it," said that gentleman. "The house was built when I was a child. It was one of the preparations for my father's second marriage. The tapestry is an heirloom; it is so old that I am always afraid of its tearing, and it is never taken from the wall. My house is at the disposal of my guests, to be sure, but none of them could have destroyed anything else that I should have felt the injury to so keenly."

"It was not willingly done," returned Edmonson, "it was by the impulse of fate. As to the picture, it does not seem strange that we expect Colonel Archdale to know whom his own family portraits represent."

"It may not seem strange, but it is not unprecedented to be ignorant," answered his host. "My father must have known, but in obeying his injunctions as to care of the tapestry I had no idea that I was keeping anything but bare walls from view. Even these antlers are fastened to a great nail in one of the beams. I remember it since I was a child. The hanging was fitted over it, and I was glad when it was put to use in this way."

"Yes, no doubt he could tell us about the portrait if we could only get at him," returned Edmonson coming back to his subject. "But as to who the gentleman is, and why you have flattered me so far as to be able to discover any likeness between us, I owe you all an explanation. And Colonel Archdale, another one besides, which I am most ready to make, for having presumed to search out the painting when I found by accident that there was one behind here. No time is so good as the present. Then, too, I have aroused the curiosity of these ladies and gentlemen, and I am afraid they will owe me a grudge if I don't gratify it by telling the whole story."

Bulchester had entered behind the others unseen in the concentration of attention upon the portrait and its exhibitor, and had spent his moment of amazement in silence. He now glided up to Edmonson and said something to him in an undertone too low to be caught by anyone else. The other replied by a look of scorn, and a muttered something that sounded very like, "You always were a fool." Then he stood silent, glancing first at Stephen, and then at the Colonel. The young man faced him in haughty defiance of his manner which made his words almost insulting. The elder stood with his suavity a little disturbed, it is true; but no one except Edmonson found fear in his face, or interpreted what he said as a desire of postponement when he suggested that if there were anything interesting to be heard they should wait until all the stragglers had come up, and then adjourn to the drawing-room where they would be more comfortable.

Edmonson bowed slightly in answer, smiled, thanked him, but observed that it was most flattering to an orator to [118] find his audience increase as he went on, and began:

"I am to tell you who this gentleman of the portrait is, and why I resemble him."

All at once Stephen glanced at Elizabeth. He had found her in the hall with Edmonson. Had she any hand in this unveiling of an ancestral face? He thought of the possibility of shame that might follow—of shame, because he remembered the talk of the two men in the woods and the old butler's look at Edmonson that very morning. If this triumphant fellow had any such thing to tell, did she already know it? Was she upon such terms of intimacy with him as this? She stood apart, still near the doorway where Edmonson had left her. None of the curiosity expressed everywhere else was in her face. She seemed scarcely listening; she looked as if she were far away and the people about her and the words they were saying belonged to a different world. But it was not so, for it was the consciousness that she was in the world about her and bound to it that gave her the expression of struggle. Chains held her when she wanted to be free. She was one too many here. Before her was Archdale's face as he had looked at Katie, and between these two a stupid woman whom she had no patience with, whom she hated—herself. And now there might be coming an added pain that she had brought. She did not care especially for Archdale's pain, except that it was of her bringing.

But Edmonson went on talking, and Stephen, like the others, forgot everything in listening. He saw his father's brows contract, and knew that he was biting his under lip hard, as he did when he was much troubled.

Edmonson still went on with his story. He certainly made it interesting. Stephen's secret uneasiness passed into surprise, distrust, conviction, inward disturbance as he stood with his haughty air unchanged.

CHAPTER XIX.

RANKLING ARROWS.

Elizabeth was alone at last, that is, as much as a thought pursuing like a personality lets one be alone. When she crossed her room in the silence it was a relief to hear no voices, not to be obliged to answer when she had not listened and was afraid lest she should not answer rightly. Yet the events of the last few hours, the stray words as they seemed to her that she had heard, the faces that had been before her kept moving on before her now and repeating themselves faintly for a little time, just as one whose head is throbbing with some continued sound still hears it through all his pulses, even when he has gone out of reach of the reality. She seemed to be driving home with Lady Dacre's face full of tenderness opposite her. The sympathy had been almost too much for Elizabeth, her eyes had not met the compassionate glances. Sir Temple had conversed for three; he had been very kind, too, but the kindness hurt her, for she knew they pitied her.

Elizabeth had an humble way with her sometimes, and, as has been said, her own achievements seemed to her worthless. She had nothing of that blatant quality, vanity, which claims from others and by reason of its arrogance gets to be called pride; but her dignity strove above everything to be sufficient for itself. Such a spirit shrinks from claiming the appreciation it hungers for, shrinks back into itself, and passes for shyness, or humility, or anything but what it is, that supreme pride that seeks from the world its highest, [119] the allegiance of love, in return for its own love of what is true and grand. Finding a denial in those it meets, it draws away in a silence that to people who rate assertion as power seems tameness, for its action is beyond them, like sights that need a telescope, or sounds out of reach of the ear. Pride like this has two possibilities. It is a Saint Christopher that will serve only the highest. That unfound, it grows bitter, and shrinks more and more into itself, and withers into hopelessness. But if it find the Highest and draw upon that love too great for change or failure, then all things have a new proportion, for grown up to the shelter of the eternities, human judgments dwindle, and human slights, however they may scar, cannot destroy.

The person Elizabeth seemed to see most clearly was Archdale in that one moment in which all his heart had been revealed. Yet it seemed to her that it was not of him that she was thinking most but of Katie's pain and anger. If she were to be separated from Stephen Archdale forever, what wonder that she was grieved with the woman who had done it? For Elizabeth knew that though Katie liked admiration, she loved Stephen. Elizabeth herself saw that he was superior, not only in appearance, but in mind, to any of the suitors with whom she confessed that in event of the worst it was possible that the girl might console herself.

But Elizabeth was by no means so far above thoughts of herself that any other woman's suffering was bringing to her face the look that came upon it as her pride and her fear forced her away from the belief she had determined to hold, into a horror lest all she dreaded was true, lest she was really the wife of the man who at the very lightest disliked her. She could not blame him for that, and it would not have been the worst thing, since she cared nothing about him; she had not fotgotten his look of scorn on that day of the wedding, it came back to her often; but what of that, she asked herself, since she returned it? But to-night there was more than this; to-night his heart had been shown, and Elizabeth had seen how she stood for misery to him, seen, too, another danger which she had never thought of before. This possibility, remote enough, would not be put out of sight now. It might happen that if there were proved to have been no marriage between herself and Stephen Archdale, the certainty of this would come too late to save Katie for him. Elizabeth turned wild at the sense of her own helplessness. "I am one too many in the world," she thought; she could not have spoken, all her will was concentrating into action. Night had overswept her; she forgot everything in her thought for the beings whom she saw were covered by the same cloud. She was to be always an ugly obstacle to the happiness of Katie and of a man she pitied. Whichever way she turned it seemed that there was no other chance for her. She would not go through the world one too many. On coming into the room she had put back the curtains for more air and had blown out the candles. She did not light them again; all that she was going to do she could see well enough to do by the stars and the long summer twilight. She sat down in the armchair beside her table, drew her dressing-case toward her, and opening it, unlocked one compartment with a tiny key found in another. The package so carefully locked away here was something that Mrs. Eveleigh in one of her nervous moods had given her to keep, lest some accident should happen. To be sure, she had given it under promise that no one should know [120] of it, for she had used it for only a little while for her complexion, she explained to Elizabeth, and might never want it again. But, on the other hand, she might. It had been a good deal of trouble to buy it; she did not want to run another gauntlet of questions. So the powder had lain in Elizabeth's dressing-case, unremembered even, until to-night. Now she took it out with a firm hand; there was no sign of shrinking or fear about her, not because she was incapable of it, for she had her terrors, though she showed them less than some women. But she was a soldier in the midst of battle whose only object is to dislodge the enemy; what it will cost is not counted. She waited a moment, then opened the paper so steadily that she spilled none of the powder in the dimness. She had no last words to say, nothing to leave; it would be understood. She spread out the paper a little more, still firmly, still so absorbed in the thought of escape as to have taken no account of the way. Then she bent her face over it and slowly drew nearer. Suddenly she raised her head; it seemed as if a voice had called her, a voice so clear, so still, so full of power that she waited submissive and wondering. In another moment she came to herself, the brave self that suffering had thrust away usurping its place by a wicked will. She drew a long breath as if waking from a horrible dream, and sat quiet for a while, her hands clenched and brought together. She shivered in the summer air. Suddenly she rose, took up the paper, and going to the window, tossed it out, scattering its contents. "It shall never tempt any one like this again," she said aloud.

Then slipping down to the floor, she leaned her arms upon the windowsill and buried her face in them.

"God, forgive me," she cried. "It was Thy cross that I was casting off. But my life is in Thy guidance. I will take all the pain from Thy hand. Forgive me. Help me against my wicked pride. And in return for the misery I have brought, give me something good that I may do, some little favor. And yet—Thy will be done," she added brokenly, then trembled lest that Will should refuse the one request which seemed to promise any relief; trembled, but did not retract. "I will wait, I will trust," she said, and looked into the depths beyond the stars with no fear that her prayer would fall back into itself like a sound which, finding no home, returns weary, and robbed of its meaning and strength. She knew that the something which fell upon her was forgiveness too deep for words and an assurance of guidance. For the telephone is not new but as old as humanity and with a call in every man's consciousness. It summons him at times to leave what he is doing and listen. And when in some depth of need he sends a message, then, because no other ear than his may catch the answer given, is there for that reason none? The soul is like science; it cannot break through its boundaries and burst in upon the unknowable that surrounds its little realm of knowledge, but wherever it presses against these barriers they recede without being destroyed, and the adventurer, still in his own domain, brings back new treasures to the old life. The source of power is, we know, forever beyond us, but in going out toward that we enter the realm of power and are charged with it.

In the stillness that had fallen upon her Elizabeth rose softly, and made her preparations for the night.

Archdale came down early the next morning. He stood a few moments in the hall waiting for the appearance of the person he had come to meet. As [121] he looked out into the garden, a picture seemed to rise before him, one that was not within his horizon at present. He seemed to be looking out into a garden as he had been that morning when, with his mother, Sir Temple and Lady Dacre, he had paid a visit to Madam Pepperell. Looking into this garden absently he had seen Elizabeth. Unaware of visitors in the house, she was going on with her occupation of gathering roses. Archdale the day before, wondering about her complicity with Edmonson's scheme had had this vision of her come between him and any belief in this. It came again that next morning as he was waiting to see Edmonson alone, and imagined his mind full only of what he had learned from him the day before. He remembered the expression of her face; he had never seen it gentle like this. She had been standing only a few rods distant with scarcely so much as her profile turned toward him. A cluster was in her left hand; in her right a stem just broken off, holding a rose and several buds. She was perfectly still, seeming to have forgotten to move, to be lost in reverie. She saw him no more than her roses; she was alone with her thoughts. There was a strength and a sadness in the delicate outline, especially in the mouth, which he had not seen before, perhaps, because he had never studied her profile. As he had thought of this expression while he had stood before the uncovered portrait, he had said to himself that certainly she had not been willingly concerned in helping forward another's misfortune. While he sat watching her he had been inclined to go to her, obeying his impulse rather than his judgment, which told him that even if he were in any way the cause of her sorrow, he could do nothing to help her. But Lady Dacre had spoken to him at the moment, and before he could answer her he had seen a servant go up to Elizabeth, and had perceived that she was coming into the house.

This morning also it was Lady Dacre's voice that broke in upon him. She was hurrying through the hall with eyes on the open door.

"Good morning," she said. "Has Madam Archdale gone into the garden yet? I told her I should be there first this morning, and now she has stolen a march upon me." Archdale was startled. Yes, his mother was in the garden, he saw her now. Was the other only a vision? "Will you follow, Temple?" cried her ladyship. Her husband, who had been coming down stairs as his wife spoke, greeted Archdale hastily and accepted her invitation, for some one else stood in the hall, having entered it, his observer supposed, from the library, for he had not seen him on the stairs. This other one was coming forward to his host when Sir Temple passed, and in another moment he stood face to face with Archdale.

"Good morning," he said with a bow. His expression had changed from the sneer it had worn as he stood in the shadow covertly watching Archdale's face. "Friends, is it not?" he added, and he smiled and held out his hand tentatively. His host hesitated in the least, then took it. He had been obliged to remind himself first that instinct was not an autocrat of one's manners. Edmonson perceived the hesitation, slight as it was, and the shadow in his heart sprang up and darkened his face for a moment. Then he gave a short laugh, and turned toward the sunshine. "That's right," he said; "let us part on good terms; it's luck, not I, that you find against you."

"It was about this very thing that I was waiting here to speak to you this [122] morning," returned Stephen. "I was going to beg you to remain until we can look into things a little; you, and my father, and I, you understand? It can be done more conveniently here than anywhere else,—and I trust I need not assure you that you are welcome. Of course, I don't pretend to like the turn of affairs."

"Not necessary," interposed the other, the covert impertinence under his frank smile making Archdale flush, and return haughtily:

"I was merely going to say that we must accept with the best grace possible the consequences of things that happened so long before our day."

"This philosophy is delightful on your lips. As for myself, I shall not find that acceptance of the situation makes any demand for philosophical endurance."

He tossed his head a little as he ended in amusement at having finished his opponent at the same time as his speech.

"Perhaps that is well," returned Archdale quietly. "Then it is settled that you stay a few days longer with us?" he added.

"Thank you. I shall be happy to do so. When you need me, I am at your service; for you will find that I have proofs enough to be satisfactory. I have not considered that my unsupported word would be taken as sufficient guarantee in a case like this, where, you know, incredulity is so desirable."

"Yes, Master Edmonson, I confess, where incredulity is so desirable. Well, then, after breakfast I shall be obliged to trouble you."

"Thank you," answered Edmonson, marching off immediately. "I think Lady Dacre is in need of my services. She is struggling with a rose that has climbed up out of her reach, and her husband has disappeared altogether; he is probably assisting Madam Archdale. These husbands are not in the right place, you see." With which Parthian arrow he disappeared, and was soon filling Lady Dacre's hands with her coveted treasures.

Archdale watched him a few moments noticing his easy movements and his air of assurance.

"Impudent fellow," he muttered, setting his teeth, "to speak to an Archdale in that style. I can't believe him. I shall have Allston examine his proofs; he has a hawk's eye for flaws. But there's the likeness. Yes, his story may be true; but the man has the making of a knave in him, if the work is not done already."

It was almost dinner time. Elizabeth had been out sailing with Madam Archdale, Colonel Pepperell, and Sir Temple, and Lady Dacre. They were in the Colonel's boat; and Madam Pepperell, who had been detained, had sent her young guest to represent her. But Edmonson had gone off with his host to Colonel Archdale's, and Bulchester had mysteriously disappeared soon afterward. Elizabeth suspected that he had gone to pay a visit to Katie and had found her so fascinating that he could not tear himself from her society, or that he had wandered off somewhere by himself to dwell upon her perfections. "Poor simpleton!" she said to herself in the revulsion from her fears of the night before. At all events, the result was the same; there were only three at Seascape to accept the Colonel's invitation to go sailing.

It was always a refreshment to Elizabeth to be with Sir Temple and Lady Dacre; that morning it was even better than being alone; they were the only ones purely spectators in the drama of struggle and suffering going on under [123] the courtesies that were its scenic accompaniments. When they talked and jested it was out of happy hearts, at least so far as the things about them were concerned, and for this reason the strain was taken from her in their presence. She had only to be gay enough, and there was no need of watching her words lest they should be misconstrued. If she had been asked why anything that she said or did was liable to be misconstrued, she could not have told. This was her feeling, but she did not see her way; no flash of the electric storm that the blackness foreboded had yet shown her where she stood; but the elemental conditions affected her.

The boat on its return had landed Madam Archdale and her guests on the pebbly beach at Seascape, not far from the house. They had said farewell and sauntered up the path toward it and disappeared. The boat was about putting out again when a man came running up to the Colonel, and begged him to wait to speak with the Captain of a schooner standing out about half a mile. The Captain had come ashore on purpose to see him and was a little way down the beach now hurrying toward him. The business was urgent.

"Go back without me," the Colonel said. "I may be kept here for some time." But Elizabeth had had enough of sailing for that day; she was already on shore and said that she would rather walk home. As Pepperell left her with an apology she walked on a few rods, and stopped to speak to a fisherman cleaning his boat. She had seen him at the house and had heard that he had lost his child the week before. As she turned from him she went on slowly until she came to where a boulder towered over her head and seemed to bar her progress except along the shore. She knew the zigzag way that wound about its base and led her into the straight path again which would take her across the grounds of Seascape and bring her into the road not far from Colonel Pepperell's home. But before she had time to enter this way, voices on the other side of the boulder startled her. Her first thought was that Lady Dacre and her husband had come back. But she perceived that the tones were Bulchester's. She stood still an instant, wishing that she could reach the road without being obliged to talk to him or any one, she felt so little like it. But there was no hope of that. There was a rough seat cut in the stone on the other side; the views landward and seaward were delightful; the great elm near by shaded the place, and Bulchester had probably ensconced himself there with somebody else. She must go by, and if they even joined her, it was no matter. She made a movement forward, when Edrnonson's voice with a ring that she had never heard in it came to her ears. Yet it was not his tones, but his words, that made her cower and stand motionless with startled eyes and parted lips, until, slowly, as wonder grew into disgust, her face crimsoned from brow to throat and drooped, as if to hide from itself. Was this the way that men spoke of women, with sneers, with scoffing? In all her innocent life she had never looked even through bars at the world that such expressions revealed, dimly enough to her veiled in her simplicity.

The Puritan spirit of her country, that although it sometimes put bands on the freeman, chained the brute in human nature in his dungeon, lest his breath in the land should breed death, had been in such accord with her own fair womanhood that she had not realized that all the world was not as safe as her own home, as safe, though not as happy. Yet the sneer that Edmonson had [124] spoken seemed to him so slight, so much a matter of course, that it was forgotten as soon as uttered; it was merely his way of looking at a world unknown to his listener. She did not know of what woman it was that he had dared to speak with such contempt; probably of some one she had never seen. It was not at the stranger alone; it was through her at all women that the mire of suspicion had been thrown.

She could not go forward now, and while she stood trying to grow calm through her indignation and seeing that she must go home by the other road, which would take her quite a distance out of her way, scraps of the conversation that fell upon her ears found lodgment in her mind. The two seemed to be talking of some man now. Then all at once she heard Bulchester say:

"It's the oddity that takes you;"—she had lost what went before—"that will soon wear off. But I'm glad enough you're not as wise as I, to prefer the other. What makes you so sure, though, that he has secured your—?" In some movement she lost the last word and the answer, unless it were merely a significant exclamation of belief. "You wouldn't stand upon the chances of change though," resumed Bulchester, "I know you well enough. But, according to you, there's the insuperable obstacle."

"Insuperable?" he answered. "Stray shots have taken off more superfluous kings and men than the world knows of. And just now, with this prospect of war before the country, something is sure to happen,—to happen, Bulchester; luck has a passion for me, and after all her caprices, she is coming to—."

Elizabeth lost the rest of the sentence. She was already on her way home by the other road, treading softly while on the beach, lest the pebbles should betray her footsteps. When she was well out of hearing she stopped a moment to take breath. She stood looking out upon the expanse of ocean before her as if her sight could reach to the unknown world beyond it.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

MEMORY'S PICTURES.

By Charles Carleton Coffin, 1846.

It is a pleasure to throw back the door,

And view the relics of departed hours;

To brush the cobwebs from the ancient lore,

And turn again the book of withered flowers.

Within the dusty chambers of the past,

Old pictures hang upon the crumbling walls;

Dim shadowy forms are in the twilight cast,

And many a dance is whirling through the halls.

There are bright fires blazing on the hearth,

The merry shout falls on the ear again;

And little footsteps patter down the path,

Just like the coming of the summer rain.

I hear the music of the rippling rill,

The dews of morn are sprinkled on my cheek;

While down the valley and upon the hill

The laughing echoes play their hide-and-seek.

I roam the meadow where the violets grow,

I watch the shadows o'er the mountain creep;

I bathe my feet where sparkling fountains flow,

Or bow my head on moss-grown rocks to sleep.

I hear the bell ring out the passing hour,

I hear its music o 'er the valleys flung;

O, what a preacher is that time-worn tower,

Reading great sermons with its iron tongue!

The old church clock, forever swinging slow,

With moving hands at morning and at even,

Points to the sleepers in the yard below,

Then lifts them upward to the distant heaven.

How will such memories o' er the spirit stray,

Of hopes and joys, of sorrows and of tears;

They are the tomb-stones time will ne'er decay,

Although the moss will gather with the years.

EARLY ENGLISH POETRY.

By Professor Edwin H. Sanborn, LL.D.

Our Saxon ancestors when they conquered England, were rude, barbarous, and cruel. The gods of their worship were bloodthirsty and revengeful. Odin, their chief divinity, in his celestial hall drank ale from the skulls of his enemies. In the year 596, the Monk Augustine, or Austin, was sent by Pope Gregory to attempt their conversion to Christianity. He and his associates were so successful that on one occasion ten thousand converts were baptized in one day. Of course their conversion was external and nominal. They still clung to their old superstitions and customs. But with the new religion came new ideas.

Manuscripts were circulated; monasteries and schools were founded, and learning was somewhat diffused. The Saxon language is marked by three several epochs:

1st. From the irruption of the Saxons into Britain, A.D. 449, to the invasion of the Danes, including a period of 330 years.

3d. The Norman-Saxon era, running down to the close of Henry II's reign. Of the first period, but a single specimen remains, and that a quotation by King Alfred; of the 2d period, numerous specimens both in verse and prose are extant; with the last period, the annals of English poetry commence.

The three dialects of these three literary epochs illustrate fully the changes which the old Saxon tongue underwent during the five centuries of its growth into the modern English.

Learning was chiefly confined to the church, during the dark ages; of course, the great lights of Saxon England were prelates, except Alfred, and most of them wrote in Latin.

The venerable Bede (born 673, died 735), as he is styled, who wrote in the eighth century, was a profoundly learned man for those times. His writings embrace all topics then included in the knowledge of the schools or the Church. His works were published at Cologne, in 1612, in eight folio volumes. Another of the ornaments of this century was Alcuin, librarian and pupil of Egbert, Archbishop of York. He enjoyed a European reputation; was invited to France, by Charlemangne, to superintend his own studies; and was thought by some to have been the founder of the University of Paris. He was contemporary with Bede, was acquainted with the Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, languages and composed treatises on music, logic, rhetoric, astronomy and grammar; besides lives of saints, commentaries on the Bible, homiles, epistles and verses.

From the age of these authors learning declined till Alfred appeared. "At my accession to the throne," he remarks, "all knowledge and learning were extinguished in the Englsh nation, insomuch, that there were very few to the south of the Humber who understood the common prayers of the Church, or were capable of translating a single sentence of Latin into English; but to the north of the Thames, I cannot recollect so much as one who could do this." King Alfred was an eminent lover and promotor of learning. His works in the Saxon tongue, both original and translated, were numerous and valuable. His glory [126] as a scholar is not eclipsed by his fame as a legislator. In both respects he has no peer in England's line of Kings. He is reputed to have been the founder of the University of Oxford, as well as the originator of the "Trial by Jury." He died A.D. 900 or 901.

John Scot, or Johannes Scotus Engena, flourished during Alfred's reign, was a lecturer at Oxford, and the founder or chief prompter of scholastic divinity. The earliest specimen of the Anglo-Saxon language extant is the Lord's prayer, translated from the Greek by Ealdfride, Bishop of Sindisfarne, or Holy Island, about the year 700:

"Urin	Fader	thic	arth	in heofnas;
Our	father	which	art	in heaven;

sic	gehalgud	thin	noma;
be	hallowed	thy	name;

to cymeth	thin	ryc;
to come	thy	kingdom:

sic	thin	willa	sue	is in heofnas	&	in eorthe;
be	thy	will	so	is in heaven	and	in earth;

urin	hlaf	ofirwistlic	sel	us to daig;
our	loaf	super-excellent	give	us to day;

and forgefe	us scylda	urna;
and forgive	us debts	ours;

sue	we forgefan	scyldgum	urum;
so	we forgiven	debts of	ours;

and no	inlead	usig	in	custnung;
and not	lead	us	into	temptation;

ah	gefrig	usich	from ifle.
but	free	us each	from evil.

The new Danish irruptions again arrested the progress of learning, and ignorance and misery, as is usual, followed in the train of war. Alfred had restored learning and promoted the arts of peace. But his successors failed to sustain the institutions he planted. He is said to have shone with the lustre of the brightest day of summer amidst the gloom of a long, dark, and stormy, winter. Before the Norman conquest the Anglo-Saxon tongue fell into disrepute; and French teachers and French manners were affected by the high-born.

During the reign of Edward, the Confessor, it ceased to be cultivated; and after the Conqueror, it became more barbarous and vulgar, as it was then the sign of servility, and the badge of an enslaved race.

As early as the year 652, the Anglo-Saxons were accustomed to send their youth to French monasteries to be educated. In succeeding centuries the court and nobility were intimately allied to the magnates of France; and the adoption of French manners was deemed an accomplishment. The conquerors commanded the laws to be administered in French. Children at school were forbidden to read their native language, and the English name became a term of reproach. An old writer in the eleventh century says: "Children in scole, agenst the usage and manir of all other nations, beeth compelled for to leve hire own langage, and for to construe his lessons and thynges in Frenche, and so they haveth sethe Normans came first into England." The Saxon was spoken by the peasants, in the country, yet not without an intermixture of French; the courtly language was French with some vestiges of the vernacular Saxon.

The Conqueror's army was composed of the flower of the Norman nobility. They brought with them the taste, the arts, and the refinements, they had acquired in France. European schools and scholars had been greatly benefitted by studying Latin versions of Greek philosophers from the Arabic. Many learned men of the laity also became teachers, and the Church no longer enjoyed a monopoly of letters. They travelled into Spain to attend the Arabic schools.

It is a remarkable fact that Greek learning should have travelled through Bagdad to reach Europe.

The Arabs were as fond of letters as of war. In the eighth century, when they overran the Asiatic provinces, they found many Greek books which they read with eagerness. They translated such as best pleased them into Arabic. Greek poetry they rejected because it was polytheistic. Of Greek history they made no use, because it recorded events prior to the advent of their prophet. The politics of Greece and its eloquence were not congenial to their despotic notions, and so they passed them by. Grecian ethics were suspended by the Koran, hence Plato was overlooked. Mathematics, metaphysics, logic, and medicine, accorded with their tastes. Hence they translated and studied Aristotle, Galen, and Hippocrates, and illustrated them with voluminous commentaries. These works stimulated native authors to write new treatises. The Arabs, therefore, became distinguished for their skill in logic, medicine, mathematics, and kindred studies. They founded universities during the eighth century in the cities of Spain and Africa. Charlemagne commanded their books to be translated into Latin; thus Aristotle entered Europe through Asia by the double door of the Arabic and Latin tongues, and, by long prescription, still holds his place in European schools.

Charlemagne founded the universities of Bononia, Pavia, Paris, and Osnaburg, in Hanover. These became centres for propagating the new sciences. The Normans, too, shared in the general progress of learning, and carried with them their attainments into England. The wild imagination of the Saracens kindled a love of romantic fiction, wherever their influence was felt. The crusades made the Europeans intimately acquainted with the literature of the Arabs. Says Marton, who maintains that romantic fiction originated in Arabia, in his "History of English Poetry," "Amid the gloom of superstition, in an age of the grossest ignorance and credulity, a taste for the wonders of oriental fiction was introduced by the Arabians into Europe, many countries of which were already seasoned to a reception of its extravagancies by means of the poetry of the Gothic scalds, who, perhaps, originally derived their ideas from the same fruitful region of invention.

"These fictions coinciding with the reigning manners, and perpetually kept up and improved in the tales of troubadours and minstrels, seem to have centred about the eleventh century in the ideal histories of Turpin and Geoffrey of Monmouth, which record the suppositious achievements of Charlemagne and King Arthur, where they formed the groundwork of that species of narrative called romance. And from these beginnings or causes, afterwards enlarged and enriched by kindred fancies fetched from the crusades, that singular and capricious mode of imagination arose, which at length composed the marvellous machineries of the more sublime Italian poets, and of their disciple Spenser." The theory which traces romantic fiction to the Arabs is but partially true. The entire literature of that age was monstrous, full of the most absurd and extravagant fancies. History was fabulous; poetry mendacious and philosophy erroneous. Theology abounded in pious frauds. Monks and minstrels vied with each other in the invention of lying legends to adorn the lives of heroes and saints. All classes of the community shared in the general delusion, and the supernatural seemed more credible than the natural. In tracing the progress of learning, in England, I propose, during the remainder of the present paper to [128] discuss one inconsiderable yet important element of modern civilization, which is often entirely overlooked. I refer to "Lyric Poetry."

The lyre is one of the oldest of musical instruments. Its invention is ascribed to a god. Its Saxon name is harp. It was the favorite instrument of the ancient Hebrews, as well as of the Greeks. The Saxons, Britons and Danes regarded it with veneration, and protected by legal enactments those who played upon it. Their persons were esteemed inviolable and secured from injuries by heavy penalities. By the laws of Wales, slaves were forbidden to practice upon it; and no creditor could seize the harp of his debtor. That minstrels were a privileged class is manifested from king Alfred's penetrating the Danish camp (878) disguised as a harper. Sixty years after a Danish king visited King Athelstan's camp in the same disguise. It was also said of Aldhelm, one of the leading scholars of the eighth century: "He was an excellent harper, a most eloquent Saxon and Latin poet, a most expert chanter, or a singer, a doctor egregius, and admirably versed in scriptures and liberal sciences." The minstrel was a regular and stated officer of the Anglo-Saxon kings. Poetry is always the earliest form of literature; song the earliest form of poetry. The Muse adapts her lessons to the nation's infancy and adds the charm of melody to verse. No nation is destitute of lyric poetry. Even the North American Indians have their war songs, though their individual worship of their gods has prevented the creation of any national poetry for associated worship. The Scandinavians have but one term for the poet and the singer. The Northern scald invented and recited his own songs and epics. In other countries the poet and minstrel performed separate duties. "The Minstrels," says Bishop Percy, "were an order of men in the Middle Ages who subsisted by the arts of poetry and music, and sang to the harp verses composed by themselves and others. They appear to have accompanied their songs with mimicry and action. They are called in Latin of the day histriones, Mimi and Scurræ. Such arts rendered them exceedingly popular in this and in neighboring countries, where no high scene of festivity was esteemed complete that was not set off with the exercise of their talents; and where so long as the spirit of chivalry existed, they were protected and caressed, because their songs tended to do honor to the ruling passion of the times, and to encourage and foment a martial spirit."

They were the legitimate successors of the bards and scalds of early times whose art was considered divine and their songs worthy of regal patronage. They were the historians, genealogists, poets, and musicians, of the land. The word minstrel is derived from the Latin minister, a servant, because they were classed among the King's attendants. An earlier Saxon name for this class of performers was "Gleeman," in rude English, a Jogeler or Jocular; Latin, "Joculator." The word "glee" is from the Saxon "gligg," meaning music; and the meaning now attached to that word shows how intimately associated were pleasure and music in the national mind. The harp was the most ancient of Saxon musical instruments. It continued in use for a thousand years. It was well known in the time of Chaucer. His Frere could play upon it and sing to it; the merry "wife of Bath" had frequently danced to it in her youth. It was an ordinary accompaniment of revels and tavern festivals. It continued in use till the reign of Elizabeth. In [129] Dr. Percy's "Reliques of ancient English poetry" he speaks of the minstrels as an order of men in the Middle Ages, highly honored, retained and pensioned by kings, lavishly rewarded by nobles, and kindly entertained by the common people.3 Ritson in his "Ancient Songs" admits that such an "order" of singers existed in France, but never in England; that individuals wandered up and down the country chanting romances and singing songs or ballads to the harp or fiddle; but that they never enjoyed the respect of the high born or received favors from them. The church evidently looked upon them with disfavor, as the enemies of sobriety and the promoters of revelry and mirth. In the sixteenth century they lost all credit and were classed, in penal enactments, with "rogues and vagabonds." One reason of the decline of minstrelsy was the introduction of printing and the advance of learning: that which might afford amusement and pleasure when sung to the harp, lost its point and spirit when read in retirement from the printed page. Their composition would not bear criticism. Besides, the market had become overstocked with these musical wares; as the religious houses had with homilies and saintly legends. The consideration bestowed on the early minstrels "enticed into their ranks idle vagabonds," according to the act of Edward I, who went about the country under color of minstrelsy; men who cared more about the supper than the song; who for base lucre divorced the arts of writing and reciting and stole other men's thunder. Their social degeneracy may be traced in the dictionary. The chanter of the "gests" of kings, gesta ducum regumque, dwindled into a gesticulator, a jester: the honored jogelar of Provence, into a mountebank; the jockie, a doggrel ballad-monger.

Beggars they are by one consent,

And rogues by act of Parliament.

What a fall was there from their former high estate and reverence. The earliest minstrels of the Norman courts, doubtless, came from France, where their rank was almost regal.

Froissart, describing a Christmas festival given by Comte de Foix in the fourteenth century, says:

"There were many Mynstrels as well of hys own as of strangers, and eache of them dyd their devoyres in their facalties. The same day the Earl of Foix gave to Hauralds and Minstrelles the sum of 500 franks, and gave to the Duke of Tonrayns Mynstreles gouns of cloth of gold furred with ermyne valued at 200 franks."

The courts of kings swarmed with these merry singers in the Dark Ages, and such sums were expended upon them, that they often drained the royal treasuries. In William's army there was a brave warrior named Taillefer, who was as renowned for minstrelsy as for arms. Like Tyrtæus and Alemon, in Sparta, he inspired his comrades with courage by his martial strains, and actually led the van in the fight against the English, chanting the praises of Charlemagne, and Roland. Richard Cœur de Lion was a distinguished patron of minstrels as well as "the mirror of chivalry." He was sought out in his prison in Austria by a faithful harper who made himself known by singing a French song under the window of the castle in which the king was confined. Blondel was the harper's name. The French song translated reads thus:

"Your beauty, lady fair,

None views without delight;

But still so cold an air

No passion can excite.

[130]

Yet still I patient see

While all are shun'd like me.

No nymph my heart can wound

If favor she divide,

And smiles on all around

Unwilling to decide;

I'd rather hatred bear,

Than love with others share."

Edward I had a harper in his train, in his crusade to the Holy Land, who stood by his side in battle.

That same king in his conquest of Wales is said to have murdered all the bards that fell into his hands lest they should rouse the nation again to arms. Gray's poem, "The Bard," was written upon that theme. I will quote a few lines:

"Dear lost companions of my tuneful art,

Dear as the light that visits these eyes,

Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart,

Ye died amidst your dying country's cries—

No more I weep. They do not sleep.

On yonder cliffs a griesly band,

I see them sit; they linger yet,

Avengers of their native land."

That the minstrel was a privileged character in England down to the reign of Elizabeth is proved by history, by frequent allusions to them in the current literature of the times, and by the large body of songs, ballads, and metrical romances, still extant which are ascribed to them. They were essential to the complete education of a knight as tutors: for no accomplishment was more valued in the days of chivalry than the playing of the harp and the composition of songs in honor of the fair. Before the origin of printing they acted as publishers of the works of more renowned poets by public recitations of their works. The period of their greatest celebrity was about the middle of the fifteenth century. The minstrel chose his own subject and so long as he discoursed to warriors of heroes and enchanters, and to gay knights of true love and fair ladies, he would not want patient and gratified listeners.

The great sources of Gothic romance are a British History of Arthur and his wizzard, Merlin, by Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, translated into Latin by Geoffrey of Monmouth; the history of Charlemagne and his twelve peers, forged by Turpin, a monk of the eighth century; the History of Troy, in two Latin works, which passed under the names of Dares Phrygius and Dictys Cretensis; and the History of Alexander the Great, originally written in Persic and translated into Greek by Simeon Seth, A.D. 1070, and again turned into Latin by Giraldus Cambrensis about the year 1200. These four works with variations, additions, and dilutions, formed the staple of romantic fiction in verse in the Dark Ages.

The minor songs and ballads which were called forth by passing events were usually amorous, sportive, gay, and often gross, yet suited to a rude age.

Ellis in his specimens of the early English poets has given us sketches of one hundred and sixty-one writers of songs from the year 1230 to 1650, after a careful search through this whole period for literary gems. The first edition of his work consisted almost entirely of love songs and sonnets; the revised edition has greater variety; but our circle of ideas is so enlarged, our habits are so different from those of by-gone centuries, that we look over this rare collection of old poems, rather to learn the manners of the people, than to enjoy the diction of their songs. We cannot doubt that this species of poetry excited an important influence when it was the staple of popular education and amusement.

A maxim is current among us which has been successively ascribed to many great thinkers, which shows the value usually set on compositions of this kind. [131] It is this: "Let me make the songs of a people and I care not who makes their laws."

A ballad is a story in verse whose incidents awaken the sympathies and excite the passions of those who listen. The song is designed to express deep emotion, joy or sorrow, hope or fear and appeals directly to the feelings. Here, often, the singing is more than the sentiment; the tones of the chanter are often more touching than the thoughts of the Emperor. A national ode must have a national element in it; it must reflect the passions that burn in the people's breasts. Local topics, too, may call forth a general interest when they describe trials or triumphs which all may share. Says Carlyle: "In a peasant's death-bed there may be the fifth act of a tragedy. In the ballad which details the adventures and the fate of a partisan warrior or a love-lorn knight,—the foray of a border chieftain or the lawless bravery of a forrester; a Douglass, or a Robin Hood,—there may be the materials of a rich romance. Whatever be the subject of the song, high or low, sacred or secular, there is this peculiarity about it, it expresses essentially the popular spirit, the common sentiment, which the rudest breast may feel, yet which is not beneath the most cultivated. It is peculiarly the birth of the popular affections. It celebrates some event which the universal heart clings to, which, for joy or sorrow, awaken the memories of every mind." Hence we learn the history of a nation's heart from their songs as we learn their martial history from their armor.

"Summer is y-comen in,

Loude sing cuckoo:

Groweth seed,

And bloweth mead,

And springeth the wood now;

Sing Cuckoo!

Ewe bleateth after lamb,

Lowth after calf cow;

Bullock starteth,

Buck resteth

Merry sing cuckoo!

Cuckoo, Cuckoo!

Well sings thou cuckoo!

Ne swick thou never now."

The old ballads seem to have no paternity. They spring up like flowers, spontaneously. Most of them are of unknown date and unknown authorship. The structure, language, and spelling of many have been so modified, by successive reciters, that their original form is now lost. We have a short summary of King Arthur's history, the great hero of romance, in a comparatively modern ballad. I will quote it:

Of Brutus' blood, in Brittane born,

King Arthur I am to name:

Through Christendome and Heathynesse

Well known is my worthy fame.

In Jesus Christ I doe beleeve;

I am a Christyan born:

The Father, Sone and Holy Gost

One God I doe adore.

In the four hundreed nintieth yeere

Over Brittaine I did rayne,

After my Savior Christ his byrth:

What time I did maintaine.

The fellowshippe of the table round

Soe famous in those days;

Whereatt a hundred noble Knights

And thirty sat alwayes;

Who for their deeds and martiall feates,

As bookes dou yet record,

Amongst all other nations

Wer feared through the world.

And in the castle of Tayntagill,

King Uther me begate

Of Agyana, a bewtyous ladye,

And come of hie estate.

And when I was fifteen yeer old,

Then was I crowned Kinge;

All Brittaine that was att an uprore

I did to quiett bring

And drove the Saxons from the realme,

Who had oppressed this land;

All Scotland then throughe manly feates

I conquered with my hand.

Ireland, Denmarke, Norway,

These countryes won I all

Iseland, Getheland and Swothland;

And mad their kings my thrall

I conquered all Galya,

That now is called France;

And slew the hardye Froll in Field

My honor to advance,

And the ugly gyant Dynabus

Soe terrible to vewe,

That in Saint Barnard's Mount did lye,

By force of armes, I slew;

[132]

And Lucyus, the emperor of Rome

I brought to deadly wracke;

And a thousand more of noble knightes

For feare did turn their backe;

Five kings of "Haynims" I did kill

Amidst that bloody strife;

Besides the Grecian emperor

Who also lost his liffe.

Whose carcasse I did send to Rome

Cladd pourlye on a beete;

And afterward I past Mount Joye

The next approaching yeer.

Then I came to Rome where I was mett

Right as a conquerer

And by all the cardinalls solempnelye

I was crowned an emperor.

One winter there I mad abode;

Then word to mee was brought

Howe Mordred had oppressed the crown;

What treason he had wrought.

Att home in Brittaine with my queene:

Therefore I came with speed

To Brittaine back with all my power

To quitt that traterous deede.

And soon at Sandwich I arrivde

Where Mordred me withstoode.

But yett at last I landed there

With effusion of much blood.

Thence chased I Mordred away

Who fledd to London right,

From London to Winchester, and

To Comeballe took his flight.

And stile I him pursued with speed

Tile at the last wee mett:

Uhevby an appointed day of fight

Was there agreed and sett

Where we did fight of mortal life

Eche other to deprive,

Tile of a hundred thousand men

Scarce one was left alive.

There all the noble chevalrye

Of Brittaine took their end

Oh see how fickle is their state

That doe on feates depend.

There all the traiterous men were slaine

Not one escapte away

And there dyed all my vallyant knights

Alas! that woful day!

Two and twenty yeere I ware the crown

In honor and grete fame;

And thus by deth4 suddenlye

Deprived of the same.

Some distinguished English critics, like Warton and Dr. Warburton, maintain that the materials as well as the taste for romantic fiction were derived almost exclusively from the Arabians. They assume therefore that the traditions, fables and mode of thought in Northern Asia from whence the Scandinavians and Germans are supposed to have originated, were identical with those which the secluded people of Arabia afterwards incorporated into their literature. It is more natural to assume that there is always a similarity in the mythologies, as in the manners, religion, and armor of rude ages and races. Respect for woman was a characteristic of the northern nations of Europe, and not of the Mohammedans. This is an all pervading element in romantic and chivalric fiction. The Northmen believed in giants and dwarfs; in wizzards and fairies; in necromancy and enchantments; as well as the Oriental natives. It is reasonable, therefore, to assume that the immense tide of song which inundated Europe from the eleventh to the sixteenth century, under the form of metrical romances, ballads, and songs, was made up of confluent streams from classical, Oriental, and Gothic mythologies. The Troubadours of Province (from Provincia, by way of eminence), the legitimate successors of the Latin citharcedi, the British bards, the northern scalds, the Saxon gleemen, and English harpers, all contributed in turn to form English minstrelsy and French romance. The Latin tongue ceased to be spoken in France about the ninth century. The new language used in its stead was a mixture of bad Latin and the language of the Franks. As their speech was a medley, so was their poetry. As the songs of chivalry were the most popular compositions in the new or Romance language, they were called Romans, or Romants. They appeared about the eleventh century. The stories of Arthur and his round table are doubtless of British origin. It is evident that the Northmen had the elements of chivalry in them long before that institution became famous, as is shown by the story of Regner Lodbrog, the celebrated warrior and sea king, who landed in Denmark about the year 800. A Swedish Prince [133] had intrusted his beautiful daughter to the care of one of his nobles who cruelly detained her in his castle under pretence of making her his wife. The King made proclamation that whoever would rescue her should have her in marriage. Regner alone achieved her rescue. The name of the traitorous man was Orme, which in the Islandic tongue means a serpent, hence the story that the maiden was guarded by a dragon, which her bold deliverer slew. The history of Richard I. is full of such romantic adventures. Shakespeare, in his play of King John, alludes to an exploit of Richard in slaying a lion, whence the epithet "Cœur de Lion," which is given in no history. He says:

"Needs must you lay your heart at his dispose

Against whose furie and unmatched force,

The aweless lion could not wage the fight

Nor keep his princely heart from Richard's hand:

He that perforce robs lions of their hearts

May easily winne a woman's."

This allusion is fully explained in the old romance of Richard Cœur de Lion. The King travelling as "a palmer in Almaye," from the Holy Land, was seized as a spy and imprisoned. Being challenged to a trial of pugilism by the King's son, he slew him. The King to avenge his son's death let in a hungry lion upon the royal prisoner. The King's daughter, who loved the captive, sent him forty ells of white silk "kerchers" to bind about him as a defence against the lion's teeth and claws. The romance thus proceeds:

The kever-chefes he toke on hand,

And aboute his arme he wonde;

And thought in that ylke while

To slee the lyon with some gyle

And syngle in a kyrtyle he strode

And abode the lyon fyers and wode,

With that came the jaylere,

And other men that with him were

And the lyon them amonge;

His pawes were stiffe and stronge.

His chamber dore they undone

And the lyon to them is gone

Rycharde aayd Helpe Lord Jesu!

The lyon made to him venu,

And wolde him have alle to rente:

Kynge Rycharde beside hym glente

The lyon on the breste hym spurned

That about he turned,

The lyon was hongry and megre,

And bette his tail to be egre;

He loked about as he were madde,

He cryd lowde and yaned wyde.

Kynge Richarde bethought him that tyde

What hym was beste, and to him sterte

In at the thide his hand he gerte,

And rente out the beste with his hond

Lounge and all that he there fonde.

The lyon fell deed on the grounde

Rycharde felt no wem ne wounde.

On such fictitious incidents in the romances of past ages, Shakespeare undoubtedly built many of his dramas. The story of Shylock in the Merchant of Venice is found in an old English ballad. I will quote a few stanzas to indicate the identity of Shylock and "Germutus, the Jew of Venice."

The bloudie Jew now ready is

With whetted blade in hand

To spoyle the bloud of innocent,

By forfeit of his bond,

And as he was about to strike

In him the deadly blow;

Stay, quoth the judge, thy crueltie

I charge thee to do so.

Sith needs thou wilt thy forfeit have

Which is of flesh a pound;

See that thou shed no drop of bloud

Nor yet the man confound

For if thou do, like murderer

Thou here shall hanged be;

Likewise of flesh see that thou cut

No more than longs to thee;

For if thou take either more or lesse

To the value of a mite

Thou shall be hanged presently

As is both law and right.

It is reasonable to suppose the miser thereupon departed cursing the law and leaving the merchant alive.

There is, also, a famous ballad called "King Leir and His Daughters," which embodies the story of Shakespeare's tragedy of Lear. It commences thus:

So on a time it pleased the king

A question thus to move,

Which of his daughters to his grace

Could show the dearest love;

For to my age you bring content,

Quoth he, then let me hear,

Which of you three in plighted troth

The kindest will appear.

To whom the eldest thus began;

Dear father, mind, quoth she

Before your face to do you good,

My blood shall render'd be:

And for your sake, my bleeding heart

Shall here be cut in twain

Ere that I see your reverend age

The smallest grief sustain.

And so wilt I the second said;

Dear father for your sake

The worst of all extremities

I'll gently undertake.

And serve your highness night and day

With diligence and love;

That sweet content and quietness

Discomforts may remove.

In doing so you glad my soul

The aged king replied:

But what sayst thou my youngest girl

How is thy love ally'd?

My love quoth young Cordelia then

Which to your grace I owe

Shall be the duty of a child

And that is all I'll show.

This honest pledge the King despised and banished Cordelia. The ballad accords with the drama in the catastrophe. Both have the same moral and the same characters. The ballad is doubtless the earlier form of the story. Possibly the minstrel and dramatist may have borrowed from a common source. Good thoughts, good tales and noble deeds, like well-worn coins, sometimes lose their date and must be estimated by weight. Ballad poetry is written in various measures and with diverse feet. The rhythm is easy and flows along trippingly from the tongue with such regular emphasis and cadence as to lead instinctively to a sort of sing-song in the recital of it. Ballads are more frequently written in common metre lines of eight and six syllables alternating. Such is the famous ballad of "Chevy Chace,"5 which has been growing in popular esteem for more than three hundred years. Ben Jonson used to say he would rather have been the author of it than of all his works. Sir Philip Sidney, in his discourse on poetry, says of it: "I never heard the old song of Percy and Douglass that I found not my heart more moved than with a trumpet." Addison wrote an elaborate review of it in the seventieth and seventy-fourth numbers of the Spectator. He there demonstrates that this old ballad has all the elements in it of the loftiest existing epic. The moral is the same as that of the Iliad:

"God save the king and bless the land

In plenty, joy and peace

And grant henceforth that foul debate

Twixt noblemen may cease."

Addison, in Number 85 of the Spectator, also commends that beautiful and touching ballad denominated "The Children in the Wood." He observes, "This song is a plain, simple copy of nature, destitute of the helps and ornaments of art. The tale of it is a pretty, tragical story and pleases for no other reason than because it is a copy of nature." It is known to every child as a nursery song or a pleasant story. A stanza or two will reveal its pathos and rhythm. The children had been committed by their dying parents to their uncle:

The parents being dead and gone

The children home he takes,

And brings them straite unto his house

Where much of them he makes.

He had kept these pretty babes

A twelve month and a daye

But for their wealth he did desire

To make them both away

These pretty babes with hand in hand

Went wandering up and downe;

But never more could see the man

Approaching from the town:

Their pretty lippes with black-berries

Were all besmeared and dyed

And when they saw the darksome night

They sat them down and cried.

Thus wandered these poor innocents

Till death did end their grief,

In one another's armes they dyed

As wanting due relief;

No burial this pretty pair

Of any man receives

Till robin red-breast piously

Did cover them with leaves.

There is a famous story book written by Richard Johnson in the reign of Elizabeth, entitled, "The Seven Champions of Christendom."6

The popular English ballad of "St. George and the Dragon," is founded on one of the narratives of this book, and the story in the book on a still older ballad, or legend, styled "Sir Bevis of Hampton." This, too, resembles very much Ovid's account of the slaughter of the dragon by Cadmus. In the legend of Sir Bevis the fight is thus described:

"Whan the dragon that foule is

Had a sight of Sir Bevis,

He cast yo a loud cry

As it had thondered in the sky,

He turned his belly toward the sun

It was greater than any tonne;

His scales was brighter than the glas,

And harder they were than any bras

Betwene his sholder and his tayle

Was 40 fote without fayle,

He woltered out of his denne,

And Bevis pricked his stede then,

And to him a spere he thraste

That all to shivers he it braste.

The dragon then gan Bevis assayle

And smote Syr Bevis with his tayle

Then down went horse and man

And two rybbes of Bevis brused than."

Suffice it to say the knight at last conquered and the monster was slain. The same story is repeated in the ballad of "St. George and the Dragon," with variations. There a fair lady is rescued:

"For, with his lance that was so strong,

As he came gaping in his face,

In at his mouth, he thrust along,

For he could pierce no other place;

And thus within the lady's view

This mighty dragon straight he slew."

The martial achievements of this patron saint of the "Knights of the Garter" are considered apocryphal, and, in 1792, it required an octavo volume by Rev. J. Milner to prove his existence at all. Emerson says he was a notorious thief and procured his prelatic honors by fraud.

The English history is to a considerable extent embodied in the national songs. Opinions, prejudices, and superstitions, however, are oftener embodied in them than facts. This species of literature has been very potent for good or ill in revolutionary times. Kings and parties have been both marred and made by them. The martial spirit, in all ages, has been kindled by lyrics; national victories have been celebrated by them; and by them individual prowess has been immortalized.

The English people were famous for their convivialty and periodical festivals such as May Day, New Years, sowing-time, sheep-shearing, harvest home, corresponding to our Thanksgiving and Christmas. All these occasions were enlivened with songs and tales. The Christmas carol and story are famous in England's annals. Scott says:

"All hail'd with uncontroll'd delight

And general voice the happy night,

That to the cottage as the crown,

Brought tidings of salvation down.

'Twas Christmas broached the mightiest ale

'Twas Christmas told the merriest tale;

A Christmas gambol oft could cheer

The poor man's heart through half the year."

3 (return)
Ritson and Bishop Percy speak of different ages: one describing the rise and the other the decline of minstrelsy.

BOOK REVIEWS.

ORIENTAL RELIGIONS AND THEIR RELATION TO UNIVERSAL RELIGION. By Samuel Johnson, with an introduction by O.B. Frothingham. Persia, Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1885.

This is the third volume of the series, and was not quite completed at the time of Mr. Johnson's death in 1882. The other volumes, on India and China, created much interest in the world of religious and ethnical study, a prominent London publisher and literateur saying to a friend of the present writer that nothing more would need to be written of China for the next quarter of a century. Max Muller testified to the high value of Mr. Johnson's work.

In the study of the various religions, the author finds in each some peculiar manifestation of the universal religious sentiment. In Southern Asia he clearly sees nature almost absorbing the individual and hence a pantheistic vagueness and vastness in which man does not realize a complete sense of personality. But in the North and West the same Tudo-European race comes to a self-conscious individuality and there is the "evolution and worship of personal will." Mr. Johnson's first chapter on "Symbolism" brings out this epoch of will development as illustrated by the Persians,—the human soul impressing itself upon the material world—and finding outside itself natural emblems to express its religious life. "Symbolism is mediation between inward and outward, person and performance, man and his environment." "Work is the image man makes of himself on the world in and through nature." Mr. Johnson finds the personal element becoming supreme in these people of Northern and Western Asia.

Perhaps there has never been so philosophical and satisfactory a treatment of the Fire-Symbol, which, however, our author says is not peculiar to the religion of Persian Zoroaster, as we find in Mr. Johnson's chapter under that head. As light, heat, cosmic vital energy, astronomical centre, as all producing and all sustaining force, the sun and the other burning and brilliant objects lighted therefrom, furnish very much of the symbolism of all religions. "The Sun of Rightousness" is a favorite figure with Jew and Christian. It is doubtless as incorrect to characterize the Persians as "fire worshipers" as it would be to say that Christians, who use the same symbol, give their worship to the symbol rather than the Being symbolized. Still our author finds this emblem a very important one in the religion of the followers of Zoroaster and thinks he detects a progress in thought and civilization marked by the coming of the people to give religious regard to the sun and heavenly bodies, instead of fire kindled by human hands—a new stability of being corresponding with the passage of early people's art of nomadic or shepherd life into agriculture with its fixed abodes and domestic associations.

The two deities of the Zend Avesta, Ormuzd and Ahriman, the good and the evil in perpetual conflict, could not have been conceived of in Southern Asia where the human will is kept under, and where self-consciousness is so moderately developed. This battle is in the Avestan faith and morals largely in the [137] human breast, and is the same that Paul is conscious of in the combat he describes between himself and sin that was in him. The Avestan Morals are brought out by Mr. Johnson in their original and exceeding purity.

But the larger sweep of Mr. Johnson's purpose carries him into an exhaustive and most interesting consideration of Persian influence upon the Hebrew faith and thought—through the conquests of Cyrus and Alexander—and through Maurchæism and Gnosticism—down to Christendom.

Mahometanism is, in our author's mind, the culmination of the religion of personal will, and he devotes many glowing and instructive pages to bringing out the meaning and heart of the religion of Islam, especially in its later and in its more spiritual developments. The final object of the volume is to show the relation of the religion of personal will to universal religion.

Of course our author has not been foolish and unfair enough to portray the perversions and lapses of this particular type of Oriental faith and ethics; but his aim has been to set forth its essential principles and to show how they spring from the universal root.

The study of comparative religions, and hence of the universal religion, is one of the characteristics and glories of our time. Once every people despised, as a religious duty, every nation and every religion but its own, and sword and fagot were employed, as under divine command, to exterminate all strange manifestations of religious sentiment. Now the advance guard of civilization is giving itself to devout and thankful study of all the religions under the sure impression that they will prove to be one in origin and essence: and so a sweeter human sympathy and a more complete unity are beginning to be realized among men.

No man has in most respects been better fitted for this study than was the lamented author of these books. Mr. Johnson was almost or quite "a religious genius," with an enthusiasm of faith in the invisible and the idea, which few men have ever shown; and his devoutness was equalled by his catholicity. His religious lyrics enrich our Christian psalmody, while his published discourses, mingling philosophical light with fervor of a transcendent faith in God and man, rank among the grandest utterances from the American pulpit and platform. No American can afford to miss the power and influence of such a mind; and no student of religion should fail to have in his possession Johnson's Persia.

S.C. Beane.

"THE OVERSHADOWING POWER OF GOD. A synopsis of a new philosophy concerning the nature of the soul of man, its union with the animal soul, and its gradual creation through successive acts of overshadowing and the insertion of shoots, to its perfection in Jesus the Christ; with illustrations of the inner meaning of the Bible, from the Hebrew roots; offering to the afflicted soul the way of freedom from inharmony and disease. By Horace Bowen, M.D.; transcribed in verse by Sheridan Wait, with chart and illustrations by M.W. Fairchild. Vineland, N.J. New Life Publishing Co., 1883."

This book of Dr. Bowen's opens into a field of thought that has heretofore mostly escaped the survey of theologians and philosophers: classes that are supposed to be in pursuit of essential truth concerning both God and man. Its leading aim seems to be to present a reliable clew to those truths by an unusual interpretation of the Scriptures as a revelation of creative order. The author stands with a comparatively small class of ardent explorers [138] who have come to see "the light of the world" under a new radiance; a radiance that actually gives it the breadth and power of its claim.

Dr. Bowen's personal career in coming to this light, as related in the preface, is full of interest; and this preface is impressively wrought with the system of creative law that he aims to outline, and that the verse of Mr. Wait labors to elaborate. This author is firmly loyal to the sacred Scriptures as divine revelation, and, as such, he aims to show that, in their inmost sense, they systematically unfold the creative process, which consists of divine operations in the human soul by which, through varied series of growth, it becomes fully conjoined to, and illuminated with creative life—the light and life of Jesus, the Christ. The process from Adamic to Christ states of soul, Dr. Bowen finds was effected through successive births by "the overshadowing power of God;" so the immaculate conception of the virgin, that gave "the highest" full embodiment in Jesus Christ was simply a revelation of the ultimation of creative power in outward realms; as such, "was the completion of the plan for the creation of man, through a serial gradation of over-shadowings, or the sowing of seed and the insertion of shoots"—this "individual case being but the universal method of God in creation."

Dr. Bowen goes on to show the relation and bearing of this ultimate order of creative life in the human form to the mental and physical conditions of man, and holds it to be the saving term to our human nature, in all respects.

The body of the book, consisting of nearly five hundred pages of "verse" by Mr. Wait, is an ingenious elaboration of the principles and forms of this order, especially as it is found held in the Hebraic Roots, throughout the incomparable system of divine revelation. But, indisputably, the treatise would have been far more forcible and impressive if it had been dressed with the direct and vigorous style shown by the author in his preface. Not the least in significance in this remarkable publication is a pocketed chart by Miss Fairchild. But the whole must be perused and pondered in order to give proper impressions of its real value. To the mind of the writer of this brief notice, the book will greatly aid the struggling thought of this manifestly transitional era, in that it points so distinctly to the oncoming theological science that is to effect a complete revolution in prevailing conceptions of creative order.

W.H.K.

PHILOSOPHIÆ QUESTOR: or Days in Concord. By Julia R. Anagnos. Boston: D. Lothrop and Company.

This is a little book—only sixty pages—but it is entirely unique in its plan and style. Its purpose is to give an outline sketch of two seasons of the School of Philosophy. To secure this purpose, the author has taken as "a sort of half heroine the shadowy figure of a young girl;" and, as seen to her, the proceedings of the school are sketched. Most of the persons and places have fictitious names; Mr. Alcott is called "Venerablis;" Concord, "Harmony;" the school, "the Acadame." Mr. Emerson retains his real name; the girl, who observes and writes, is "Eudoxia."

One who opens the book will be apt to read it through, not as much for its real value as for its quaint style and sometimes beautiful expressions.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

Of all the nearly two-score states together forming the American Union, no one surpasses the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the extent and variety of her historical resources. Two hundred and sixty-five years ago the Mayflower and her companion craft sighted the rock-bound coast of New England as they sailed into Massachusetts Bay. That event marks the beginning of a history which, to us of the present generation, stands unequalled in the richness of its coloring. While the history of the Colonial period is cold and unpoetic in many of its aspects, it also contains an element of romance not to be overlooked. Truly, it is not the romance of ancient Rome, nor of the castle-bordered Rhine, nor of Merrie Old England; it is a romance growing out of a life in a new world; a life attended—almost made up, even, of conflicts with a strange race of savage people, and conflicts with hunger, cold, and sometimes famine. The events of this early Colonial life, tragic as they often are, carry with them an interest which is almost enchanting.

When, as children, we read those tales from the old school reading book, or heard them recited as we sat at grandfather's knee, what pictures impressed themselves on our eager minds! The log meeting-house, and before it the stacked muskets and pacing sentinel; the dusky savage faces hiding behind every tree; the midnight assault: the lurid fire, and the brandished tomahawk—these are pictures that have sometimes come with startling vividness to our youthful imaginations. And then our fancies have seen the so-called witches of Salem, the sudden arrest, the hurrying to the jail and perhaps to the gallows.

To the older mind, these realities of the past have a deep and ever-growing interest. The later periods of the Colony, the period of the Revolution and the period immediately following, are increasingly fertile in materials for the historian, the essayist, and the novelist. To bring out into clearer light, to present in forms adapted to the mass of readers, and to arouse a more lively interest in this history, especially the romantic element of it, is one leading aim and intent of this magazine. There are in existence various magazines devoted to New England history, and which are of great value to the student and the antiquary. The Bay State Monthly is not only this, it is a magazine for the people; and throughout this State, and no less in many others,—offsprings of this old Commonwealth,—it has received and awaits a still more generous reception.

The custom of observing the anniversaries of the incorporation of towns and cities in New England has become well established. In Massachusetts there are a very few towns which have reached so important an epoch in their history, as the quarter millennial of their corporate existence. Several have celebrated their bi-centennials, while hardly a year passes without the observance of one or more centennial anniversaries.

The custom is strongly to be commended, for it serves an important historical purpose. It is especially true in New England that every town, no matter how small, has an important place in the general history, and the perpetuity of this history, it hardly needs to be said, is a matter of great importance to this and succeeding generations. This is being done most effectually by means of these publicly-observed anniversaries. An event of this kind draws together the residents of the town, and many others who are connected with its history by their early life or ancestry. The occasion calls forth an historical address prepared by some native of the town, who has attained distinction in professional or public life—and what New England town cannot boast of its distinguished son—and, at the same time, arrangements are made for a published history of the town. These historical sketches are of great value and, collectively, they contain the true history of the people. The humble historian of the little town down on the Cape or up among the hills of Berkshire, may not be a Prescott, a Motley or a Bancroft, but, in his smaller sphere, he is performing a service no less valuable than that of the historian of nations. In many of these local histories are to be found events of highly-romantic interest, while some of them have been the starting point of real romances stronger than fiction. But their chief value is in their faithful portrayal of the lives of those earlier generations whose relations with our lives are so well worthy of study. That there is at present a much more general interest in this kind of history than there was fifty, or even twenty years ago, is evident; and as the towns of this State successively arrive at their important anniversaries, the written history of Massachusetts will grow more and more complete.

The annual meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society took place in the society's room, April 9, the Honorable Robert C. Winthrop in the chair.

It was greatly regretted that Mr. Winthrop felt compelled to decline serving as President for a longer term, and a tribute to his distinguished services in this office was offered in the remarks of Mr. Saltonstall. Mr. Winthrop's reply was most appropriate; and in it he spoke of the distinguished men who had honored the membership of the society within the term of his presidency extending over the last forty-five years.

The following officers were elected for the ensuing year: President, Rev. G.E. Ellis, D.D.; Vice Presidents, Charles Deane, LL.D., Francis Parkman, LL.D.; Recording Secretary, Rev. Edward J. Young, A.M.; Corresponding Secretary, Justin Winsor, A.B.; Treasurer, Charles E. Smith, Esq.; Librarian, Honorable Samuel A. Green, M.D.; Cabinet-keeper, Fitch Edward Oliver, M.D.; Executive Committee of the Council, William W. Greenough, A.B., Honorable Samuel C. Cobb, Abbott Lawrence, A.M., Abner C. Goodell, A.M., Honorable Mellen Chamberlain, I.L.B.

The one hundred and tenth anniversary of the battle of Lexington was fittingly observed in that town on the 19th of April. The citizens, with many visitors, united in celebrating that memorable event, the very thought of which must ever stir the soul of every patriotic American. At the exercises in the evening at the Lexington Town Hall, Governor Robinson delivered a brief oration. The closing words are as follows:

"The story of eloquence is breathed in the associations of the spot. You feel the inspirations that come out of the place and you know full well in your heart the depth of the lesson it teaches. Now, has it failed in these recent years? When the call came again to the men of Lexington to stand for the welfare of the Union there were no laggards. So shall it be that the people reading the story of the past will bring up all to that standard which was set so high. Slavery of the human form may not now be tolerated. Despotism may not triumph. The shackles may have fallen from men's bodies. But still, forms of bondage control the actions of thinking men, and so the battle is before the men who love their liberty and appreciate it. And so, as of old, they shall find the God above leading them on, and when the great victory of all is accomplished, when man treats his brother man in perfect equality—not in theory, but in truth—it will certainly be in recognition of God's leadership of his people, and then the grand Te Deum should be chanted that should make the welkin ring with rejoicing."

Among the few towns in Massachusetts which were founded so long as two hundred and fifty years ago, the town of Newbury is one. On the tenth day of June next, its quarter-millennial anniversary will be celebrated. The occasion will be one of great interest. The address will be given by President Bartlett of Dartmouth College. John G. Whittier, who is descended from the old Greenleaf family of Newbury, is expected to furnish a poem, and George Lunt, who read the ode at the celebration fifty years ago, will provide one for this occasion. It is regretted that James Russell Lowell, who is a lineal descendant from a noted Newbury family, cannot take part in the exercises. But the gathering will be a notable one, and there will be no lack of historical reminiscences.

The one-hundredth anniversary of the incorporation of the town of Heath, Franklin. County, Massachusetts, is to be observed on the nineteenth of August next. Previous to 1785, Heath was a part of Charlemont. The town is rich in historic events and is the birthplace of many men and women of note.

At the centennial celebration, addresses will be delivered by Rev. C.E. Dickinson of Marietta, Ohio, and John H. Thompson, Esq., of Chicago, Illinois; and a poem will be given by Mrs. C.W. McCoy of Columbus, Georgia.

The town has chosen the following committee to have charge of the arrangements: O. Maxwell, Chairman; William S. Gleason, William M. Maxwell, Charles D. Benson; Charles B. Cutler, Corresponding Secretary.

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2

THE BAY STATE MONTHLY.

A Massachusetts Magazine.

VOL. III. MAY, 1885. NO. II.

Contents

SYLVESTER MARSH.

[THE PROJECTOR OF THE MOUNT WASHINGTON RAILROAD.]

By Charles Carleton Coffin.