The Project Gutenberg EBook of Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI,
December 1863, by Various

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Title: Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863
       Devoted to Literature and National Policy.

Author: Various

Release Date: July 30, 2006 [EBook #18946]

Language: English

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THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY:

DEVOTED TO

LITERATURE AND NATIONAL POLICY.

VOL. IV.--DECEMBER, 1863.--No. VI.




THE NATION.


We are of the race of the Empire Builders. Some races have been sent
into the world to destroy. Ours has been sent to create. It was needed
that the blunders of ten centuries and more, across the water, should be
given a chance for amendment. On virgin soil, the European races might
cure themselves of the fever pains of ages. So they were called here to
try. There was no rubbish to sweep away. The mere destructive had no
occupation. The builder and creator was the man wanted. In the full glow
of civilization, with the accumulated experience of the toiling
generations, with all the wealth of the fruitful past, we, 'the foremost
in the files of time,' have been called to this business of _nation
making_.

The men of our blood, they say, are given to boasting. America adds
flashing nerve fire to the dull muscle of Europe. That is the fact. But
the tendency to boasting is an honest inheritance. We can hardly boast
louder than our fathers across the sea have taught us. The boasting of
New York can scarcely drown the boasting of London. Jonathan thinks
highly of himself, but, certainly, John Bull is not behind him in
self-esteem.

But, after all, what wonder? Ten centuries of victory over nature and
over men may give a race the right to boast--ten centuries of victory
with never a defeat! The English tongue is an arrogant tongue, we grant.
Command, mastery, lordliness, are bred into its tones. The old tongue of
the Romans was never deeper marked in those respects than our own. It is
a freeman's speech, this mother language. A slave can never speak it. He
garbles, clips, and mumbles it, makes 'quarter talk' of it. The hour he
learns to speak English he is spoiled for a slave. It is the tongue of
conquerors, the language of imperial will, of self-asserting
individuality, of courage, masterhood, and freedom. There is no need of
being thin-skinned under the charge of boasting. A man cannot very well
learn, in his cradle, 'the tongue that Shakspeare spake,' without
talking sometimes as if he and his owned creation.

For the tongue is the representative of the speaker. A people embodies
its soul in its language. And the people who inherit English have done
work enough in this little world to give them a right to do some
talking. They, at least, can speak their boast, and hear it seconded, in
the bold accents their mothers taught them, on every shore and on every
sea. They have been the world's day-laborers now for some centuries.
They have felled its forests, drained its marshes, dug in its mines,
ploughed its wastes, built its cities. They have done rough pioneer work
over all its surface. They have done it, too, as it never was done
before. They have made it _stay done_. They have never given up one inch
of conquered ground. They have never yielded back one square foot to
barbarism. Won once to civilization, under their leadership, and your
square mile of savage waste and jungle is won forever.

We are inclined to think the world might bear with us. We talk a great
deal about ourselves, perhaps; but, on the whole, are we not buying the
privilege? Did a race ever buckle to its business in this world in more
splendid style than our own? With both hands clenched, stripped to the
waist, blackened and begrimed and sweat bathed, this race takes its
place in the vanguard of the world and bends to its chosen toil. The
grand, patient, hopeful people, how they grasp blind brute nature, and
tame her, and use her at their word! How they challenge and defeat in
the death grapple the grim giants of the waste and the storm--fever,
famine, and the frost!

You will find them down, to-day, among the firedamps in the mines,
to-morrow among the splendid pinnacles of the mountains, to settle a
fact of science, or add a mite to human knowledge. Here is one,
painfully toiling through the tangled depths of a desert continent, to
find a highway for commerce or Christianity. Here is another, in the
lonely seas around the pole, where the ghostly ice-mountains go drifting
through the gray mists, patiently wrestling with the awful powers of
nature, to snatch its secret from the hoary deep, and bring it home in
triumph. Hard fisted, big boned, tough brained, and stout hearted,
scared at nothing, beaten back by no resistance, baffled, for long, by
no obstacle, this race works as though the world were only one vast
workshop, and they wanted all the tools and all the materials, and were
anxious to monopolize the work of the world.

They are workers primarily, makers, producers, builders. Labor is their
appointed business as a people. Sometimes they have to fight, when fools
stand in their way, or traitors oppose their endeavors. They have had to
do, indeed, their fair share of fighting. Things go so awry in this
world that a patient worker is often called to drop his tools, square
himself, and knock down some idiot who insists on bothering him. And
this race of ours has therefore often, patient as it is, flamed out into
occasional leonine wrath. It really does not like fighting. That
performance interferes with its proper business. It takes to the
ploughshare more kindly than to the sabre, and likes to manage a steam
engine better than a six-gun battery. But if imbeciles and scoundrels
will get in its way, and will mar its pet labors, then, heaven help
them! The patient blood blazes into lava, fire, the big muscles strain
over the black cannon, the brawny arm guides the fire-belching tower of
iron on the sea, and, when these people do fight, they fight, like the
Titans when they warred with Jove, with a roar that shakes the spheres.
They go at that as they do at everything. They fight to clear this
confusion up, to settle it once for all, so it will _stay_ settled, that
they may go to their work again in peace. Fond of a clean job, they
insist on making a clean job of their fighting, if they have to fight at
all.

'But, after all, this race of ours is selfish,' you say. 'It works only
for itself, and you are making something grand and heroic out of that.
If it civilizes, it civilizes for itself. If it builds cities, drains
marshes, redeems jungles, explores rivers, builds railroads, and prints
newspapers, it is doing all for its own pocket.' Well, we say, why not?
Is the laborer not worthy of his hire? Do you expect a patient, toiling
people to conquer a waste continent here, for God and man, and get
nothing for it from either? A people never yet did a good stroke of work
in this world without getting a fair day's wages for the job. The old
two-fisted Romans, in their day, did a good deal of hard work in the way
of road and bridge building, and the like of that, across the sea, and
did it well, and they got paid for it by several centuries of mastery
over Europe. We rather think, high as the pay was, and little as the
late Romans seem to have deserved it, it was, on the whole, a profitable
bargain for Europe. The truth is, our race has, like all other great
creating races, been building wiser than it knew. It is not necessary
that such a race should be conscious of its mission. In its own
intention it may work for itself. By the guiding of the Great Master, it
does work for all humanity and all time. If a race comes on the earth
mere fighters, brigands, and thieves, living by force, fraud, and
oppression, even then it serves a purpose. It destroys something that
needs destroying. In its own turn, however, it must perish. But an
honest race, that undertakes to earn its honest living on the earth, and
in the main does earn it, honestly and industriously, by planting and
building, like our own, never works merely for itself. It plants and
builds to stand forever. The results of patient toil never perish. They
are so much clear gain to humanity.

To many, the _conscious_ end of the existence of the Yankee nation may
have been a small affair indeed. That end is only what they make it. Its
_unconscious_ end is, however, another matter. That end God has made. To
one man, the nation exists that he may make wooden clocks and sell them.
To another, the chief end of the nation's existence is that he may get a
good crop of wheat to market during rising quotations. To another, that
he may do a good stroke of business in the boot and shoe line. To
another, that he may make a good thing in stocks. To some in the past,
this nation existed solely that men might breed negroes in Virginia, and
work them in Alabama! This great nation was worth the blacks it owned,
and the cotton it raised! Actually that was all. The _conscious_ end to
thousands amounted to about this. Men looked at the nation from their
own small place. They dwarfed its purposes. They made them small and
mean and low. They did this three years ago more commonly, we think,
than they do now. The war has taught us many things. It has certainly
taught us higher ideas of the value of the Nation, and a loftier idea of
the meaning of its life. We have awaked to the fact that we are trustees
of this continent for the world. We have been fighting for two years and
more, not to save this nation for the value of its wheat, or cotton, or
manufactures, or exports, but for the value of the ideas, the hopes, the
aspirations, the tendencies this nation embodies. We have risen to see
that it were a good bargain to barter all the material wealth it holds
for the priceless spiritual ideas it represents. France babbles about
'going to war for an idea.' We don't babble. We buckle on our armor and
fight, we practical, money-making Yankees, who are said to value
everything by dollars, and, after two years of tremendous fighting, are
half amazed ourselves to find we have been fighting solely for a
half-dozen ideas the world can lose only at the cost of despair. Since
the days when men left house and home and friends, with red crosses on
their hearts, to redeem from the hands of the infidel the sepulchre
which the dead Christ once made holy, the world has never seen a war
carried on for a more purely ideal end than our own. We fight for the
integrity of _the Nation_. We fight for what that word means of hope
and confidence and freedom and advancement to the groaning and
bewildered world. We say, let all else perish,--wealth, commerce,
agriculture, cunning manufacture, humanizing art. We expend all to save
_the Nation_. That priceless possession we shall hold intact to the end,
for ourselves, our children, and the coming years!

Let us see what this thing is that we prize so highly. Let us see if we
are paying any too high a price for our object--if it is worth a million
lives and a countless treasure. What is _the Nation_?

There used to be a theory of 'the Social Compact.' It was a prominent
theory in the French Revolution, It was vastly older, however, than that
event. It was originally a theory of the Epicureans. Ovid has something
to say about it. Horace advocates it. It has not perished. It exists in
a fragmentary way in some books taught in colleges. It has more or less
of a hold still on many minds. This theory teaches that the natural
state of man is a state of warfare, an isolated savagery, where each
man's hand is against his neighbor, each lord and master for himself,
with no rights except what force gives him, and no possessions except
what he can hold by force. This natural state, however, was found to be
a very uncomfortable state, and so men contrive to get out of it as soon
as possible. For this purpose they form a 'social compact.' They come
together, and agree to give up some of their natural rights to a settled
government, on condition that government protect them in the others.
That is to say, naturally they have the right to steal all they can lay
their hands on, to rob, plunder, murder, and commit adultery, if they
have the power, and, generally, to live like a pack of amiable tiger
cats; but that these pleasant and amusing natural rights they consent to
give up, on condition they are relieved from the trouble of guarding
others. Just such babblement as that you can read in very learned books,
and stuff like that has actually been taught in colleges, and nobody was
sent to the lunatic asylum! That is the theory of the 'Social Compact.'
That is the way, according to that theory, that nations are made.

It is enough to say of this old heathen dream, that there never was such
a state of savage brutalism known since man was man. All men are born
under some law, some government, some controlling authority. As long as
fathers and mothers are necessary, in the economy of nature, to a man's
getting into the world at all, it is very hard for him to escape law and
control when he comes. I was never asked whether I would be a citizen of
the United States, whether it was my high will to come into 'the Social
Compact' existing here. Neither were you. No man ever was. Just fancy
the United States solemnly asking all the infants born this year, 'if
they are willing to join the social compact and behave themselves in the
country as respectable babies should!

It is vastly better to take facts and try to comprehend and use them.
And, as a fact, man is not naturally a brute beast. He never had to make
a Social Compact. He has always found one made ready to his hand. Some
established order, some national life has always stood ready to receive
the new recruit to the ranks of humanity, put him in his place, and ask
him no questions. He is made for society. Society is made for him. He is
not isolated, but joined to his fellows by links stronger than iron, by
bands no steel can sever. The nation stands waiting for him. In some
shape, with some development of national life, but always essentially
the same, the nation takes him, plastic at his birth, into its great
hands, and moulds and fashions him, by felt and unfelt influences,
whether he will or no, into the national shape and figure.

And that is what nations are made for. They do not exist to produce
wheat, corn, cattle, cotton, or cutlery, but to produce _men_. The
wheat, corn, and the rest exist for the sake of the men. The real value
of the nation, to itself and to the world, is not the things it
produces, but the style of man it produces. That is the broad difference
between China and Massachusetts, between Japan and New York. Nations
exist to be training schools for men. That is their real business.
Accordingly as they do it better or worse they are prospering or the
reverse. What is France about? The newspaper people tell me she is
building ships, drilling zouaves, diplomatizing at Rome, brigandizing in
Mexico, huzzaing for glory and Napoleon the Third. That is about the
wisdom of the newspapers. She is moulding a million unsuspecting little
innocents into Frenchmen! That is what she is at, and nobody seems to
notice. What is England doing? Weaving cotton, when she can get it, I am
told, drilling rifle brigades, blustering in the _Times_, starving her
workmen in Lancashire, and feasting her Prince in London, talking
'strict neutrality' in Parliament, and building pirates on the Clyde.
She's doing worse than that. That is not half her wrong-doing. She is
taking thousands of plastic, impressible, innocent babes, into her big
hands, monthly, and kneading them and hardening them into regular John
Bulls! That's a pretty job to think of!

So the nations are at work all over the world. And the nation that, as a
rule, takes 'mamma's darling' into its arms, and in twenty or thirty
years makes him the best specimen of a man, is the most perfect nation
and best fulfils a nation's purpose.

For the business of Education, which so many consider the schoolmaster's
speciality, is a larger business than they think. The Family exists to
do it, the Church exists to do it. It is the real business of the State.
The great Universe itself, with all its vastness, its powers and its
mysteries, was created for this. It is simply God's great schoolroom. He
has floored it with the emerald queen of the earth and of the gleaming
seas. He has roofed it with a sapphire dome, lit with flaming starfire
and sun blaze. He has set the great organ music of the spheres
reverberating forevermore through its high arches. He has put his
children here, to train them for their grand inheritance. He has ordered
nature and life and circumstance for this one great end.

Therefore the Nation is not a joint-stock company. It is not a
paper association. It is not a mutual assurance society for life
and property. That is the shallow, surface notion that makes
such miserable babble in political speeches. The Nation is Divine and
not Human. It is of GOD's making and not of man's. It is a moral
school, a spiritual training institute for educating and graduating men.
For that purpose it is _alive_. Men can make associations, companies,
compacts. God only makes _living bodies_, divine, perpetual
institutions, with life in themselves, which exist because man exists,
which can never end till man ends. The Family is one of these. The Church
is another, in any shape it comes. The Nation is another, holding Family
and Church both in its arms.

True, from the fact that the power, the administration and the
arrangements of details are in men's hands in the nation mistake is
common, and people are tempted to think the Nation purely human. All
thought below the surface will show the fallacy and stamp the Nation as
the handiwork of God.

We believe true thought on this matter is, at this day and in this land,
of first importance. The Lord of Hosts rules, and not the master of a
thousand regiments with smoking cannon. God builds the Nation for a
purpose. While it fulfils that purpose it shall stand. The banded folly
and scoundrelhood within and the gathered force of all enemies without
shall never overthrow one pillar in its strong foundations or topple
down one stone from its battlements while it works honestly toward its
true end. Not till it turn traitor to its place and purposes, not till
it madly plant itself in the way of the great wheels that roll the world
back to light and justice, will He who built it hurl it to the earth
again in crashing ruin, to build another order in its place. The man who
has let that great truth, written out in flame across the dusky forehead
of the Past, slip from his foolish atheist's heart and his shallow
atheist's brain, is blind, not only to our own land's short history, but
to the lessons of the long ages and the broad world.

We have been driven back to the loftiest ground on this question. We
have found that only on that could we stand. When the very foundations
of what we held most awful and reverential have been assailed by mad
traitorous hands, as though they were vulgar things, when frenzied
self-will has laid its profane grasp upon the Ark of the Covenant, we
have been forced back to those strong foundations on which nations
stand, for hope and confidence, to those tremendous sanctions that
girdle in, as with the fires of God, the sanctity of Law, the majesty of
Order, and established Right. We have declared these things Divine. We
have said men administer truly, but men did not create, and men have no
right to destroy. We arise in the defence of institutions of which
Jehovah has made us the guardians for men!

We have said the Nation exists to train men, that the best nation is the
one that trains the best men. Let us see how it does this.

In the first place, it educates by Written Law. To be sure, laws are
passed to define and protect human rights, in person, purse, family, or
good name. People sometimes think that is all they do. But consider.
These laws on the Statute Book are the Nation's deliberate convictions,
so far, on right and wrong, a real code of morals, the decisions of the
national conscience on moral subjects. An act is passed punishing theft.
It is intended to protect property indeed, but it does more. It stands
there, the Nation's conviction on a point of ethics. Theft is absolutely
wrong. It passes another act punishing perjury. The mere lawyer looks at
this solely as a facility for getting at the truth before a jury. It is
vastly more. It is a moral decision. The Nation binds the Ten
Commandments on the popular conscience, and declares, 'Thou shalt not
bear false witness.' It declares, 'There are everlasting distinctions,
things absolutely right, and things absolutely wrong. So far has the
conscience of the Nation made things clear. The good citizen knows all
this without the Statute Book, and much more. But there must be a limit
somewhere. Here it is. Up to this point you may come, but no farther.
Everlasting distinctions must be taught by bolts, chains, and scaffolds,
if there are those in the Nation who will learn them from no other
teachers.'

It has been very easy to tamper with Law among ourselves, very easy to
try experiments. And people get the notion that Law is a mere human
affair, the act of a legislature, the will of a majority. It is all a
mistake. A Nation's living laws are the slow growth of ages. They are
its solemn convictions on wrongs and rights, written in its heart. The
business of a wise legislator is to help all those convictions to
expression in formal enactment. Meddling fools try to choke them, pass
acts against them even, think they can annihilate such convictions. One
day the convictions insist on being heard, if not by formal law, then by
terrible informal protest against some legalized wrong. Think how
laboriously lawmakers have toiled to prevent the expression of the
Nation's determined convictions on the subject of Slavery! Think of the
end! Nay, all enactments which accord with these deep decisions of the
National Conscience, which help them to better expression and clearer
acknowledgment, are the real Laws of the Land. All that oppose these
decisions, though passed by triumphant majorities, with loud jubilation,
and fastened on the Nation as its sense of right, are mere rubbish, sure
to be swept away as the waves of the National life roll on.

We, by no means, hold that even the best nation, in its most living
laws, always declares perfect truth and perfect right. Human errors and
weaknesses enter into all things with which men deal. And the Nation is
ordered and guided by men. Nevertheless the Nation is an authorized
teacher of morals, and these errors are the accidents of the
institution. They are not of its essence. So far as they exist, they
block its working, they stand in its way. Pure, clear Justice is the
perfect ideal toward which a living, advancing Nation aims. That it
daily come nearer this ideal is the basis of its permanence. And,
meanwhile, though the result be far from attained, we none the less hold
that the Law of the Nation is, to every man within it, the Law of God.
His business, as a wise man, is to accept it, obey it, help it to
amendment where he believes there is error, with all patience and
loyalty.

For the first disorder in the makeup of man is wilfulness. The child
kicks and scratches in his cradle. It wants to have its own small will.
The first lesson it has to learn is the lesson of submission, that the
untried world, into which it is thrust, is not a place of self-pleasing
but of law. It takes parents and teachers years to get that fact through
the stubborn youngster's head. It will burn its fingers, it will tumble
down stairs, it will pitch head first over fences, because it will not
learn to forego its own small, ignorant will, and submit to wiser and
larger wills. In the good old days they used to think that matter ought
to be learned in childhood once for all, and they labored faithfully to
convince us urchins, by the unsparing logic of the rod, that the law of
life is not self-will. Some of us, possibly, remember those emphatic
lessons yet.

It is hard, however, to learn this thing perfectly. And so after the
Mother, Father, and Teacher get through, the Nation takes up the lesson.
A wise, wide, unselfish will takes command, and puts down the narrow,
conceited, selfish will of the individual. The individual will may think
itself very wise and very right. But the large will, the broad, strong,
wise will of the Nation, comes and says: 'Here is the _Law_, the
embodiment of the great, wide, wise will, to which the wisest and the
strongest must submit and bow.'

That is the law of human position. Not self-will but obedience, not
anarchy but order, not mad uncontrolledness, but calm submission, even
to temporary error and wrong, is the road to ultimate perfection.
Therefore, we can say nothing too reverential of Law. We cannot guard
too jealously the clear trumpet-tongued preacher of everlasting right,
sounding out a great Nation's convictions of obligation and duty. Hedge
its sanctity with a ring wall of fire. Reverence the voice of the land
for right and order. We have exploded forever, let us trust, the notion
of 'the right divine of kings to govern wrong.' We must cling,
therefore, with tenfold tenacity to the right divine of Law, the Sacred
Majesty of the Nation's settled Order.

But the Written Law is only one way in which the Nation brings its
teachings home to the individual. It is not the strongest way. The
Nation's most powerful formative influence lies in its _traditions_, its
unwritten law, its sense and feeling about the questions of human life
and conduct, handed down from father to son in the continuity of the
national life. And the power to hand these down depends on the fact that
the Nation is a living organism.

For examine, and you will find every nation has a power to mould men
after a certain model. We are Americans because we have been made so by
the national influence. Rome, in old time, moulded men after a certain
type, and, with infinite small diversities, made them all Romans. Greece
took them, and, on another model, made them Greeks. England has the
artistic power, and kneads the clay of childhood into the grown up
creature the world knows as an Englishman. France has the same power,
and manufactures the Frenchman.

Now this moulding power, which every nation has, and the greatest
nations the most markedly of all, comes mostly from what we call the
National Tradition. Some people call it Public Opinion. They think they
can even make it. They suppose it belongs to the present. In fact, they
cannot make it to any extent at all. It belongs to the past. It is a
thing inherited. It is best to call it National Tradition.

For the nation, being an organism, and living, its life does not end
with one generation. The river flows to-day, and is the same river it
was a thousand years ago, though every wave and every drop has changed a
million times. So the generations heave on into the great sea and are
forgotten, but the Nation abides the same. So all the thought, and
feeling, and conviction of the Nation to-day, on questions of human life
and duty, it brings from the far-away past, from the gray mists of the
distant hills where it took its rise.

Just think! The life of every great, strong man and woman, who has
lived, thought, worked in the Nation, has it not entered into the
Nation's life? Is not here yet, a part of the Nation's influence? Every
great, distinct type of human nature grown in the Nation becomes forever
a mould in which to cast men. Every great deed done, every strong
thought uttered, every noble life lived, is committed to the stream of
this national tradition. Every great victory won, every terrible defeat
suffered, every grand word spoken, every noble song sung, is alive to
the last. The living Nation drops nothing, loses nothing out of its
life. The Saxon Alfred, the Norman William, Scandinavian viking, moss
trooper of the border, they have all gone into our circulation, they all
help to shape Americans. And we have added Washington, the stainless
gentleman, and Jefferson, the unselfish statesman, and Franklin, the
patient conqueror of circumstance, and a thousand others, as types by
which to form the children of this people for a thousand years.

Think, too, how the national tradition rejects all bad models, all mean
types, how it refuses to touch them at any price, how it will only carry
down the grand models, the noble types. Arnold never enters as an
influence into national training. The Arnolds and their treason are
whelmed and sunk, as the Davises and their treason will be. The
Washingtons do live as types. Their deeds sweep on, like stately barks,
borne proudly on the rolling waves of the Nation's life, with triumphal
music on their snowy decks, the land's glory for evermore! Only the
noble, only the good, the true in some shape, never the utterly false or
vile, will this national tradition hold and keep, as an influence and a
power for time.

Unseen, unfelt, but strong like God's hand, this power surrounds the
cradle of the child. He finds it waiting for him. He does not know about
it or reason about it. It takes him, soft and plastic as it finds him,
and calls out his powers, and fashions them after its own forms. Before
he is twenty-one he is made up for good and all, an American, an
Englishman, or a Frenchman, _for life_. The creating influence was like
the air. He breathed it into his circulation.

There are people who think it very wise to quarrel with this state of
things. They think it philosophic to sneer at national prejudices, as
they call them, to call national pride and national feeling narrow and
bigoted. It is simply very silly to quarrel with any divine and
unalterable order of life. Better work under it and with it. Does not
love of country exalt and ennoble, and all the more because of its
prejudices? Does not the very meanest feel himself higher, more worthy,
more self-respecting, because he is one of a strong, great, free people,
with a grand inheritance of heroism from the past, and grand
possibilities for the future? Who will quarrel with the Frenchman, the
Englishman, or the Japanese, for holding his land the fairest land, his
nation the noblest nation the sun shines on? Is it not my fixed faith
that he is utterly deluded? Do I not _know_ that my own land is the
garden of the Lord? Do I not see that its valleys are the holiest, and
its mountains the loftiest, its rivers the most majestic, and its seas
the broadest, its men the bravest, and its women the purest and fairest
on the broad earth's face? Even Fourth of July orations have their uses.

No! thank Heaven for this virtue of patriotism! It lifts a man out of
his lower nature, and makes his heart beat with the hearts of heroes.
There are two or three things in the world men will die for. The Nation
is one. They will die for the land where their fathers sleep. They will
fling fortune, hope, peace, family bliss, life itself, all into the
gulf, to save its hearths from shame, its roof trees from dishonor. They
will follow the tattered rag they have made the symbol of its right,
through bursting shells and hissing hail of rifle shot, and serried
ranks of gleaming bayonets, 'into the jaws of death, into the mouth of
Hell,' when they are called. They will do this in thousands, the poorest
better than the richest often, the humblest just as heroically as the
leaders of the people. And therefore, we say, thank God for the
elevating power of Patriotism, for national Pride, for national
_prejudice_, if you will, that can, by this great love of country, so
conquer selfishness, meanness, cowardice, and all lower loves, and make
the very lowest by its power a hero, while the mortal man dies for the
immortal Nation! Let a man commit himself boldly to the tendencies and
influences of his race then. Let him work with them, not against them.
He cannot be too much an American, too thoroughly penetrated with the
convictions and the spirit of his country. And he need fear no
contracting narrowness. The Nation's aims are wiser far and loftier far
than the wisest and the loftiest of any one man, or any one generation.

We have faintly shadowed out here something of the meaning of THE
NATION. If we are right, we can pay no price that shall come near
its value. For ourselves, for our children, for the ages coming, it is
verily the Ark of the Covenant. We have seen that we are here to build
it. Because GOD needed these United States, He kept a continent
till the time was ripe, and then sent His workmen to the work. We are
all, in our degree, builders on those walls. We are building fast, these
days. Some rotten stones have entered into the structure, and it is hard
work to get them out, but we shall succeed. We shall see that no more of
that kind get in. Let us build on the broad foundation of the fathers a
stately palace, of marble, pure and white, whose towers shall flash back
in glory the sunlight of centuries, towers of refuge against falsehood
and wrong and cruelty forevermore.

We are all builders, we say. The humblest does his share. There's fear
in that thought, but more of hope. Nothing perishes. The private, who
falls, bravely fighting, does his part like the general. The ploughman's
honest life gives its contribution to the Nation's greatness as the
life of Webster does. All is telling in 'the long results of time,'
helping to decide what style of manhood shall be fashioned in America
for generations.

For the great Nation grows slowly upward to its perfect proportions, as
the parent and teacher of men. And all things and all men in it help to
decide and develop that capacity. Not dazzling battle-bursts alone, not
alone victorious charges on the trampled plain, not splendid triumphs,
when laurelled legions march home from conquered provinces and humbled
lands, not the mighty deeds of mighty men in camps, nor the mighty words
of mighty men in senates, though all these do their part, and a grand
part too--not these alone give the great land its character and might.
These come from a thousand little things, we seldom think of. By the
workman's axe that fells the forest as by the soldier's bayonet, by the
gleaming ploughshare in the furrow as by the black Columbiad couchant on
the rampart, by the schoolhouse in the valley as by the grim battery on
the bay, by the church spire rising from the grove, by the humble
cottage in the glen, by the Bible on the stand at eve, by the prayer
from the peaceful hearth, by the bell that calls to worship through the
hallowed air; by the merchant at his desk, and by the farmer in the
harvest field, by the judge upon the bench, and the workman in his shop,
by the student in his silent room, and by the sailor on the voiceful
sea, by the honest speaker's tongue, by the honest writer's pen, and by
the free press that gives the words of both a thousand pair of eagles'
wings over land and sea, by every just and kindly word and work, by
every honest, humble industry, by every due reward to manliness and
right and loyalty, and by every shackle forged and every gallows built
for villany and scoundrelhood; by a thousand things like these about us
daily, working unnoticed year by year, is the great river swelled, of
thought and feeling and conviction, that floats a mighty nation's
grandeur on through the waiting centuries.




BUCKLE, DRAPER, AND A SCIENCE OF HISTORY.

_SECOND PAPER._


The word _Science_ has been so indiscriminately applied to very diverse
departments of our intellectual domain, that it has ceased to have any
distinctive or well-defined signification. Meaning, appropriately, that
which is certainly _known_, as distinguished from that which is matter
of conjecture, opinion, thought, or plausible supposition merely, its
application to any special branch of human inquiry signifies, in that
sense, that the facts and principles relating to the given branch, or
constituting it, are no longer subjects of uncertain investigation, but
have become accurately and positively _known_, so as to be demonstrable
to all intelligent minds and invariably recognized by them as true when
rightly apprehended and understood. In the absence, however, of any
clear conception of what constitutes _knowledge_, of where the dividing
line between it and opinion lay, departments of the universe of
intelligence almost wholly wanting in exactness and certainty have been
dignified with the same title which we apply to departments most
positively _known_. We hear of the Science of Mathematics, the Science
of Chemistry, the Science of Medicine, the Science of Political Economy,
and even of the Science of Theology.

This vague use of the word Science is not confined to general custom
only, but appertains as well to Scientists and writers on scientific
subjects. So general is this indistinct understanding of the meaning of
this term, that there does not exist in the range of scientific
literature a precise, compact, exhaustive, intelligible definition of
it. In order, therefore, to approach our present subject with clear
mental vision, we must gain an accurate conception of the character and
constituents of Science.

In his _History of the Inductive Sciences_, Professor Whewell says:

     'In the first place, then, I remark, that to the formation of
     science, two things are requisite:--Facts and Ideas; observation of
     Things without, and an inward effort of Thought; or, in other
     words, Sense and Reason. Neither of these elements, by itself, can
     constitute substantial general knowledge. The impression of sense,
     unconnected by some rational and speculative principle, can only
     end in a practical acquaintance with individual objects; the
     operations of the rational faculties, on the other hand, if allowed
     to go on without a constant reference of external things, can lead
     only to empty abstraction and barren ingenuity. Real speculative
     knowledge demands the combination of the two ingredients--right
     reason and facts to reason upon. It has been well said, that true
     knowledge is the interpretation of nature; and therefore it
     requires both the interpreting mind, and nature for its subject,
     both the document, and ingenuity to read it aright. Thus invention,
     acuteness, and connection of thought, are necessary on the one
     hand, for the progress of philosophical knowledge; and on the other
     hand, the precise and steady application of these faculties to
     facts well known and clearly conceived.'

This explanation of the nature of Science, more elaborately expanded in
_The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences_, is limited by its author to
the Physical Sciences only. In addition to this circumscribed
application, it is moreover indistinct by reason of the use of the word
Ideas, a word to which so many different significations have been
attached by different writers that its meaning is vague and
undefined--to convey the impression of Laws or Principles. The same
defect exists in the detailed exposition is perhaps the most extended
and complete extant.

But even when we gain a clear conception of the proposition which
Professor Whewell only vaguely apprehends and therefore does not clearly
state, namely--that Science is an assemblage of Facts correlated by Laws
or Principles, a system in which the mutual _relations_ of the Facts are
known, and the Laws or Principles established by them are
discovered;--when we understand this ever so distinctly, we are still at
the beginning of a knowledge of what constitutes Science. When do we
know that we have a Fact? How are we to be sure that our proof is not
defective? By what means shall it be certain, beyond the cavil of a
doubt, that the right Laws or Principles, and no more than those
warranted by the Facts, are deduced? These and some other questions must
be definitely settled before we can thoroughly comprehend the nature of
Science, and the consideration of which brings us, in the first place,
to the examination of the characteristics of Scientific Methods.

The intellectual development of the world has proceeded under the
operation of three Methods. Two of these, identical in their mode of
action, but arriving, nevertheless, at widely different results, from
the different points at which they take their departure, are not
commonly discriminated, but are both included in the technical term
_Deductive Method_. The other is denominated the _Inductive_. A brief
analysis of these Methods will clear the way for an understanding of the
nature of Science, particularly in its application to the subject of
History, with which we are at present especially concerned.

The earliest evolution of that which has been called Science,--the
Mathematics, which we dismiss for the instant, excepted,--took place
under the operation of a Method, which, ordinarily confounded with the
true Deductive one, is now better known among rigorous Scientists as the
Hypothetical or Anticipative Method. This has two modes of expression,
one of which consists in the assumption of Laws or Principles, which
have not been adequately verified, or in the erection of fanciful
hypotheses, as the starting points of reasoning for the purpose of
establishing other Facts. The second and most common operation referred
to this Method, which is, however, strictly speaking, an imperfect
application of the Inductive Method, is _to draw conclusions from Facts
which these do not warrant_--sometimes conclusions not related to the
Facts, oftener those which, being so related, are a step beyond the
legitimate inferences which the Facts authorize, though in the same
direction. This results in the establishment of Laws or Principles as
true, which are by no means proven, many of which are subsequently found
to be incorrect. It is to this operation of the Hypothetical Method that
Professor Whewell, who does not discriminate the two, refers when he
describes the defect in the physical speculations of the Greek
philosophers to have been, 'that though they had in their possession
Facts and Ideas, _the Ideas were not distinct and appropriate to the
Facts_.' The main cause of defect in the mental process here employed is
the tendency of the human mind to generalize at too early a stage of the
investigation, and consequently upon a too narrow basis of Facts.

This Method characterized the intellectual activity of the race from the
earliest beginnings of thought up to a period which is commonly said to
have commenced with the publication of the _Novum Organum_ of Lord
Bacon. It was of course fruitless of _Scientific_ results, as it was not
a Scientific, but an absolutely Unscientific Method, since _certainty_
is the basis of all Science, and since a Method which attempts to deduce
Facts from Principles which are not ascertained to be Principles, or
Principles from an insufficient accumulation of Facts, cannot insure
certainty.

It is common to aver that the Anticipative or Hypothetical Method failed
to secure distinct and established verities, and thus to answer the
purpose of a guide to knowledge, because it neglected Facts, disregarded
experience, and endeavored to spin philosophy out of the unverified
thoughts of men. Professor Whewell, in the two able and valuable works
to which we have referred, has shown that this was not the case among
the Greeks, at least, whose Philosophy 'did, in its opinions, recognize
the necessity and paramount value of observation; did, in its origin,
proceed upon observed Facts, and did employ itself to no small extent in
classifying and arranging phenomena;' and furthermore, 'that Aristotle,
and other ancient philosophers, not only asserted in the most pointed
manner that all our knowledge must begin from experience, but also
stated, in language much resembling the habitual phraseology of the most
modern schools of philosophizing, that particular facts must be
_collected_; that from these, general principles must be obtained by
induction; and that these principles, when of the most general kind, are
_axioms_.'

The confusion of thought which has existed and, to a considerable
extent, still exists, even among Scientific men, in relation to the
nature of this Method, arises from the want of an understanding of its
twofold mode of operation, as just explained. The assertion of those
who ascribe the failure of this Method to its neglect of Facts, is true;
the averment of Professor Whewell that it was neither from a lack of
Facts nor Ideas, but because the Ideas were not distinct and appropriate
to the Facts, is not less so. But the former statement applies to that
phase of the Method which assumed unverified Laws or Principles, or
fanciful hypotheses, as the starting points of reasoning without
reference to Facts; while the latter refers to the process, which, while
it collected Facts and derived Laws therefrom, did not stop at the
inferences which were warranted by the Facts. This last was the mode of
applying the Method most in vogue with Aristotle and the Greek
Scientists; while the first was preëminently, almost exclusively, the
process of the Greek Philosophers and the mediæval Schoolmen.

But while the endeavor to arrive at certain knowledge by the Deductive
Method, by attempting to reason from Principles to Facts, from Generals
to Particulars, failed so completely as far as the Anticipative or
Hypothetical branch, of the Method was concerned, the same mode of
procedure was productive of the most satisfactory results when applied
to Mathematics, and furnished a rapid and easy means of arriving at the
ulterior Facts of this department of the universe with precision and
certainty. We have thus the curious exhibition of the same process
leading into utter confusion when applied to one set of phenomena, and
into exactitude and surety when applied to another; and behold the
Scientific world condemning as utterly useless for other departments of
investigation, and throwing aside, a Method which is still retained in
the only Science that is called _exact_, and in which proof amounts to
_demonstration_, in the strict sense of the term. This anomaly will be
recurred to and explained farther on.

Soon after the invention of printing, with its resulting multiplication
of books and increased intellectual activity, the mind of Europe began
to emerge from the deep darkness in which it had been shrouded for
centuries, and a number of great intellects engaged in the search after
knowledge by the close and laborious examination of the actual
existences and operations of nature around them. Leonardo da Vinci and
Galileo in Italy; Copernicus, Kepler, and Tycho Brahe in Central Europe;
and Gilbert in England, peered into the hidden depths of the universe,
collected Facts, and established those Principles which are the
foundations of the magnificent structures of modern Astronomy and
Physics. About the same time, Francis Bacon put forth the formal and
elaborate statement of that Method of acquiring knowledge which is often
called after him the Baconian, but more commonly the Inductive Method;
substantially the Method pursued by the great scientific dicoverers whom
we have just named.

The characteristic of this Method is the precise Observation of Facts or
Phenomena and the Induction (drawing in) or accumulation of these
accurate Observations as the basis of knowledge. (This is seemingly the
first or etymological reason for the use of the term _Induction_; a term
subsequently transferred, as we shall see, to the establishment of the
Laws, from which then _ulterior_ Facts are to be _deduced_.) When a
sufficient number of Facts have been accumulated and classified in any
sphere of investigation, and these are found uniformly to reveal the
same Law or Principle, it is assumed that all similar Phenomena are
invariably governed by this Principle or Law, which, in reality
_deduced_ or derived, is, by this inversion of terms, said to be
_induced_ from the observed Facts. The Law so established has
thenceforth two distinct functions: I, all the Facts of subsequent
Observation, by the primitive Method of observation, are ranged under
the Law which, to this extent, serves merely as a superior mode of
classification; and, II, the Law itself, now assumed to be known and
infallible, becomes an instrument of prevision and the consequent
discovery through it of new Facts, the same which were meant by the
expression 'ulterior Facts' above used. It is this _deduction_ of new
Facts from an established Law which constitutes the true and legitimate
Deductive Method of Science, the third of the three Methods above stated
and the one which, as has been pointed out, is often erroneously
confounded with the Anticipative or Hypothetical Method.

The mode of investigation by the Inductive Method is, therefore, in
general, similar to that which Aristotle and the Greek Scientists
adopted. It first Observes and Collects Facts; then it resorts to
Classification for the purpose of discovering the Law by which the
observed Facts are regulated; then _derives_ from this Classification a
General Law, presumed to be applicable to all similar Facts, although
they have not yet been observed; and, finally, _deduces_ from the
General Law thus established, new Facts and Particulars, by bringing
them in under the Law.

The Inductive Method is, therefore, almost identical in its mode of
procedure with one of the processes anciently adopted for the
acquisition of knowledge under the Anticipative or Hypothetical Method.
It failed of fruitful results, in this earlier age, because, as we have
seen, men were not content with adhering rigorously and patiently to the
logical, irresistible conclusions which Facts evolved, but sought to
wrench from them Principles, which required for their establishment a
wider or different range of phenomena. On the revival of this Method
among the modern Scientists, it was conceived, especially by Bacon, that
a rigid adhesion to the legitimate deductions of Facts and a faithful
exclusion from the domain of knowledge of everything which did _not_
logically and inevitably result from the Observation and Classification
of Facts, was the only safe way to arrive at certainty in any department
of thought. It is this fidelity to conclusions rigorously derived from
Facts, and the severe exclusion of everything not clearly substantiated
by Observation, Classification, and Induction, which has given us the
body of proximately definite knowledge that we now possess, and which,
so far as it has been persevered in, has been productive of such
beneficial intellectual results.

Under the guidance of this Inductive Method new Sciences have been
gradually generated, whose foundations and Principles are capable of
such a degree of satisfactory proof as the Method itself affords. During
the present century, Auguste Comte, a distinguished French philosopher,
often denominated the Bacon of our epoch, the special champion of the
Inductive Method, has undertaken, for our day, the task which his
illustrious English predecessor attempted for his, namely--an Inventory
and Classification of our intellectual stores. He endeavored to bring
the Scientific world up to the _practical_ recognition of that which
they had _theoretically_ maintained since Bacon's time,--that nothing
deserves to be considered as true, which cannot be undoubtedly,
conclusively established by inference, from the Facts of Experience,--a
theory to which they had never strictly adhered. He insisted that all
Theological, Metaphysical, and Transcendental Speculations were wholly
beyond the range of exact inquiry, and should therefore be excluded from
the domain in which human knowledge was to be sought; and that
investigation should be confined to those regions of thought and
activity which were within the limits of precise apprehension. Upon this
clear, logical and right application of the Inductive Method, Comte
based his Classification of our existing knowledge. He denominated as
_Positive_ Sciences those systems of Principles and correlated Facts,
comprising Mathematics, Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry, Biology,
Sociology, and their derivative domains, which were founded on the exact
Observation of Phenomena, and set aside all other realms of the universe
of thought as departments in which _exact_ knowledge was impossible, and
whose intellectual examination was therefore fruitless. The Philosophy
based on this critical Method was denominated by its founder Positivism.
All modern Scientists, with rare exceptions, whether they are disciples
of Comte or not, are theoretical Positivists in their modes of
investigation, in their unwillingness to accept theories not proven, in
their partiality for Facts, and in their devotion to the Inductive
Method, although the nature of _proof_ is still but dimly comprehended
by them as a body, and much laxity creeps into their practical efforts
at demonstration. Under the influence of Positivism, however, the
Scientific field is being rapidly cleared of unestablished theories
which formerly mingled with it, claiming to be an integral part of its
area, and the boundaries of Science are becoming more closely defined.
The Inductive Method is enthusiastically eulogized as the source of the
success of modern Scientific investigators, as the true Scientific
Method, and--except among a few of the most advanced thinkers--as the
final word of wisdom in regard to the manner of establishing definite
and exact knowledge. The Deductive, often called the _à priori_
Method--in which term the Anticipative or Hypothetical and the true
Deductive Method, seen in Mathematical investigations, are not
sufficiently discriminated--is, on the other hand, almost everywhere
denounced as essentially false, the source of all error; and we are
assured that the attempt to work it was the fault of the old world,
prior to Bacon, and the cause of its failure to secure great
intellectual results.

A distinguished thinker, Stephen Pearl Andrews, from whose writings some
of these suggestions concerning Methods have been borrowed, points out
three sources of confusion in the minds even of the learned themselves,
in connection with this subject. First, in the verbal point of view, the
terms Induction and Deduction are applied in a way directly the opposite
of that which their Etymology would indicate: _In_-duction is used for
the _De_-rivation of a Law from Facts, and _De_-duction for the
_Intro_-duction of new Facts under the Law. Secondly, the two terms
Inductive and Deductive, which are alone usually spoken of, are not
enough to designate all the processes involved in the several Scientific
Methods; and, thirdly, these terms are sometimes used to denote
_Processes_ merely, and sometimes to designate Methods which are merely
characterized by the predominance of one or the other of these
Processes.

This intricate subject of Methods may be better understood after a
statement of the following considerations. Induction, as a _Process_,
occurs whenever Facts are used as an instrument by which to discover a
Principle or Law of Nature. The Principle is derived from, or, as
Scientists have chosen to conceive it, _induced upon_ the Facts.
Deduction, as a _Process_, occurs whenever a Principle or Law of Nature
is used as an instrument by which to discover Facts. The new Facts are
ranged under, or, as it is conceived, _deduced from_ the Principle.

Each, of these Processes occurs in _every_ Scientific Method; but
different Methods are _characterised_ by that one of these two Processes
which is _put first or takes the lead in the given Method_. Thus, in
both Methods which are included in the one generally called the
Deductive, the main Process was _Deduction_, there being no perceptible
_Induction_ from Collected Facts in the proper Hypothetical or
Anticipative Method, while in the true Deductive Method, as applied to
Mathematics, the Inductive stage is so short and so slight that it is
performed instinctively by all people and the Deductive stage at once
reached. The other branch of the Hypothetical Method, that used by
Aristotle and the Greek Scientists, was, as we have seen, in reality a
first and imperfect attempt to use the Inductive Method. In this Method
itself, on the other hand, the main Process is the _Induction_ or
derivation of a Principle or Law from accumulated Facts, while
_Deduction_, or the bringing in of new Facts under the Law, is a
subordinate or Secondary Process.

In reality, there is but ONE Method, having several stages or
_Processes_, which Processes, preponderating at different epochs, have
not been clearly apprehended as necessary complements of each other, and
have, hence, been regarded as different Methods. In one phase of the
Anticipative or Hypothetical stage,--the assumption of basic Principles
as points to reason from,--the Observation and Collection of Facts, and
the Induction therefrom, were processes so imperfectly performed, that
they appeared to have no existence; in another phase, that employed by
Aristotle, these Processes were apparent, but still imperfectly
conducted, and hence, in both cases, the Law or Principle employed for
the _Deductive_ Process was liable to be defective, and therefore
insufficient as a guide to the acquisition of certain knowledge. In the
Inductive stage or Method, on the other hand, the Processes thus
defectively employed in the former stage, the Hypothetical, are
preëminently and disproportionately active, while the Deductive Process
is given a very inferior position. The establishment of the just,
reciprocal activity of these two Processes in intellectual investigation
would secure the perfection of the _one true Scientific Method_.

The Inductive Method--preserving the term Method to avoid confusion--in
which the mode of procedure from Facts to Principles predominates, and
which is hence sometimes called the Empirical, or the Experimental, or
the Positive, or the _à posteriori_ Method, is that which now prevails
in the world, which is extolled as if it were the only legitimate
Method, and the only possible route to Scientific Discovery. That the
just claims of the Inductive Method are very great is universally
admitted, but let us not stultify ourselves by assuming a position in
its defence which is in direct violation of the teachings of the Method
itself,--namely, the assumption of a theory which is not verified by
Facts. That the Inductive Method is vastly superior to the Anticipative
or Hypothetical one, is abundantly proved; but that it is the _only_
correct path to Scientific truth, that it is the best path to Scientific
truth which will ever be known, or that in a rightly balanced Method it
would be the _main_ Process, is an averment for which there is no
warrant. On the contrary, a very cursory examination of the Inductive
Method will show defects which render it unavailable as the sole or the
chief guide in Scientific inquiry.

The leading characteristic of the Inductive Method, that for which it is
mainly admired, is its cautious, laborious, oftentimes tedious
Observation and Collection of the Facts of Experience, and their careful
Classification as a basis for the derivation of a Principle or Law
applicable to the Phenomena grouped together. By this means, it is said,
we secure precision and _certainty_, by which is intended, not only the
_certainty of that which is already observed and classified_, but also
_the certainty of that which is deduced from the Law or Principle
derived from these known Facts_. It is just here, however, that the
Inductive Method is lacking. Experience may testify a thousand, ten
thousand, any indefinite number of times, to the repetition of the same
Phenomena, and yet we can have no _certainty_ of the recurrence of the
same Phenomena, in the future, in the same way. All the Facts of
Observation and Experience for thousands of years went to convince men
that the earth was at rest and the sun and stars passing around it. A
larger Experience showed them their error. How shall we know that our
Observation has at any time included all the Facts necessary to
establish a Law? The history of Science, even under the guidance of the
Inductive Method, is a history of Principles announced as firmly
established, which a little later were found to be defective and had to
be adjusted to the advanced stage of human Experience. The very nature
of the Inductive Method indicates its inadequacy for the largest and
most important purposes of Science. It gives certainty, where it does
give it, only up to the point of the present, _it can never afford
complete certainty for the future_. The logical and rigid testimony of
this Method can never be more than this;--Observation and Experience
show that such has been the uniform operation of Nature in this
particular _so far as can be discovered_, and _in all probability_ it
will always continue to be such. _High Probability_, amounting, it may
be, at times, to an assurance of certainty, is the strongest proof which
this Method can, from its very nature, produce. To establish a Principle
or Law for a _certainty beyond any possibility of doubt_ by the
Inductive Method, it is essential that we should know that we are in
possession of every Fact in the universe which has any relation to the
given Principle, or rather that we should know that there are _no_ Facts
in the universe at variance with it. To _know_ this, it is necessary to
be in possession of _all_ the Facts in the universe, since the Inductive
Method has no mode of discovering when it has sifted out of the immense
mass of Facts all those which exist in connection with any given Law. As
we shall _never_ be in possession of all the Facts of the universe, we
shall never be able, by the Inductive Method, to possess _certainty_ in
respect to the future operations of Nature; and thus we discover the
insufficiency of this Method as a perfect guide to the acquisition of
knowledge.

The famed Inductive Method, like the Anticipative or Hypothetical,
furnishes, in truth, only an _assumption_ as a starting point for
reasoning in the endeavor to establish other Facts than those already
known. The verification of the Law or Principle assumed is, indeed, in
the former Method, as complete as it can be, in the nature of the case,
while in the latter it is not; but we have just seen that the strongest
proof which Observation, Classification, and Induction can give is that
of High Probability, on the _supposition_ that a certain number of Facts
from which a Law is derived include substantially all that the whole
range of Phenomena belonging to the given sphere would represent. Any
possible application of the Inductive Method is, therefore, only a
nearer or more remote approximation to an Exactitude and Certainty which
the Method itself can never _fully_ attain.

The Inductive Method being thus defective as a Scientific guide, in the
most important requirement of Science, it is unnecessary to enter into
an exposition of minor defects, not the least of which is the _slowness_
with which conclusions must necessarily be arrived at, when they are
reached only by the gradual accumulation of Facts and the derivation of
a Law from these. A Method or a Process which lacks that which is the
very essence of Science--the power of making _known_, of introducing
_certainty_ into investigation, may be an important factor in the _true
Scientific_ Method, but cannot constitute the _Method itself_, or its
_leading_ feature. Let it not be understood, however, that in bringing
the Inductive Method in Science to the ordeal of a critical examination,
it is designed to detract from its just dues or to depreciate its true
value. Science is preëminently severe in its probings; and that which,
asserts its claim to the highest Scientific position, and affects to be
the only guide to exact knowledge, cannot expect anything less than the
most rigorous inquiry into the validity of such claim, and the most
peremptory insistence upon the production of proper credentials before
so lofty a seat be accorded it. If inquiry discovers deficiencies in its
character, Science should rejoice that truth is vindicated, and that, by
correctly understanding the nature and powers of their present guide,
Scientific men may avoid being tempted to consider it as competent to
conduct them into regions where the blind must inevitably be leading the
blind, and both be in danger of the ditch. If the devotees of the
Inductive Method have in their enthusiasm set up claims for it which
cannot be substantiated, they must not blame the rigorous hand, which,
in the service of Science, unmasks their idol and exhibits its defects,
but rather impute to their own deviation from the severity of Scientific
truth, the disappointment which they may experience. The question of
Method lies at the foundation of all Science. Until it is thoroughly
understood, until the exact character of all our Methods or Processes is
definitely and rightly apprehended, there can be no full understanding
of the true nature of Science, and, hence, no critical and exact line
drawn between that which is Science and that which is not.

Our examination of the Methods in use thus far in our past search after
knowledge has developed these facts:--that prior to an era which is
commonly said to commence with Bacon, the Method of intellectual
investigation was _mainly_ by attempting to proceed from Principles to
Facts, and that the attempt exhibits three distinct phases: one, in
which the Induction stage is so simple and so short as to be
instinctively and correctly performed by all people, and the Deductive
stage at once reached--this furnishes the Mathematics, the only Science
in which hitherto the _true_ Deductive Method has prevailed; a second,
in which Principles are assumed to reason from, without any previous
effort at Induction, such as existed, being unconsciously made from the
supposed Facts or Knowledge which the mind was in possession of; and a
third, in which Facts were collected, classified, and Induction
therefrom as a basis of further investigation attempted, but in which
the Laws or Principles assumed as established by the Facts were not
rigorously and accurately derived from Facts; or, in other words, in
which the Facts were not strictly used for the purpose of deriving from
them just such Laws or Principles only as they actually established, but
were wrenched to the attempted support of Laws, Principles, or Ideas
more or less fanciful or unrelated to the Facts. These two last phases
are included in what is known among Scientists as the Anticipative or
Hypothetical Method; while the three phases are commonly undiscriminated
and collectively termed the Deductive Method. It was also developed that
the results of this period of intellectual activity were fruitless of
definite Scientific achievements, _except so far as the true Deductive
Method_ had been employed. It was furthermore seen that since Bacon's
time, the opposite Method of procedure, namely, from Facts to
Principles, has been chiefly in vogue; that under its impulse
distinctness and clearness have been brought to pervade those stores of
knowledge which were already in our possession, thus fulfilling _one_ of
the requisites of a perfect Scientific Method, while, however, the other
necessary requirement, that of furnishing a _certain_ guide to future
discoveries, has been only proximately attained by it.

It is obvious from this exhibition of the characteristics of the two
leading Scientific Methods, or the two leading Processes of the one
Method, in whichever light we may choose to view them, that so far from
being the best or the only true Method or Process of intellectual
investigation, the Inductive is far inferior to the _true Deductive_
Method or Process, in all the essentials of a Scientific guide. The
Inductive can give us only a _high degree_ of precision and
definiteness, with only proximate certainty for the future as the result
of a slow mode of procedure; while the true Deductive Method gives us
perfect precision, exactitude, and complete certainty, as the result of
a rapid mode. The true Deductive Method--brought into disrepute by being
confounded with the Anticipative or Hypothetical, which differs from it
only in this, that the Principles from which the latter reasons are
_true_, while those of the former are _doubtful_--has thus far prevailed
in Mathematics alone, and _Mathematics_ is, up to our day, _the only
recognized Exact Science_, the only Science in which _Demonstration_, in
the strict sense of that term, is now possible,--the fruits of the
Inductive Method being known as the _Inexact_ Sciences, in which only
Probable Reasoning prevails.

It is necessary to say, in the _strict sense of the term_, because the
same laxity exists in the use of the word _Demonstration_, as in that of
Science, and hence it has lost the distinctive meaning which attaches to
it, in its legitimate use, as signifying a mode of reasoning in which
the _self-evident truths or axioms_, with which we start, and every step
in the deduction, 'are not only perfectly definite, but incapable of
being apprehended differently--if really apprehended, they must be
apprehended alike by all and at all times.' It is because this Method of
proof exists only in Mathematics, that this alone is denominated the
_Exact_ Science, or its branches, the Exact Sciences; Sciences whose
Laws or Principles, and the Facts connected with or deduced from them,
are irresistible conclusions of thought, in all minds, which conclusions
rest upon universally recognized axioms; while the _Inexact Sciences_,
including all except Mathematics, the Sciences in which the Inductive
Method prevails, are systems of Laws or Principles, with their related
Facts, of the truth of which there is great probability, but of which
there is, nevertheless, no complete certainty; whose conclusions are not
_based_ upon universally undeniable axioms, or are not _themselves_
irresistible to the human mind.

The superiority of the Deductive Method, both in its mode of advancing
to the discovery of new truth and in the precision, clearness, and
certainty which accompany its findings, must now easily become apparent.
Whether we regard Induction and Deduction as correlative Processes
belonging to one Method, each of which has been disproportionately in
vogue at different epochs, or as distinctive Methods, having each their
own Deductive and Inductive Processes, in either aspect, Induction is
only a preparative labor, leading in the more important work of the
application of the Law or Principle derived. It is only, indeed, for the
purpose of discovering this Law that Observation, Classification, and
Induction are undertaken. It has been the triumphant boast of the
Inductive Method, that it guarded, by means of these preliminary steps,
in the most careful manner, against error in establishing its Laws. To
the extent of its capacity it has done so. But we have already seen,
that deriving its Principles, as it was obliged to, from less than _all_
the Facts which appertained to the Principles, these must inevitably
have been lacking in some particulars; it being impossible to make the
whole out of less than all its parts.

The Inductive Method has obtained an importance greatly exaggerated, for
the reason that it has been brought into comparison, for the most part,
with the Anticipative or Hypothetical, the bastard Deductive Method
only, and its superiority over this exhibited in the most detailed
manner, while the right application of the Deductive Method, except in
Mathematics, has not been considered possible. The reason of this can be
made obvious.

The immense superiority of _Mathematical_ Reasoning, as _Demonstration_
is often called, over all other kinds, is universally known and
recognized. For in this mode of reasoning there is no room for doubt or
uncertainty. It starts from Principles of whose truth there can be no
doubt, because it is impossible for _the human mind to apprehend them in
more than one way_, and proceeds by steps, every one of which can
likewise be apprehended in only one way. Hence all men arrive
_inevitably_ at the same conclusion at the close of the chain of
reasoning. It is, therefore, a Method of proof which sets out from a
precise, definite, universally established Law or Principle which really
contains the conclusion in itself, and which can be developed to the end
through a series of necessary and irresistible convincements; while in
the Inductive Method we are obliged to start from this or that admitted
Fact or Truth assumed after Observation, Classification, and Induction,
which may have been rigorously performed, but which, nevertheless, could
not, in the nature of the case, prove the Fact or Truth with complete
certainty, and which is not, perhaps, universally admitted, and proceed
by merely probable inferences drawn from various, diverse, and often
uncertain relations, until we reach a conclusion. Such reasoning may be
sufficient to incline the mind to a particular conclusion, as against
those which tend to any other conclusion, but they are never quite
sufficient, as in Demonstrative or _true_ Deductive reasoning, to
_necessitate_ the conclusion, and render any other impossible.

A Method of Scientific investigation which proceeds from self-evident
truths to necessary results by undeniable steps, would of course be
preferable to one which, starting from truths whose precision and
certainty might be doubtful, advances by more or less probable
inferences to a more or less probable conclusion, did there not exist
some powerful cause for a contrary action. A difficulty thus far
insurmountable has, indeed, stood in the way of the adoption of the
Deductive Method in any department of investigation, save the one
already referred to. This Method, we have seen, leads to truth or error
accordingly as the Principles or Laws from which it commences its
reasoning process are true or false. In the Mathematics, the basic
truths, being of a simple character, were arrived at by easy and
instinctive mental processes, and the Method achieved in this department
great success. But the other domains of human knowledge being more
complex, involving more qualities or characteristics than mere Number
and Form and Force, which are all that come within the scope of
Mathematics, their fundamental bases or truths were not so easily
attainable. Hence, when Principles or Ideas which men believed to
contain all the fundamentals of a specific domain of thought were
adopted as starting points of reasoning, they were generally lacking in
some important element, which caused the conclusion to be in some way
incorrect. We have seen the historical results of this mode of procedure
in what is denominated the Anticipative or Hypothetical Method. The
failure of this to secure good results, and the absence of any standard
by which to be certain when a Law or Principle was fundamental, exact,
and inclusive, when it was a valid basis to reason from, led to the
abandonment of the Deductive Method, except in its application to
Mathematics, where true starting points were known. The Observation and
Classification of Facts was then resorted to, first, in a loose way, in
Greece, and afterward, in a more rigorous way, in the world at large,
for the purpose of endeavoring to discover, by the only mode considered
effective--the examination of Phenomena--the fundamental Principles,
which, like those of Mathematics, should include all the essentials of
the special domain under consideration. These being discovered, might
furnish, it was instinctively felt, starting points from which to work
the Deductive Process, with the same success as that which attended its
application to Mathematics.

The Inductive Principle, considered either as a Process or a Method, is
valuable, therefore, mainly as it furnishes proper starting points for
the activity of the Deductive Principle. Thus far in the history of the
Natural Sciences it has been the best and safest guide in affording such
starting points. But the indications are numerous all about us that the
progress of Scientific discovery will ere long bring us to a stage,
where the Laws or Principles which underlie every department of the
Universe being fully revealed, the function of the Inductive Principle
as a guide to fundamental bases, will be at an end, and the Deductive
Method once more assume the leadership, opening to us all departments of
investigation, with the rapidity, precision, and certainty which
characterize Mathematical research and Demonstrative Reasoning.

This _desideratum_ must necessarily result whenever a Unitary Law shall
be discovered in Science; whenever the Sciences, and the Phenomena
within the different Sciences, shall be _basically_ connected. All the
present conditions and tendencies of knowledge indicate that the
attainment of this crowning intellectual goal was predestined to our
epoch. It has been the grand work of the Inductive Method to arrange
Facts under Principles, and these latter as Facts or Truths under a
smaller number of Principles, and these in turn under a still smaller
number, until all the Phenomena of the different domains of thought
which are reckoned as Sciences are included within a few Principles
which lie at the foundation of each domain. The connection of these few
Principles by a still more fundamental Law, is all that is necessary to
the completion of the work of the centuries and the establishment of a
Universal or Unitary Science. Already those recognized as leaders in the
Scientific world watch expectantly the signs of the times and await the
advent of the Grand Discovery which is to usher in a new intellectual
era, 'We have reached the point,' says Agassiz, in one of his _Atlantic
Monthly_ articles, 'where the results of Science _touch the very problem
of existence, and all men listen for the solving of that mystery_. When
it will come, and how, none can say; but this much, at least, is
certain, _that all our researches are leading up to that question_, and
mankind will never rest till it is answered.'

'All the Phenomena of Physics,' says Professor Silliman, in his _First
Principles of Philosophy_, 'are dependent on a limited number of general
laws, _of which they are the necessary consequences_. However various
and complex may be the phenomena, their laws are few, and distinguished
for their exceeding simplicity. All of them may be represented by
numbers and algebraic symbols, and these condensed _formulæ_ enable us
to conduct investigations _with the certainty and precision of pure
Mathematics_. As in geometry, all the properties of figures are deduced
from a few axioms and definitions; so _when the general laws of Physics
are known, we may deduce from them, by a series of rigorous reasonings,
all the phenomena to which they give rise_.'

Auguste Comte, in his elaborate and encyclopædic _Course of Positive
Philosophy_, tells us that 'these _three_ laws [the Law of Inertia, the
Law of the Equality of action and reaction, and the Law of the
Composition of forces] are the experimental basis of the Science of
Mechanics. From them the mind may proceed _to the logical construction
of the Science, without further reference to the external world_. * * *
We cannot, however, conceive of any case which is not met by these three
laws of Kepler, of Newton, and of Galileo, and their expression is so
precise that they can be immediately treated in the form of analytical
equations easily obtained.' While also exhibiting the small number of
Principles which lie at the foundation of other domains of our
intellectual accumulations, Comte remarks: 'The ultimate perfection of
the Positive system would be (if such perfection could be hoped for) to
represent all phenomena as particular aspects of a single general
fact;--such as Gravitation, for instance.'

These are a few specimens of what may be found in the books, pointing
out the gradual approach of Scientific investigation to the discovery of
a Unitary Law, and the expectation among Scientists of the advent, at
some period not far distant, of a new Science, the greatest among
Sciences, a true Pantology or Universology. Upon the apprehension of
this Law, which must establish the true basis of every domain of thought
or activity, and show it to be identical or analogous in the several
domains, we shall be placed, _in relation to the whole universe_,
precisely where we now stand in relation to Mathematics, Mechanics, and
Physics; that is, the General Law or Laws of every domain of
investigation will become known, as we now know those of these Sciences,
and, to adopt the words of the French writer, 'from them the mind may
proceed to the logical construction of the Science [being now the
Science of the whole Universe], without further reference to the
external world;' or to use the language of Professor Silliman, 'when the
general laws of [the Universe] are known, we may _deduce_ from them, by
a series of rigorous reasonings, _all the phenomena to which they give
rise_.' Thus, upon the discovery of a Unitary Law, linking the Sciences
together, and showing the identity of their starting points or bases,
the Deductive Principle, considered either as a Method or a Process,
must once more take the lead, and the Inductive occupy its legitimate
position as a subordinate and corroborative auxiliary. Under the
guidance of this new adjustment of the Deductive and Inductive
Principles, a full, exact, complete, definite, _Scientific_
Classification of our knowledge will become possible, and the true
boundaries of every domain of intellectual examination may be critically
and clearly established. In the absence of such a Classification, it is
only by viewing departments of the Universe with reference to the Method
or Process employed in the investigation of their Phenomena, that we are
able to estimate their present relations to Science, and to ascertain
proximately their Scientific or Unscientific character. We proceed,
then, to examine the connection of History, in its present development,
with Science, a task to which the foregoing brief and incomplete
consideration of the subject of Method has been a necessary preliminary.

A number of Classifications of human knowledge have been attempted, none
of which were exact or complete, or could have been, for a reason which
was stated above, and none of which are now considered to be
satisfactory by the Scientific world. Bacon and D'Alembert, men of
vigorous and vast intellectual capacity, were admirably adapted to such
a work, so far as it could be performed in their day. But the state of
knowledge and Scientific progress was not sufficiently advanced, at that
time, to render any Classification which could be made of more than
temporary value, and those furnished by these illustrious thinkers now
appertain only to the archæology of Science.

The Classification of Auguste Comte, in the absence of a more exact,
complete, and inclusive one, still holds the highest rank, and is the
only one which now claims the attention of the general Thinker. It is
very restricted in its application, professing to include only the
domain which Comte calls abstract or general Science, which has for its
object the discovery of the laws which regulate Phenomena in all
conceivable cases within their domain, and excluding the sphere of what
he denominates concrete, particular, or descriptive Science, whose
function it is to apply these laws to the history of existing beings.
This throws such Natural Sciences as Botany, Zoology, Mineralogy,
Geology, etc., out of his range. He also excludes the domain of
_practical_ Knowledge, comprising what is included under the terms, the
Applied Sciences, the Arts, the Mechanical Sciences, etc. A
Classification, far more detailed and comprehensive in its scope than
anything yet published, is in preparation by Professor P. H. Vander
Weyde, of the Cooper Institute--advanced sheets of which, so far as it
is elaborated, have been kindly furnished to the writer by the
author--the incomplete state of which, however, prevents a further
consideration here.

The Principle which Comte adopted to guide him in his Classification was
the following: 'All observable phenomena may be included within a very
few natural categories, so arranged as that the study of each category
may be grounded on the principal laws of the preceding, and serve as the
basis of the next ensuing. This order is determined by the degree of
simplicity, or, what comes to the same thing, of generality of their
phenomena. Hence results their successive dependence, and the greater or
lesser facility for being studied.' In accordance with this Principle,
Comte establishes what he denominates the _Hierarchy of the Sciences_.
Mathematics stands at the base of this, as being that Science whose
Phenomena are the most general, the most simple, and the most abstract
of all. Astronomy comes next, wherein the Static and Dynamic properties
of the heavenly bodies complicate the nature of the investigation; in
Physics, Phenomena must be considered in the midst of the still greater
complications of Weight, Light, Heat, Sound, etc.; Chemistry has
additional characteristics to trace in its subjects; Biology adds the
intricacies of vital Phenomena to all below it; and Sociology, the sixth
and last of Comte's Hierarchy--all other departments of thought other
than those previously excluded from his survey, being regarded as out of
the bounds of human cognition--deals with the still more complicated
problem of the relations of men to each other in society.

This Classification is admirable for the purpose of showing the mutual
interdependence of the branches of Knowledge included in it; but aside
from its covering only a small part of our intellectual domain, it is
also defective in not distinguishing with sufficient clearness that
which is properly Science, from that which is merely Theory or Plausible
Conjecture. Biology and Sociology are classed with Mathematics as
_Positive_ Sciences, as if the Laws or Principles which correlated the
Phenomena of the former were established as certainly and definitely as
those of the latter; while there is no prominence given to the different
nature of _proof_ in Mathematics and that in every other department of
investigation--except in so far as Mathematical Phenomena and Processes
enter into the latter--if, indeed, the founder of Positivism has even
anywhere distinctly stated it. Chemistry, Biology, and Sociology,
leaving Astronomy and Physics aside for the present, are not yet
_Positive_ Sciences, in any such sense as Mathematics. The lack of
_exact_ analysis is apparent in all of Comte's generalizations,
otherwise magnificent and masterly as they undoubtedly are. In respect
to the matter under consideration, it renders his Classification
unavailing for determining with sufficient precision and exactitude the
character of any intellectual domain. History, while it is the source
whence the proof of his fundamental positions is drawn, finds no place
in his Scientific schedule. Even had it been otherwise, the defect just
alluded to would have rendered it useless for our present purposes,
until a prior Classification had first been made, exhibiting the radical
difference between the various domains, which are all indiscriminately
grouped under the name of _Science_. After such a Classification, based
on the nature of _proof_ as involved in Method, the Principle which
guided Comte in the establishment of the Hierarchy of the Sciences will
enable us, in a concluding paper, to estimate with proximate certainty
the character of a possible Science of History, and to ascertain how far
the labors of Mr. Buckle and Professor Draper have aided toward the
creation of such a Science.




DIARY OF FRANCES KRASINSKA;

OR, LIFE IN POLAND DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.


                                            Friday, _April 10th._

Easter week is over, and I am really sorry; I had found happiness in
repose, and already have care and disquiet won their way into my heart
and my mind.... How many sins I have committed! Poor humanity! poor
nature, so frail and weak! Notwithstanding my promises and the
resolutions which I fancied so strong, I yield to the least temptation.

For example, and it is indeed incredible, but a fact, that on Holy
Thursday, the very day after my confession, I sinned, and sinned through
pride. I should have worn black when I went to be present at the court
ceremony, but I could not resist the seduction of a beautiful costume.
Just as I was beginning my preparations, the Princess Lubomirska entered
my room, accompanied by her maids, who brought me a charming dress of
white velvet, with a long train, and trimmed with white roses; the
headdress consisted of a garland of white roses, and a long white blonde
veil. The taste and richness of this costume surpasses description! How
could I resist the happiness of seeing myself so becomingly attired!

I asked the princess why she required me to wear so brilliant a costume
to church; she replied that on Holy Thursday it was customary after the
service to go into the great hall of the castle, where the king would
wash the feet of twelve old men, in commemoration of the humility of our
Saviour, and that he would also wait upon them at table. During this
pious and edifying ceremony, a young girl belonging to one of the
noblest families must make a collection for the poor; the king himself
names the lady, and this year he was pleased to honor me by his
selection; he at the same time announced that the results of my efforts
should be given to the hospital for the poor under the Abbé Baudoin's
charge.

I was very happy as I listened to the princess; but, must I confess it?
I was not happy through the good action I was about to perform; I
thought only of myself, of my beauty, of the charming costume, of the
effect I should produce among all the other women dressed in black, and
I rejoiced to think that I should be the most beautiful. What culpable
vanity! And on Holy Thursday! But at least I frankly admit my sin, and
humiliate myself for it.

My collection surpassed my hopes. I received nearly four thousand
ducats. Prince Charles Radziwill said, as he put his hand to his purse:
'My dear (Panie Kochanku, his favorite expression), one must give
something to so beautiful a lady;' and he threw five hundred gold pieces
on my plate, which would have fallen from my hands had I not been aided
in holding it. When I began my collection, I was very much embarrassed;
I trembled all over, and blushed at each new offering I received; but by
degrees I gained courage, and profited by my dancing master's lessons.
The grand marshal of the court gave me his hand, and named each lord as
he repeated the customary formula employed in handing them the plate; as
for me, I could not have said a word; I found it quite enough to make a
proper and becoming courtesy to each one. When the plate became too
heavy, the marshal emptied it into a large bag, borne behind us.

I heard many compliments, and I was more looked at and admired than I
ever had been before in my life. The prince royal said to me: 'If you
had asked each of us to give you his heart, no one could have refused
you.'

I replied: 'Affection is not solicited, it is inspired.'

He seemed pleased with my frankness. I cannot comprehend how a woman
could solicit love, and say: Love me, admire me.... For a king I could
not thus degrade myself. Tenderness is involuntary; one may seek to win
it, one may gladly accept it when offered; but to solicit it, is even
more ridiculous than criminal.

The washing of the feet is one of the most striking ceremonies of our
religion. A king kneeling before those twelve aged men, and then
standing behind them while they are at table, is a most touching and
sublime spectacle. That ceremony can never pass from my memory. Augustus
III, although no longer young, is still handsome; his gestures bear the
impress of dignity and nobility: the prince royal, Charles, resembles
him exactly.

On Good Friday we visited the sepulchre; all the court ladies were
dressed in black; we made our stations in seven churches, and in each we
said appropriate prayers. I was on my knees during a whole hour in the
cathedral. On Holy Saturday the services were magnificent, and the
organs pealed forth the most heavenly strains of music.

Tho princess's Easter collation (swiencone) was superb; until yesterday,
the tables were continually covered with cakes and cold meats. It is
just one year since I assisted at Madame Strumle's very modest
collation; I was then a schoolgirl; who could have guessed that on the
following Easter Monday I should be with the princess palatiness, that
the prince royal would partake of the same collation with myself, and
that we should eat out of the same plate!

One really finds a pleasure in eating meat after a Lent so rigorously
observed; for all here are as particular as at Maleszow. During holy
week, everything is cooked in oil, and on Good Friday a severe fast is
adhered to, each one taking only food sufficient to keep him from
starving.

The prince royal has fasted so much that he has become quite thin. I
noticed this yesterday, and my eyes involuntarily rested upon his
features with a more tender expression than usual: as he was talking
with the prince palatine, I did not think he was paying any attention to
me, but thoughts springing from the heart never escape him, he is so
good, so quick in understanding; soon after, he thanked me for my
solicitude. I grew very red, and promised myself in future to keep a
strict guard over the expression of my eyes.

A woman's part, especially that of an unmarried girl, is very difficult;
not only must she measure out her words and watch the tones of her
voice, but she must also command the expression of her countenance. I
must ask, of what use are governesses and their lessons in such cases?
The princess is quite right when she says, that ten governesses, let
them be as watchful as they may, cannot guard a young girl who does not
know how to guard herself.

                                         Wednesday, _April 15th._

We leave Warsaw to-morrow; I am going with the prince and princess to
their estate at Opole. My father has written to the princess to say that
I may remain with her so long as my presence may be agreeable to her. I
hope she will never be dissatisfied with me; I endeavor to please her in
every possible way. She inspires me with infinite fear and respect; she
controls me entirely, and I am always ready to yield to the lightest
expression of her will; when she smiles upon me, when she looks at me
kindly, it seems to me as if heaven were opening before me. If I should
ever reach an advanced age, I would like to inspire the same feelings
which I experience toward her. The prince royal himself is afraid of the
princess.

Would any one believe that I am glad to think that I shall not now go to
Maleszow? I dread the home of my childhood; it seems to me as if I
should profane it were I to visit it with a heart so filled with unrest
and disquietude!

Ought I to regret the past? Will a life of torment be the price of a
single ray of happiness enlightening the highest pinnacle of human
felicity? If the wish which I dare not express should ever be
accomplished, I will surely be equal to my position; but I will also
know how to bear the shipwreck of my dearest hopes.... Great God, how
can I write, how dare I confide to paper what I fear to confess to
myself! When I think of him, I tremble lest any one should divine my
feelings, and yet I write!... If my journal were to fall into any one's
hands I should be deemed mad, or at least most foolishly presumptuous; I
must shut it up under four locks.

                           CASTLE OF OPOLE, Friday, _April 24th._

We have been here nearly a week; the situation of the castle is very
agreeable, but I am no longer gay, and nothing pleases me. The trees
should already be green, and they are still bare; it should be warm, and
the air freezes me. I desired to embroider, but the indispensable silks
were wanting; I tried the piano, but it was not in tune: it will be
necessary to send to Lublin for the organist. There is quite a large
library here, but I dare not ask the princess for the key. The prince
has several new works; he paid in my presence six gold ducats for ten
little volumes of M. Voltaire's works: Voltaire is now the most
celebrated writer in France. The princess forbids my reading his books,
and I am sure I am quite content. But what I cannot endure is, that I am
not permitted to read a romance lately come from Paris, entitled _La
Nouvelle Héloïse_. It is by a certain Rousseau, and has made a great
sensation here. I picked up one volume, and read a few pages of the
preface, but what did I see? Rousseau himself says: 'A mother will
forbid her daughter to read it.' The princess is quite right, and I laid
the book aside with a flutter at my heart which still continues.

The physicians in Warsaw have ordered the princess to ride on horseback
during her sojourn in the country; they say this exercise will be
excellent for her health. She laughed at the prescription, and had not
the faintest intention of trying it; but the prince palatine will hear
of no jesting where physicians are concerned.

He has bought a pretty mare, very gentle and well trained, as also a
most comfortable saddle; but the princess still refuses to mount the
animal. She was with great difficulty persuaded yesterday to mount a
donkey, and thus make the circuit of the garden. She will be obliged to
repeat this exercise every day. As for me, who have no fear of horses, I
had a most burning desire to try the mare; I spoke of it yesterday
evening; but the princess chid me, and told me with quite a severe air,
that it was the most improper thing in the world for a young lady. I
must of course renounce my desire; but I do it with real regret, for I
already saw myself in fancy riding through the forests, going to the
chase, climbing the steep mountain sides with _him_, and admiring his
strength and skill....

The castle has become more lively; several persons have come from the
city and the neighborhood to present their homage to the palatine. They
might perhaps afford me amusement; and yet I do not even find a passing
distraction in their presence. I have seen Michael Chronowski, my
father's former chamberlain; how the poor young man is changed! The
prince palatine, in consequence of my father's recommendation, placed
him at the bar in Lublin. They say he is doing very well, but he is
thin, bent, and old before his time; his face is strangely colored, and
he has some frightful scars. He has not danced once since Barbara's
wedding. The time for mazourkas and cracoviennes is past: they have been
replaced by law cases, pleading, chicanery, and all its tiresome
accompaniments; his language is so learned that one can no longer
understand him.

As a compensation, however, we have here one very agreeable visitor,
Prince Martin Lubomirski, the prince palatine's cousin, though much
younger than he. I had already met him in society at Warsaw. The
princess, who is severe, and who never overlooks the least defect,
criticizes him a little; but I find his manners very agreeable: he owns
in the neighborhood the estate of Janowiec, and has given us all a most
pressing invitation to visit his castle. It is possible we may go there;
I should be charmed, for no one talks more agreeably. He is gay, fond of
pleasantry, and a great friend to the prince royal; he often speaks of
him, and always well and worthily; he appreciates him and knows how to
praise him.... My heart swells with pleasure while I listen.


                     CASTLE OF JANOWIEC, Friday, _May 1st, 1760._

We came here two days ago, and Prince Martin says he will not let us
soon depart. Everything is more beautiful at Janowiec than at Opole; no
one can be more generous, more hospitable, or more amiable than Prince
Martin. The princess says he scatters gold and silver about as if he
expected it to grow. He is now having a wide avenue cut through the
forest surrounding the castle. I can see from the windows of my room
immense trees falling beneath the axes of hundreds of laborers; at the
end of the avenue, a pavilion is being built, at which they work so
rapidly that one can see it grow from hour to hour. The prince sent to
Warsaw and to various other places for his workmen; he pays them double
wages, and he has made a bet with the palatine that the pavilion will be
entirely finished in four weeks. I am quite sure he will win. The forest
is to be transformed into an enclosed park. The whole neighborhood
abounds in wild beasts; but he has had many elks and bears taken to
people his wonderful park. There must be some mystery lurking behind all
these preparations. I feel, rather than guess it.

I like Janowiec better than any other place; the situation is charming,
and the castle magnificent. It stands upon a mountain overlooking the
Vistula; its architecture belongs to a very ancient period. From the
castle the whole city may be seen, with the granaries of Kazimierz, and
also Pulawy, belonging to the Princess Czartoryski. The apartments are
large, very numerous, and gorgeously furnished; but I believe that my
boudoir is the most delightful room in the castle. It is situated at the
top of a tower, and while I am in it I can fancy myself a real heroine
of romance. It has three windows, all opening in different directions,
and each with a most enchanting view. I generally sit by the window
overlooking the new avenue and the pavilion, which rises as if built by
fairies. The panels of my cabinet are adorned with paintings,
representing Olympus. 'Venus alone was wanting,' said the prince, with
that grace for which he is distinguished, 'but you have come to finish
the picture.'

I feel here an incomprehensible sense of well-being, I am soothed by
such sweet presentiments, I fancy myself on the eve of some very happy
event.


                                                Sunday, _May 3d._

I do not think I ever rose so early before in my whole life; the castle
clock has just struck three, and I am already at my writing. I took a
walk before daylight through the long corridors of the castle: had any
one seen me, I should have been taken for an ancestral shade, come to
visit the domain of its descendants. Prince Martin, following an old and
excellent custom, has built a gallery, containing the portraits of all
the most distinguished members of his family; all the memories of the
race of Lubomirski may be found in this gallery. He sent to Italy for an
artist to execute the portraits, and he called to his aid a learned man
fully acquainted with the history of the Lubomirski family and of our
country. After much deliberation and many discussions, the project was
finally carried into effect in 1756, as announced by the main
inscription. It is to be regretted, says the princess, that these
pictures are in fresco, and not in oil colors, as they would then have
been more solid and transportable.

Let what will happen in the future, at present this gallery is truly
magnificent. Yesterday, Prince Martin, with the palatine and the
palatiness, gave me a historical account of each picture; I immediately
determined to transfer them to my journal. With this intention I rose
before day and visited the gallery on tiptoe while all were still
sleeping. I will write down all I have been told, and all I have seen.

In the four corners of the hall are the arms of the Lubomirski family,
Srzeniawa, received on the occasion of a battle gained by one of the
ancestors on the banks of the Srzeniawa, not far from Cracow. The first
picture represents the division of the property between the three
brothers Lubomirski; a division which was made according to law, during
the reign of Wladislas I, and signed February 1st, 1088. Nearly all the
other pictures are family portraits; women rendered illustrious by noble
deeds, and men distinguished in political, civil, military, or religious
careers, especially during the reigns of Sigismund III, of John Casimir,
and of John III, Sobieski, There are several copies of the portrait of
Barbara Tarlo, who brought the castle of Janowiec as a dowry to a
Lubomirski.

The series is ended by a picture which is equivalent to a whole poem; it
represents a winter sky and a naked forest; a furious bear endeavors to
overthrow a tall and athletic man; a young woman, wearing a hunting
costume, comes behind the bear and places a pistol at each ear. In the
distance is a horse running away and dragging behind him an upset
sledge. I asked an explanation of the picture, and was told as follows:

A certain Princess Lubomirska, who was very fond of the chase, set out
one winter day on a bear hunt; as she was returning in a little sledge,
drawn by one horse, and having only one attendant with her, a furious
bear, driven by some other hunters, fell upon the princess. The
terrified horse upset the sledge, and she and the attendant must
infallibly have perished, had not the courageous servant determined to
sacrifice himself for his mistress; he threw himself before the bear,
saying these words; 'Princess, remember my wife and children.' But the
noble and heroic woman, thinking only of the danger of him who was about
to sacrifice his life for her, drew two small pistols from her pockets,
placed the barrels in the bear's ears, and killed him on the spot.

In truth, I envy this noble and generous action.... It is needless to
add that the servant with his wife and children became henceforth the
special care of the princess.

But, during the last few moments, I have heard considerable noise
through the castle, and I must return to my own room. I hear Prince
Martin's voice resounding through the corridors. He is calling his dogs,
of which he is exceedingly fond, as indeed he may well be, for his
hounds are the most beautiful in the whole country. He is always sorry
when the season will not admit of hunting; but at present the most
intrepid hunters are forced to renounce their sport. I must close my
book. It is five o'clock, and some one might come into the gallery.


                                            Thursday, _May 14th._

We have been to Opole, where we spent several days; but Prince Martin
made us promise to return here, and here we are again installed. He
wished us to see the pavilion entirely finished. The exterior is
completed, and only a few interior embellishments are yet wanting.
Prince Martin has then won his bet, and he talks to me about it in such
strange enigmas that I cannot comprehend him; for example, he said to me
this morning: 'Every one says that I am expending the most enormous sums
on my park and my pavilion; but I shall receive a recompense which I
shall owe to you, far above anything I can do.'

Indeed, I lose myself in conjecture; either I am mad, or all who come
near me have lost their senses.


                                            Saturday, _May 16th._

Could I ever have anticipated such happiness! The prince royal has
arrived; the pavilion, the park, and all, were for him, or rather for
me; for they know that he loves me, and to please him, the princes have
invented this pretext for bringing him to Janowiec. Great Heaven! what
will my fate be! I bless the happy accident that brought him here at
nightfall, for otherwise every one must have observed my blushes, my
embarrassment, and that throbbing at my heart which deprived me of the
power of speech and took away my breath; he too would have understood my
joy! I never saw him so tender before; but the future--what will that
be?...

Until now, I have always feigned not to comprehend the meaning of his
words, and have striven to hide from him all that was passing in my
soul; but can I always control myself when I must see him every moment?
Ah! how painful will be the effort!... What torture ever to repress the
best feelings of one's soul! To refuse expression to my thoughts, when
my thoughts are all personified in him.... Notwithstanding my efforts, I
fear lest my heart should be in my eyes, in my voice, in some word
apparently trivial.... God give me courage, for what can my future
destiny be? On what can I rely?... My fate sometimes appears to me so
brilliant, I foresee a superhuman happiness; and then again it seems to
me so dark and menacing that a shudder runs through my whole frame.

I do not know what to decide upon; I do not know whether I should trust
to my heart or my reason. Alas! my reason--I have only fears and
melancholy foreshadowings, which lead me back to the truth when I have
yielded too willingly to the enchantment of such sweet illusions.

If I could confide in any one; if I could find a friend and guide in the
princess! But my attachment to her is too respectful to be tender and
confiding; then she says, perhaps by chance, words which destroy my
desire to make a confidante of her. She blames the prince's character,
and pities the woman who would bind herself to him.... The palatine
gives me no assistance; he doubtless believes my virtue is strong enough
to suffice without aid or counsel.

I will accept all the happiness which Heaven may send me; I will guard
it as a sacred treasure, but I will commit no imprudence, no action
unworthy of my name. God will be my refuge; he will deign to enlighten
me. I passed the whole of last night in prayer. Ah! how sorry I am the
Abbé Baudoin is not here, for each day will be a new trial. The prince
will remain some time at the castle; the princes, his brothers, will
soon join him here, and great projects for hunting have been made.


                                             _May 18th._ evening.

Heaven has been gracious, and my destiny is the happiest of all! I,
Frances Krasinska, in whose veins runs no royal blood, am to be the wife
of the prince royal, Duchess of Courland, and one day, perhaps, may wear
a crown.... He loves me, loves me beyond everything; he sacrifices his
father to me, and overleaps the inequality in our rank; he forgets all,
he loves me!

It seems to me I must be misled by some deceitful dream! Is it indeed
true that I went alone with him this afternoon to walk in the park? The
princess's recent accident was the cause. As she was ascending the
stairs of the pavilion, she made a false step, and was forced to remain
in the saloon with one of the young lady companions. Usually, she does
not leave us a single moment; but as her foot would not permit her to
walk, the princes, he and I, went without her. Prince Martin stopped by
the way to show the prince palatine some of his preparations for the
chase. The prince royal told them he preferred to walk on, and passed my
arm within his own. He was silent during some moments; I was surprised,
for I had always seen him so abounding in wit, and so fertile in
subjects of conversation. He finally asked me if I still persisted in
misunderstanding the motive which had brought him to Janowiec. I
replied, as usual, that the anticipated pleasures of the chase had
doubtless determined him to accept Prince Martin's invitation.

'No,' he said, 'I came for you, for myself, to secure the happiness of
my whole life.'

'Is it possible?' I cried; 'Prince, do you forget your rank, and the
throne which awaits you in the future? The prince royal should wed a
king's daughter!'

He replied: 'You, Frances, you are my queen; your charms first seduced
my eyes, and later, your truth and virtue subjugated my heart. Before I
knew you, I had been always accustomed to receive advances from women;
scarcely had I said a word, when I was overwhelmed with coquetries....
You, who have perhaps loved me more than they, you have avoided me; one
must divine your secret thoughts if one would love you without losing
all hope; you merit the loftiest throne in the universe, and if I
desired to be King of Poland, it would only be that I might place a
crown upon your noble and beautiful brow.'

My surprise, my happiness, deprived me of all power to reply; meanwhile,
the princes rejoined us, and the prince royal said to them:

'I here take you for the witnesses of my oath: I swear to wed no other
bride than Frances Krasinska; circumstances require secrecy until a
certain period, and you alone will know my love and my happiness: he who
betrays me will be henceforth my enemy.'

The princes made the most profound salutations, and expressed themselves
deeply honored by the prince royal's confidence; they assured him that
they would keep his secret most religiously; then, passing by my side,
they whispered in my ear, 'You are worthy of your good fortune,' and
departed.

I stood motionless and dumb, but the prince was so tender, his words
were so persuasive and so eloquent, that I ended by confessing to him
that I had long loved him: I believe one may, without criminality, make
this avowal to one's future husband.... The castle clock at length
struck midnight, that hour for ghosts and wandering spirits; after
midnight their power vanishes.... Can I yet be the plaything of an
illusion?... But no, all is true, my happiness is real, my grandeur is
no dream.... The ring I wear upon my finger attests its truth.

Barbara gave me a ring in the form of a serpent, the symbol of eternity;
the prince royal often fixed his eyes upon it, and now he has had one
made exactly like it, with this inscription: 'Forever,' which he has
exchanged with me for mine. Our first and holy betrothal had no
witnesses but the trees and the nightingales. I will tell no one of this
occurrence, not even the princess.

Alas! Barbara and my parents are also ignorant of it--they have not
blessed our rings; it was not my father who promised me to my betrothed,
nor has my mother given me her blessing!... Alas! my sorrow oppresses
me, and my face is bathed in tears.... Yes, all is true, this must
indeed be life, since I begin to suffer!


                                              Monday, _May 25th._

I have written, and it seems to me as if I had said nothing; I have not
written during the past week, because I found no words to express my
thoughts.... I am happy, and language, which is eloquent in the
expression of sorrow, has no tongue for joy and happiness.

Last week, I took up my pen to write, but I soon gave up the attempt; my
feelings and ideas were confused with their own constant repetition and
renewal, and when my poor head would have presided over the arrangement
of the words, my heart melted into hopes and desires.... I can write
to-day, because the fear of misfortune, of some sudden catastrophe, has
seized upon me.... If he should cease to love me!...

The royal princes, Clement and Albert, arrived last Thursday. There have
been hunting parties without intermission. Prince Martin had sent for
plenty of wild animals; they were let loose in the park, and the princes
have had as much as they could do. My maid tells me the princes Clement
and Albert leave this morning; my first thought was that he would go
too.... Happiness has entirely absorbed me during the past week;
happiness, unalloyed by a single fear; my cares too as mistress of the
house (for since the princess's accident I have taken her place) have
left me not a moment unemployed!... And now, these few words uttered by
my maid have completely unsettled my mind: Great Heaven, if he were to
go too! For whom would I wake in the morning, for whom would I dress
with so much care, for whom would I strive to be more beautiful? Ah!
without him, I can see but death and a void which nothing can fill!... I
grow faint.... I must open the window.... I breathe, and already feel
better.

It is only six o'clock, and yet I see a white handkerchief floating from
the window of the pavilion. That is his daily signal, to say good
morning. I will never confess to him that my awakening each day preceded
his.... But who is that man running toward the castle; I know him
well--his favorite huntsman; he brings me a bouquet of fresh flowers;
they must have been sent for to an orangery four leagues from here....
How silly and unjust I was to torment myself so! He is still here, no
one has told me that he is going, he will doubtless remain a long
time.... Ah yes, some days of happiness will still be granted
me--perhaps some weeks.




THE SLEEPING SOLDIER.

  On the wild battle field where the bullets were flying,
  With a ball in his breast a brave soldier was lying,
  While the roar of the cannon and cannon replying,
    And the roll of the musketry, shook earth and air.

  The red ooze from his breast the green turf was a-staining;
  The light of his life with the daylight was waning;
  From his pain-parted lips came no word of complaining:
    Where the fighting was hottest his spirit was there.

  He had marched in the van where his leader commanded;
  He had fall'n like a pine that the lightning has branded;
  He was left by his mates like a ship that is stranded,
    And far to the rear and a-dying he lay.

  His comrades press on in a gleaming of glory,
  But backward he sinks on his couch cold and gory;
  They shall tell to their children hereafter the story,
    His lips shall be silent forever and aye.

  A smile lit his face, for the foe were retreating,
  And the shouts of his comrades his lips were repeating,
  And true to his country his chill heart was beating,
    When over his senses a weariness crept.

  The rifle's sharp crack, the artillery's thunder,
  The whizzing of shell and their bursting asunder,
  Heaven rending above and the earth rumbling under,
    Nevermore might awake him, so soundly he slept.

  He had rushed to the wars from the dream of his wooing,
  For fame as for favor right gallantly suing,
  Stem duty each softer emotion subduing,
    In the camp, on the field--the dominion of Mars.

  And there when the dark and the daylight were blended,
  Still there when the glow of the sunset was ended,
  He slept his last sleep, undisturbed, unattended,
    Overwept by the night, overwatched by the stars.

    BATON ROUGE, LA., _September 10th, 1863._




MY MISSION.


I opened my eyes and looked out.

Not that I had been exactly asleep, but dreamily ruminating over a
series of chaotic visions that had about as much reason and order as a
musical medley. I had been riding in the cars for the past six hours,
and had now become so accustomed to the monotony that all idea of a
change seemed wildly absurd; in my half-awake state, I was feebly
impressed with the conviction that I was to ride in the cars for the
remainder of my existence.

The entrance of the conductor, with the dull little glowworms of lamps
which he so quickly jerked into their proper places, made a sudden break
in my train of thought; and, not having anything else to occupy me just
then, I became speedily beset with the idea that the luminary just above
my head was only awaiting a favorable opportunity to tumble down upon
it. The thought became unpleasantly absorbing; and, not having
sufficient energy to get up and change my seat, I looked out of the
window again.

The prospect was, like most country views, of no particular beauty when
seen in the ungenial light of a November evening: the sky rather leaden
and discouraging; the earth, chilled by the sun's neglect, was growing
shrivelled and ugly with all its might; and the trees were dreary
skeletons, flying past the car window in a kind of mad dance, after the
fashion of Alonzo and the false Imogen. I gave up the idea of making the
cars my future residence, and considered that it was quite time to look
about me, and inquire, for present, practical purposes, what I was and
where I was going.

But, at the very outset of this laudable occupation, a disagreeable fact
thrust itself impudently in my face, and even shook its fist at me in
insolent defiance. There was no getting over it--I was undeniably a
_woman_--and, what was worse, rather a womanly woman. I am aware, of
course, that this depends. If you should ask that stately lily, radiant
with beauty, from the crown of the head to the sole of her foot,
surrounded by her kind, and cherished and admired as one of the choicest
gems of the garden, whether she considered it an agreeable thing to be a
flower, she would probably toss her head in scorn, as youthful beauties
do, at the very question. But ask the poor roadside blossom, trampled
on, switched off, and subjected to every trial that is visited on
strength and roughness, without the strength and roughness to protect
her, and there is very little doubt that she would express a desire to
wake up, some morning, and find herself transformed into a prickly pear.
Womanhood, under some circumstances, is very much like sitting partly on
one chair, and partly on another, without being secure on either.

It is an unnatural combination to have the propensities of a Columbus or
Robinson Crusoe united with a habit of trembling at stray dogs in the
daytime, and covering one's head with the bedclothes at night. I had
longed to be afloat for some time past; but now, that I was fairly out
of sight of land, I shuddered at the immensity of the fathomless sea
that stretched before me. Whither bound? To the 'Peppersville Academy,'
in a town on the border of a lake familiar to me in my geography days at
school, but which seemed, practically, to have no more connection with
New York than if it had been in Kamtchatka. To this temple of learning I
was going as assistant teacher; and the daring nature of the undertaking
suddenly flashed upon me. Suppose that, when weighed in the examining
balances, I should be found wanting? Suppose that some horridly sharp
boy should 'stump' me with 'Davies' Arithmetic?'

That was my weak point, and I realized it acutely. Figures never would
arrange themselves in my brain in proper order; I am by no means sound
even on the multiplication table; and the only dates that ever fixed
themselves in my memory are 1492 and 1776. The very sight of a slate and
pencil gave me a nervous headache, and as I had lately been told that
_idiots_ always failed in calculation, I considered myself but a few
removes from idiocy. My answering that advertisement was a proof of it;
and here I was, hundreds of miles from any familiar sight, going to
teach pupils who probably knew more than I did! I had my music and
French, to be sure, and that was _some_ foundation--but not half so
solid as a substantial base of figures.

In a sort of frantic desperation, I began, to ply myself with impossible
sums in mental arithmetic, until I nearly got a brain fever; and the
cars stopped, and the dreaded station was shouted in my ears, while I
was in the midst of a desperate encounter with a group of stubborn
fractions.

How I dreaded the sight of the personage who had twice subscribed
himself my 'obedient servant, Elihu Summers'! My 'obedient servant,'
indeed! More likely my inexorable taskmaster, with figures in his eye
and compound fractions at his tongue's end. I painted his portrait:
tall, wiry, with compressed lips, and a general air of seeing through
one at a glance. Now, when one is painfully conscious of being deficient
in several important points, this sort of person is particularly
exasperating; and I immediately began to hate Mr. Summers with all my
might.

Nevertheless, I shook considerably, and, having been informed that I
would be met at the station, though by whom or what was not specified, I
prepared to alight, with my bag and shawl and 'Harper,' attached to
various parts of my person. Considering how short the step is from the
sublime to the ridiculous, the length, or rather height, of that step
from the car to the platform was out of all proportion; I looked upon it
as an invention of the enemy, and stood hopelessly considering the
impossibility of a descent without the aid of a pair of wings.

Raising my eyes in dismay, I saw in the dim light a pair of arms
outstretched to my assistance; and, observing that the shoulders
pertaining thereto were broad and solid-looking, I deposited my hundred
and twenty pounds of flesh and bone thereon without any compunctions of
conscience, and no questions asked. I almost fell in love with that
individual for the very tender manner in which I was lifted to the
ground; but, once safe on terra firma, I merely said, 'Thank you, sir,'
and was gliding rapidly into the ladies' saloon, half afraid of
encountering Mr. Summers in my journey.

But my _aide-de-camp_, with a hasty stride, arrested my progress, as he
said inquiringly, 'This is Miss Wade, I believe?'

I turned and looked at him, as the light fell upon his figure from the
open doorway--large and well proportioned, with the kind of face that
one sees among the heroes of a college 'commencement,' or the successful
candidates for diplomas--half manly, half boyish, with a firm mouth and
laughing eyes; and he immediately added, 'I have come to conduct you to
your boarding house.'

I concluded that he was either a son or nephew of 'Elihu Summers,'
possibly an assistant in the school; and I felt glad at the prospect of
some congenial society.

The walk to the boarding house was not a long one, and we said very
little on the way. My companion had quietly relieved me of my small
articles of baggage; and I had mechanically taken the offered arm as
though I had known him all my life. I could not see much of the town in
the dark, and what I did see did not impress me with a very exalted idea
of its liveliness--the inhabitants apparently considering it sinful to
show any lights in the fronts of their houses, except an occasional
glimmering over the hall door.

My companion suddenly turned, mounted two steps, and lifted a knocker.
The sound, at first, produced no reply; but presently a sound of
unbolting and unbarring ensued, and the door was opened, as Morgiana
would have opened it to let in the forty thieves. A small, pale man,
with whitish eyes, and gray hair standing on end, peered at us rather
inhospitably; and on the lower step of the staircase a tallow candle, in
a brass candlestick, emitted the brilliant light that tallow candles
usually do.

We effected an entrance by some miracle; and once in that full blaze of
light, the old man exclaimed:

'Oh, Mr. Summers, so it is you, is it? I was kind of puzzled to make out
_who_ 'twas. And is this the new teacher you've brought along, or a
boarding scholar? Looks about as much like one as t'other.'

With a smile, I was introduced as 'Miss Wade;' and just as a pleasant
matronly looking woman made her appearance, the old man seized me in an
unexpected embrace, observing, quite as a matter of course, 'I always
kiss nice-looking young gals.'

'Not always,' thought I, giving him a desperate push that sent him,
where he more properly belonged, to the arms of Mrs. Bull, who
opportunely arrived in time to restore his equilibrium.

I suppose my cheeks were blazing, they felt so hot, for the good wife
gently remarked, 'It is only Mr. Bull's way--he doesn't mean anything by
it, or I should have been jealous long ago.'

Had the observation not been so hackneyed, I would have advised Mr. Bull
to mend his way; but he seemed so thoroughly astonished that further
comment was unnecessary.

A glance at Mr. Summers, who had proved to be the redoubtable Elihu,
discovered an amused smile hovering around the corners of his mouth; and
it _was_ ridiculous that, at my first entrance into a house, I should
have a pitched battle with the master of it. To do the old man justice,
I do not believe that he _did_ 'mean anything,' as the intended salute
was to be given in the presence of witnesses; he only labored under the
hallucination of old men in general, who seem to think that, because it
is an agreeable thing to them to kiss all the fresh young lips they
encounter, it must be just as agreeable to the fresh young lips to
receive it; reminding me of a wise saying I encountered somewhere
lately, that, 'although age sees a charm in youth, youth sees no charm
in age.'

But father Bull was not malicious; he only said that 'he guessed I
wasn't used to country ways;' and after that little brush we became very
good friends.

I took to _Mrs._ Bull at once; and, following her into a neat little
room, where there was a stove, a rag carpet, and a table laid for one, I
was informed that this was the dining room, sitting room, and room in
ordinary. Tea was over long ago; indeed, as it was eight o'clock, they
had begun to think of going to bed. Cars in which I travel are always
behindhand; and they had almost given me up.

Having introduced me to my host and hostess, Mr. Summers took his leave,
for he did not board there, and went to see that my trunk was speedily
forwarded to its destination.

I sat down at the neat table, and tried what Mr. Bull denominated
'presarved squinches'--which might have passed for fragments of granite,
and were a trifle sour in addition; the apple pie, which, had it been
large enough, would have been a splendid foundation for a quadrille; the
bread, which looked like rye, but wasn't; and the tea, which neither
cheered nor inebriated. This is what good, honest city people eulogize
under the name of 'a real country tea;' and half an hour after I had
left the festive board, I could not positively have sworn whether I had
had any tea or not.

Mr. and Mrs. Bull were very hospitable, and pressed me continually to
eat, remarking that 'I had an awful small appetite;' but I considered it
awful under the circumstances, without being small. They had one other
boarder, they said, 'a single lady, who was very quiet, and didn't
disturb any one.' They evidently intended this as an eulogy for Miss
Friggs, but I should have preferred an inmate with more life about her.

At nine o'clock I concluded, from various signs, that it was time to
turn my steps bedward; and producing a fresh tallow candle, Mrs. Bull
placed it in another brass candlestick, and led the way up stairs. The
stairs were narrow, crooked, and winding, and the doors opened with
latches. My sanctum was of moderate size, with a comfortable-looking
bed, covered with a white counterpane (I had dreaded patchwork), a white
curtain to the window, and a white cover on the table,--a pleasant
harmony, I thought, with the snow that would soon cover the ground; and
feeling chilled through, in spite of the fire that burned in the funny
little stove, I wondered that so many people never think of providing
for but one kind of hunger.

Mrs. Bull helped me to arrange my things, and kissed me good-night in a
way that went to my heart at once. I did not treat her on this occasion
as I had treated Mr. Bull.

'I suspect,' said she, kindly, 'that you've been used to things very
different from what you'll find here; but we'll do all in our power to
make it pleasant for you, and I dare say that, before long, you'll feel
quite at home in Peppersville.'

People 'dare say' anything, and many things appeared more probable than
that I should ever feel at home in Peppersville.

One thing I thoroughly congratulated myself upon, and that was that Mr.
Summers boarded elsewhere. It is a dreadful thing to be housed under the
same roof, in a place where there is a total want of all excitement,
with any sort of a man--people have even become attached to spiders when
shut up alone with them--and when the man is young, good-looking, and
poor, the danger is increased. I did not come to Peppersville to fall in
love with the principal of the Academy; and I was glad that _one_ road,
at least, to that undesirable end was cut off.

I found the evening psalms and lessons, and then climbed into my
nest--where I sank down, down, down into the feathery depths, in a
manner peculiarly terrifying to one whose nights had all been spent on
hair mattresses. A few hours' ride had transplanted me into a new
region, among an entirely different race of people, and I fell asleep to
dream that a whole army of intricate sums were charging upon me with
fixed bayonets.

       *       *       *       *       *

Morning came, and I was under the painful necessity of getting up--which
is always an unnatural wrench under the most favorable auspices. The
first bell had rung at an unearthly hour, and I paid no attention to it,
but the second bell was not much more civilized; and as I failed to
appear, Mrs. Bull came to the door to see if I had made way with myself.

I told her not to wait--I would be down as soon as I could get dressed;
and I plunged desperately into a basin of cold water. Thankful for the
institution of nets, I hastily packed my hair into what Artemus Ward
calls 'a mosquito bar,' and with a final shake-out of my
hurriedly-thrown-on drapery, I descended, with the expectation of
finding the family in the full enjoyment of their morning meal.

But Mrs. Bull stood at the head of the table, Mr. Bull at the foot, and
Miss Friggs at the side, all with their hands on their respective
chairs. If they had stood in that position ever since Mrs. Bull's visit
to my door, they had enjoyed it for at least half an hour.

This was very embarrassing; but the only answer that I received to my
remonstrances was that 'they knew what manners was.' After that, I
always managed to be down in time.

I found Miss Friggs just as she had been represented, with the addition
of being very kindly disposed toward me; but between her and Mr. Bull
there existed a sort of chronic squabble that led to frequent passages
of wit. Mr. Bull opened the ball, that morning, by observing, with a
half wink at me, that 'he see she hadn't been kerried off yet,' which
referred to a previously expressed objection on the part of Miss Friggs
to sleep without some secure fastening on the door of her room; and
people in the country can never understand why you should want anything
different from the existing state of things. Then Mr. Bull remarked that
Miss Friggs had better sleep in a bandbox or an old stocking, as folks
packed away valuables in such things, because they were seldom looked
into by housebreakers.

Suddenly, Miss Friggs asked her tormentor if he had seen any robbers
lately--when he turned around and handed me the butter. This referred to
a tradition that Mr. Bull had come running home one evening, entirely
out of breath, under the firm belief that he was pursued by a robber,
and nearly shut the door in Mr. Summers's face, who had been in vain
hallooing to him to stop, in order to apprise him of my expected
arrival, and make some provision for my accommodation.

These things were all explained to me by degrees; and in the uneventful
routine upon which I had entered, I learned to consider them quite spicy
and champagne-ish.

Mr. Summers called at fifteen minutes before nine, according to
agreement, and we set out together for the Academy. It was a one-storied
edifice, after a Grecian model, which probably looked well in marble,
with classical surroundings, but which, repeated in dingy wood, with no
surroundings at all, grated on an eye that studied the fitness of
things. But, unfortunately, my business was with the inside; and I felt
uneasy when I saw the formidable rows of desks.

'And now, Miss Wade,' said my companion, with admirable seriousness,
'you see your field of action. You will have charge of about thirty
girls; and when they behave badly, so that you have any difficulty with
them, just send them in to me.'

This sounded as though they were in the habit of behaving very badly
indeed; but I doubted if sending them in to him would have been much of
a punishment for any over fifteen.

There was one scholar there when I arrived--a tall, awkward-looking
girl, somewhat my senior--whom Mr. Summers introduced as 'Helen Legram.'
Her only beauty was a pair of very clear eyes, that seemed to comprehend
me at a glance; for the rest, her face was oddly shaped, her figure bad;
and a narrow merino scarf, tied around her throat, was not a becoming
article of dress.

But scarcely had I made these observations when the Philistines were
upon me--arriving by twos, threes, and fours, and pouring through the
open door like overwhelming hordes of barbarians. Of course, every pair
of eyes that entered was immediately fixed upon me; and, although I
endeavored to keep up my dignity under the infliction, I could not help
wishing that it were possible to be suddenly taken up and dropped into
the middle of next week, when my _mauvaise honte_ would have had a
reasonable chance to wear off by several days' contact.

This _beginning_ is a terrible lion blocking up the way of every
undertaking, and never does he appear so formidable as at the outset of
school teaching, unless it is in writing a story. I cast about in my
mind for various models, as a sort of guide; but the only spirits that
emerged from the vasty deep were Dr. Blimber and Cornelia. With an
inconvenient perversity, they refused to be laid, and kept dancing
before me all day. In entering upon my career, I was firmly impressed
with two convictions: one was that I didn't know anything, and the other
was that my pupils would speedily find it out.

The day began, as all sorts of days do; and through the open door of the
adjoining apartment I watched Mr. Summers, and endeavored to follow all
his proceedings. When he rang his bell, I rang mine; and, by dint of
looking as wise and sober as I possibly could, I contrived to begin with
a tolerable degree of success.

But a pair of clear eyes, that never seemed to be removed from my face,
embarrassed me beyond expression. Their owner was a perfect bugbear.
Such a formidable memory I never encountered; and in her recitations,
which were long and frequent, I do not think she ever misplaced a
letter. That girl had algebra written on her face; and when, in a slow,
deliberate way, she approached me with slate, pencil, and book, I felt
sure that this would prove my Manassas. I was inexpressibly relieved to
discover that the problems, complicated enough to bring on a slow fever,
were all unravelled; indeed, my feelings bore no small resemblance to
those of a criminal at the gallows just presented with a reprieve.

All that I had to do was to say, 'Very well, indeed, Miss Legram; are
you fond of algebra?' To which she replied, 'Very,' and went back to her
seat.

Going in to Mr. Summers for some private instructions, I found his desk
covered with votive offerings, as though it had been the shrine of some
deity to be propitiated. There were large winter apples; hard winter
pears; bunches of chrysanthemum; bags of chestnuts, and even popped
corn; but the parcel that received the most honorable treatment was a
paper of black-walnut kernels, carefully arranged and presented by a
little, mild-eyed lame girl. I made a note of that.

With the dignity of a professor, Mr. Summers solved my difficulties;
while I meekly listened, and wondered if this could be the half-boyish
individual who had lifted me from the cars. He did not look over
twenty-three, though, and, if not strictly handsome, had had a very
narrow escape of it. His hair had a way of getting into his eyes, and he
had a way of tossing it back as horses toss their manes; and this motion
invariably brings up a train of associations connected with Mr. Summers.

The day's session was over, and the pupils had departed. I thought that
Mr. Summers had departed also; and, nervous and wearied out with the
unwonted strain upon my patience and equanimity, I applied myself
dejectedly to the fascinating columns of 'Davies' Arithmetic,' for
unless I speedily added to my small stock of knowledge, a mortifying
_exposé_ would be the inevitable consequence. Why, thought I, with all
the ills that man is naturally heir to, must some restless genius invent
figures? The people in those examples have such an insane way of
transacting business, I could make nothing of them; my answers never
agreed with the key, but I fully agreed with the poor man who said so
despairingly, 'Wat wi' faeth, and wat wi' the earth goin' round the sun,
and wat wi' the railways all a whuzzin' and a buzzin', I'm clean
muddled, confoozled, and bet!' and flinging the book out of sight, I
gave myself up to the luxury of a good cry.

I had not been enjoying myself long, though, before I was interrupted;
and as the crying was not intended for effect, the interruption was an
unpleasant one. Of course, I had to answer that original question, 'What
is the matter?' but instead of replying, after the most approved fashion
in such cases, 'Nothing,' I went directly to the fountain head, and
said, abruptly, 'Davies' Arithmetic.'

Mr. Summers quietly picked up the book, and I saw that he understood the
matter at once--for the dimples in his cheeks deepened perceptibly, and
beneath the dark mustache there was a gleam of white teeth. My face grew
hot as I noted these signs, and I exclaimed desperately:

'Mr. Summers, I should like, if you please, to resign my situation. I am
aware that I must seem to you like an impostor, for I cannot do anything
at all with figures; and I thought'--

Here I broke down, and cried again, and Mr. Summers finished the
sentence by saying:

'You thought that you would not be called upon to teach arithmetic? A
very natural conclusion, and there is no reason why you should. I prefer
taking charge of these classes myself--but no one can supply your place
in French and music.'

'A sugar plum for the baby,' thought I, and kept silence.

'I think, though,' continued my mentor, 'that anything as dry and
practical as figures is a very good exercise for an imaginative turn of
mind, by supplying a sort of balancing principle; and, if you would like
to improve yourself in this branch, I should take great pleasure in
assisting you.'

Very kindly done, certainly, and I accepted the offer with eagerness. I
was to rest that evening, he said--I had had enough for one day; but it
was understood that on other evenings generally he was to come to Mr.
Bull's and instruct his assistant teacher in the A B C of mathematics. I
could not help thinking that few employers would have taken this
trouble.

Mr. Bull appeared to be of no earthly use in the household except to go
to the door, which, in Peppersville, was not an onerous duty; and had I
not so frequently seen the same thing, I should have wondered what Mrs.
Bull ever married him for. From frequent references to the time 'when
Mr. Bull was in the store,' I came to the conclusion that he had once
dealt in the heterogeneous collection of articles usually found in such
places. I was not informed whether Mr. Bull had 'given up the store,' or
whether 'the store' had given up Mr. Bull; but I was disposed to
entertain the latter idea.

There was no servant in the establishment except an old Indian woman,
who amused herself by preparing vegetables and washing dishes in the
kitchen--not being at all active, in consequence of having lost part of
her feet from indulging in a fancy for a couch of snow on one of the
coldest nights of the preceding winter, when, to use a charitable
phrase, 'she was not quite herself.' I believe that, even after this
melancholy warning, that eccentric person was frequently somebody else.
'However,' as Mrs. Bull said, 'she didn't disturb any one'--and although
I could not exactly see the force of this reasoning, I treated it with
respectful silence for Mrs. Bull's sake.

Miss Friggs, who was 'quite one of the family,' and had lived in it so
long that I believe she almost persuaded herself that she had been born
in it, 'did' her own room--which was perfectly appalling with its
fearful neatness. There was not a thread on the carpet, nor a particle
of dust in the corners; and the bed, when made up, was as accurately
proportioned as though it had all been scientifically measured off. I
have caught glimpses of Miss Friggs going about this business with her
head carefully tied up, as though it might burst with the immensity of
her ideas on the subject; and when she had finished, you might have
eaten off the floor--that is, if you preferred it to a table. This was
her one occupation in life, and she did it thoroughly; but it seemed
too sad to have so few occupations that any could be accomplished in so
faultless a manner.

Fired with honest but misguided zeal, I one morning entered the lists
against Miss Friggs in a vain attempt to make my own bed; but those
horrid feathers acted like the things in the Philosopher's Scales, for
when some were up, others were down; neither north nor south, east nor
west would agree to terms of equality, and it was impossible to bring
them to any sort of compromise.

I related my experience to Mrs. Bull; and when I assured her that I had
crawled all over the bed in the vain attempt to bring some order out of
chaos, she was more amused, in her quiet way, than I had ever known her
to be. She desired me, however, to leave the room, to her in future, as
she enjoyed it, and I could not be expected to do everything. I did not
interfere with her measures again.

A lesson had been given me to look over; and on Mr. Summers's first
visit to me, in Mrs. Bull's parlor, I felt as if he had been a dentist
with evil designs on my largest grinder. He was as cool as though he had
been fifty and I five, and behaved himself generally as though it were a
very common thing for youthful principals to give private lessons to
their young lady-teachers.

Mr. Bull had made a fire, which was another talent that I discovered in
him; and Mrs. Bull had given the room as much of a look of comfort as a
room can have that is very seldom used. The good woman had even placed a
dish of apples and doughnuts on a table in the corner--which, she said,
were always on hand when Mr. Bull was paying his addresses to her; but
the family did not appear to put any such construction on Mr. Summer's
visits to me. I had told them that we had a great deal of school
business in common; and they seemed to think it quite natural that we
should have.

And to business Mr. Summers proceeded immediately on his arrival,
throwing me into a state of complete confusion by asking me questions
not definitely set down in the book, and calmly allowing me to blunder
through to something like an end without the least interruption or
assistance. I, whose childhood had for some time been made miserable by
the question of a sharp schoolmate, 'Which is the heaviest--a pound of
lead or a pound of feathers?' and her calm persistence that they were
both alike, in spite of my passionate denial in favor of lead, was not
likely to distinguish myself at these sittings; and whatever I had
hitherto admired in Mr. Summers was now eclipsed by my appreciation of
his extraordinary patience.

'You must think me a perfect fool!' I exclaimed, unguardedly.

'No,' replied my imperturbable companion, 'I consider you a very fair
average.'

I bit my lip in anger at myself, and turned assiduously to my slate and
pencil.

'You will take that for next time,' said my preceptor, rising at the end
of an hour, and calling my attention to a portion that he had marked in
pencil, 'when I shall be more particular about your recitations. Good
evening.'

'Very romantic,' thought I, as I walked rather discontentedly into the
sitting room, and I wondered what sort of stuff Mr. Summers was made of.
I began to be afraid that I might be piqued into flirting with him.

He seemed to have the talent, though, of winning golden opinions from
all sorts of people. Mr. Bull pronounced him 'a cute chap,' and 'real
clever, too,' for he did not consider the terms synonymous. Mrs. Bull
said that he was just the right person in the right place; and Miss
Friggs declared that he was 'a young man among a thousand.' Not at
Peppersville, certainly, for there were but five others in the place;
but, to use the phraseology most in vogue there, they could not hold a
candle to him.

That quiet, overgrown girl, with her faultless recitations and steady
pursuance of one idea, interested me exceedingly, and I determined to
find out her history. I spoke of her to Mr. Summers, and he replied:

'Oh, yes; Helen Legram is quite an original. 'Born of poor, but
respectable parents,' I have little doubt that she will turn out like
the heroes of all biographies that commence in a similar manner. Her
father is a very plain farmer, living somewhere among the mountains,
with a large family to provide for; and Helen, in consequence, has
hitherto enjoyed no advantages in the way of education beyond those
obtained from an occasional quarter at the district school. In the
intervals she had to wash, bake, mend, and make, with untiring industry,
with short snatches of reading, her only indulgence; until, last summer,
a relative, well to do in the world, spent some months at the mountain
farm, and presented Helen with the means of obtaining her heart's
desire--a thorough education. To that end she is now assiduously
devoting herself in the spirit of Milton, who 'cared not how late he
came into life, only that he came fit.' Helen Legram is a plain,
unformed country girl; but she has those three handmaids of talent who
so frequently eclipse their mistress: industry, patience, and
perseverance; and I prophesy that not only will she succeed in her
present undertaking, but win for herself a name among the Hannah Mores
and Corinnes of posterity. What a wife such a woman would make!'

I wondered if he was engaged to her? They were about the same age, and
being entirely opposite in every respect, it was quite natural that they
should fall in love with each other.

I had some trouble with my tall pupil in French, as she had not quite
the Parisian accent, and at her time of life it was not easy to acquire
it. She persevered, though, with unparalleled firmness; and as she
wished to study Latin, I was obliged to learn it myself, from Mr.
Summers. I pitied that man when I began to stumble through the
declensions. Virgil would have torn his hair in frenzy at such rendering
of his lines, and I should have been very sorry to encounter him alone.
There we sat, hour after hour, in Mrs. Bull's parlor, scarcely a word
passing between us except on the subject of Latin or arithmetic. Mr.
Summers was an excellent teacher; and it was worth my sojourn in
Peppersville to learn what I did.

One evening, however, we were rather more sociable; and in answer to
some remark of mine, Mr. Summers asked me where I supposed he was born!

Beginning with Maine, I went regularly through the Eastern States, with
a strong desire to leave him in Massachusetts; but, very much to my
surprise, he denied them all.

'New York, then, or New Jersey,' I persisted.

Mr. Summers only smiled; and then I tried the Hoosier States, where they
are 'half horse and half alligator;' his figure was somewhat in the
backwoodsman style. But none of these would do.

'Then,' said I, out of all patience, 'you could not have been born
anywhere. I give it up.'

'Well,' was the reply, 'I think you might as well, for you would never
guess.'

And here the matter ended. But frequently afterward did I find myself
wondering what portion of the globe Mr. Summers could claim as his own,
his native land; for I had come to the conclusion that he might not be
an American at all.

Skating season arrived; and all Peppersville took to the lake like a
colony of ducks. It was splendidly exhilarating, and my crotchet needle
had for some time previous been flying through tangled mazes of crimson
worsted, to the great admiration of the household, in the manufacture of
a skating cap.

I must have been built expressly for going on ice, for it seemed like my
native element. Those beautiful moonlight nights, with the cold blue sky
above and the glittering crystal beneath, were like glimpses of
fairyland. Mr. Summers taught me how to skate, for which I was
sufficiently grateful; but I had no idea of being handed over to him
exclusively for the benefit of Peppersville, so I seized upon 'big
boys,' or staid, married men, or anything that came handy in the way of
support, until I was sufficiently experienced to go alone.

Helen Legram did not skate. Nothing could induce her to venture; and
probably, while we were cultivating our heels on the ice, she was
cultivating her head in milder latitudes. I thought, _then_, that she
was to be pitied; but, two weeks later, I would have given all that I
possessed to have followed her example in the beginning.

It was intensely cold that night, and somehow my skates were very
troublesome. Mr. Summers bent down to arrange them, and I declined
making use of his shoulder as a support. I never knew how I did it, but
ice is slippery; I performed an extraordinary slide--kicked Mr. Summers
directly in the mouth, thereby knocking out one of his front teeth, as
though I had been a vicious horse--and went backward into the arms of
the oldest male pupil of the Peppersville Academy, while my unfortunate
victim, knocked into a state of insensibility, fell prostrate on the
ice.

A crowd gathered, of course, and raised their venerable preceptor, and
brought him to his senses, while I was congratulated on my escape. I
looked upon this as the most awkward predicament I had ever been placed
in, and was completely nonplussed as to the course of action to be
pursued under the circumstances. Had I been in love with Mr. Summers, or
he with me, the case would have been different; as it was, I would have
given much to have changed places with him. He declared, however, that
it was nothing, laughed about the accident, and said that one tooth more
or less made very little difference. Had he been a woman, he never would
have forgiven me.

The next morning, Mr. Summers was not at school, and Helen Legram took
his place. They boarded in the same house; and from her I learned that
his mouth was so much swollen he could scarcely speak. It was very
disagreeable, certainly; but, having weighed the matter all the morning,
I came to the conclusion by afternoon, that it was decidedly my duty to
go and see after Mr. Summers.

I found him in the parlor, considerably disfigured; and Helen Legram was
making him some pap--that being the only style of sustenance upon which
he could venture. His mouth was very sore, for the sharp runner of a
skate is rather a formidable weapon; but he laughed with his eyes when I
presented myself, and seemed to enjoy my embarrassment.

'I do not see how it happened,' said I, very much annoyed.

'All that I know of the case,' replied Mr. Summers, quite as though it
had been somebody else's case, 'is that, while engaged in the discharge
of my duty, a cloud of dimity suddenly floated before my eyes--a
stunning shock ensued--I saw stars--and then exit into the region of
know-nothingdom.'

Rather awkwardly, I suppose, I offered myself as head nurse, having been
the cause of the mischief; but Mr. Summers, with many thanks for the
offer, did not think there would be any necessity for availing himself
of it. I felt very sorry for him, and quite as sorry for myself.

In a few days the principal returned to his school duties. He possessed
a remarkable degree of reticence; and, owing to this blessed quality,
no one but ourselves and Helen Legram ever knew of my share in that
unfortunate accident. I felt rather guilty whenever allusion was made to
it by some well-meaning person; but I noticed that Mr. Summers always
turned the conversation as soon as possible. We were on more social
terms after that disaster; and somehow the evenings spent over Latin and
arithmetic became less practical, and decidedly more interesting. Mr.
Summers, however, was very cautious, and so was I. He never seemed to be
swayed by impulse; and I should have nipped anything like tenderness in
the bud.

One evening, however, I was considerably astonished at him, and not a
little indignant. The 'faculty' of the Peppersville Academy were invited
to a small party at the house of one of its wealthiest patrons, who
lived some miles out of town.

They sent a covered wagon for us, and a 'boy,' that indispensable
article in the country, to drive us.

The boy seemed to drive with his eyes shut; suddenly, there was a
terrific jolt, and I screamed and clung to Mr. Summers for protection.
Under the circumstances this was unavoidable; but, as he seemed disposed
to retain my hand, I tried to disengage it.

It was held in a firm grasp; and I said, in a tone that could not be
mistaken: 'Mr. Summers!'

My hand was immediately released; and neither of us spoke another word
during the drive.

I did not enjoy that party. I was angry at Mr. Summers, and I let him
see it; but I had no patience with any other man in the room. In driving
back, Mr. Summers 'thought that he would sit outside, to get a little
fresh air,'--which, as the thermometer stood at twenty, must have been
exhilarating. I was handed out in silence, and went to bed in as bad a
humor as that in which many a belle comes from the ball room.

There was a coolness between us for several days, which gradually thawed
into a more genial state of things, but it did not seem to me that it
ever became quite as it was before.

All winter there were rumblings deep and continual in the political
sky--sometimes the sun broke out, and people said that it was going to
clear; but usually the weathercocks predicted a long, southerly storm. I
never saw a man so full of prophecy as Mr. Bull. One would have supposed
that every hour brought him telegraphic despatches both from the real
and the spurious Congress; and that President Lincoln and Jeff. Davis
were both convinced of their utter inability to take any steps without
the cognizance and approval of Mr. Bull.

Mrs. Bull said mildly that 'she hoped it would blow over;' but Mr. Bull
exclaimed indignantly that 'he didn't want it to blow over--he wanted it
to blow out and done with it, if it was goin' to, and not keep a
threatenin' all to no purpose. It was high time that things was settled,
and people knew what was what. If we was goin' to hev a rumpus, he hoped
we'd _hev_ it.'

If the old man had not been really good-natured and inoffensive, I
should have taken him in hand; but these disconnected remarks appeared
to give him so much pleasure that it would have been cruel to deprive
him of it.

Helen Legram had a reverential way of speaking of Mr. Summers that
provoked me; but she told me one day, when I laughed at this, that no
one who knew his life could do otherwise. And how did _she_ 'know his
life'? He had never disclosed it to _me_--and I could not see what there
was in Helen Legram to entitle her to this confidence. They certainly
were engaged--everything went to prove it; and, if I had been at all in
love with Mr. Summers, I should have classed the feeling that pervaded
me under the head of jealousy.

Mr. Bull 'guessed that Mr. Summers and that tall gal were goin' to make
a match of it;' and, when I assented to the proposition, he added that
'she didn't _pretty_ much, but he kalkilated she'd make a good, stirrin'
wife for a young man who had his livin' to get. Should hev kind o'
thought,' continued Mr. Bull, who seemed to love the subject, 'that he'd
hev fancied _you_; but there's no accountin' for tastes.'

I glided out of the room unperceived, and the old gentleman probably
talked confidentially to the four walls for some time afterward.

       *       *       *       *       *

Sumter had fallen; and the whole school broke out in badges.
Peppersville was on fire, and burning, of course, in red, white, and
blue flames. No one bought a dress even that had not the loyal colors
displayed _somewhere_ in it; and a man who did not wear a cockade was
rather looked askance upon.

Mr. Bull was in his element, and spent his time principally in going to
the post office in search of news, and asking everybody's political
shibboleth. The subject was discussed at every meal. Mr. Bull thought
that half the members of Congress ought to have been hung long ago. Miss
Friggs, who sometimes attempted the poetical, said that it made her
heart bleed to think of the glorious figure of Liberty wandering
desolate and forsaken, with her costly robe of stars and stripes
trailing in the dust; and Mrs. Bull, who was one of the wisest women I
ever knew, prudently said nothing on a subject which she did not quite
understand.

The militia of Peppersville began to turn out in rusty regimentals, and
cut up queer antics in the street; and Mr. Summers, who appeared to have
a talent for everything, took them in hand to drill.

'Do you understand military tactics?' I inquired in surprise.

'Somewhat,' was the reply. He had been captain of a company of boy
soldiers; and, now that I came to think of it, there was something
decidedly military in his bearing.

'If I were only a _man!_' I exclaimed, discontentedly, 'I would be off
to the war and distinguish myself; but a woman is good for nothing but
to be insignificant.'

'The works of a watch are 'insignificant,' in one sense,' observed my
companion; 'but what would the watch he without them?'

'I do not see any application in this case,' I replied, indifferently.

'A woman,' said he, bending down to adjust some papers, 'is often the
Miriam and Aaron of some Moses whose hands need holding up. Many a
bullet that finds the heart of an enemy is sent, not by the hand that
pulls the trigger, but by a softer hand miles away. Something, or rather
some _one_, to work for, is an incentive to great deeds.'

Mr. Summers's face was flushed; and he looked suddenly up when he had
done speaking.

I withdrew my eyes in confusion, and, with the careless remark, 'Mrs.
Partington would tell you that you were speaking paregorically,' I left
a place that was getting entirely too hot to hold me.

A few days after, Mr. Summers started for the seat of war, with the
commission of first lieutenant, and Helen Legram became principal of the
Peppersville Academy. I think that bright spring days are disagreeable,
glaring things, when some one whom you like and have been accustomed to
see in certain places, is seen there no more; and the day that Mr.
Summers left, I was out of all patience with the April sunshine.

He had said no more: a friendly pressure of the hand from him, and a
sincerely expressed hope on my part that he would return unharmed--a
request from Mr. Bull to 'give it to 'em well'--a caution from Mrs. Bull
not to expose himself, if he could help it, to the night air--a
pincushion from Miss Friggs, because men never have conveniences-and he
was gone, with, no reasonable prospect of his return.

I said this to myself a great many times; but I also said that I did not
go to Peppersville to fall in love with the principal of the Academy.

Those everlasting recitations began to be unendurable; the walks about
Peppersville were totally uninteresting, and I did not know what to do
with myself. I cultivated Helen Legram; and, during the vacation, she
took me home with her to the farm.

It seemed like a new life, that three weeks' visit, and I enjoyed it
extremely. We went on expeditions up the mountains, and lived a sort of
vagrant life that was just what we both needed. The roar of cannon could
not reach us there; the sight of bleeding, dying men was far away; and
we almost forgot that the teeth of the children whom she had nourished
at her breast were tugging at the vitals of the Union.

One afternoon, amid the fragrant odor of pine trees, Helen Legram told
me the story of Mr. Summers's life.

He was born and educated in Florida, much to my astonishment, and had
entailed upon him the misery of a worthless, dissipated father. His
mother, after dragging out a saddened existence, sank into the grave
when her youngest boy was just entering upon the years of boyhood.
Finally, the elder Summers, who had always boasted of his patrician
blood, killed a man in a fit of mingled passion and intemperance, and
then cheated the gallows of its due by putting an end to his own life.
His property was quite exhausted; and the two sons who survived him
could only look upon his death as a release from continued mortification
and disgrace. An uncle's house was open to receive them; but, before
many years had elapsed, Arthur Summers, who was described as a miracle
of manly beauty, changed his name for that of a rich heiress who
bestowed herself and her lands upon him, and requested his brother to
follow his example in the matter of the name at once, and in the matter
of the heiress as soon as convenient.

Elihu Summers, however, persisted in retaining the name that his father
had disgraced; he said that he would redeem it, and declared that no
wife of his should furnish him with bread while his brain and hands were
in working order. His brother looked upon him as a harmless lunatic; but
Elihu was firm, and took up his abode at the North, as better calculated
to further his design. After a series of adventures he became principal
of the Peppersville Academy, with the view of ultimately studying a
profession; and there he had been for two years when I came in contact
with him.

I had been studying Helen Legram's face during this recital; and at its
conclusion I asked her if she was engaged to Mr. Summers.

'No, I am not engaged to him,' she replied, with a vivid blush; 'I have
good reason to suppose that he is attached to some one else.'

'Well,' thought I, as I noted the blush, 'if not engaged to him, you are
certainly in love with him;' and I felt sorry for her if it was not
returned.

I did not go back to Peppersville that summer--I had had enough of
school teaching; and I returned to the relatives with whom I had become
disgusted, on promises of better behavior from them for the future. They
were not _near_ relatives--I had none; and I had rebelled at being
tutored and watched like a child. Having fully asserted my independence,
I was treated with more respect; but, while they supposed that I was
nestling down in quiet content, I was busily casting about in my mind
the practicability of another venture.

I burned to do something for my country; I could not do as meek women
did, and sit down and sew for it; the monotonous motion of the needle,
which some people call so soothing, fairly distracted me; and, in spite
of the low diet of Latin and mathematics on which I had been kept all
winter, I entertained vague visions of myself, in cropped hair and army
blue, following the drum.

Just at this critical juncture, when common sense was spreading her
pinions for flight, I received a letter from a darling Mentor of a
friend, who was spending the golden sunshine of her life as her Saviour
spent His, in doing good; and she ordered me to the hospitals.

'You have youth and health,' she wrote; 'spend them in the service of
your country. Many a brave soldier lies stiffening in his gore on the
bloody field of Manassas; many as brave are writhing in agony in the
hospitals that received the wounded of that disastrous day; go among
them with words of comfort, and smooth the pillow of those brave
defenders whose blood has been freely poured out to enable _you_ to
sleep in peace.'

I could wait no longer; in spite of protestation, I put my chattels in
order, and was off with a noble band of women, who were all bent on the
same errand.

I had heard nothing from Mr. Summers since his departure: he might have
been killed at Manassas, or have fallen, side by side with the noble
Winthrop, at Big Bethel, or have perished, as the lamented Ellsworth
perished, by the hand of the assassin. I never expected to behold him
again in _this_ world; and I began to think that I had not appreciated
him.

       *       *       *       *       *

I cannot describe my life as hospital nurse: it was just passing from
one scene of suffering to another; and I had not realized that there
_could_ be so much misery in this bright, beautiful world. At first I
used to tremble and faint; but finally the intense desire to _do_
something for these poor, mutilated wrecks of humanity conquered the
weakness; and I even wondered at my own self-control.

There were pleasant gleams, too, in this life, of utter
self-abandonment; blessings from fever-parched lips; grateful looks from
dying eyes; pleased attention to holy words; and, wrapping all like a
halo, the thought that I was working in very deed, ay, and battling,
too, for the glorious flag that floated over my head.

They were constantly bringing in fresh patients, and the sight roused no
curiosity; but one day, such a ghastly face was upturned to view, as
they placed the shattered body tenderly on a cot, that, involuntarily, I
bent closer.

'Awful things, those Minié wounds,' observed a young surgeon who stood
near me; and then, as he went on to describe how the horrible ball
revolves in the lacerated flesh, I suddenly caught a full view of the
features, over which the shadow of death seemed to have settled, and
fainted dead away.

It was a long time, I believe, before I regained my senses; but as soon
as I did, I went to work. Mr. Summers was stretched before me on that
cot, with a gaping wound in his shoulder, that had not been attended to
in proper time. He opened his eyes once, and smiled, as he seemed to
recognize me bending over him; but a fainting fit ensued, and then he
became delirious.

I could not bear to have any one else attend to him, and I watched him
faithfully day and night. That dreadful Minié wound seemed as if it
never would heal, and I think that the doctors scarcely expected him to
get up again. I almost felt as if I had been brought to the hospital for
this one purpose; and without his ever having told me in plain words
that he loved me--in spite of all my wise resolutions to the
contrary--during silent watches beside that couch of suffering, I became
convinced that I loved him with all the strength of which I was capable.
Yes, I who had nominally devoted myself to the service of my country,
had ignominiously closed my career by falling in love with the first
good-looking patient that had been brought into my ward!

If any stupid man, though (a woman would know better), supposes that I
informed Mr. Summers of this, either by word or look, in his first lucid
moment, he is entirely mistaken. On the contrary to punish myself for
this humiliating weakness, I was more severe than ever; and when the
patient became well enough to thank me for my kind attention, etc., I
told him, as coldly as I could, that it was no more than I would have
done for the commonest soldier--(which was not strict truth)--that my
labors were given to my country, and not to individuals--with much more
to the same purpose.

Mr. Summers sighed deeply, and turned over on his pillow; and he did not
imagine how I felt.

He said no more on the subject then; but, one evening, when he had been
moved from his bed to an easy chair, he spoke out like a man, and a
pretty determined one, too, in plain terms, and asked me if I would ever
marry him?

In just as plain terms I told him that I never would--I had resolved to
devote my life in this manner; and, with an expression of utter
hopelessness, he replied that he took back all his thanks for the
miserable life I had saved; he was weary of it, and would hasten to
throw it away on the next battle field.

This was very dreadful, of course; but that winter's practice had given
me quite a turn for arithmetic, and I fell to calculating how many
battles would probably transpire before that crippled shoulder would let
him take the field again.

'You will not get out under three months,' said I, confidently.

He looked at me for a moment; and then, bending closer, he whispered,
'You do not really mean it, Isabel?'

My face flushed uncomfortably at this address, but, making a last
struggle, I inquired carelessly, 'And why not, pray?'

'Because,' he replied, with a steady voice, 'you have too kind a heart
to consign to a disappointed life one who loves you so devotedly.'

I suppose I had; for, after that, he had the impudence to assure me that
I was engaged to him.

'Providence seems to smile upon us,' observed my convalescing patient,
the next morning; 'read this, Isabel.'

The formidable looking document was placed in my hand, and I learned
that Lieutenant Elihu Summers, for gallant conduct at the battle of Bull
Run, was promoted to the rank of colonel.

'Mrs. Colonel Summers,' said he, with the old mischief beaming in his
eye; 'isn't that tempting?'

I immediately punished him by reading an article that happened to be on
hand, which proved conclusively that army and navy officers were a
worthless, dissipated set. Nevertheless, it was a satisfaction to think
that my wish of entering the army was about to be gratified--although in
such an unexpected way.

I could never definitely ascertain whether Helen Legram loved Mr.
Summers or not; but I am under the impression that she did, and that she
will never marry. She makes a splendid principal for the Peppersville
Academy; and, when we have a house of our own, she will be the first
invited guest.

I am afraid that I have no 'mission.' I spoiled my school teaching by
falling in love with the principal, and my hospital nursing by becoming
infatuated with my most troublesome patient. I do not feel disposed,
therefore, to try another field.




LETTER WRITING.


To Atossa, a Persian queen, the daughter of Cyrus and the mother of
Xerxes, has been ascribed the invention of letter writing. She, although
a royal barbarian, was, like her prototype of Sheba, not only an admirer
of wisdom in others, but wise herself. She first composed epistles. So
testifies Hellanicus, a general historian of the ancient states, and so
insists Tatian in his celebrated oration against the Greeks. In that
oration he contends that none of the institutions of which the Greeks
were so boastful had their origin with them, but were all invented by
the barbarians.

It may be doubted, however, whether to any known person in the domains
of olden time can be truly attributed the high honor of such an
invention. Indeed, the views that may justly be entertained as to what
constitutes an invention may be various and diverse. Perhaps, in a
qualified sense, any signal addition or improvement deserves to be so
distinguished. What was precisely the subject matter of Atossa's
invention is not told, nor is anything recorded to lead to the
conclusion that she invented any new material; but, if she discovered
any way of committing the communications between persons, separated or
at a distance from each other, to paper--whether composed of the
interior bark of trees, or of the Egyptian papyrus, or other flexible
substance--and making it into a roll or volume, to be sent by some
carrier, that Persian queen may be accredited as the inventress of
epistolary composition.

It has been conjectured that letter writing was an art existing in the
days of Homer; because one of that great poet's characters, named
Pretus, gives a folded tablet to another personage, Bellerophontes, to
deliver to a third individual, Jobates. But the learned commentators,
both German and English, agree in the fact that the Iliad and the
Odyssey were never written, but recited to various audiences by

  'The grand old bard of Scio's rocky isle.'

Writing, however, was in use throughout Greece before the time of Homer,
if not in ordinary intercourse, certainly for memorials and
inscriptions. The age of Homer may be regarded as preceding the
Christian era by about one thousand years. It synchronizes with the time
of Solomon. Thus the greatest of poets and the wisest of kings
coexisted--truly a noticeable fact, a theme for the imagination.

But the Holy Scriptures afford instances of letter writing, in some form
or other, at a period considerably anterior to the age of Solomon. David
wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah: 'And he wrote
in the letter, saying.' (2 Samuel xi, 14, 15.) And, about one hundred
and forty years afterward, Jezebel wrote letters in Ahab's name (1 Kings
xxi, 8, 9), and 'sealed them with his seal, and sent the letters unto
the elders and to the nobles that were in the city, dwelling with
Naboth, and she wrote in the letters, saying, (2 Kings v, 5, 6, 7; 2
Kings x, 1, 2, 6, 7.) The king of Syria wrote a letter to the king of
Israel, and therewith sent Naaman, his servant, to be cured of his
leprosy: 'And it came to pass when the king of Israel read the letter,
that he rent his clothes.'

Now this occurred about nine hundred years before the Christian era;
and, about twenty years later, we are told that Jehu wrote letters and
sent them to Samaria. A second time he transmitted other letters of a
similar import, which were cruelly obeyed.

Then there is the threatening letter of the king of Assyria to Hezekiah,
set forth in the second book of Kings, and also the complimentary
letter from Berodach-Baladan to the same king of Judah after his
sickness; a king who subsequently appears himself to have written
letters to the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, to summon them to
Jerusalem. (2 Kings xix, 14; xx, 12; 2 Chron. xxx, 1-6.)

Cyrus, after publishing his decree giving liberty to the Jews to return
to their own country and rebuild the house of the Lord at Jerusalem,
wrote letters recommendatory to the governors of several provinces to
assist the Jews in their undertaking; one of which letters Josephus has
recorded as being addressed to the governors of Syria, and commencing
with the regular epistolary salutation, 'Cyrus, the king, to Sysina and
Sarabasan sendeth a greeting.' And while the children of the captivity
were rebuilding their temple (and this was five hundred and twenty-two
years before Christ), there was a frequent correspondence by letters
between, their adversaries and Artaxerxes, king of Persia. Now,
supposing the invention, in any modified sense, of letter writing _on
paper_, or what may answer to the idea conveyed by that term, is in any
measure attributable to the daughter of Cyrus, this was quite a matter
of course and in accordance with the general practice.

Still, let us not be disposed to take away from the royal lady the honor
of having invented an art which her sex have, in modern years, carried
to a perfection scarcely attainable by the male sex; for it may be set
down as an axiom that one woman's letter is worth a dozen letters by
men.

After all, the instances of communication by means of letter writing to
which allusions have thus been made are plainly no specimens of that use
of the invention which constitutes it the medium of free thought and
intelligence, or even the simple vehicle of domestic intercourse. Those
letters or missives were either formal announcements of authoritative
mandates and despatches, or, at best, only the conveyancers of certain
information, to be the motive to some act or understanding, or to
determine or direct some course of proceeding. There are no examples of
what can properly be called _familiar letters_ before the time of
Cicero, whose correspondence may justly be regarded as among the most
precious remains of ancient literature which have survived to our own
day. In connection with this remark, we may be permitted to observe
that, as with the greatest of ancient, so with the greatest of modern
orators, he was distinguished for the beauty, power, and brilliancy of
his letters. There are few instances of English style more charming in
themselves than the epistles, whether published or still in manuscript,
written by that versatile and wonderful person, Daniel Webster.
(_Nunquam tetigit quod non ornavit._) How copious is their expression!
How facile and felicitous their illustrations! What grace! What beauty
of diction! What simplicity, elevated by a matchless elegance! Nothing
more clearly proves the various talents of both the Roman and the
American statesman than that they should no more have excelled in their
forensic achievements on grand occasions than in those common and
trivial affairs of every-day life, so unaffected and so effortless as
the writing of letters to their friends.

All the letters of Greek and Roman origin which have come down to us
seem to be doubtful, except those of Plato and Isocrates, until the days
of Cicero. Under his genius the mind of the Roman nation took a sudden
spring, and the polite literature of the world was embellished by
epistolary composition. As the rules and illustrations of poetic writing
were borrowed by Aristotle from the example of Homer, so the practice
and authority of Cicero appear to have furnished precepts best entitled
to determine the character and merits of the epistolary style. He
esteemed it as a species of composition enjoying the privilege of great
ease and familiarity, as well in its diction as in its treatment of its
subject, and also in its employment of the weapons of wit and humor. The
general style most suitable to its spirit and character he considered to
be that most in use in the ordinary and daily intercourse of society. He
admired a simple and playful use of language, and he affected, as he
asserts, a common and almost plebeian manner of writing, using words of
every-day stamp in his correspondence. In his view of letter writing,
its style and manner ought to vary with the complexion of its subject
matter, and be subjected to no abstract system of rules. Ho propounds
three principal kinds of epistles: first, that which merely conveys
interesting intelligence, being, as he says, the very object for which
the thing itself came into existence; second, the jocose letter; third,
the serious and solemn letter. And it was besides the opinion of the
great orator--an opinion sanctioned and ratified by all honorable
persons then and in our own day--that there is something sacred in the
contents of a letter which gives it the strongest claims to be withheld
from third persons. 'For who,' he exclaims, in his second Philippic,
'who that is at all influenced by good habits and feelings, has ever
allowed himself to resent an affront or injury by exposing to others any
letters received from the offending persons during their intercourse of
friendship?' 'What else,' he eloquently exclaims, 'would be the tendency
of such conduct but to rob the very life of life of its social charms!
How many pleasantries find their way into letters, as amusing to the
correspondents as they are insipid to others; and how many subjects of
serious interest, which are entirely unfit to be brought before the
public!'

Truly is it gratifying, in our treatment of this topic, to be able to
adduce such high, classical authority concerning the sacred and
inviolable character of all private correspondence. In our humble view,
not only is the seal of a letter a lock more impregnable to the hand of
honor than the strongest bank safe which the expert Mr. Hobbs might
vainly have tried to open; but even when that seal has already been
rightfully broken and the contents of the letter exposed, those contents
are to the eye of delicacy as unreadable as if written in that _Bass_
language which Adam and Eve are said to have spoken while in the garden
of Eden, and which, since the fall, none but angels have ever been able
to comprehend. Now, if Cicero thought it base for a third party to read
a private letter, what eloquent thunder would he not have hurled at the
head of that wretch who not only read, but printed and published it!
There is an epithet, which, in certain parts of New England, the folks
apply to the poorest of poor scamps--'mean.' Now who, in this round
world, of all that dwell therein, can be found one half so 'mean' as the
betrayer and revealer of another's secrets? A whip should be placed in
every honest hand to lash the rascal naked through the world. He should
be fastened in an air-tight mail bag, and sent jolting and bouncing,
amid innumerable letters and packages and ponderous franked documents of
members of Congress, over all the roughest roads of our Northwestern
country!

To return to what a letter should be. It seems, upon the whole, to have
been Cicero's opinion--and in this we shall fain agree as well as in his
view of the secrecy of letters--that, whether the subject be solemn or
familiar, learned or colloquial, general or particular, political or
domestic, an easy, vivacious, unaffected diction gives to epistolary
writing its proper grace and perfection.

In very truth, good letter writing is little else than conversation upon
paper, carried on between parties personally separate, with this
especial advantage, that it brings the minds of the interlocutors into
reciprocal action, with more room for reflection, and with, fewer
disturbances than can usually consist with personal conversation.

We have thus made mention of Cicero as the greatest of authorities with
regard to this subject, because he was himself the greatest of letter
writers. The epistle was the shape in which his versatile and beautiful
mind most gracefully ran and moulded itself. His fluctuating and
unstable character no less than his vanity and love of distinction,
seemed to minister occasion to those varied forms of diction and
expression in which the genius of animated letter writing may be said to
delight. Read his 'Familiar Letters,' if not in Latin, yet in
translation, if you wish to study the most perfect specimens of this
style--a style which has not been equalled or approached since his day.

Next to the letters of the great Roman orator, merit points to those of
the philosopher Seneca. He, too, cultivates and enjoins an easy and
unstudied diction. So great is the excellence of his letters; so nearly
is their beauty allied to the beauty of our Holy Scriptures; so does he
seem to anticipate the morals and teachings of our Christian
dispensation, that it is almost reprehensible to speak of them at all,
without setting forth their extraordinary charms of style and thought,
even in a larger space than the present article can be allowed to
occupy.

After Seneca, the next most noted of the ancient letter writers was
Pliny the younger. And now we are brought down to the days of the
Apostles and their Epistles. With a simple reverential allusion to the
letters of St. Paul and the other immediate followers of our Lord,
letters that teach men the way of salvation--we pass to a more modern
consideration of our topic.

Letters can hardly be classified. They are of various sorts. Most of
them, as schoolboys say, end in t-i-o-n, _tion_. There are Letters of
Introduction; Letters of Congratulation; Letters of Consolation; Letters
of Invitation; Letters of Recommendation; Letters of Administration.
There are, moreover, letters of friendship, business letters, letters of
diplomacy, letters of credit, letters patent, letters of marque (apt
also to be letters of mark), and love letters--the last being by no
means least.

Let not the gentle reader imagine from this enumeration than we are
going to be so tedious as to divide the remainder of this article into
heads, and to treat of each one of these kinds of letters in its turn.
No; our object is, by indicating thus the number of sorts, to elucidate
the importance of letters, and to prove that, if their writing be not,
like that of poetry, ranked among the fine arts, it well deserves to be.
For what more admirable accomplishment can there be--what is of more
importance often than the proper composing of letters? Many a reputation
is made or marred by a single epistle. Great consequences follow in the
train of a single epistle. The pen is mightier than the sword. How well
may our readers remember one brief letter of Henry Clay (_clarum et
venerabile nomen!_), who, when a candidate for the Presidency, wrote
many excellent letters, and too many--so many, indeed, that his
adversaries indulged in pointless ridicule, and called him 'The Complete
Letter Writer.' We allude, of course, to that brief letter to certain
importunate individuals in Alabama, which lost for him the decisive and
final vote of New York, and made Mr. Polk President--its consequences
being the war with Mexico, the acquisition and annexation of California,
the discovery of the gold mines--working an utter change in the
political and commercial fortunes of the world, which would probably
never have taken place, or, at least, not in our century, but for that
one brief Alabama letter! It is, we believe, fully conceded that the
safest rule for becoming Chief Magistrate of our country is never to
write a letter.

Many a man and woman, who has written a letter and posted it, wishes
ardently that it could be recalled; and many a one who has something
disagreeable to say, and is obliged to say it in a letter because he has
promised to write, wishes that he could send the letter in blank--like
Larry O'Branigan to his wife Judy, when he was constrained to inform her
that he had been dismissed from his place, thus done into verse by the
bard of Erin:

  'As it was but last week that I sent you a letter,
    You'll wonder, dear Judy, what this is about,
  And, troth, it's a letter myself would like better,
    Could I manage to leave the contents of it out.'

Excellent, by the way, as this Hibernicism is, it is not so perfect as
the following, which it would be difficult for the most accomplished of
Paddies to surpass. A man, dying, wrote an epistle, in which, stating
that he was near death, he took an affectionate farewell of his friends.
He left the letter open on a table near him, and expired before he had
time to complete it. His attendant, just after his demise, taking up the
defunct's pen, in which the ink was scarcely yet dry, added, by way of
postcript, or rather _post-mortem-script_: 'Since writing the foregoing,
I have died.'

There is more philosophy than one would at first imagine in the apology
of him who said that his pen was so bad it could not spell correctly. To
write a letter as it should be in all respects, to be what it ought to
be, orthographically, grammatically, rhetorically right, there should be
a good pen, good paper, good ink. Many a pleasant correspondence has
been marred by want of these adjuncts; many an agreeable thought
arrested; many a composition, happily begun, hurried to an abrupt
conclusion. And how many delightful letters have been omitted or
neglected to be written by their want! We are not jesting. These
concomitants, together with nice envelopes, are as requisite to a
respectable epistle as becoming costume is to a lady. When we see a
scrawling hand on coarse paper, ill folded, worse directed, and ending,
'Yours in haste,' we think but little of the writer. Such a one may
complain of being in a hurry, but ladies and gentlemen should always
take time to do well whatsoever they do at all. No letters should be
written 'in haste' except angry ones, and the faster they are 'committed
to paper' the better. We have found it a capital plan, when in hot
wrath, to sit directly down and scratch off a furious letter, and then,
having thus committed our ire to the paper, to commit that to the
flames. The process is highly refrigerant, in any state of the weather.

Nothing can be more false than the phraseology of most letters. Many a
letter is commenced with 'dear,' when the writer, if he dared express
his real sentiment, would use a very opposite word. But, be the
sentiments of a letter what they may, true or false, real or affected,
it is the desire of the present writer to insist upon the indispensable
neatness of letters--that they should be externally faultless, however
defective inside. We regret to record the unpleasant fact that our
American ladies seldom write good hands, whereas a fair chirography is
properly considered as among the very first accomplishments for a
well-educated girl in England. Who ever saw a letter from a true English
lady that was not faultless in its details? What nice, legible
penmanship! How happily expressed! How trim and pretty a cover! How
beautiful and classic a seal! Very different these from the concomitants
of half a sheet of ruled paper, scrawled over as if chickens had been
walking upon it, and folded slopingly, and held loosely together by a
wafer!

It is an affectation of many lawyers and most literary people to write
ill, probably to create an impression that such is the vast importance
of their occupations and lucubrations that they have not time to attend
to so minor a matter as penmanship. A certain highly distinguished
counsellor of Massachusetts was said to have written so badly that he
could not comprehend his own legal opinions after he had put them on
paper. Now such affectation is in very poor taste. Those who cannot
write fairly and legibly had better go to school and practise until they
can. Incomprehensible writing is as bad as incomprehensible speaking. A
clear enunciation is scarcely more important than a plain hand. A
lawyer, in speaking, may as well jumble his words so together that not
one in fifty can be understood, as in writing to scrawl and run them
about so that not one in fifty can be read.

What a world of content or of unhappiness lies within the little fold of
a letter! Hark! There is the postman's ring at the door, sharp, quick,
imperative; as much as to say, 'Don't, keep me standing here; I'm in a
hurry.' How your heart beats! It has come at length--the long-expected
letter; an answer to a proposal of marriage, perhaps; a reply to an
urgent inquiry concerning a matter of business; information with regard
to some near and dear relative; a bulletin from the field of battle;
what the heart sighs for, hopes for--fears, yet welcomes--desires, yet
dreads. You seize the letter. Has it a black seal? Yes? The blood leaves
your cheeks and rushes to its citadel, frozen with fear, and in your ear
sounds the knell of a departed joy. No? Then you heave a long sigh of
relief, and gaze for a moment at the missive, wondering from whom it can
be. Your doubts are soon resolved, and you rest satisfied or you are
disappointed. Recall the emotions which you have experienced in opening
and reading many a letter, and you will acknowledge that fate and
fortune often announce their happiest or sternest decrees through a
little sheet of folded paper. Have you not thought so, wife, when came
the long looked-for, long hoped-for, long prayed-for--with so many sighs
and tears, such throbbing, and such sinking of the heart--letter from
your husband, telling the fruition of his schemes, and the prospect of
his speedy return? Have you not thought so, mother, when your son's
letter came, assuring you that your early teachings had been blessed to
him; and, though perchance surrounded by the temptations of a great city
or a great camp, he had found that 'peace which passeth understanding?'
Have you not thought so, O happy damsel--yes! that blush tells how
deeply--when _his_ letter came at last, that letter which told you you
were beloved, and that all his future felicity depended upon your reply?
And that soft reply--how covered with kisses, how worn in that pocket of
the coat in which it can feel the beatings of the precordial region! And
not of you alone, ye refined and accomplished lovers--but of swains and
sweethearts are the letters dear. Nothing more prized than such
epistles, commencing with: 'This comes to inform you that I am well,
saving a bad cold, and hope you enjoy the same blessing,' and ending:

  'My pen is poor, my ink is pale,
  My love for you shall never fail.'

Assuredly, if there can be unalloyed happiness in this world, it
appertains to those dear and distant friends, parted from one another by
intervening ocean or continent, at those moments of mental communion
which are vouchsafed by long and loving letters. Ah, how would the bands
of friendship weaken and drop apart if it were not for them! They
brighten the links of our social affections; they freshen the verdure of
kind thoughts; they are like the morning dew and the evening rain to
filial, conjugal, fraternal, paternal and parental love!

Let us now pass on to say something concerning those different kinds of
letters that we named. Letters of diplomacy are affairs in which words
are used for the purpose of concealing or obscuring the author's
meaning, and which always conclude: 'Yours, with distinguished
consideration.' To this species of epistle, the 'non-committal style,'
of which the late Martin Van Buren was reputed to be a perfect master,
is best adapted. Diplomatists seldom desire to be comprehended; but
occasionally, when they do, how luminously plain they can be! Witness
that celebrated letter which Mr. Webster dictated to Edward Everett, and
the latter put on paper to be sent to Austria's minister, the Chevalier
Hulsemann. The 'distinguished consideration' of that discomfited
official was exercised to an unpleasant extent; and the result is that
Austria has ceased to instruct this republic.

Nothing is more difficult to compose than a letter of consolation or
condolence. The more earnestly you desire to express sympathy and impart
solace, the more impossible it seems to find gentle and appropriate
terms. You would shun commonplaces and avoid sermonizing. You wish to
say something simple, kind, soothing. And yet the reflection of how far
short of the exigencies of the grief you would mitigate, fails your best
and most effectual efforts, oppresses and restrains your pen.

Of letters of business, it is quite well to say as little as they say
themselves: 'Yours received; contents noted. Yours, &c.' As brevity is
the soul of wit, so is it the soul of a business letter--the argument of
which should be _ad rem_, to the matter; _cum punctu_, with point.

Letters of invitation and congratulation are often mere formalities,
although there is a way of infusing kindness, courtesy, and sincerity
into them, especially into the latter, which ought at least to seem to
be in cordial earnest.

Letters of introduction and recommendation are very difficult to write,
because most people endeavor to give an original turn to their
expressions. After all, it is judicious, in the composition of such
affairs, to follow the briefest and most usual formulas, unless, indeed,
you desire to introduce and recommend some particular person in
downright reality, and then the farther you deviate from mere customary
expressions the better. And if you are truly in earnest, you need be at
no loss what to say: the words will suggest themselves.

Letters of friendship may be divided into two sorts--real and pretended.
A real letter of friendship commends itself directly to the heart. There
is a warm, genial glow about it, as welcome as the blaze of a hickory or
sea-coal fire to one coming in from the cold, bitter breeze of a
December night. It makes one philanthropic and a believer in human
goodness. What cheer--what ardent cheer is there in a letter
unexpectedly received from an old friend between whom and one's self
roll years of absence, or stretch lands and seas of distance! It is like
a boon from the very heaven of memory. But a pretended letter of
friendship--how easily detected! how transparent its falsity! The
loadstone of love touches it, and finds it mere brass. Its influence is
icy and bleak, like the rays of the moon, from which all the lenses on
earth cannot extract one particle of heat.

And what can be said of love letters--those flowers of feeling, those
redundant roses of recapitulation? There is one strain running through
their first parts, and then--_da capo_. They are the same thing, over
and over and over again, and then--repeat. Yet are they never wearisome
to those who write or to those who acceptably receive. They are like the
interviews of their writers, excessively stupid to everybody else, but
exquisitely charming to themselves; that is, _real_ love letters; not
those absurd things--amusing from their very absurdity--which novelists
palm off upon innocent readers as the correspondence of heroes and
heroines. Verily is there a distinction between letters written by
lovers and love letters. The former may be deeply interesting to
uninterested readers, while the latter are the very quintessence of
egotistical selfishness; for, indeed, lovers may sometimes write about
other matters besides love, as, for example, in the famous epistles of
Abelard and Héloïse.

  'Heaven first taught letters for some wretch's aid,
  Some banish'd lover or some captive maid;
  They live, they breathe, they speak what love inspires,
  Warm from the soul, and faithful to its fires;
  The virgin's wish without her fears impart,
  Excuse the blush, and pour out all the heart;
  Speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul,
  And waft a sigh from Indus to the pole.'

About the other kinds of letters which have been enumerated, we shall
have nothing to say; because they are letters rather in name than in
reality.

The fashion prevalent in modern days, to publish on the demise of an
author pretty much all his private correspondence, proves the general
interest which is felt in mere letters. Many of these are utterly
worthless, vastly inferior to those which constantly pass between
friends on the topics of the hour or their own affairs. It is charitable
to conjecture that their writers never imagined that they could be
exposed in print, or would not be burned as soon as read. And yet, with
what avidity are they conned and discussed! Look at the letters of Lord
Byron, Moore, and Campbell. How much brainless twattle do they contain,
amid a few grains of wit and humor. What mere commonplace! Editors may
as well publish every word a man says, as what he writes familiarly in
his dressing gown and slippers. We have not a doubt that by far the best
letters ever written still remain unpublished. There are many printed
volumes of travels very inferior to those which could be made up from
the letters of private persons abroad, composed purely for the
delectation of friends. There is hardly anything so difficult in writing
as to write with ease. They who write letters on purpose to be
published, feel and show a constraint which a mere private correspondent
never entertains nor exhibits.

The war in which we are engaged has brought forth whole hosts of
correspondents. They come not single spies, but in battalions. None of
these letters, so far as we have read, can boast of any striking or
peculiar excellence. Their great fault is their immense prolixity. Their
words far outnumber their facts. An editor having once complained to a
writer of the inordinate length of his composition, the writer replied
that he had not had time to make it _shorter_. This is doubtless the
trouble with our army letter writers. They are forced to write _currente
calamo_--sometimes on the heads of drums, and not unfrequently are such
epistles as full of sound and fury and as empty as the things on which
they are written. The best of these correspondents so far is the
somewhat ignominious Mr. Russell, of the London _Times_; the only one,
indeed, who has achieved a reputation. Mr. Charles Mackay, his successor
(_heu! quantum mutatus ab illo_), writes letters that are poorer, if
possible, than his poems; he has just sufficient imagination to be
indebted to it for his facts. As for his opinions, he seems to gather
them, like a ragpicker, from political stews, reeking with the filth of
treason and foul with the garbage of secession.

So far as _literary_ merit goes, we regret to give our verdict in favor
of correspondents for the Southern journals. They write with greater
facility, greater elegance, and greater force than our own too
voluminous reporters. But, as much as they have figured, it is not
probable that they will live in print. They are like exhalations over a
battle field--touched briefly by the hues of sunlight, then fading,
rolling off, and vanishing in the distance.

Of all the methods of acquiring a good English style, there is no
practice so beneficial as that of frequent and familiar letter writing.
Because your object in writing to a friend is to make yourself perfectly
clear to him, therefore you make use of the simplest, plainest, readiest
words--and such are ever the best for an essay, sermon, lecture, or even
oration. This practice imparts ease and perspicuity, and it teaches that
writing ought to be and may be as little difficult as conversation. It
teaches every one not to say anything till he shall have something to
say. A want of something to say is generally not felt in writing
letters, especially by ladies; but it would seem to be a great pity that
there are so many words in our language; for, whenever one desires to
say anything, three or four ways of saying it run in one's head
together, and it is hard to choose the best! It is quite as puzzling to
a lady as the choice of a ribbon or a--husband. But let us earnestly
advise all fair letter writers to lessen their perplexity by restricting
themselves to words of home manufacture. They may perhaps think it looks
prettily to garnish their correspondence with such phrases as _de tout
mon coeur_. Now, _with all my heart_ is really better English; the
only advantage on the side of the former expression is that it is far
less sincere. French silks and French laces may be superior, but it is
much better to make use of the English language. Whenever there is any
doubt between two words or expressions, choose the plainest, the
commonest, the most idiomatic. Let ladies eschew fine phrases as they
would _rouge_; let them love simple words as they do native roses on
their cheeks. A true lady should be emulous to deserve that praise which
the old poet Chaucer bestows on his Virginia:

  'Though she were wise as Pallas, dare I sain
  Her faconde eke full womanly and plain,
  No contrefeted terms hadde she
  To semen wise; but after her degree
  She spake; and all her wordes more or less
  Sounding in virtue and in gentilesse.'

Exquisite examples of this pure, mother English are to be found in the
speeches put by Shakspeare into the mouths of his female characters.

  'No fountain from its rocky cave
  E'er tripped with foot more free;'

never were its waters clearer, more translucent, or more musical. This
is indeed the peculiar beauty of a feminine style--choice and elegant
words, but such as are familiar in well-bred conversation; words, not
used scientifically, but according to their customary signification. It
is from being guided wholly by usage, undisturbed by extraneous
considerations, and from their characteristic fineness of discernment
with regard to what is fit and appropriate, as well as from their being
much less influenced by the vanity of fine writing, that sensible,
educated women have a grace of style so rarely attainable by men. What
are called the graces of composition are often its blemishes. There is
no better test of beauties or defects of style than to judge them by the
standard of letter writing. An expression, a phrase, a figure of speech,
thought to be very splendid in itself, would often appear perfectly
ridiculous if introduced in a letter. The rule of the cynic is a pretty
good one, after all: _In writing, when you think you have done something
particularly brilliant, strike it out._

We are pretty well persuaded that authors are but poor judges of their
own productions. They pride themselves on what they did with most labor.
It is not good praise of any work to say that it is 'elaborate.' An
author's letters are not apt to be labored, 'to smell of the lamp;' and
they are, therefore, in general, his best specimens. In letter writing
there will be found a facility, a freedom from constraint, a
simplicity, and a directness, which are the capital traits of a good
style. Of Shakspeare it is said, in the preface to the first edition of
his works: 'His mind and hand went together, and what he thought he
uttered with that easiness, that we have scarce received from him a blot
in his papers.' Shakspeare did not, therefore,

  'Write with fury, and correct with phlegm;'

but he wrote straightforwardly and naturally, as they do who assiduously
practise letter writing.




THE YEAR.


  Come, gentle Snowdrop, come; we welcome thee:
    Shine, fiery Crocus, through that dewy tear!
  That thou, arrayed in burnished gold, may'st be
    A morning star to hail the dawning year.

  Now Winter hath ta'en Summer by the hand,
   And kissed her on her cheek so fair and clear;
  While Spring strews bridal blossoms o'er the land
    To grace the marriage of the youthful year.

  The blackbird sings upon the budding spray,
    I hear the clarion tones of chanticleer,
  And robins chirp about from break of day,--
    All pipe their carols to the opening year.

  The butterfly mounts up on jewelled wing,
    Risen to new life from out her prison drear:
  All Nature smileth;--every living thing
    Breaks forth in praises of the gladsome year.

  Down in the sheltered valley, Mayflowers blow,--
    Their small, sweet, odorous cups in beauty peer
  Forth from their mother's breast in softened glow,
    To deck the vestments of the princely year.

  And splendid flowers in richly-colored dress
    Will bloom when warm winds from the south shall veer:
  And clustering roses in their gorgeousness
    Shall form a coronet for the regal year.

  Rejoice, O beauteous Earth--O shining Sea!
    Rejoice, calm Summer sky, and all things dear:
  Give thanks, and let your joyful singing be
    An anthem for the glories of the year.




THE GREAT AMERICAN CRISIS.

_PART ONE._


The American crisis, actual and impending; the causes which have led to
it through the years that have passed; the consequences which must flow
from it; the new responsibilities which it devolves on us as a people in
the practical sphere; the new theoretical problems which it forces upon
our consideration--everything, in fine, which concerns it, constitutes
it a subject of the most momentous importance. The greatest experiment
ever yet instituted to bring the progress of humanity to a higher plane
of development is being worked out on this continent and in this age;
and the war now progressing between the Northern and the Southern States
is, in a marked sense, the acme and critical ordeal to which that
experiment is brought.

First in order, in any methodical consideration of the subject, is the
question of the causes which have led to this open outburst of collision
and antagonism between the two great sections of a common country, whose
institutions have hitherto been--with one remarkable exception--so
similar as to be almost identical. Look at the subject as we will, the
fact reveals itself more and more that the one exception alluded to is
the 'head and front of this offending,' the heart and core of this
gigantic difficulty, the one and sole cause of the desperate attempt now
being waged to disturb and break up the process of experiment, otherwise
so peacefully and harmoniously progressing, in favor of the freedom of
man. There is no possibility of grappling rightly with the difficulty
itself, unless we understand to the bottom the nature of the disease.

When the question is considered of the causes of the present war, the
superficial and incidental features of the subject--the mere symptoms of
the development of the deep-seated affection in the central constitution
of our national life--are firstly observed. Some men perceive that the
South were disaffected by the election of Abraham Lincoln and the
success of the Republican party, and see no farther than this. Some see
that the Northern philanthropists had persisted in the agitation of the
subject of slavery, and that this persistency had so provoked and
agitated the minds of Southern man that their feelings had become heated
and irritated, and that they were ready for any rash and unadvised step.
Others see the causes of the war in the prevalence of ignorance among
the masses of the Southern people, the exclusion of the ordinary sources
of information from their minds, the facility with which they have been
imposed on by false and malignant reports of the intentions of the
Northern people, or a portion of the Northern people. Others find the
same causes in the unfortunate prevalence at the South of certain
political heresies, as Nullification, Secession, and the exaggerated
theory of State Rights.

A member of President Lincoln's cabinet, speaking of its causes, near
the commencement of the war, says:

     'For the last ten years an angry controversy has existed upon this
     question of Slavery. The minds of the people of the South have been
     deceived by the artful representations of demagogues, who have
     assured them that the people of the North were determined to bring
     the power of this Government to bear upon them for the purpose of
     crushing out this institution of slavery. I ask you, is there any
     truth in this charge? _Has the Government of the United States, in
     any single instance, by any one solitary act, interfered with the
     institutions of the South? No, not in one._'

But let us go behind the symptoms--let us dive deeper than the
superficial manifestations--let us ask why is it that the South were so
specially disaffected by the election of a given individual, or the
success of a given political party, to an extent and with an expression
given to that disaffection wholly disproportionate to any such cause,
and wholly unknown to the political usages of the land? Why is the South
susceptible to this intense degree of offence at the ordinary
contingency of defeat in a political encounter? Why, again, does the
persistent discussion or agitation of _any_ subject tend so specially to
inflame the Southern mind beyond all the ordinary limits of
moderation--to the denial of the freedom of speech, the freedom of the
press, and finally of the right of national existence itself to the
North--except in conformity with preconceived opinions and theories of
its own? Why were they of the South standing ready, as to their mental
posture, for any or every rash and unadvised step? Why, again, are the
Southern people uneducated and ignorant, as the predominant fact
respecting a majority of their population? Why is the state of popular
information in that whole region of a nominally free country, such as to
make it an easy thing to impose upon their credulity and instruct them
into a full belief in the most absurd and monstrous fabrications, or
falsifications of the truth? Why were the ordinary sources of
information excluded from their minds, more than from ours, or from the
population of any other country? Why this fatal facility on the part of
the Southern public for being misled by the designing purposes of
ambitious demagogues; imbued with unjust prejudices; deluded into a
murderous assault upon their best friends, and into the infliction of
the most serious political injury upon themselves? Why, as a people, are
they prompt to rush from the pursuits of peace into all the horrors and
contingencies of war?--from the enjoyment of political freedom, at least
nominal and apparent, into the arms of a military despotism, the natural
and necessary ultimatum of the course which they have chosen to adopt?

The one and sole answer to all these questions is, Slavery. Some one has
said, in speaking of the present crisis, that the sentiment of loyalty
has never been prevalent at the South. This is a grand mistake. No
people on the surface of the planet have more sincerely felt or more
invariably and unflinchingly demonstrated loyalty than they. But it is
not loyalty to the American Government, nor indeed to any political
institutions whatsoever. It is loyalty to slavery and to cotton. No
other ideas exist, with any marked prominence, at the South. The
Northern people have never understood the South, and their greatest
danger in the present collision results from that ignorance. The
difference between the two peoples is indeed so wide that it is not
equalled by that which exists between any two nations of Europe--if we
except, perhaps, the Western nations and the Turks. The single
institution of slavery has, for the last sixty or seventy years, taken
absolute possession of the Southern mind, and moulded it in all ways to
its own will. Everything is tolerated which does not interfere with it;
nothing whatsoever is tolerated which does. No system of despotism was
ever established on earth so thorough, so efficient, so all-seeing, so
watchful, so permeating, so unscrupulous, and so determined.

The inherent, vital principle of slavery is irresponsible, despotic
rule. The child is born into the exercise of that right; his whole
mental constitution is imbued with its exercise. Hence for twenty or
thirty years--not by virtue of law, but against law--the mails have been
searched throughout the South for incendiary matter, with a strictness
of censorship unknown to any Government of Europe. Northern men and
Europeans immigrating to the South have uniformly been quietly dragooned
and terrorized into the acceptance of theories and usages wholly unknown
to any free country;--quietly, only because the occasion for doing the
same thing violently and barbarously had not yet arrived.

The two civilizations, North and South, are wholly unlike. Without the
slavery of four millions of men, to be kept in subjection by a
conspiracy to that effect, on the part of the whole free population--the
lack of fidelity to which conspiracy is the only treason known in those
regions--the existence of a people like the inhabitants of the Southern
States would be a riddle incapable of solution. Slavery itself, is _a
remnant of barbarism overlapping the period of civilization_; but,
unlike the slaveries of the barbaric ages, American slavery has been
stimulated into all the enterprising and audacious energy of this
advanced and progressive age. It is an engine of ancient barbarism
worked by the steam of modern intelligence. The character of the people
which has been created under this rare and anomalous state of things is
alike rare and anomalous. No other people ever so commingled in
themselves the elements of barbarous and even savage life with traits of
the highest civilization. No other community were ever so instinct with
the life of the worst ages of the past, and so endowed with the physical
and intellectual potencies of the present. The national character of the
South is that of the gentlemanly blackleg, bully, and desperado.
Courteous when polished, but always overbearing; pretentious of a
conventional sense of honor--which consists solely in a readiness to
fight in the duel, the brawl, or the regular campaign, and to take
offence on every occasion; with no trace of that modesty or delicacy of
sentiment which constitutes the soul of true honor; ambitious,
unscrupulous, bold; dashing and expert; with absolutely no restrictions
from conscience, routine, or the ordinary suggestions of prudence; false
and, like all braggarts, cowardly when beaten; confident of their own
strength until brought to the severest tests; capable of endurance and
shifts of all kinds; awaiting none of the usual conditions of
success--the Southern man and the Southern people are neither
comfortable neighbors in a state of peace, nor enemies to be slightly
considered or despised in war.

The anomalous character of Southern society, it cannot be too often
repeated, is not understood and cannot be understood by the people of
the North, or of Europe, otherwise than through the sharp experience of
hostile and actual contact; nor otherwise than in the light of the
inherent tendency and necessary educational influences of the one
institution of slavery. Of the whole South, in degree, and of the
Southwestern States preëminently, it may be said as a whole description
in a single form of expression: _They know no other virtue than brute
physical courage, and no other crime than abolitionism or
negro-stealing._

All this is said, not for the purpose of blackening the South, not from
partisan rancor or local prejudice, or exaggerated patriotic zeal, but
because it is true. It is not true, however, of the whole population of
the South, nor true, perhaps, in the absolute sense of any portion. It
is impossible to characterize any people without a portion of individual
injustice, or to state the drift of an individual character even,
without a like injustice to better traits, adverse to the general drift,
and which, to constitute a complete inventory of national or personal
attributes, should be enumerated. There is at the South a large
counterpoise, therefore, of adverse statement, which might be, and
should be made if the object of the present writing were a complete
analysis of the subject. It is, however, not so, but a statement of the
preponderance of public character and opinion in those States. As a
people they have their countervailing side of advantage--a great deal of
amiability and refinement in certain neighborhoods, so long as their
inherent right of domination is not disputed. Men and women are found,
all over the South, who as individuals are better than the institution
by which their characters are affected, and whose native goodness could
not be wholly spoiled by its adverse operation. Slavery, too, offers
certain advantages for some special kinds of culture. We of the North,
on the other hand, have our own vices of a kind not to be disguised nor
denied; so that the present statement should not be mistaken for an
attempt to characterize in full either population. It is simply
perceived that the grand distinctive drift of Southern society is
directly away from the democratic moorings of our favorite republican
institutions; is rapid in its current and irresistible in its momentum;
and that already the divergency attained between the political and
popular character of the people at the North and the South is immense;
that these constantly widening tendencies--one in behalf of more and
more practical enlargement of the liberty of the individual; the other
backward and downward toward the despotic political dogmas and practices
of the ignorant and benighted past--have proceeded altogether beyond
anything which has been seen and recognized by the people of the North;
and that, consequently, the whole North has been acting under a
misapprehension.

The spirit of the South is and has been belligerent, rancorous, and
unscrupulous. The idea of settling any question by the discussion of
principles, by mutual concessions, by the understanding, admission, and
defence of the rights of each, is not in all their thoughts. They are
inherently and essentially invaders and conquerors, in disposition, and
so far as it might chance to prove for them feasible, would ever be so
in fact. War with them is therefore no matter of child's play, no matter
of courtesy or chivalry toward enemies, except from a pompous and
theatrical show of a knightly character, which they do not possess;--it
is simply a question of pillaging and enslaving, without let or
hindrance from moral or humanitary considerations, to any extent to
which they may find, by the experiment now inaugurated, their physical
power to extend. The North, let it be repeated, entered into this war
under a misapprehension of the whole state of the case. It is at the
present hour, to a fearful extent, under the same misapprehension. There
is still a belief prevailing that the South only needs to be coaxed or
treated kindly or magnanimously to be convinced that she has mistaken
the North; that she has not the grievances to complain of which she
supposes she has, and that she can yet obtain just and equitable
treatment from us. There is a tacit assumption in the minds of men that
she _must_ be content to receive the usage at our hands which we are
conscious that we are ready to bestow, and which has in it no touch of
aggressive and unjust intention. It is not realized that the spirit of
the South, in respect to the North, in respect to Mexico, in respect to
the islands of the sea, and--should their power prove proportionate to
their unscrupulous piratical aspirations--in respect to all the nations
of the earth, is that of the burglar and the highwayman. It is not
realized that the institution of slavery--itself essential robbery of
the rights of man; covering the area of half a continent, and the number
of four millions of subjects; planted in the midst of an intellectually
enlightened people, whose moral sense it has utterly sapped--is
essentially a great educational system, as all-pervading and influential
over the minds of the whole population as the common schools of New
England; and that this grand educational force tends toward and
culminates in this same tendency toward robbery and the suppression of
human rights or the individual and national rights of all other
people--expressed _in a collective and belligerent way_. It is not, as
said before, that all men at the South are of this filibustering cast;
but the bold, enterprising, and leading class of the population are so,
and the remainder are passive in their hands. Virtually and practically,
therefore, the South are a nation of people having far more relationship
in thought and purpose with the old Romans during the period of the
republic and the empire, or with the more modern Goths and Vandals and
Huns, than they have with the England or New England of to-day.

It is such a people, planted on our borders and aroused for the first
time to an exhibition on a large scale of those abiding and augmenting
national attributes and propensities which have thus been indicated,
with whom we are now brought into hostile array. They are at present
trying their hand at the collective and organic activities of a national
cutthroatism which, in an individual and sporadic way, has for many
years past constituted the national life of that people. Who at the
North, at the commencement of the war, impressively understood these
facts? Who even now sees and knows, as the fact is, that the military
success of Jefferson Davis; that his triumphant march on Philadelphia,
New York, and Boston--as they of the South threaten, and intend if they
have the power, and have already twice unsuccessfully attempted--would
terminate not, in a separation of these States by a permanent disruption
of the old Union; nor in new compromises of any kind whatsoever; but in
the absolute conquest of the whole North--not conquest even in any sense
now understood among civilized people; but conquest with more than all
the horrors which fourteen centuries ago were visited on Southern Europe
by the overwhelming avalanche of Northern barbarian invasion?--that in
that event, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of
locomotion without question, freedom in any sense which makes life
valuable to the man once educated into the conception of freedom, is
lost?--that the whole progress of modern civilization and development,
as it has been working itself out in the Northern American States, would
not only be diverted from its course, but positively reversed and made
to contribute all its accumulations of power to the building up, not of
the temple of Freedom for the blessing of the nations, but of an
infernal pantheon of Despotism and human oppression?

The North was forced, reluctantly and unwillingly, into this war: with
her as yet it has hardly become a matter of earnest. She has endeavored
to carry it on considerately and tenderly, for the well-being of the
South as well as of the North, much in the spirit of a quiet Quaker
gentleman unexpectedly set upon by a drunken rowdy, 'spoiling for a
fight,' and whom in his benevolence and surprise, he is anxious indeed
to restrain, but without inflicting on him serious injury. In an
especial degree was this tenderness felt on the part of the Government
and people of the North toward that peculiar institution of the South
which is distinctively known to be, in some way, fundamentally related
to this unprovoked and unreasonable attack. While the South was
attributing to the whole North a rabid abolitionism; while the North
itself was half suspecting that it had committed some wrong in the
excess of its devotion to human rights; the simple fact on the contrary
was, that the whole North had been and was still 'psychologized' into a
positive respect for slavery, and for slaves as property, which we feel
for no other species of property whatsoever. The existence of this
sentiment of veneration for what our Abolition apostles have for some
years been denominating the 'sum of all villanies,' is a curious fact
in the spiritual history of our people, which had very generally escaped
critical observation.

At the South, the individual planter, owning and possessing ten slaves,
of an aggregate value, it may be, of ten thousand dollars, ranks higher,
socially, is regarded indeed, in some subtile way, as a richer man, than
the merchant or banker who may be worth his hundred thousand or half
million of dollars, provided he has no slaves. To come to be the owner
of negroes, and of more and more negroes, is the social ambition, the
aristocratic purpose and pretension of the whole Southern people. It is
by virtue of this mystical _prestige_ of the institution itself; which
couples the charms of wealth with the exercise of authority, or a
certain show of official supremacy on the part of the master; which
begins by subjugating the imagination of the poorer classes, the whites
throughout the South, whose direct interests are wholly opposed to those
of the slaveholding class, and ends by subjecting them, morally and
spiritually, and binding them in the bonds of the most abject allegiance
to the oligarchy of slaveholders. It is in this way that the South is
made a unit out of elements seemingly the most incongruous and radically
opposed. For a series of years past, the South has sent forth its annual
caravan of wealthy planters to visit the watering places, and inhabit
the great hotels of the North. Coming in intimate contact with the
superior classes of our own population; floating up in the atmosphere of
serene self-complacency; radiating, shedding down upon those with whom
they chanced to associate, the ineffable consciousness of their own
unquestionable superiority; they have communicated without effort on
their part, and without suspicion on the part of those who were
inoculated by their presence, the exact mould and pressure of their own
slaveholding opinion. To this extent, and in this subtile and ethereal
way, the North had imposed upon it, unconsciously, a certain respect,
amounting to veneration, for what may be called the sanctity of slavery,
as it rests in and constitutes the aromal emanation from every Southern
mind. Hence not only did we begin this war with the feeling of
tenderness toward the Southern man and the Southern woman as brother and
sister in the common heritage of patriotism, but, superadded to this,
with a _special_ sentiment of tenderness toward that _special_
institution for which it is known that they, our brethren, entertain
such _special_ regard.

Now all this is rapidly changing; the outrages inflicted on citizens of
the North residing at the South at the opening of the war--hardly
paralleled in the most barbarous ages in any other land;--their reckless
and bloodthirsty methods of war; their bullying arrogance and
presumption; the true exposition, in fine, of the Southern character as
it is, in the place of a high-toned chivalry which they have claimed for
themselves, and which the people of the North have been tacitly inclined
to accord--are all awakening the Government and the people to some
growing sense of the real state of the case. Still, however, we are so
far dominated by these influences of the past, that we are not fighting
the South upon anything like a fair approximation to equal terms. They
have no other thought than to inflict on us of the North the greatest
amount of evil; the _animus_ of deadly war. We, on the other hand, fight
an unwilling fight, with a constant _arrière pensée_ to the best
interests of the people whom we oppose--not even as _we_ might construe
those interests, but, by a curious tenderness and refinement of
delicacy, for those interests as _they_, from their point of view,
conceive them to be. We forbear from striking the South in their most
vital and defenceless point, while they forbear _in nothing_, and have
no purpose of forbearance.

Who doubts for a moment that a thousand mounted men, acting with the
freedom which characterized the movements of the detachment of Garibaldi
in the Italian war, acting with the authorization of the Government,
actuated by the spirit of a John Brown or a Nat Turner, sent, or rather
let go, into the mountains of Virginia, North Carolina, or Georgia, with
the authority to assemble and arm the slaves, retreating whenever
assailed to the fastnesses of the mountains, would cause more terror in
those States; would do more, in a word, toward the actual conquest in
three months' time of those rebel commonwealths, than fifty or a hundred
times their number organized in the regular forms of modern warfare,
operating against the whites only, and half-committed to the coöperative
protection of the institution of slavery, would accomplish in a year?
Who doubts for a moment that, if the South could find a like vulnerable
point in the openings of our armor, she would make, with no hesitation,
the most fearful and tremendous use of her advantage? The whole North is
aware of its possession, in its own hands, of this immense engine of
destructive power over its enemy. The whole civilized world stands by,
beholding us possessed of it, and expecting, as a simple matter of
course, that we shall not fail to employ it--standing by indeed,
perplexed and confused at the seeming lack of any significance in the
war itself, unless we make use of the power at our command in this
fortuitous struggle, not only to inflict the greatest injury upon our
enemy, but to extinguish forever the cause of the whole strife. Still we
forbear to make the most efficient use of our advantage. We for a long
time embarrassed and partially crippled ourselves in all our movements
by an almost unconscious sense of responsibility for the protection of
this very institution of slavery from the disastrous consequences which
were liable to fall upon it as the results of the war.

True, we are slowly and gradually recovering from this perversion of
opinion. The Emancipation Proclamation was probably issued as soon, or
nearly as soon, as the Northern sentiment was prepared to give it even a
moral support. Another term had to expire to accustom the same public
mind to appropriate the spirit of that document as matter of earnest; to
come to regard it as anything more than a mere _brutum fulmen_, a Pope's
bull, as President Lincoln once called it himself, against the comet. Up
to this hour, its effect on the war has been far more as a moral
influence preparing for a great change of opinion and of conduct, than
as a charter of efficient operations. General Thomas's action at the
South, just previous to the capture of Vicksburg, began experimentally
to inaugurate, on something like an adequate scale, the new programme of
practical work in the conduct of the war. Even a month earlier his
movement would hardly have been tolerated by the same army, which, just
then beginning to appreciate the tremendous difficulty of the enterprise
of conquering the South, were ready to accept anything new which
promised to augment their own strength and to weaken that of the enemy.
Still another term of waiting and suffering is requisite to change the
habit of mind which has so long despised and maltreated the negro,
before he will be put, in all respects, upon the footing of his own
merit as a patriot and a soldier; and before all of his uses as the
severest goad in the sides of the hostile South will be fairly
appreciated.

Thus in all ways we are only now in the midst of a revolution of
opinion, which, when it is accomplished, will be seen to be the greatest
triumph of the war. Though we have spoken of this change as slowly and
gradually occurring, yet, viewed with reference to the long periods of a
nation's life, it is an immense revolution almost instantly effected. We
are perhaps already one half prepared adequately to use our tremendous
advantage. New disasters may be providentially requisite to quicken our
education in the right direction; more punishment for our complicity in
the crimes of the South; new incentives to a more perfect love of
justice as a people; but every indication points to the early
achievement of these substantial victories over ourselves, while, at the
same time, we conquer the powerful array of Southern intrepidity and
desperation, in behalf of their bad cause, upon the external battle
field.

To resume the question of causes. Why is there, and why has there always
been at the South this unfortunate prevalence of certain political
heresies, as Nullification, Secession, and the exaggerated theory of
State Rights?

The answer is still, slavery. The cause of causes, lying back of the
whole wide gulf of difference in Northern and Southern politics is
still, slavery. From the date of our Constitution, opinion has divided
into two great currents, North and South, in behalf of paramount
allegiance to the General Government at the North, and paramount
allegiance to the several State Governments at the South. The
resolutions of '98 and '99 began the public expression of a political
heresy, which has gone on augmenting at the South from that day to this.
At the North, the Government of the United States was never feared as
likely to become injurious in any sense to the inhabitants of the
States. Each State fell quietly and harmoniously into its true
subordinate orbit, acknowledging gladly and without question the
supremacy of the new Government, representative of the whole of the
people, in simple accord with the spirit and intention of the
Constitution and the Government which the people had formed. At the
South, on the contrary, the United States Government was, from the
first, looked upon with a suspicion plainly expressed in the speech, for
example, of Patrick Henry, in the Virginia convention, which consented
reluctantly that the State should come into the Union, lest the National
Government might, in some unforeseen contingency, interfere with the
interests of the institution of slavery. That fear, the determination to
have it otherwise, to make the General Government, on the contrary, the
engine and supporter of slavery, the propagandist of slavery, in fine;
has been always, since, the animating spirit of Southern political
doctrine. A doctrine so inaugurated and developed has endeavored to
engraft itself by partisan alliance upon the Democratic party of the
North, but always hitherto with an imperfect success. State Rights, as
affirmed at the North, has never been a dogma of any considerable power,
because it has rested on no substratum of suspicion against the General
Government, nor of conspiracy to employ its enginery for special or
local designs. At the South it has been vital and significant from the
first, and it has grown more mischievous to the last. President Lincoln,
in his first message, discussed, ably enough, the right of secession as
a mere constitutional or legal right. Others have done the same before
and since. The opinion of the lawyer is all very well, but it has no
special potency to restrain the nocturnal activities of the burglar. All
such discussions are, for the present behalf, utterly puerile.
Secession, revolution, the bloody destruction and extinction of the
whole nation, were for years before the war foregone determinations in
the Southern mind, to be resorted to at any instant at which such
extreme measures might become necessary; not merely to prevent any
interference with the holy institution; but equally to secure that
absolute predominance of the slaveholding interest over the whole
political concerns of the country which should protect it from
interference, and give to it all the expansion and potency which it
might see fit to claim. So long as that absolute domination could be
maintained within the administration of the Government, slavery and
slaveholders were content to remain nominally republican and
democratic--actually despots and unlimited rulers. But a contingency
threatened them in the future. The numerical growth of population at the
North, the moral convictions of the North--both of these united, or some
other unforeseen circumstance, might withdraw the operations of the
General Government from their exclusive control. To provide for that
possible contingency, the doctrine of paramount allegiance to the
individual States, and secondary allegiance merely to the General
Government--a perpetual indoctrination of incipient treason--was
invented, and has been sedulously taught at the South from the very
inception of the Government. Hardly a child in attendance upon his
lessons in an 'old-field' schoolhouse throughout that region but has
been imbued with this primary devotion to the interests of his State;
certainly, not a young lawyer commencing to acquire his profession, and
riding the circuit from county court-house to court-house, but has had
the doctrine drummed into his ears, of allegiance to his State; and when
the meaning and importance of that teaching was inquired for, he was
impressively and confidentially informed that the occasion might arise
of collision between the South and the General Government on the subject
of slavery; and that then it would be of the last importance that every
Southern man should be true to his section. Thus the way has been
prepared through three generations of instruction, for the precise event
which is now upon us, flaunting its pretensions as a new and accidental
occurrence.

Meantime, the North has suspected nothing of all this. Her own devotion
and loyalty to the General Government have been constantly on the
increase, and she has taken it for granted that the same sentiments
prevailed throughout the South. Hence the utter surprise felt at the
enormous dimensions which the revolt so suddenly took on, and at the
unaccountable defection of such numbers of Southern men from the army
and the navy at the first call upon sectional loyalty. The question is
not one of legal or constitutional rights in accordance with the literal
understanding of any parchment or document whatsoever. The most
triumphant arguments of President Lincoln or of anybody else have had in
the past, and have now, no actual relevancy to the question at the
South, and might as well be totally spared. It is purely and simply that
the South are in dead earnest to have their own way, unchecked by any
considerations of justice or right, or any other considerations of any
kind whatsoever--less than the positive demonstration of their physical
inability to accomplish their most cherished designs. Even in a
technical way, the question is not most intelligibly stated as one of
the right of secession; it is the bald question of Paramount Allegiance;
it is so understood at the South. The whole action of the South is based
upon a thorough indoctrination into a political dogma never so much as
fairly conceived of at the North as existing anywhere, until events now
developing themselves have revealed it, and which is not now even well
understood among us. Back of this indoctrination again, and the sole
cause of it, is the existence of the institution of slavery; its own
instinct from the first that it had no other ground of defence or hope
of perpetuation but physical force; its fears of invasion and its
obstinate determination to invade.

The supposition has, until quite recently, extensively prevailed in the
Northern mind that slavery is or was regarded at the South as a
necessary evil, borne because it was inherited from the past and because
its removal had become now next to impossible. A certain school of
Northern philanthropists, headed, we believe, by Elihu Burritt, had gone
so far, previous to the war, as to form a society and appeal to the
Northern people for aid to enable their Southern brethren, through such
aid, and finally, perhaps, through the interposition of the General
Government, to rid themselves of this monster evil. This handful of
kindly individuals must soon have discovered, had they come into actual
contact with the prevailing sentiment of the South, that their whole
movement was based upon a misapprehension of that sentiment. Thirty-five
years ago, and before the Northern abolition movement had taken root in
the land, it was a pleasant fiction for the Southern mind to speak
deprecatingly of the blame which they otherwise might seem to incur in
the mind of mankind for adhering to their barbarous institution; to
plead their own conviction of its entire wrongfulness, and to
commiserate themselves for their utter inability to free themselves from
its weight. A certain considerable freedom of discussion in relation to
its abstract merits was allowed, with the tacit condition imposed,
however, just as really though not as consciously as now, that slavery
itself must not be disturbed. Talk which had in it any touch of genuine
feeling in favor of active exertion to rid the country of the
institution as an evil, was then as effectually tabooed as it is to-day,
with some minor exceptions on the borders of the slaveholding region, in
Baltimore, North Carolina, Eastern Tennessee, etc., and with the further
exception when Virginia was terrified for a few weeks or months by the
results of a desperate insurrection. On the strength of these few
exceptions, it has been claimed at the South, and still more
persistently by Southern sympathizers at the North, that the whole drift
and tendency of things at the South prior to the commencement of the
abolition agitation at the North were toward gradual emancipation, and
that they would have ultimated at an early day in that result. This,
too, is a pleasant fiction with the least possible percentage of truth
at the bottom of it.

The institution of slavery, under the stimulus given to it by the
invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney, and the consequent
development of the cotton-growing industry--aided, curiously enough, in
a certain sense, by the prohibition of the African slave trade, giving
rise to the slave-rearing business in Virginia and Maryland--has all
along been exhibiting a steady, sturdy, and rapid growth. By the
alliance, accidentally as it were, resulting from the prohibition of the
slave trade, between the Southern and the Northern slaveholding States,
a robustness and consistency were given to the whole slaveholding
interest which possibly it might never have had under a different
policy. If the foreign importation of slaves had continued, that species
of population would gradually have overrun the cotton-raising border of
States--would have overrun them to an extent threatening the safety of
the institution there by its own plethora--while from the southern line
of North Carolina and Tennessee northward, where this extra-profitable
industry could not readily be extended, the temptation to the
importation of slaves would have been slight, no market existing for the
home increase. The hold of the institution would have been constantly
weakened there in the affections of the white population; and, in those
States, there is a seeming probability that white labor and free labor
would have taken the place of the present system, as it did in the
States farther north. This would have deprived the Southern belt of
cotton-raising and negro-holding States of that sympathy which, under
existing circumstances, they have steadily had from their more northern
sisters, and favored an early extinction of the system. However this
might have been, as things are and have been actually, it is certain
that at no period has the growth of the slaveholding institution
exhibited any weakness or defect of vitality. Like an infant giant, it
has steadily waxed stronger and stronger, and more and more arrogant
and aggressive.

When the anti-slavery agitation commenced at the North, the parties who
engaged in it had no consciousness of the immense magnitude and potent
vitality of the institution against which they proposed to carry on a
moral warfare. They supposed that, as a matter of course, they would
find a universal sympathy throughout the North with doctrines in behalf
of freedom, where freedom was the basis of all our institutions, and
where, apparently, there was no alliance of interest, no possible reason
for a sympathy with slavery or the denial of freedom to man. They were
met unexpectedly by a powerful current of semi-slaveholding opinion
pervading the whole area of the Free States, and ready to deny to them
free speech or the rightfulness of any effort to arouse the people to a
consideration of the subject. When, after some years of contest, this
current of prejudgment was partially reversed, and their new thought
began to find audience by the Northern ear; when, strengthened by
numbers and the better comprehension of the subject by themselves; the
increased determination and enthusiasm which arose from the _esprit du
corps_; and the assurance--satisfactory to themselves at least--that
they were engaged in a good cause; they began to grapple more directly
with intensified and genuine pro-slavery sentiment at the South itself,
they were astonished to find that, instead of battling with a weak
thing, they had engaged in moral strife with one of the most mighty
institutions of the earth.

Pro-slavery sentiment at the South, inherently arrogant and aggressive,
as already said, was, at the same time and from the same causes, aroused
to the consciousness of its own strength. Called on to answer for the
unseemly fact of its existence in the midst of these modern centuries,
when the world boasts of human freedom and progression, it began by
blushing for its hideous aspect and uttering feeble and deprecative
apologies. Not that it was at bottom ashamed of its existence, for
slavery, like despotism of all sorts, is characteristically
self-confident and proud; but because it had been allowed to grow up
under protest in the midst of free institutions, and among a people
conscious of the incongruity of the relationship existing between them
and it; and had so contracted the habit of apology, and the hypocritical
profession of regret for its own inherent wrongfulness. Provoked,
however, to try its strength against the feeble assaults of the new
friends of freedom, finding all its demands readily yielded to, and
itself victorious in every conflict, it soon threw off its false
professions of modesty, pronounced itself free from every taint of
wrong-doing, claimed to be the very corner stone and basis of free
institutions themselves, the condition _sine qua non_ of all successful
experiment in republican and democratic organizations, and became boldly
and openly the assailant and propagandist, instead of occupying any
longer the position of defence. Then followed the various attempts to
overthrow and extinguish free speech in the capital of the nation by the
use of the bludgeon, to extend slavery by illegal and bloodthirsty means
over the soil of Kansas, to strengthen the enactments of the fugitive
slave law by new and more offensive provisions, and to cause the
authority of the Slave Power to be openly and confessedly recognized
throughout the whole land, as it had been for years secretly and warily
predominant. The opposition to these measures of aggression ceased to be
wholly confined to the mere handful of technical abolitionists, and to
spread and to take possession of the minds of the whole people, exciting
surprise and alarm, and arousing them to some slight efforts at
resistance. With this rising tendency to resist arose in like measure
the tendency of the slaveholding power to invade. The alternative was
quietly but resolutely chosen in the minds of the leading politicians
of the South to 'rule or ruin.' Preparation was made for retaining the
absolute control of the General Government at Washington, and for
extending the influence of the peculiar institution over the whole North
and all adjacent countries, so long as that policy should prove
practicable; and, if by any contingency defeated in it, to break up the
Union as it existed, and reconstruct it upon terms which should place
the slaveholding aristocracy in that front rank of authority without
question, to which, as a settled conviction, ever present and dominant
in their minds, they alone, of all men, are preëminently entitled.

Accordingly they imposed their weight more and more heavily upon the
successive administrations from Van Buren down to Buchanan, and were
encouraged to find that, in proportion as they pressed harder in their
demands, proportionate concessions seldom failed to be made. The
reaction at the North was nevertheless steadily progressing. Wisely
perceiving that the first part of their _programme_ of action had nearly
served its day; that preparation must be made for entering on the second
and more desperate part of their conspiracy against free government;
they forced on the crisis at the Democratic Convention in Charleston, by
demanding terms which, with the fire in the rear now regularly organized
and steadily operative at the North, that party could not accede to,
without consenting to its own death. A disruption ensued of the
unnatural alliance between the Southern oligarchy and the Northern
Democracy, and the Southern leaders from that hour availed themselves of
their sole remaining lease of power under the administration of Mr.
Buchanan to strengthen their position by all means, honorable and
dishonorable, for the coming conflict, which by them had been long
planned or at least looked forward to, as the probable contingency.
Having virtually the entire control of the General Government, they used
their power for sending South the arms of the common country, for
disposing the army and navy in such ways as to leave them in the least
degree effective for opposing their designs; and with all the quietness
and deliberation of a dying millionaire making his will, they prepared
to begin the conflict which the lazy and confiding North had not even
begun to suspect as among the possibilities of the future; and to begin
it absolutely upon their own terms.

Enough has now been said, perhaps, in relation to the causes of the
present war. The present stage of its development is such as might have
been fairly anticipated from such a commencement. The South has had the
advantage of earnestness and concentration of purpose; of a warlike and
aggressive spirit; of prior preparation, and of a full knowledge from
the first of the desperate nature of the enterprise upon which they were
about to enter, with a readiness to meet all its contingencies, and,
since the great uprising, with no anticipation of easy work. The North
was hurried into a war for which it had no preparation, to which it had
never looked as a serious probability, and for which it had been
stripped in a great measure, through the pilfering policy of the South,
of the ordinary means at its command. A peaceable and highly civilized
people, among whom actual war upon its own soil had been unknown for
nearly fifty years, and among whom the spirit of war, always so rife at
the South, was opposed and neutralized by a thousand industrial and
peaceful propensities, was suddenly called into the field. Uninstructed
at first in the real nature of the conflict, regarding it as an
unreasonable disaffection, and therefore necessarily limited in extent,
not aroused even yet to a full consciousness of the momentous
consequences involved in the struggle and its gigantic proportions, they
have come to the work, in a great measure, unprepared. Their condition
at its commencement was even less favorable than that of the British
nation at the commencement of the Russian war. Both of these great
industrial peoples, with whom war had fallen among the traditions of the
past, had to begin new struggles by learning anew the theory and
practice of war. The Northern people rose, after the assault on Fort
Sumter demonstrated to them that the South was in earnest, with the
unanimity and power as of a single man, but bewildered and uncertain
which way to turn, or how to grapple with the strange and unaccountable
monster of rebellion which had suddenly precipitated himself among them.
The whole habits of the nation had to undergo a violent and rapid
change. A new educational experience had to be hurried through its
successive courses of instruction. The gristle on the bone of the new
military organization had to have time to harden. Sharp experiences had
to be undergone, and will still have to be endured, as part of the price
of tuition in the novel career to which we have been so unexpectedly
called. Still, we have great power in reserve; no feeling of
discouragement, no thought of abandoning the purpose of maintaining our
integrity as a people, no sense of weakness possesses our minds. Great
and triumphant successes are attending our arms. State after State,
swept at first wholly or in part into the vortex of revolt, is again
included within our military lines and brought back to a partial
allegiance. New questions are rising into importance. We pass from the
consideration of causes to that of results. It is a different and a
difficult work to forecast the future. It is a perilous experiment to
enact the prophet or seer, but in another paper we shall venture at
least upon some suggestions which may have their uses in modulating that
national destiny which none of us have the power actually to create or
even to foretell.




WAS HE SUCCESSFUL?

'Do but grasp into the thick of human life! Every one _lives_ it--to
not many is it _known_; and seize it where you will, it is
interesting.'--GOETHE.

'SUCCESSFUL.--Terminating in accomplishing what is wished or
intended.'--WEBSTER'S _Dictionary_.


CHAPTER XI.

Miss Arabella Thorne was the daughter of an old citizen of New York, a
worthy man, a plumber by trade, who, by means of plenty of work, small
competition, and high prices, managed to scrape together fifty or sixty
thousand dollars, which from time to time he judiciously invested in
real estate. Late in life he married a tall, lean, sour-visaged
spinster, considerably past thirty, with nothing whatever to recommend
her except that she belonged to one of the first families. The fact is,
she was a poor relation, and had all her life been passed around from
cousin to cousin, each endeavoring to shift the burden as quick as
possible. As she grew older she became more fretful and ill tempered,
until it was a serious question with all interested how to dispose of
her. Of late years she had taken to novel reading, and when engaged with
a favorite romance, she was so peevish and irritable, that, to use a
common expression, there was no living with her.

Things were at this pass when Thorn (he spelled his name without an
_e_) was called to do some work at the house of Mr. de Silver, an uncle
of the 'poor relation,' with whom she was then staying. This gentleman,
who for years had been at his wits' end to know what to do with his
niece, conceived the design of marrying her to Thorn, who was in good
circumstances, and could give her a comfortable home. It so happened
that she was at that time absorbed with a novel (she always fancied
herself the heroine) where the principal character was called on to make
a sacrifice, and by so doing married a nobleman in disguise. She
therefore was ready; but it was not without some difficulty that Thorn
was brought into the arrangement. However, the distinction of marrying
so much above him, and the advantage which might avail to his children,
overcame his natural good sense, and the 'poor relation' became Mrs.
Thorn.

It is very certain that Mrs. Thorn would have been the death of her
husband in a reasonably short period, had she not herself been suddenly
cut off the second year of her married life, leaving an infant a few
hours old, whom she named Arabella, after her last heroine, just as the
breath was leaving her body.

Mr. Thorn buried his wife, and was comforted. He never married again.
His eighteen months' experience was sufficient. He even consented to
give up the direction of the infant, who would _not_ be a poor relation
like her mother, to Mrs. de Silver, who proceeded to look after it quite
as she would one of her own children.

[And this was all because old Thorn was getting rich, and would probably
not marry again, and Arabella would have his money.]

When Arabella was ten years old, her father died. By his will he made
Mr. de Silver his executor, but prudently forbade any sale of his real
estate till his daughter should be twenty-one, when she was to enter
into possession. The personal property was ample for her meantime.
Arabella grew up quite as the adopted child of the De Silvers. They had
no daughter, but were blessed with three sons. The youngest was but ten
years older than Arabella, for whom Mrs. de Silver had destined him.
Miss Thorne (to whose name an _e_ had been mysteriously added) bore a
strong resemblance to her deceased mother, but there was one striking, I
may say overwhelming difference between them. Mrs. Thorn had all her
life been poor and dependent, and treated as such while thrown about
from house to house for a precarious home. She was crossed and snubbed,
and a naturally unamiable temper made a thousand times worse by the
treatment she received. Arabella was rich and independent, and spoiled
by over indulgence to her idle whims and caprices. For Mrs. de Silver,
intent on making the match, did not dare cross her dear Arabella in the
least thing. She was shrewd, and soon perceived that she controlled the
situation, and did not hesitate to take advantage of it. In fact, she
kept everybody dancing attendance on her. Fond of admiration to an
absurd degree, she still had a constant suspicion that she was courted
for her money. As I have said, in person she resembled her mother, but
here wealth came in to do away with the resemblance. True, she was tall
and angular, but she made up superbly, so that on looking at her one
would exclaim: 'What a stylish woman!' True, her features were homely,
and her complexion without freshness, but over these were spread the
magic atmosphere of fashion and assured position. She had a
consciousness which repelled any idea that _she_ could be otherwise than
handsome, fascinating, intelligent, and everything else desirable, and
this consciousness actually produced, in a large majority, the pleasing
illusion that she was really all these. But she was not. On the
contrary, stripped of the gloss, she was censorious, supercilious, and
selfish. Deprived of her dressmaker, she was gaunt and unsightly.
Separated from her position, she would have been unbearable. Arabella
had many offers, of course, but she was too fond of her power and too
suspicious of an attempt on her purse to yield easily. She was enough of
a coquette not absolutely to destroy the hopes of an admirer, but
managed to keep him dangling in her train. She had never absolutely
discouraged young De Silver, but she would not commit herself even to
Mrs. de S., who still fondly hoped that the money of the industrious
plumber would come into her family. So matters ran on till Miss Thorne
was of age. Mr. de Silver evidently did not suppose there was to be any
change in the management of his ward's affairs. He was soon undeceived.
The young lady, about two weeks after the event, asked for a private
interview with her guardian, and very quietly, after a series of polite
phrases, announced that from that time she should herself take charge of
her own property. There was nothing in this to which Mr. de Silver could
object. Beyond some advantages which he derived from its management,
without injury to his ward, it was of no importance; but he was not a
little mortified nevertheless. It looked as if there was a lack of
confidence in his management, but he could only assent, and say his
accounts were ready for her inspection. The truth is that Arabella had
made some acquaintances who ranked a grade higher in the fashionable
world even than the De Silvers. They had impressed her with an idea that
it would add to her importance to have her own 'solicitor' and take on
herself the management of her affairs. To this end she had consulted Mr.
Farrar, a well-known and experienced lawyer, who had been recommended to
her by one of her friends. Just then speculation in real estate was
rife, and prices had reached an extravagant point. The first thing which
Miss Thorne did under the advice of Mr. Farrar, was to sell from time to
time, as opportunity offered, all the real estate which her father had
left her, and invest it in personal securities. In this way a very large
sum was realized, and Miss Thorne's labors soon reduced to the simple
task of receiving her semi-annual dividends. Mr. Bennett had not
overrated the value of her property when he pronounced her worth two
hundred thousand dollars. On the contrary, it is probable one might add
fifty thousand to the computation and be nearer the mark.

When Mrs. de Silver saw the independent course Miss Thorne was pursuing,
she became still more assiduous in her efforts to please her dear
Arabella. The latter, since it was still convenient to live with the De
Silvers, was sufficiently amiable, but she never omitted an opportunity
to show that she was her own mistress and intended to continue so. The
De Silvers were Episcopalians, but they did not attend the most
fashionable church. Miss Thorne very soon purchased an expensive pew in
St. Jude's, and although Mrs. de Silver kept a carriage which was always
at Miss Thorne's disposal, the latter set up a handsome brougham of her
own. The young lady, after joining her new church, had determined to
distinguish herself. She was not content with moderate performances. She
aspired to lead. She kept at the very height of fashion. Yet St. Jude's
had no more zealous member. She was an inveterate party goer, and
nothing pleased her better than to have double engagements through the
whole season; but the period of Lent found her utterly _dévote_--a most
zealous attendant on all the ordinances of the Church. She was very
intimate with Mr. Myrtle, and it is probable no one had half so much
influence with her as the Rev. Charles Myrtle himself. She had her
_protégés_ also--generally some handsome young fellow about taking
orders, whose devotion to Miss Thorne was perfectly excruciating. Time
went on and Miss Arabella Thorne was carried along in the train of the
tyrant. With the passing years she became more intensely fashionable,
more bigoted, more fond of admiration, more difficult to please. She had
refused so many offers, while she had coquetted so much, that young men
began to avoid her. This greatly increased her natural irritability;
made her jealous of the success of every rising belle, censorious, ill
natured in remark, and generally disagreeable. When Hiram Meeker first
saw Miss Arabella Thorne in her pew at St. Jude's, the interesting young
woman was (dare I mention it?) already twenty-eight. In respect to
appearance, she had altered very little since she was eighteen. So much
depended on her milliner, her dressmaker, her costumer, and her maid,
and to their credit be it spoken, they performed their duty so well,
that the 'ravages' of the fashionable seasons she had passed through
were not at all visible. There were times when Miss Arabella Thorne
would confess to herself that she ought to marry. But with every
succeeding birthday came increased suspicion that she was sought only
for her fortune.

Such was the position of affairs when the shrewd wholesale drygoods
merchant, satisfied that all his cousin cared for in matrimony was
money, conceived the idea of making a match between Hiram and the
fashionable Arabella. It did not take the former long, after Mr. Bennett
once explained just how things stood, to comprehend exactly the
situation, and to form and mature his plans accordingly. He had
committed a blunder, as Mr. Bennett termed it, in giving up Miss Tenant,
but that was a conventional mistake, if, which it is very doubtful,
Hiram ever admitted that it was a mistake. Here, however, he could bring
his keen knowledge of human nature to play, and once understanding the
character of Miss Thorne, he felt fully equal to the enterprise. In
fact, Hiram was once more on his old ground, and he enjoyed the idea of
the contest he was about to engage in.

Mr. Myrtle was fully enlisted on Hiram's side. He was much pleased with
the addition of a wealthy, rising young man--and a proselyte besides--to
his church. He feared that Miss Thorne might in time be lost to it by
her marrying outside of his congregation. Here was a capital chance to
secure _her_ and add to his own influence and popularity.

He was too astute to approach the subject directly. Miss Thorne might be
suspicious even of him. He would give her no opportunity. Mr. Myrtle was
too polished and too refined a man, too dignified indeed, to even
_appear_ in the light of a match maker. But assurance was conveyed by
Mrs. Myrtle to Mrs. Bennett, and thence _via_ Mr. Bennett confidentially
to Hiram, that Mr. Myrtle might be relied on to do everything in his
power in the delicate business.

Thus fortified, and conscious of the aid of the Bennett family, which
was a very strong point, our hero entered on the fall and winter
campaign, resolved before it was over to secure the two hundred thousand
dollars of the fashionable Arabella, and, as it must needs be, that
inestimable person along with it.

I have mentioned their first sight of each other in church, and the
curiosity of Miss Thorne to know who the young man in the next pew could
be. And here Hiram's generalship must be specially noticed. Mrs. Bennett
proposed to bring about an immediate introduction by arranging an
_accidental_ meeting at her house. This Hiram peremptorily objected to;
and in speaking on the subject with Mr. Bennett, with whom all his
conversations were held, he displayed such a subtle insight into the
character, habits, and peculiarities of Miss Thorne, that Mr. Bennett
was amazed. He afterward told his wife she must let Hiram have his own
way, as the fellow knew more than all of them.

Two parties came off the following week, to both of which Hiram was
invited through the influence of the Bennetts. Miss Thorne was of course
present. Hiram, now perfectly at his ease, and fashionably attired, made
no insignificant display. He was introduced to a great many young
ladies, and saluting two or three of the most attractive, he paid at
different stages of the evening assiduous court to them. His waltzing
was really superb [O Hiram, what a change!], and not a few inquired,
'Who is he?' Mrs. Bennett was really proud to answer, 'A cousin of ours.
A very fine young man, indeed--very rich.'

Miss Thorne did not ask any questions--not she; but she quickly
recognized in the waltzer the occupant of the pew who had already
attracted her notice. She waited complacently for the moment when Hiram
should be led up to her for presentation, and she had already decided
just how she should receive him. She was resolved to ruffle his
complacency, and thus punish him for not paying his first tribute to her
charms; then, so she settled it, she would relax, and permit him to
waltz with her.

When the evening passed, and the fashionable young man had made no
demonstration, she was amazed. Such a thing had never happened before.
To think he should not ask _her_, while he devoted half the evening to
Miss Innis, who waltzed shockingly (every one knew that), and who had no
money either!

She went home in a very uncomfortable state of mind.

The following Wednesday there was a repetition of this very scene. The
party was even more brilliant than the last, Miss Thorne more
exquisitely dressed, but Hiram kept aloof. Miss Thorne had never been
slighted before--never. This evening she was tempted to waive her pride,
and inquire of her dear friend Mrs. Bennett, with whom she saw Hiram
conversing--but the thought was too humiliating, and she forbore.

How she hated the wretch!--that is, as women hate, and as men like to be
hated. What should she do? Could she endure to attend another party, and
be so treated? Why, the creature never even looked toward her! What
right had he to dress so fashionably and to waltz with such ease, and in
fact appear so well every way? To occupy quite by himself the very best
pew in St. Jude's, directly in front of her! What audacity! Then his
provoking _nonchalance_. Oh, what was she to do? She should go crazy.
Not quite that. She would first inquire of Mr. Myrtle, in a very
careless manner. So she ran in that same morning on the accomplished
clergyman, and was speedily in a full gallop of conversation.

'By the way,' she exclaimed, at length, as if a new thought had suddenly
struck her, 'pray, tell me, who is my new neighbor? I intended asking
the last time I saw you, but forgot it.'

The Rev. Charles Myrtle looked completely mystified, and asked with his
eyes, plainly as eyes could ask, 'Pray, what do you mean?'

'I see you don't take. I mean the new occupant of the Winslows' pew;
some relation, I suppose.'

'Oh, no. He is a cousin of the Bennetts, a young merchant, who has
purchased the pew.'

'Indeed? A good churchman, I hope, if he is to sit so near me.'

'I should judge so. I am but slightly acquainted with him. Mrs. Bennett,
however, speaks of him in the most enthusiastic terms. She says he has
but one fault (I mention it to save you young people from
disappointment), which is, that he is not fond of ladies' society.'

'I know better,' interrupted Miss Thorne, betraying herself; for she was
thinking of what she had witnessed at the two parties. Too much a woman
of the world to blush or betray any embarrassment, she as quickly
recovered, and added, laughingly, 'No one can make me believe he takes
all that pains with his dress for nothing.'

'Now I think of it, he does dress in very good taste,' said Mr. Myrtle
carelessly. 'I think, however, what Mrs. Bennett meant to convey is that
Mr. Meeker is not a marrying man. She says he is very rich, and has a
horror of being caught, as it is called.'

'So then his name is Meeker,' replied Miss Thorne, with an absent air,
as if she had paid no attention to Mr. Myrtle's concluding observation,
though she had drunk in every word with eager interest.

'Yes. You will probably meet him at the Bennetts', though I do not think
he would please you, Miss Arabella. [Mr. Myrtle knew the weakness of
spinsters after reaching a certain age for being called by their first
name.] You are too _exegeante_, my dear young lady, and Mr. Meeker is
devoted to affairs.'

'I wonder Mrs. Myrtle does not return; she told me she would not be gone
two minutes,' said Miss Thorne, with the air of complete indifference to
what Mr. Myrtle was saying, which a fashionable thorough-bred knows so
well how to assume.

'Here she is,' said Mr. Myrtle. 'I will leave you together, and go back
to my labors. Good morning.'

Miss Thorne by this time was really very much excited; so much so that
she could not resist speaking of Hiram to Mrs. Myrtle, though of course
in the same accidental way in which she had inquired of her husband.

Mrs. Myrtle of course had much more to say in reply. All about Hiram's
joining their church--what a good young man he was, how conscientious,
how devoted to business, and how rich, and getting richer every day.

Miss Thorne drew herself up slightly, as if that could be of no
consequence to _her_. Still she unbent directly, and said with an
amiable smile, as if simply to continue the conversation, 'But Mr.
Myrtle says he is a woman hater.'

'Oh, I think not so bad as that; but Mrs. Bennett says the ladies are
all crazy about him, and he has a ridiculous suspicion that they are
after his money.'

'The wretch!' exclaimed Miss Arabella, laughing.

'So I say,' rejoined Mrs. Myrtle. 'But the fact is, Mrs. Bennett says
that Mr. Meeker thinks too much about business, and if he goes on in
this way he will never get married, and she tells him she is determined
he shall marry.'

'A very proper resolve!' exclaimed Miss Thorne in the same vein.

The conversation now turned on other topics, and after a few minutes
Miss Thorne took leave in no very enviable state of mind. Here was a
young man about to become one of the stars of fashion, rich,
accomplished, quite in her own set, too; yet not a step had he taken
toward securing her favor. Why, he might even outstrip her at St.
Jude's! Then what _would_ become of her? 'I wonder if he keeps Lent?'
she muttered between her clenched teeth, as she walked along.

At that very moment, who should she encounter but Miss Innis, a
charming, bewitching, and very fashionable young creature (so all the
gentlemen said), to whom at the late parties, as I have already
mentioned, Hiram had been devoted the larger part of the evening.

The ladies rushed toward each other and embraced in the most
affectionate manner. The usual rapid chitchat ensued.

'What do you think of our new beau?' asked Miss Innis.

Now Miss Thorne was burning with envy, hatred, malice, and all
uncharitableness toward the young and rising belle, which was greatly
increased by witnessing Hiram's extraordinary devotion to her. After the
conversation with Mrs. Myrtle, she could no longer doubt the fact that
he was soon to become of decided importance in the fashionable world.
The moment she saw Miss Innis approaching, she anticipated some such
question as was now put to her, and knowing that through her dear friend
Mrs. Bennett she could make Hiram's acquaintance at any time, she had
decided how to treat it.

She replied therefore with considerable animation, and as if she knew at
once to whom Miss Innis alluded: 'Oh, I think we shall make something of
him before the season is over. I tell Mrs. Bennett she must cure him of
some little provincialisms, however.'

'Provincialisms!' exclaimed Miss Innis, who prided herself on her family
and aristocratic breeding, though she had not wealth to boast of;
'provincialisms! I confess I discovered none, and I certainly had a
pretty good opportunity for judging. He waltzes divinely, doesn't he?'

The tantalizing minx knew very well that Miss Thorne could only judge by
observation.

'He waltzes with much perfection, certainly,' replied Miss Thorne, with
the air of a connoisseur, 'but I think a little stiffly.'

'Quite the reverse, I assure you. I never had a partner with whom it was
so easy to waltz. He supports one so perfectly. I declare I am in love
with him already. Arabella dear, I give you warning I shall try my best
to engross his attention the entire season.'

She laughed as she said this, and Miss Thorne laughed; then these young
women of fashion again embraced, and with smiles and amiable expressions
went their way.

How suddenly the countenance of each then changed! That of Miss Innis
gave unmistakable tokens of contempt and disgust, while Miss Thorne's
face expressed a concentrated venom, which, if I had not myself often
witnessed, I would not believe is in the power of woman to display.

The rencontre with Miss Innis was so unendurable that Miss Thorne
resolved to proceed at once to Mrs. Bennett's, where she could get
definite information. Her pride was beginning to give way before her
jealousy of a rival.

Mrs. Bennett was at home, and welcomed her dear 'Arabella' with more
than usual cordiality. A long conversation ensued before Miss Thorne
could bring herself to broach the delicate subject. At last, and it had
to be apropos of nothing, she said:

'Oh, I declare, I forgot. Do you know I am angry with you? Yes, very,
very angry.'

Mrs. Bennett immediately put on the proper expression.

'Tell me, quick, all about it,' she said. 'I will do penance if I have
given you cause.'

'Indeed, you have given great cause. You have undertaken to bring out a
gentleman, and your own cousin, too, without presenting him to me, and I
made up my mind never to speak to you again; but you see how I keep my
resolution.'

'Poor Mr. Meeker!' exclaimed Mrs. Bennett. 'He little thinks in what
trouble he has involved me.'

'But what have you to say for _yourself_?' persisted Miss Thorne.

'I declare, Arabella, I don't know what to say. Cousin Hiram is so odd
and so obstinate on some points, although in most respects the best
creature in the world.'

'Why, what can you mean?'

'I can hardly explain what I do mean. In short, while Cousin Hiram asks
my advice in many matters, and, indeed, follows it; yet, where ladies
are concerned, he is as obstinate as a mule.'

'But what has that to do with your not presenting him?'

'Well, since you must know,' hesitated Mrs. Bennett, 'he declined being
introduced to you.'

'Declined!'

'Yes.'

'It is all through that hateful Mary Innis!' exclaimed Miss Thorne,
reddening with rage. 'I know it. I am sure of it. Yes, I see through it
all--all.'

'I dare say,' returned Mrs. Bennett. 'I can't believe it either,' she
continued. 'He is not so easily influenced. But, Arabella, my dear,
think no more of the matter. You will like Mr. Meeker, I know, when you
do meet, and all the more for any little obstacle at the beginning. I
was just thinking how I could bring you together. What do you say to
dropping in at--no, that won't do. I have it; come round this very
evening and take tea with us. Mr. Meeker is almost sure to come in. He
has not been here this week.'

'Arabella' had her little objections.

'Nonsense, my darling. I am determined you two shall become acquainted
before Mrs. Jones's party, and that is next Thursday. Don't forget how
fond you are of waltzing, and there Cousin Hiram is superb.'

'I know it,' said Miss Thorne, with a sigh. 'But won't it look strange?'

'Look strange to do what you have done so often, my darling! Now,
Arabella, I won't take 'no' from you.'

'I consent,' said Miss Thorne, languidly. 'He won't be rude to me, will
he?'

'Rude! why, Arabella, what do you take him for?'

The ladies separated in great good humor.

Miss Thorne, with a view to be revenged on Miss Innis, was determined to
secure our hero on any terms. She was at Mrs. Bennett's at the appointed
hour. On this occasion her toilette was elaborately simple. She always
exhibited, not only great taste, but great propriety, in dress. On this
occasion one might readily suppose that, running in for a brief call,
she had been induced to prolong her stay.

About eight o'clock, who should arrive but Hiram! What a singular
coincidence!

An introduction followed.

Miss Thorne was very natural. She appeared entirely at ease, receiving
Hiram with quiet cordiality, as if he were a member of the family.

Hiram, on his part, did not exhibit any of those disagreeable qualities
for which he received credit, but was apparently quite disarmed by the
domesticity of the scene.

The conversation became general, and all joined in it. After a while Mr.
Bennett withdrew to 'spend a half hour at the club,' assuring Miss
Thorne he would return in ample time to hand her to her carriage.
Presently the servant called Mrs. Bennett, and hero and heroine were
left alone together.

There was an awkward pause, which was first broken by Arabella, when the
conversation ran on much in this way:

'We are to have a very gay season, I believe.'

'Indeed!'

'I suppose you take a great interest in it?'

'Quite the contrary. I take very little.'

'Still, you seem to enjoy parties.'

'Why, yes. When I go, the best thing I can do is to enjoy them.'

'But you like to go, don't you?'

'I can scarcely say I do--sometimes, perhaps.'

'A person who waltzes as well as you do ought to like parties, I am
sure.'

'I feel very much flattered to have you praise my waltzing.'

There was another pause. It was again broken by Miss Thorne.

'Do you know I think you so droll?'

'Me! pray, what is there droll about me?'

'Oh, I don't know. I can't tell. But you are droll--very droll.'

'Really, I was not conscious of it.'

'Were you aware that you occupy a seat directly in front of me in
church?'

'Certainly; that's not droll, is it?'

'Well, yes; I think it is, rather. But that is not what I was going to
say. Will you answer me one question truly? It will seem strange for me
to ask it,' simpered Arabella; 'but you must know your cousin Mrs.
Bennett and I are the dearest friends--the _very_ dearest friends; and
meeting you here, it seems different, and I am not so much afraid of
you.'

Hiram sat with eyes wide open, in affected ignorance of what could
possibly come next.

'Now you put me out, indeed you do; I can never say what I was going to,
in the world.'

'_Do_,' said Hiram, gently.

'Well, will you tell me why you refused to be introduced to me, and who
it is that has so prejudiced you against me?'

'No one, I assure you,' replied Hiram.

'Then why did you decline the introduction? It is of no use to deny it;
I know you _did_ decline it.'

'I heard you were an heiress,' replied Hiram naively, 'and I don't like
heiresses.'

'Why not, pray?'

'Oh, for various reasons. They are always such vain, stuck-up creatures.
Then they are excessively requiring, and generally disagreeable.'

'You saucy thing, you,' exclaimed Miss Thorne, but by no means in a
displeased tone.

'Then why did you ask me? I must tell the truth. I confess I did not
want to make your acquaintance. Everybody was talking about Miss
Thorne--Miss Thorne--Miss Thorne. For my part, it made me detest you.'

'Oh, you horrible creature,' said Arabella, now quite appeased.

'I don't deny it,' continued Hiram, pleasantly. 'I repeat, I can't bear
an heiress. I wouldn't marry one for the whole world.'

'Why, pray?'

'Because she would want her separate purse and separate property, and it
would be _her_ house, and _her_ horses and carriage, _her_ coachman, and
so on. Oh no--nothing of that for me. I will be master of my own
establishment.'

'What a savage you are! I declare it is as refreshing to hear you talk
as it would be to visit a tribe of Indians.'

'You are complimentary.'

'You see I do you justice, though we are enemies. But tell me now that
you have been introduced to me, do I seem at all dangerous?'

Hiram Meeker's countenance changed from an expression of pleasant
badinage to one of sentimental interest, while he gazed abstractedly in
the young lady's face, without making any reply.

Arabella's heart beat violently, she scarce knew why.

'You do not answer,' she said.

'I cannot tell,' said Hiram, dreamily; then, starting, as if from a
revery, he said, in his former tone, 'Oh, your sex are all dangerous;
only there are degrees.'

'I see you are not disposed to commit yourself. I will not urge you. But
do you think you will be afraid to waltz with me at the next party?'

'It was the introduction I objected to, not the waltz.'

'Then you consent?'

'With your permission, gladly.'

'The first waltz at the next party?'

'The first waltz at the next party.'

It is not necessary to detail the conversation which ensued, and which
was of a more general nature, referring to New York society, life _à la
mode_, the reigning belles, then by an easy transition to Mr. Myrtle,
and topics connected with St. Jude's. Soon they fell into quite a
confidential tone, as church subjects of mutual interest were discussed,
so that, when Mrs. Bennett returned to the room, it seemed almost like
an interruption.

'I knew you two would like each other if you ever became acquainted,'
said Mrs. Bennett, with animation.

'Pray, how do you arrive at any such conclusion?' replied Miss Thorne,
in a reserved tone, while she gave Hiram a glance which was intended to
assure him she was merely assuming it.

'Oh, never mind, my dear; it is not of so much consequence about your
liking Hiram. You may detest him, if you please, but I am resolved he
shall like you, for you are my pet, you know.'

Arabella looked affectionate, and Hiram laughed.

'Oh, you may laugh as much as you please; men cannot understand our
attachments for each other, can they, Arabella?'

'No, indeed.'

'That is true enough,' quoth Hiram.

After Mr. Bennett came in, a handsome little supper was served. That
concluded, Hiram waited on Miss Thorne to her carriage.

'I shall expect you to take back all the naughty things you have said
about me to your cousin,' she said, very sweetly, after she was seated.

'About you, yes; but not about the _heiress_. But--but if you were not
one, I do think I should like you pretty well. As it is, the objection
is insuperable; good night.'

Away went carriage and horses and Arabella Thorne. Hiram stepped back
into the house.

'My wife says you have made a splendid hit to-night, Hiram,' remarked
Mr. Bennett.

'Does she?' replied the other, in an absent tone.

       *       *       *       *       *

Hiram went late to Mrs. Jones's party.

So did Miss Thorne.

In a pleasant mood, Mrs. Bennett walked with her cousin to where the
heiress was standing, and said, 'Miss Thorne, this is Mr. Meeker. I
believe, however, you have met before.'

The waltzing had already commenced, and Hiram led his not unwilling
partner to the floor, where they were soon giddily whirling, to the
intense admiration of the lookers on.

It was now Hiram felt grateful to the unknown young lady who taught him
how to waltz _close_. He practised it on this occasion to perfection.
Arabella, by degrees, leaned more and more heavily. One arm resting
fondly on his shoulder, she was drawn into immediate contact with
Hiram's _calculating_ heart. Round and round she sped--round and round
sped Hiram, until the two were so blended that it was difficult to
decide who or what were revolving.

At last Arabella was forced to yield. Faintly she sighed, 'I must stop,'
and Hiram, coming to a graceful termination, seated her in triumph--the
master of the situation!

Miss Innis looked on and smiled. Others expressed their admiration of
the performance. None could deny it was very perfect.

Soon they were on the floor again, and again Arabella struggled hard for
the mastery. It was in vain. After repeated attempts to hold the field,
she was obliged to yield.

Hiram was too familiar with the sex to attempt to pursue his advantage.
Indeed, Miss Arabella, having accomplished her object in showing Miss
Innis that she _could_ monopolize Hiram if she chose, would have been
quite ready to play the coquette and assume the dignified.

Hiram was prepared for this, and further was resolved not to expose
himself to any manifestation of her caprice. He perceived Miss Thorne
was disinclined to converse, and fancied she was preparing to be
reserved. So he passed quietly into the next room, where he found Miss
Innis quite ready to welcome him, though surrounded by a number of
gentlemen. He claimed her for the next waltz by virtue of an engagement
entered into at Mrs. Jones's. Soon the music commenced, and away they
went, responsive to its fascinating strains. Both waltzed admirably.
They entered with zest into the spirit of the scene and with that
sympathy of motion which makes every step so easy and so enjoyable.
There was no rivalry, no holding out against the other. The pauses were
natural, not by either, but, as it were, by mutual understanding. Miss
Thorne was also on the floor with a very showy partner, doing her best
to attract attention. She managed, as she swept by her rival,
_accidentally_ to step on her dress in a very damaging manner. But Miss
Innis was one of those natural creatures who are never discomfited by
such an occurrence. She very quietly withdrew, and in about two minutes
was on the floor again.

'It is well,' said Hiram to her in a low tone, 'that this happened to
you instead of Miss Thorne.'

'Why?'

'Because she never could have appeared again the same evening.'

Miss Innis smiled, and spoke of something else. The little hit did not
seem in the least to gratify her.

Hiram noted this. 'Youth and beauty can well afford to be amiable, but
it does not always happen that they are so,' he whispered.

Miss Innis looked at him seriously, but made no reply; and the two took
seats within the recess of a window.

At this moment Miss Thorne, having stopped waltzing, passed across the
room to the same vicinity, and stood talking with a gentleman, in a
position to command a view of the couple just seated. As Hiram raised
his eyes he encountered hers, for she was looking intently toward him.
He saw enough to be satisfied that his plans were working to perfection.

Without appearing to notice her presence, he continued the conversation
with his partner, and so engrossing did it become on both sides that
neither seemed aware of the rapid flight of the hours. And it was only
when Miss Innis perceived that the rooms were becoming thinned that she
started up with an exclamation of surprise that it was so late.

Hiram Meeker walked slowly homeward. He could not resist a certain
influence from stealing over him.

'Why is it,' he muttered to himself, 'that all the handsome girls are
without money, and all the rich ones are ugly?'

He drew a long sigh, as if it were hard for him to give up such a lovely
creature. He soon reached his lodgings, and going to his room, he seated
himself before the fire, which burned cheerfully in the grate, and
remained for a time completely lost in thought.

       *       *       *       *       *

O Hiram Meeker, is it even now too late to obey some natural instincts?
You are well embarked in affairs, have already made money enough to
support a wife pleasantly. Your business is daily increasing, your
mercantile position for a young man remarkably well assured. Here is a
really lovely young girl--a little spoiled, it may be, by fashionable
associations, but amiable, intelligent, and true hearted. Probably you
might win her, for she seems to like you. The connection would give you
position, for you would marry into an old and most respectable family.
True, you have conducted yourself shamefully toward Emma Tenant--to say
nothing of Miss Burns. Let that pass. There is still opportunity to
retrace. Attempt to win Miss Innis. If you do win her, what a happy home
will be yours! As for Miss Thorne--Hiram, you _know_ what she is. You
despise her in your heart. Besides, she is almost twenty-nine--you but
twenty-seven. Will her money compensate? O Hiram, stop--stop now, and
think!

This may have been the revery of Hiram Meeker.

       *       *       *       *       *

At last he rose and prepared to retire. Doubtless he had made a final
and irrevocable decision.

What was it?


CHAPTER XII.

There is good news for the Tenant family! The large commercial house in
London whose failure dragged down Tenant & Co., had a branch at Rio.
This branch had been heavily drawn on, and suspended because the firm
in London stopped. When affairs were investigated, it turned out that
the Rio branch was well aboveboard. The result was that the London house
was enabled to pay a composition of fifteen and sixpence in the pound.
This not only enabled Tenant & Co. to settle with their creditors, but
placed that old and respectable firm in a position to go on with their
business, though in a manner somewhat limited when compared with their
former operations. The whole commercial community rejoiced at this. Tho
house had been so long established, and was conducted with so much
integrity, that to have it go down seemed a blow struck at the fair name
and prosperity of the city. A committee appointed by the creditors had
investigated everything connected with the failure, prior to hearing of
the news from Rio. This committee utterly refused to permit Mr. Tenant
to put his house into the list of assets from which to pay the company's
debts. He insisted, but they were inexorable. This was highly gratifying
to him, but he was not content. Now he could meet all on equal terms.

We must forgive Mrs. Tenant if she felt a very great degree of
exultation at this result. The affair between Hiram Meeker and her
daughter had touched her so deeply (until Emma was away she did not feel
how deeply), that she could not but indulge her triumph that now, when
she encountered him, she was able to pass him with complete
indifference. While her husband was crippled, she continued to feel
scorn and contempt. Having regained her old position, she enjoyed a
repose of spirits and was no longer tantalized by recollection of the
scenes of the last few months.

Emma Tenant had a most charming European tour. She was absent a year.
Two or three months before her return, and while spending a few weeks
among the Bernese Alps (I think Emma once told me it was at the Hotel
Reichenbach, near Meyringen), she encountered an old acquaintance, that
is, an acquaintance of her childhood, in the person of young
Lawrence--Henry Lawrence--who was taking advantage of a business trip
abroad to view the glory and the majesty of nature in the Oberland
Bernois.

However much it may seem contrary to the theory of romantic young men
and women, I am forced to state that notwithstanding her former love for
Hiram Meeker, Emma Tenant had not been six months in Europe before the
wound might be considered healed. As her mind became enlarged by taking
in the variety of scenes which were presented, scenes ever fresh and
changing, she was better enabled to judge how far such a person as Hiram
Meeker could ultimately make her happy. Day by day she saw his character
more clearly and in a truer light, and could thus fully appreciate the
narrow escape she had from a life of wretchedness.

Before she encountered young Lawrence, she had become entirely
disenchanted. The former illusion was fully dispelled, and her heart
left quite free to be engrossed by a new interest.

Young ladies and gentlemen! Am I giving currency to theories which you
are accustomed to consider heretical? I am but recording the simple
truth.

       *       *       *       *       *

By the time Emma Tenant had reached New York the affianced of Henry
Lawrence (subject, of course, to her parents' approbation), Hiram Meeker
was engaged to--Miss Thorne.

Once decided on his course, Hiram pursued his object with the tenacity
of a slow hound.

He took advantage of every weakness. He operated on her jealous nature
so as to subject her to all the tortures which that spirit begets. By
turns he flattered and browbeat her. He was sunny and amiable, or
crabbed and austere, as suited his purpose. In fact, he so played on
the poor girl, whose vanity and suspicion and jealous fear of a rival
were intense, that he made her life miserable. She was even thwarted in
the quarter where her strength principally lay. For Hiram treated her
fortune as a mere nothing at all. If she, as had been her custom, headed
a subscription for some charity at St. Jude's, Hiram was sure to put
down his name for double the amount in close proximity to hers.

At last her spirit was completely broken by the persevering, unsparing,
flattering, cajoling, remorseless Hiram. So she stopped quarrelling, and
yielded. Then, how charming was our hero! Amiable, kind, desirous to
please, yet despotic to an extent: never yielding the power and
ascendency he had gained over her.

The great point now was to prevent any marriage settlement. Being
married, since Miss Thorne's property was all 'personal,' he could at
once possess himself of it. Prior to the engagement, Hiram had often
repeated that he would many no woman who maintained a separate estate.
And so much did he dwell on this that Miss Thorne was actually afraid to
speak to her solicitor on the subject.

In the summer succeeding the gay season we have spoken of, Hiram Meeker
and Arabella Thorne were united at St. Jude's by the Rev. Charles
Myrtle, in presence of 'the most aristocratic and fashionable concourse
ever assembled on such an occasion.' The Bennetts were present in great
profusion. Mrs. Myrtle, all smiles and tears, stood approvingly by. Mr.
Myrtle, so all declared, never performed the ceremony so well before.
Miss Innis had a conspicuous place in the proceedings, she being the
first of the four bridesmaids who attended Arabella to the altar.

I have never been able to explain her selection of one she had so feared
and hated as a rival, nor Miss Innis's acceptance. But there she stood,
very beautiful, and apparently much interested in what was going on.

       *       *       *       *       *

After they had returned from their wedding tour, Hiram took possession
of his wife's securities. His heart throbbed with excitement and his
eyes glistened as he looked them over.

Mr. Bennett had fallen considerably short of the mark. Here were more
than two hundred and fifty thousand dollars!

Just then real estate had fallen to the extreme lowest point after the
collapse of the former high speculative prices. Hiram took immediate
advantage of this state of things. During the next three months he had
sold out his wife's securities, and invested two hundred thousand
dollars in vacant lots admirably situated in the upper part of the city.
The balance he put into his business.

From that period it did not require a heavy discounting of the future to
write Hiram Meeker a MILLIONAIRE.


END OF PART II.




DEAD!


  Dead--dead--no matter, the skies are blue,
    In their fathomless depths above,
  And the glad Earth's robes are as bright in hue,
  And worn with as regal a grace, and true,
  As they were on the day they were woven new
    By the hand of Infinite Love.

  Hush! hush!--there is music out in the street,
    A popular martial strain;
  While the constant patter of countless feet
  Keeps time to the strokes of the drum's quick beat,
  And the echoing voices that mix and meet
    Swell out in a glad refrain.

  Lost--lost! Oh, why, when the earth is bright,
    And soft is the zephyr's breath,
  Oh! why, when the world is so full of light,
  Should the wild heart, robed in a cloak of night,
  Send up from frozen lips and white
    A desolate cry of death?

  Dead--dead! How wearily drag the days;
    And wearily life runs on!
  The skies look cold, through a misty haze,
  That curdles the gold of the bright sun's rays,
  And the dead leaves cover the banks and braes,
    A shroud of the summer gone.

  Last year--nay! nay! I do not complain;
    There are graves in the heart of all;
  So I do not murmur; 'twere weak and vain;
  I accept in silence my share of pain,
  And the clouds, with their fringes of crimson stain,
    That over my young life fall.

  There were beautiful days last year, I mind,
    When the maple trees turned red,
  They flew away like the sportive wind,
  But I gathered the joys they left behind,
  As I gather the leaves, but to-day I find
    That the joys, like the leaves, _are dead_.

  One year! It is past, and I stand _alone_,
    Where I stood with another then;
  'Tis well--I had scorned to have held _my own_
  From the bloody strife, though my soul had known
  That _his_ life would ebb ere the day was gone,
    Amid thousands of nameless men.

  _Nameless_, yet never a one less dear
    Than the _dearest_ of all the dead;
  I weep--but, Father, my bitter tear
  Falleth not down o'er a _single_ bier--
  I mourn not the joys of the lost last year,
    But the rivers of bright blood shed.




RECONSTRUCTION.


Reconstruction sounds the key note of American politics to-day. It is as
true now as when Webster first said it, that 'the people of this
country, by a vast and countless majority, are attached to the Union.'
Reconstruction is the hope of the Union; and the hope of the Union is
the controlling energy of the war. Hence, naturally, the theories that
prevail in regard to reconstruction begin to define the political
parties of the immediate future. United on the war, which they hold to
be not simply inevitable, but also a war in the combined interests of
liberty and order, and, therefore, just, the people seem likely about to
be divided on questions suggested by the probably speedy termination of
the war. The Union one and indivisible is the fundamental maxim on which
all such questions must be based. So long as the name of Washington is
reverenced among them, the American people will accept no other basis of
settlement. The Union is to them the security and hope of all political
blessings--liberty, justice, political order--which blessings it
insures. Disunion is revolution, and puts them in peril. Therefore, no
theory of reconstruction is practicable which countenances disunion, or
in anywise assails the principle of the eternal oneness and
indivisibility of the Union.


THEORIES OF RECONSTRUCTION.

There are three prominent theories of reconstruction now before the
people. The first, as being in the natural and constitutional order of
things, has shaped the policy of the Administration in its whole conduct
of affairs. It supposes the rebellion to be an armed insurrection
against the authority of the United States, usurping the functions and
powers of various State Governments, and seeking to overthrow the
Nation. So considering it, the whole power of the Nation has been
brought to bear to subdue it, in accordance with the just authority
conferred by the Constitution, which is the organic law of the Nation.
The steadfast prosecution of this policy, upheld and supported by the
people with a unanimity and patient faith that have strengthened the
cause of democratic government all over the earth, has rescued from the
rebellion and restored to their undisputed position in the Union, the
States of Kentucky, Missouri, and now, at last, Tennessee, with a
portion of Virginia. Such are the results to the Union of the natural
and constitutional policy that aims at reconstruction through
restoration.

The two other theories spoken of may be best considered together, as
they originated in a common purpose, namely, the abolition of slavery,
which it is supposed cannot be attained by the ordinary processes of war
under the Constitution. Their advocates, however, contend that they are
strictly constitutional.

The first of these theories supposes that the States included in the
rebellion have, by the fact of rebellion, forfeited all rights as
States. It is argued that States, like individuals, forfeit their rights
by rebellion.

The other theory supposes that the States having rebelled, may be dealt
with as foreign States; so that, according to the laws of war, the
nation may treat them altogether as alien enemies, and in the event of
the Nation's triumph, the States will be in all respects like conquered
provinces.

It will be observed that each of these theories ignores the principle of
the indivisibility of the Union, and presupposes a dismemberment of it
on the part of every rebellious State.


I. THEORY OF STATE SUICIDE.

Probably no one will deny that rebellion works a forfeiture of all
political rights to those engaged in it. The subject who renounces his
allegiance can claim no protection: just as the Government that should
fail to protect its subjects, could not claim their allegiance.
Allegiance and protection are reciprocal and interdependent duties, and
the failure of one involves and works the failure of the other. So that
it might be quite correct to declare, in reference to the Southern
rebellion, that a rebel has no rights which the United States is bound
to respect. It will be perceived that the question of _right_ is here
spoken of, and not the question of _policy_. No feeling of sympathy with
a defeated people, not the thousand-fold natural ties that bind the
North and the South, should blind our eyes to the main question of
right. Any policy toward repentant rebels that is not magnanimous and
honorably befitting our complete triumph, can never find favor with the
American people, nor ought to; but the incalculably precious interests
of the Nation will not admit of any uncertain precedents in regard to
secession. The precedent must be perfectly clear. It must be established
unqualifiedly and unalterably that secession is treason, and that
whoever is concerned in it is a traitor and must expect a traitor's
punishment. It has been common to call secession a political heresy. The
rebellion, the fruit of secession, stamps it as more and worse than
simply a heresy. It is inchoate treason, and only awaits the favorable
conditions to become open and flagrant. The patriotism, therefore, of
any man may fairly be suspected, who, refusing to be taught by the
experience of this war, revealing these things as in the clear light of
midday, can speak softly and with 'bated breath' of secession. His
country's baptism of fire has not regenerated such a man.

The attempt, as the legitimate and inevitable result of secession, to
overthrow a Government whose burdens rested so lightly on its citizens
as to have given rise to a current phrase that they were unfelt; and yet
whose magnificent power gave it rank among the first of nations,
securing full protection to the humblest of its citizens, and causing
the name of American to be as proud a boast as Roman in the day of
Rome's power; and withal being the recognized refuge and hope of liberty
and humanity all over the globe, as vindicating the right royalty of
man;--the attempt to overthrow such a Government must stand forever as
the blackest of crimes. For the Confederate treason is more than treason
against the United States: it is a crime against humanity, and a
conspiracy in the interest of despotism, denying the royalty of man.

But, to return to our argument, a distinction is carefully to be noted
between the consequences of rebellion to the individuals who engage in
it and to the State which it assumes to control. It needs no argument to
show that rebellion against the supreme power of a State does not
necessarily affect the permanence of that power. If the rebellion fails,
the rightful authority resumes its functions. If the rebellion succeeds,
the movers of it assume the powers of the State, and succeed to all its
functions. The civil wars of England furnish abundant illustration of
this principle. However the course of Government may for the time have
been checked, and its whole machinery disarranged, the subsidence of the
tumult left the state, in every case, as an organic whole, the same. The
consequences of unsuccessful rebellion fell only upon the persons
engaged in it. So, in the successive changes that befell France after
the Revolution, the state, as the body politic, remained unchanged. In
dealing with the question of rebellion in our country the same principle
applies, only another element enters into the calculation. That element
results from the peculiar character of our Government in its twofold
relation to the people of State and Nation. The Government springs
directly from the people, who have ordained separate functions for the
two separate organisms, or bodies politic, the State and the Nation.
Strictly considered, there are not two Governments, there is only one
Government. Certain functions of it are ordained to be executed by the
State, and certain other functions by the Nation, How, then, can the
State, as such, assume to set aside the ordained functions of the
Nation? How, on the other hand, might the Nation assume to control the
ordained functions of the State? Each to its own master standeth or
falleth, and that master is the people. Hence, the absurdity of the
doctrine which claims the right of a State to resume powers once
delegated to the Nation. For the State, as such, never delegated those
powers. Hence, the absurdity of secession as a dogma in American
politics. And hence, also, it equally appears how absurd is any claim on
the part of the Nation to visit upon the State organism the penalties of
the treason of individuals against itself.

Let it be remembered that the State derives none of its rights from the
Nation. How, then, can it be said to forfeit its rights to the Nation?
The State is a separate and distinct organism, deriving its rights
directly from the people within its territorial limit. They established
it, and to them alone it is responsible. In the same manner, the people
of the whole country, without regard to the territorial limits of
States, established the Nation. The people of the whole country,
therefore, have a permanent interest in the Nation, and no one portion
of them may rightfully assume to set aside its supreme obligations, in
disregard and violation of the organic law. If certain of the people of
any State have rebelled against the National Government, attempting thus
to set aside its paramount obligations, undoubtedly their lives and
property are forfeit to the Nation. But how can their individual treason
work a forfeiture of the State powers and functions? These have been
usurped, indeed, by the armed combinations of the rebellion, but they
are still complete, only awaiting the overthrow of the armed
combinations to be resumed and controlled by those persons within the
same territorial limit who have not rebelled.

It is objected to this view that it assumes a substratum of loyal people
still existing in the rebel States. The assumption is certainly
warrantable when we read of the scenes--witnesses against the Southern
Confederacy whose eloquence surpasses speech--that have attended the
overthrow of the rebellion in Tennessee; and when we remember that even
in South Carolina there are such names as Judge Pettigrew and Governor
Aiken; and when in New York city alone there is to-day a large body of
Georgians, whose loyalty has made them exiles, and who only await the
day of their State's deliverance to return and restore their State's
loyalty; and when the signs in North Carolina are so positive that a
Union element yet survives there; and when even far-off Texas has her
loyal exiles in our midst. Considering those 'signs of the times,' the
assumption that there are loyal men in the rebellious States seems
certainly a valid and proper one, and one on which fairly to rest an
argument. But it is believed that the argument is good without this
assumption. Suppose that, the rebellion being overthrown, not even one
man remains loyal to the Nation within the territorial limits of any
single State, has the State ceased to exist? A State is called, in the
language of publicists, a body politic. It is, in effect, a sort of
corporation, administered for the benefit of its inhabitants by trustees
whom they appoint. One of the maxims of law is that a trust shall not
fail for lack of a person to execute it. It might, therefore, in such a
case as the one supposed, be competent for the United States to
designate persons who should take charge of the State Government, and
administer it in trust for the children of its former recreant
inhabitants, and as their legal and political successors. Reverting to
the settled principles of the law, we find that the essential idea of a
corporation is its immortality, or individuality, or the perpetual
succession of persons under it, notwithstanding the changes of the
individual persons who compose it. The State, like a corporation, has an
individuality of its own, which is not affected by the changes of the
individual persons composing it. It has an immortality, not affected by
their entire extinction. Its own organic existence is not thereby
extinguished. In other words, the State cannot be merged, or swallowed
up, in the Nation.

It seems, then, that the doctrine of State suicide, as propounded in so
many words, by its author, in the original resolutions offered in
Congress, is equally repugnant to the Constitution and good sense. It
is, in effect, revolutionary; for it would dismember the Union, by
striking out of existence States as purely and completely sovereign
within the sphere of their functions as the Nation itself. It is idle to
deny that it thus recognizes and gives support to the doctrine of
secession; for it accepts the results of secession, and supposes that
accomplished by the rebellion which the war is meant to thwart and
prevent, to wit, the disruption of the ties that bind the States and the
Nation together in one harmonious whole.

What are we fighting for? To restore constitutional order; to vindicate
'the sacredness of nationality.' In other words, to combat the principle
of secession, by force and arms, in its last appeal, just as we have
always combated and opposed it hitherto on the platform and in the
senate. But what right have we to oppose secession by coercion? The
right of self-preservation. For secession loosens the very corner-stone
of our Government, so that the whole arch falls, breaking the Union into
an infinity of wretched States. Admitting secession, our Constitution
is, indeed, no stronger than 'a rope of sand.' We fight to maintain the
Constitution as an Ordinance of Sovereignty (as it has been forcibly
styled) over the whole Nation. We must so maintain it, or surrender our
national existence. This being so, we cannot admit any such right as
secession; for that would be to sanction the revolutionary doctrine
that a body of men, usurping a State Government, and calling themselves
the State, can absolve their fellow citizens from their allegiance to
the Constitution, the supreme law of the land. The rebel States are,
then, still members of the Union. Otherwise, we are waging an unjust
war. Otherwise we falsify and contradict the record of our Revolution,
and are striving to reduce to dependence a people who are equally
striving to maintain their independence. There is no justification for
this war save in the plea for the National Union; no warrant for it save
in the preservation of the Constitution, which is the palladium and
safeguard of the Nation. The Southern rebellion has usurped the
functions and powers of various State Governments: when it is
overthrown, the victims of its usurpation will be restored to their
former rights. _Their_ allegiance is still perfect. Nothing but their
own act can absolve them from it.


II. THEORY OF THE STATES AS ALIEN ENEMIES.

The advocates of the theory that the rebel States are foreign enemies,
and may be treated according to all the laws of war with foreign
nations, seek support for their views in the decision of the Supreme
Court rendered last March in the Hiawatha and other prize cases. The
question was raised in those cases whether we had the right to
confiscate the property of persons resident in the rebel States who
might be non-combatants or loyal men. The Court decided that 'all
persons residing within this territory (the rebellious region) whose
property may be used to increase the revenues of the hostile power, are
_in this contest_ liable to be treated as enemies, _though not
foreigners_.' This decision defines the _status_ of persons in the
rebellion region _bello flagranti_, or while the war lasts. It calls all
persons within that region enemies, because their 'property may be used
to increase the revenues of the hostile power.' Could their property be
so used after the defeat of the rebellious power? The decision does not
assume to determine that question. Nor could it come within the province
of the Court to decide what might at some future time be the condition
and _status_ of loyal men at the South.

It is said that in accordance with this decision all persons in the
rebellious States are to be treated as alien enemies, and the deduction
is hastily made that as to them all the Constitution, like any treaty,
or compact, with foreign States, is, by the fact of rebellion, annulled.
Aside from the fact that the Constitution is not a compact, and when
rightly understood cannot be confounded with a compact, such a
conclusion is at war with that essential principle of our Government,
which denies to any body of men the right to absolve their unwilling
fellow citizens from their allegiance, that is, denies the right of
secession. Such citizens, whose will is overpowered by force, have never
proved false to their fealty. The Constitution is still theirs; they are
still parties to it; and their rights are still sacred under it.

That no such conclusion is warranted by the decision above referred to,
will still further appear from the following considerations:--Our
dealings with foreign nations are regulated by the principles of
international law, and, according to that law, war abrogates all
treaties between belligerents, as of course. But international law
supposes the belligerents to be of equal and independent sovereignty.
This is the very point in dispute in our contest with the rebellion. We
deny to the rebellion the attribute of independent sovereignty, as we
deny it to every one of the States included in the rebellion. Our
Constitution is, in no sense, a treaty between sovereign States. It is
an organic law, establishing a nation, ordained by the people of the
whole country. Therefore, only such persons under it as voluntarily wage
war upon it, can be strictly called enemies: only such persons, on the
defeat of the rebellion, will be liable to be treated as enemies. As to
all men who have not participated in the rebellion, it is not easy to
see how war, rebellion, usurpation, or any power on earth can destroy
their rights under the Constitution.


III. THEORY OF THE CONSTITUTION AND COMMON SENSE.

Reconstruction, then, must come, as the Union came, by the action of the
people within the territorial limits of each recreant State. That it
will so come is, in a manner, assured and made certain by the action of
Kentucky, Missouri, Virginia, and Tennessee. Surely, we cannot expect
the political action of an oppressed minority, in any one of the rebel
States, to anticipate the National forces sent for their deliverance.
The armed combinations in those States have overborne all opposition,
and, during the past two years, have wielded the complete powers of a
military despotism. The Southern confederacy is a monstrous usurpation
in each and every rebel State. The United States is intent on dethroning
that usurpation, for the purpose of restoring, to every man who asks it,
the rights guaranteed to him by the Constitution of his fathers; and for
the equal purpose of asserting its rightful powers as the National
Government under the Constitution. The present Administration, then, has
taken the only course possible to be taken without open and flagrant
violation of the Constitution, which is the sole and sufficient warrant
for the war. For this course Abraham Lincoln is entitled to the
gratitude of the people. His conscientious policy has been the salvation
of the Republic, maintaining its integrity against armed rebellion, on
the one hand, and, on the other hand, saving it from destructives whose
zeal in a noble cause has often blinded their minds to the higher claims
of the Nation: in whose existence, nevertheless, that cause alone has
promise of success.

But, it is asked, does not rebellion affect the institution of slavery?
Not as a State institution, so far as the municipal law of any State is
concerned. That the slaves of rebels may properly be confiscated, as
other property, seems not only reasonable and right, but also in
accordance with well-settled decisions of the Supreme Court. Moreover,
the Constitution gives to Congress the power to prescribe the punishment
of treason, and undoubtedly the Supreme Court will hold the Confiscation
Act under that power to be constitutional and valid.

But does not the Emancipation Proclamation operate to confer freedom on
all slaves within the rebel States? This question must likewise be
brought to the Supreme Court for adjudication. If the Proclamation can
be shown to have the qualities of a legislative act, doubtless it will
operate as a statute of freedom to all slaves within the districts named
in it. But it must be remembered that the Executive cannot make law. The
Proclamation, as an edict of the military commander, can only operate
upon the condition of such slaves as are in a position to take advantage
of its terms. As such military edict, therefore, it might be of no force
outside of the actual military lines of the United States armies.

But the fact of freedom to many thousands of slaves by reason of this
war, and the inevitable speedy breaking down of the institution of
slavery as one of the consequences to slaveholders of their mad folly,
are beyond dispute, and assure us of the wise Providence of Him who
maketh even the wrath of man to praise Him, and the remainder of wrath
He will restrain.




VIRGINIA.


One of the most curious and interesting results of that eclectic spirit
which has brought into suggestive relations the different spheres of
human knowledge and inquiry, is the application of geographical facts to
historical interpretation. The comprehensive researches of Ritter and
the scientific expositions of Humboldt enable us to recognize the vast
influence of local conditions upon social development, and to account
for the peculiar traits of special civilization by the distribution of
land and water, and the agency of climate and position. In the calm
retrospect of the present crisis of our national history, when the
philosopher takes the place of the partisan and the exciting incidents
of the present are viewed in the chastened light of the past, it will be
seen and felt that a kind of poetical justice and moral necessity made
Virginia the scene of civil and physical strife. Of all the States, she
represents, both in her annals and her resources, her scenery, and her
social character, the average national characteristics: natives of each
section of the land find within her limits congenial facts of life and
nature, of manners and industry: like her Southern sisters, she has
known all the consequences of slavery--but at certain times and places,
free labor has thriven; commerce and agriculture, the miner, the
mariner, the tradesman, not less than the planter, found therein scope
for their respective vocations; the life of the sea coast, of the
mountains, and of the interior valleys--the life of the East, West, and
Middle States was there reproduced in juxtaposition with that of the
South. Nowhere in the land could the economist more distinctly trace the
influence of free and slave labor upon local prosperity: nowhere has the
aristocratic element been more intimately in contact with the
democratic. Her colonial record indicates a greater variety in the
original population than any other province: she has given birth to more
eminent statesmen, has been the arena of more fierce conflicts of
opinion, and is associated most directly with problems of government, of
society, and of industrial experiment. On her soil were first landed
African captives; and when the curse thus entailed was dying out, it was
renewed and aggravated by the inducement to breed slaves for the cotton
and sugar plantations. From Virginia flowed the earliest stream of
immigration to the West, whereby a new and mighty political element was
added to the Republic: there are some of the oldest local memorials of
American civilization: for a long period she chiefly represented
Southern life and manners to the North: placed between the extremes of
climate--producing the staples of all the States, except those bordering
on the Gulf--earlier colonized, prominent in legislation, fruitful in
eminent men, she was more visited by travellers, more written about,
better known, and therefore gathered to and grafted upon herself more of
the rich and the reckless tendencies and traits of the country; and
became thus a central point and a representative State--which destiny
seems foreshadowed by her physical resources and her local situation.
Except New England, no portion of our country has been more fully and
faithfully illustrated as to its scenery, domestic life, and social
traits, by popular literature, than Virginia. The original affinity of
her colonial life with the ancestral traditions of England, found apt
expression in Spenser's dedication of his peerless allegory to
Elizabeth, wherein the baptism of her remote territory, in honor of her
virginal fame, was recognized. The first purely literary work achieved
within her borders was that of a classical scholar, foreshadowing the
long dependence of her educated men upon the university culture of Great
Britain; and those once admired sketches of scenery and character which
gave to William Wirt, in his youth, the prestige of an elegant writer,
found there both subjects and inspiration; while the American school of
eloquence traces its early germs to the bar and legislature of the Old
Dominion, where the Revolutionary appeals of Patrick Henry gave it a
classic fame. The most prolific and kindhearted of English novelists,
when he had made himself a home among us and looked round for a
desirable theme on which to exercise his facile art, chose the
Southampton Massacre as the nucleus for a graphic story of family life
and negro character. The 'Swallow Barn' of Kennedy is a genuine and
genial picture of that life in its peaceful and prosperous phase, which
will conserve the salient traits thereof for posterity, and already has
acquired a fresh significance from the contrast its pleasing and naive
details afford to the tragic and troublous times which have since almost
obliterated the traces of all that is characteristic, secure, and
serene. The physical resources and amenities of the State were recorded
with zest and intelligence by Jefferson before Clinton had performed a
like service for New York, or Flint for the West, or any of the numerous
scholars and writers of the Eastern States for New England. The very
fallacy whereon treason based her machinations and the process whereby
the poison of Secession was introduced into the nation's life-blood,
found exposition in the insidious fiction of a Virginian--Mr. George
Tucker--secretly printed years ago, and lately brought into renewed
prominence by the rebellion. 'Our Cousin Veronica,' a graceful and
authentic family history, from the pen of an accomplished lady akin to
the people and familiar with their life, adds another vivid and
suggestive delineation thereof to the memorable illustrations by Wirt,
Kennedy, and James; while a score of young writers have, in verse and
prose, made the early colonial and the modern plantation and waterplace
life of the Old Dominion, its historical romance and social and scenic
features, familiar and endeared; so that the annals and the aspects of
no State in the Union are better known--even to the local peculiarities
of life and language--to the general reader, than those of Virginia,
from negro melody to picturesque landscape, from old manorial estates to
field sports, and from improvident households to heroic beauties; and
among the freshest touches to the historical and social picture are
those bestowed by Irving in some of the most charming episodes of his
'Life of Washington.'

When the river on whose banks was destined to rise the capital of the
State received the name of the English monarch in whose reign and under
whose auspices the first settlers emigrated, and the Capes of the
Chesapeake were baptized by Newport for his sons Charles and Henry, the
storm that washed him beyond his proposed goal revealed a land of
promise, which thenceforth beguiled adventure and misfortune to its
shores. Captain John Smith magnified the scene of his romantic escape
from the savages: 'Heaven and earth,' he wrote, 'seemed never to have
agreed better to frame a place for man's commodious and delightful
habitation.' To the wonderful reports of majestic forests, rare wild
flowers, and strange creatures, such as the opossum, the hummingbird,
the flying squirrel, and the rattlesnake--to the pleasures of the chase,
and the curious traits of aboriginal life--were soon added the
attractions of civic immunities and possibilities--free trade, popular
legislative rule, and opportunities of profitable labor and social
advancement. Ere long, George Sandys, a highly educated employée of the
Government, was translating Ovid on the banks of the James river;
industry changed the face of the land; a choice breed of horses, the
tobacco culture, hunting, local politics, hospitality--churches after
the old English model, manor houses with lawns, bricks, and portraits
significant of ancestral models, justified the pioneer's declaration
that Virginia 'was the poor man's best country in the world.' Beautiful,
indeed, were the natural features of the country as described by the
early travellers; auspicious of the future of the people as it expanded
to the eye of hope, when the colony became part of a great and free
nation. Connected at the north and east, by thoroughfare and
watercourse, with the industrial and educated States of New England, the
fertile and commercial resources of New York, and the rich coal lands
and agricultural wealth of Pennsylvania; Maryland and the Atlantic
providing every facility to foreign trade, and the vast and then
partially explored domains of Kentucky and Ohio inviting the already
swelling tide of immigration, and their prolific valleys destined to be
the granary of the two hemispheres--all that surrounded Virginia seemed
prophetic of growth and security within, the economist and the lover of
nature found the most varied materials; with three hundred and
fifty-five miles of extent, a breadth of one hundred and eighty-five,
and a horizontal area of sixty-five thousand six hundred and twenty-four
square miles--one district embracing the sea coast to the head of
tidewater, another thence to the Blue Ridge, a third the valley region
between the latter range and that of the Alleghanies, and a fourth the
counties beyond them--every kind of soil and site, from ocean margin to
river slope, from mountain to plain, are included within her limits:
here, the roads stained with oxides, indicative of mineral wealth;
there, the valleys plumed with grain and maize; the bays white with
sails; the forest alive with game; lofty ridges, serene nooks, winding
rivers, pine barrens, alluvial levels, sterile tracts, primeval
woods--every phase and form of natural resource and beauty to invite
productive labor, win domestic prosperity, and gratify the senses and
the soul. Rivers, whose names were already historical--the James, the
York, the Rappahannock, the Potomac, and the peaceful Shenandoah,
flowing through its beautiful valley and connecting the base of the Blue
Ridge with the Potomac; Chesapeake bay, a hundred and ninety miles from
its entrance through Maryland and Virginia, on the one side, and the
Roanoke, finding an outlet in Albemarle sound, while the Kanawha and
Monongahela, as tributaries of the Ohio, on the other, keep up that
communication and natural highway which links, in a vast silver chain,
the separate political unities of the land. The hills ribbed with fine
marble and pierced by salubrious springs; picturesque natural bridges,
cliffs, and caves, described with graphic zeal by Jefferson, and the
wild and mysterious Dismal Swamp, sung by Moore; the tobacco of the
eastern counties, the hemp of lands above tidewater, the Indian corn,
wheat, rye, red clover, barley, and oats, of the interior, and the fine
breeds of cattle and horses raised beyond the Alleghany--are noted by
foreign and native writers, before and immediately after the Revolution,
as characteristic local attractions and permanent economical resources;
and with them glimpses of manorial elegance, hospitality, and
culture--which long made the life and manners of the State one of the
most congenial social traditions of the New World.

Yet, as if prophetic of the long political issues of which she was
destined to be the scene of conflict, the colonial star of Virginia was
early obscured by misfortune. When John Smith left her shores for the
last time in 1609, discontent and disaster had already marred the
prospects of the new settlement; and, in half a year, Gates, Somers,
Newport arrived to find but sixty colonists remaining, and they resolved
to abandon the enterprise; but on encountering Delaware, they were
induced to return, and Jamestown was again the scene of life and labor.
Ten years of comparative success ensued; and then one hundred and sixty
poor women were imported for wives, at a cost of about the same number
of pounds of tobacco; but simultaneously with this requisite provision
for domestic growth and comfort, the germ of Virginia's ruin came: a
Dutch vessel entered the James river, bringing twenty African captives,
which were purchased by the colonists. Two years later the Indians made
a destructive foray upon the thriving village; the king became alarmed
at the freedom of political discussion, dissolved the Virginia company,
and appointed a governor and twelve councillors to rule the
province;--the father's policy was followed by Charles the First, many
of whose zealous partisans found a refuge from Cromwell in the province.
At last came the Revolution and the Union. Meantime slavery was dying
out; its abolition was desired; and had free labor then and there
superseded it, far different would have been the destiny of the fair
State; whose western portion affords such a contrast to that wherein
this blight induced improvidence and deterioration, the tokens whereof
were noted by every visitor in the spare and desultory culture of the
soil, the neglected resources, the dilapidated fences and dwellings, and
the absence of that order and comfort which inevitably attaches to
legitimate industry and self-reliance. This melancholy perversion of
great natural advantages was the result of slave breeding for the
Southern market. Otherwise Virginia would have continued the prosperous
development initiated in her colonial days. The exigencies of the cotton
culture, rendered immensely profitable by a mechanical invention which
infinitely lessened the cost of preparing the staple for the market, had
thus renewed and prolonged the original and fast-decaying social and
political bane of a region associated with the noblest names and most
benign prospects. Chief-Justice Marshall aptly described to an English
traveller this sad and fatal transition:

     'He said he had seen Virginia the leading State for half his life;
     he had seen her become the second, and sink to be the fifth. Worse
     than this, there was no arresting her decline if her citizens did
     not put an end to slavery; and he saw no signs of any intention to
     do so, east of the mountains at least. He had seen whole groups of
     estates, populous in his time, lapse into waste. He had seen
     agriculture exchanged for human stock breeding; and he keenly felt
     the degradation. The forest was returning over the fine old
     estates, and the wild creatures which had not been seen for
     generations were reappearing; numbers and wealth were declining,
     and education and manners were degenerating. It would not have
     surprised him to be told that on that soil would the main battles
     be fought when the critical day should come which he foresaw.'

That day it is our lot to behold. Forced at the point of the bayonet to
arrogate to herself the illegal claims she had vainly sought to
establish by popular suffrage, as reserved rights, in 1787, and the
resolutions of 1798, the Secession Ordinance was nominally passed and
summarily enforced, despite the protests of the citizens and the
withdrawal of the western counties; and thus the traitors of the Cotton
States made Virginia the battle field between slaveocracy and
constitutional government. As early as 1632 a fierce controversy for
territorial rights occurred on the Chesapeake, when that portion of
Virginia, now Maryland, was brought into dispute by Claiborne, who began
to trade, notwithstanding the grant which Lord Baltimore had secured:
this, the first conflict between the whites, and two Indian massacres,
made desolate the region so lately devastated by the civil war. Nor was
the original enjoyment of remarkable political rights coincident with
American independence; for, while Charles the Second was an exile, and
Parliament demoralized, the fugitive king still held nominal sway in
Virginia; and when the flight of Richard Cromwell left the kingdom
without a head, that distant colony was ruled by its own assembly, and
enjoyed free suffrage and free trade: then came what is called Bacon's
rebellion--an effective protest against oppressive prohibitions. Nor did
these civil discords end with the Restoration; many old soldiers of
Cromwell emigrated to Virginia, and, under their auspices, an
insurrection 'against the tobacco plot' was organized; and this was
followed by numerous difficulties in home legislation, by violent
controversies with royal governors; deputies continually were sent to
England to remonstrate with the king against 'intolerable grants' and
the exportation of jailbirds. Their despotic master over the sea
appropriated the lands of the colonists, while their own representatives
monopolized the profits; cruel or obstinate was the sway of Berkeley,
Spottwood, Dinwiddie, and Dunmore; and after the people had succumbed as
regards military opposition, they continued to maintain their rights by
legislative action. Under James the Second, Lord Howard repealed many of
these conservative acts and prorogued the House of Burgesses. A respite,
attested by glad acclaim, marked the accession of William and Mary, and
the recall of Howard. Andros was sent over in 1692. The skirmish with
Junonville initiated the French war and introduced upon the scene its
most hallowed name and character, when Colonel Washington appeared first
as a soldier, strove in vain against the ignorance and self-will of
Dinwiddie, and shared Braddock's defeat, to be signally preserved for
the grandest career in history.

And when the war of the Revolution gave birth to the nation, not only
was Virginia the native State of its peerless chief, but some of its
memorable scenes and heroes there found scope; Steuben and Lafayette
there carried on military operations, there the traitor Arnold was
wounded, Hamilton and Rochambeau gained historic celebrity, and there
the great drama was closed by the surrender of Cornwallis. In the
debates incident to the adoption of the Federal Constitution, there was
manifested in Virginia that jealousy of a strong central government,
which thwarted the wise advocacy and ignored the prophetic warnings of
the best statesmen, thereby confirming the fundamental error destined,
years after, to give facility to treasonable usurpation: the
Constitution was only ratified, at last, by a majority of ten. In the
war of 1812, Hampton, Craney Island, White House, and various places on
and near the Potomac, since identified with fierce encounters and forays
in the war of the rebellion, witnessed gallant deeds in behalf of the
Republic. In 1829 a convention assembled in Virginia to modify the
Constitution. Long having the most extensive territory and largest
slaveholders, the aristocratic element disturbed and overmastered
democratic principles. During Cromwell's rule, when virtually
independent, Virginia proffered a fleet to the fugitive monarch; who,
when restored, in gratitude ordered her arms to be quartered with those
of England, Scotland, and Ireland; in exile even accepted her invitation
to migrate thither and assume the privileges of royalty: coins of the
Old Dominion yet testify this projected despotism. Instead of Dissenters
as in New England, Quakers as in Pennsylvania, or Romanists as in
Maryland, Virginia, from her earliest colonization, was identified with
the Church of England. It was regarded, says one of her historians, as
an 'unrighteous compulsion to maintain teachers; and what they called
religious errors were deeply felt during the regal government:' the
children of the more prosperous colonists were sent to England to be
educated; their pursuits and habits, on returning, were unfavorable to
study; and, therefore, the advantage thus gained was, for the most part,
confined to 'superficial good manners,' and the ideal standard attained
that of 'true Britons and true churchmen;' the former was a more
cherished distinction there than elsewhere in America. In 1837 was
copied from a tombstone in an old-settled part of the State, this
inscription: 'Here lyes the body of Lieut. William Harris, who died May
ye 16, 1608--a good soldier, husband, and neighbor: _by birth a
Briton_.' In these facts of the past and normal tendencies we find ample
means and motives to account for the anomalous political elements
involved in the history--social and civic--of Virginia. While boasting
the oldest university where four Presidents of the United States were
educated, she sustained a slave code which was a bitter satire on
civilized society: the law of entail long prevailed in a community
ostensibly democratic, and only by the strenuous labors of Jefferson was
church monopoly abolished. It is not surprising, in the retrospect, that
her roll of famous citizens includes the noblest and the basest names
which illustrate the political transitions of the land; the architects
and subverters of free polity, the magnanimous and the perfidious. When
the ameliorating influence of time and truth had, in a degree,
harmonized the incongruous elements of opinion and developed the
economical resources, while they liberalized the sentiments and
habitudes of the people; when, says Caines, 'slavery, by exhausting the
soil, had eaten away its own profits, and the recolonization by free
settlers had actually begun, came suddenly the prohibition of the
African slave trade, and nearly at the same time, the vast enlargement
of the field for slavery, by the purchase of Louisiana; and these two
events made Virginia again profitable as a means of breeding for
exportation and sale at the South.

The future geographer who elaborately applies the philosophy of that
science, as interpreted by its modern professors, to our own history,
will find in the events of the last few years in Virginia the richest
and most impressive illustrations of local and physical causes in
determining political and social destinies. Between the eastern and
western portion of that State it will be demonstrated that nature placed
irreconcilable barriers to the supremacy of slave labor and slave
property; and the economical value of each will be shown thus and there
tested with emphatic truth; so that by the laws of physical geography
the first effect of an appeal to arms to maintain the one, was to
alienate, as a civic element, the other, and give birth to a new State,
by virtue of the self assertion incident to the violation of a normal
instinct and necessity of civilization.

What a change came over the scene when the grave civic interests so long
and recklessly involved in the conflict of opinion were submitted to the
arbitrament of battle! Along the river on whose shores the ashes of
Washington had slept for more than half a century in honored security,
batteries thundered upon each passing craft that bore the flag of the
nation: every wood became a slaughter pen, every bluff a shrine of
patriotic martyrdom; bridges were destroyed and rebuilt with alacrity;
the sentinel's challenge broke the stillness of midnight; the earth was
honeycombed with riflepits; campfires glowed on the hills; thousands
perished in the marshes; creeks were stained with human blood; here sank
the trench; there rose a grave mound or a fortress; pickets challenged
the wanderer; every ford and mountain pass witnessed the clash of arms
and echoed with the roar of artillery; the raid, the skirmish, the
bivouac, the march, and the battery successively spread desolation and
death; Arlington House, full of peaceful trophies, once dear to national
pride, was the headquarters of an army; balloons hung in the sky, whence
the movements of the foe were watched. Gaps and junctions were contested
unto death; obscure towns gained historic names and bloody memories; and
each familiar court-house and village came to be identified with
valorous achievements or sanguinary disaster.

And this land of promise, this region which so long witnessed the
extremes of political magnanimity and turpitude, this arena where the
vital question of labor, as modified by involuntary servitude, and free
activity, found its most practical solution--was, and is, legitimately,
appropriately, and naturally, the scene of the fiercest strife for
national existence--where the claims and the climax of freedom and faith
culminated in all the desolation of civil war. A more difficult country
for military operations can scarcely be imagined. Early in the struggle
it was truly said:

     'Virginia is the Switzerland of the continent--a battle field every
     three miles--a range of hills streaming where Hill may retire five
     miles by five miles till he reaches Richmond--a conquest,
     undoubtedly, if the North perseveres, but won at such a cost and
     with such time as to prolong unnecessarily the struggle. The
     Richmond of the South lies in the two millions of blacks that are
     within the reach of cannon of our gunboats in the rivers that empty
     into the Gulf.'

How wearisome the delays and how constant the privations of the army of
occupation in such a region, wrote an experienced observer:

     'Dwelling in huts, surrounded by a sea of mud, may appear to be
     very romantic--on paper--to some folks, but the romance of this
     kind of existence with the soldiers soon wears away, and to them
     any change must necessarily be for the better; they therefore hail
     with delight, as a positive relief, the opportunity once more to
     practise their drill which the recent change of weather has
     afforded them. For the last three months, the time of the soldier
     has passed heavily enough, with the long winter nights, and little
     else to relieve the monotony of his life but stereotyped guard
     duty.'

It would require volumes to describe the ravages of war in Virginia: let
a few pictures, selected from sketches made on the spot, indicate the
melancholy aspect of a domain, a few weeks or months before smiling in
peace and productiveness. The following facetious but faithful
statement, though confined to a special, applies to many districts:

     'The once neat court-house stands by the roadside a monument to
     treason and rebellion, deprived of its white picket fence, stripped
     of window blinds, cases, and dome, walls defaced by various
     hieroglyphics, the judge's bench a target for the 'expectorating'
     Yankee;' the circular enclosure occupied by the jury was besmeared
     with mud, and valuable documents, of every description, scattered
     about the floor and yard--it is, indeed, a sad picture of what an
     infatuated people will bring upon themselves. In one corner of the
     yard stands a house of records, in which were deposited all the
     important deeds and papers pertaining to this section for a
     generation past. When our advance entered the building, they were
     found lying about the floor to the depth of fifteen inches or more
     around the doorsteps and in the dooryard. It is impossible to
     estimate the inconvenience and losses which will be incurred by
     this wholesale destruction of deeds, claims, mortgages, etc. I
     learned that a squadron of exasperated cavalry, who passed this way
     not long since, committed the mischief. The jail across the way,
     where many a poor fugitive has doubtless been imprisoned for
     striking out for freedom, is now used as a guardhouse. As I write,
     the bilious countenance of a culprit is peeping through the iron
     grates of a window, who, may be, is atoning for having invaded a
     henroost or bagged an unsuspecting pig. Our soldiers have rendered
     animal life almost extinct in this part of the Old Dominion.
     Indeed, wherever the army goes, there can be heard on every side
     the piercing wail of expiring pork, the plaintive lowing of a
     stricken bovine, or suppressed cry of an unfortunate gallinacious.'

Here is a scene familiar to many a Union soldier who gazed at sunset
upon the vast encampment:

     'Along the horizon a broad belt of richest amber spread far away
     toward north and south; and above, the spent, ragged rain clouds of
     deep purple, suffused with crimson, were woven and braided with
     pure gold. Slowly from the face of the heavens they melted and
     passed away as darkness came on, leaving the clear sky studded with
     stars, and the crescent moon shedding a soft radiance below. I
     climbed to the top of a hill not far off, and looked across the
     country. On every eminence, in every little hollow almost, were
     innumerable lights shining, some thick and countless as stars,
     indicating an encampment; others isolated upon the outskirts; here
     and there the glowing furnace of a bakery; the whole land as far as
     the eye could see looking like another heaven wherein some
     ambitious archangel, covetous of creative power, had attempted to
     rival the celestial splendors of the one above us. There was no
     sound of drum or fife or bugle; the sweet notes of the 'good-night'
     call had floated into space and silence a half hour before; only on
     the still air were heard the voices of a hand of negroes chanting
     solemnly and slowly, to a familiar sacred tune, the words of some
     pious psalm.'

We may realize the effect of the armed occupation upon economical and
social life by a few facts noted after a successful raid:

     'In the counties visited there were but few rebels found at home,
     except the very old and the very young. In nine days' travel I did
     not see fifty able-bodied men who were not in some way connected
     with the army. Nearly every branch of business is at a standstill.
     The shelves in stores are almost everywhere empty; the shop of the
     artisan is abandoned and in ruins. The people who are to be seen
     passively submit to all that emanates from Richmond without a
     murmur; they are for the most part simple minded, and ignorant of
     all that is transpiring in the great theatre about them. An
     intelligent-looking man in Columbia laughed heartily when told that
     Union troops occupied New Orleans--Jefferson Davis would let them
     know it were such the fact; and I could not find a man who would
     admit that the Confederates had ever been beaten in a single
     engagement. These people do not even read the Richmond papers, and
     about all the information they do obtain is what is passed about in
     the primitive style, from mouth to mouth. Before this raid they
     believed that the Union soldiers were anything but civilized
     beings, and were stricken with terror when their approach was
     heralded. Of six churches seen in one day, in only one had there
     been religious services held within six months. One half at least
     of the dwelling houses are unoccupied, and fast going to decay.'

Not all the land is ill adapted to cool actions and strategy; there are
sections naturally fortified, and these have been the scenes of military
vicissitudes memorable, extreme, picturesque, and fatal. Here is an
instance:

     'There is no town in the United States which exhibits more
     deplorably the ravages of war than Harper's Ferry. More than half
     the buildings are in ruins, and those now inhabited are occupied by
     small dealers and peddlers, who follow troops, and sell at
     exorbitant prices, tarts and tinware, cakes and crockery, pipes and
     poultry, shoes and shirts, soap and sardines. The location is one
     of peculiar beauty. The Potomac receives the Shenandoah at this
     point; each stream flowing through its own deep, wild, winding
     valley, until it washes the base of the promontory, on the sides
     and summit of which are scattered the houses and ruins of the town.
     The rapids of the rivers prevent navigation, and make the fords
     hazardous. The piers of an iron bridge and a single section still
     remaining, indicate a once beautiful structure; and a pontoon
     substitute shows the presence of troops. An occasional canal boat
     suggests a still continued effort at traffic, and transport
     railcars prove action in the quartermaster's department. The
     mountains are 'high and hard to climb.' The jagged sides of slate
     rock rise vertically, in many places to lofty heights, inducing the
     sensation of fear lest they should fall, while riding along the
     road which winds under the threatening cliffs. The mountains are
     crowned with batteries, 'like diadems across the brow,' and the
     Hottentoty-Sibley tents dot the ridges like miniature anthills.'

But within and around the capital of Virginia cluster the extreme
associations of her history: these memories and memorials of patriotism
hallow the soil whereon the chief traitors inaugurated their infamous
rule; the trial of Burr and the burning of the theatre are social
traditions which make Richmond a name fraught with tragic and political
interest; her social and forensic annals are illustrious; and,
hereafter, among the many anomalies of the nation's history, few will
more impress the thoughtful reminiscent than that a city eminent for
social refinement and long the honored resort of the most eminent
American statesmen and jurists, the seat of elegant hospitality and the
shrine of national fame, was, for years, desecrated by the foulest
prisons, filled with brave American citizens, who were subjected to
insults and privations such as only barbarians could inflict, for no
cause but the gallant defence of the national honor and authority
against a slaveholders' rebellion.

But perhaps no coincidence is more impressive in the late experience of
a Union soldier in Virginia than the associations then and there
awakened by the recurrence of the anniversary of the birth of her
noblest son and our matchless patriot:

     'The 22d of February, 1863--the anniversary of Washington's
     birthday--will long be remembered,' writes one, 'by the Army of the
     Potomac. Encamped, as it is, on the very spot where he--'whom God
     made childless that a nation might call him father'--passed most of
     his youthful days, the thoughts of all naturally revert to the
     history of that great man, and particularly to that part of his
     early life, when, within the sacred precincts of home, a mother's
     care laid the foundation of that high moral character which in
     after life gave tone to both his civil and military career. Within
     one mile of the spot where I am now writing these lines, George
     Washington lived from the fourth to the sixteenth year of his age.
     The river, the hills, and dales, now so familiar to the soldiers
     composing this army, were the same then as to-day, and were the
     scene of his early gambols, his youthful joys and sorrows. Over
     these hills he wandered in the manly pursuits for which he was at
     that early period distinguished above his fellows, and which
     prepared him for enduring the hardships of the position he was
     destined to fill; here, too, is where tradition says he
     accomplished the feat of throwing a stone across the Rappahannock,
     and here, too, stood the traditional cherry tree, about the
     destruction of which with his little hatchet he would not utter a
     falsehood. Yonder, just across the Rappahannock, in a small,
     unostentatious burying ground, the immortal remains of 'Mary,
     mother of Washington,' were buried--sacred spot, now desecrated by
     the presence of the enemies of those principles which her honored
     son spent the energies of his life to establish for the benefit of
     all mankind. When we think for what Washington took up arms against
     the mother country, and what, by his example and teachings, he
     sought to perpetuate forever, and see the fratricidal hand raised
     to destroy the fair fabric he helped to rear, we feel something as
     though an omnipotent power would here intervene, and here on this
     sacred spot overthrow the enemies of this land without the further
     sacrifice of blood.'

Quite a different and more recent local association is thus recorded:

     'The second time that I stood here was nigh three years ago, when I
     spoke to you in relation to John Brown, then in a Virginia jail.
     How great the result of that idea which he pressed upon the
     country! Do you know with what poetic justice Providence treats
     that very town where he lay in jail when I spoke to you before? The
     very man who went down from Philadelphia to bring his body back to
     his sad relatives--insulted every mile of the road, his life
     threatened, the bullets whistling around his head--that very man,
     for eight or ten months, is brigadier-general in command of the
     town of Charlestown and Harper's Ferry. By order of his superior
     officers, he had the satisfaction of finding it his duty, with his
     own right hand, to put the torch to that very hotel into which he
     had been followed with insult and contumely, as the friend of John
     Brown; and when his brigade was under orders to destroy all the
     buildings of that neighborhood, with reverential care he bade the
     soldiers stop to spare that engine house that once sheltered the
     old hero. I do not know any history more perfectly poetic than of
     that single local instance given us in three short years. Hector
     Tindale, the friend of John Brown, who went there almost with his
     life in his right hand, commands, and his will is law, his sword is
     the guarantee of peace, and by his order the town is destroyed,
     with the single exception of that hall which John Brown's presence
     has rendered immortal.'

The graphic details furnished by the army correspondents to the daily
press of the North, reveal to us in vivid and authentic terms the change
which war has wrought in Virginia. The condition of one 'fine old
mansion' is that of hundreds. On the banks of the Rappahannock and in
the vicinity of Fredericksburg is, for instance, an estate, now called
the Lacy House, the royal grant whereof is dated 1690. The bricks and
the mason work of the main edifice are English; the situation is
beautiful; the furniture, conservatories, musical instruments, every
trait and resource suggest luxury. After the battle of Fredericksburg,
the Lacy House became a hospital: and a spectator of the scene thus
describes it:

     'The parlors, where so often had the fairest and brightest of
     Virginia's daughters, and her bravest and most chivalric sons, met
     to enjoy the hospitalities of the liberal host, and to join in the
     mazy dance 'from eve till rosy morn'--the dining room, where so
     many lordly feasts had been served--the drawing room, wherein the
     smiling host and hostess had received so many a welcome guest--the
     bed rooms, from the bridal chamber where the eldest scion of the
     house had first clasped in his arms the wife of his bosom, to the
     low attic where the black cook retired after her greasy labors of
     the day, all were closely crowded with the low iron hospital beds.
     These halls, which had so often reëchoed the sound of music, and of
     gayest voices, and also of those lower but more sacred tones that
     belong to lovers, now resounded with shrieks of pain, and with the
     lower, weaker groans of dying men.

     'The splendid furniture was put to strange uses--the sideboard of
     solid rosewood, made in those honest days before cabinet makers had
     learned the rogue's trick of veneering, instead of being crowded
     with generous wines, or with good spirits that had mellowed for
     years in the cellars, was now crowded in every shelf with
     forbidding-looking bottles of black draughts, with packages of salt
     and senna, and with ill-omened piles of raking pills, perhaps not
     less destructive in their way than shot and shell of a more
     explosive sort. The butler's pantry and store rooms had their
     shelves and drawers and boxes filled, not with jellies and
     marmalades and preserves, and boxes of lemons and preserved ginger
     and drums of figs, and all sorts of original packages of all sorts
     of things toothsome and satisfying to the palate--but even her
     scammony and gamboge, and aloes and Epsom salts, and other dire
     weapons, only wielded by the medical profession, had obtained
     exclusive sway.

     'On many a retired shelf, and in many an odd corner, too, I saw
     neglected cartridge boxes, cast-off belts, discarded caps, etc.,
     which told, not of the careless and heedless soldier, who had lost
     his accoutrements, but of the _dead_ soldier, who had gone to a
     land where it is to be hoped he will have no further use for Minié
     rifle balls or pipe-clayed crossbelts. I saw, too, with these other
     laid-aside trappings, dozens and hundreds of Minié and other
     cartridges, never now to be fired at an enemy by the hand that had
     placed them in the now discarded cartridge box.

     'The walls of the various rooms of the Lacy House, like those of
     most of the old houses in Virginia, are ceiled up to the top with
     wood, which is painted white. There is a heavy cornice in each
     room; there are the huge old-fashioned fireplaces, the marble
     mantelpieces over the same, and in the main dining room, where it
     was the custom for the men to remain after dinner, and after the
     ladies had retired, was a curious feature to be observed, that I
     have never seen but once or twice. Over the marble mantel, but
     quite within reach, runs a mahogany framework intended for the
     reception of the toddy glasses, after the various guests shall have
     finished the generous liquor therein contained.

     'There are still some vestiges of the family furniture
     remaining--some rosewood and mahogany sideboards, tables,
     bedsteads, etc., which the family have not been able to remove, and
     which the occupying soldiers have found no use for. The most
     notable of these articles is a musical instrument, which may be
     described as a compound harp-organ. It is, in fact, an upright
     harp, played by keys which strike the wires by a pianoforte action,
     which has an ordinary piano keyboard. This is, in fact, the
     earliest form of the modern pianoforte. Then, in the same
     instrument is an organ bellows and pipes, the music from which is
     evoked by means of a separate keyboard, the bellows is worked by a
     foot treadle, like that most detestable abomination known to
     moderns as a melodeon. Thus, in the same instrument, the performer
     is supposed to get the powers and effect both of an upright piano
     and a small organ. It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to say that
     this instrument (which, doubtless, originally cost at least $3,000)
     is now utterly useless, the wires, many of them, being broken, and
     the whole machine being every way out of order. The maker's name is
     set down as 'Longman & Broderup, 26 Cheapside, No. 13 Haymarket,
     London.' The poor old thing has doubtless been in the Lacy House
     for more than a hundred years. It has been rudely dragged from its
     former place of honor, and now stands in the middle of the floor.
     The spot it formerly occupied has been lately filled by a hospital
     bed, on which a capital operation was performed. The spouting blood
     from the bleeding arteries of some poor patient has covered the
     wall with crimson marks. In fact, everywhere all over the house,
     every wall and floor is saturated with blood, and the whole house,
     from an elegant gentleman's residence, seems to have been suddenly
     transformed into a butcher's shamble. The old clock has stopped;
     the child's rocking horse is rotting away in a disused balcony; the
     costly exotics in the garden are destroyed, or perhaps the hardiest
     are now used for horse posts. All that was elegant is wretched; all
     that was noble is shabby; all that once told of civilized elegance
     now speaks of ruthless barbarism.'

Take another illustration--that of the incongruous juxtaposition of old
family sepulchres and fresh soldiers' graves--the associations of the
past and the sad memorials of recent strife even among the dead:

     'Yesterday,' writes a thoughtful observer, from near Stafford Court
     House, in December, 1862, 'for the first time since leaving
     Harper's Ferry, I met with an evidence of the old-time aristocracy,
     of which the present race of Virginians boast so much and possess
     so little. About four miles from here, standing remote and alone in
     the centre of a dense wood, I found an antiquated house of worship,
     reminding one of the old heathen temples hidden in the recesses of
     some deep forest, whither the followers after unknown gods were
     wont to repair for worship or to consult the oracles. On every side
     are seen venerable trees overtowering its not unpretentious
     steeple. The structure is built of brick (probably brought from
     England), in the form of a cross, semi-gothic, with entrances on
     three sides, and was erected in the year 1794. On entering, the
     first object which attracted my attention was the variously carved
     pulpit, about twenty-five feet from the floor, with a winding
     staircase leading to it. Beneath were the seats for the attendants,
     who, in accordance with the customs of the old English Episcopacy,
     waited upon the dominie. The floor is of stone, a large cross of
     granite lying in the centre, where the broad aisles intersect. To
     to the left of this is a square enclosure for the vestrymen, whose
     names are written on the north side of the building. The reader, if
     acquainted with Virginia pedigrees, will recognize in them some of
     the oldest and most honorable names of the State--Thomas Fitzhugh,
     John Lee, Peter Hedgman, Moot Doniphan, John Mercer, Henry Tyler,
     William Mountjoy, John Fitzhugh, John Peyton. On the north hall are
     four large tablets containing Scriptural quotations. Directly
     beneath is a broad flagstone, on which is engraved with letters of
     gold, 'In memory of the House of Moncure.' This smacks of royalty.
     Parallel to it lies a tombstone with the following inscription:

            *       *       *       *       *

     Sacred to the memory of William Robison, the fourth son of H. and
     E. Moncure, of Windsor Forest, born the 27th of January, 1806, and
     died 13th of April, 1828, of a pulmonary disease, brought on by
     exposure to the cold climate of Philadelphia, where he had gone to
     prepare himself for the practice of medicine. Possessed of a mind
     strong and vigorous, and of a firmness of spirit a stranger to
     fear, he died manifesting that nobleness of soul which
     characterized him while living, the brightest promise of his
     parents, and the fondest hopes of their afflicted family.

            *       *       *       *       *

     'Led, doubtless, by the expectation of discovering buried
     valuables, some one has removed the stone from its original
     position, and excavated the earth beneath. Close by the entrance on
     the north side are three enclosed graves, where sleep those of
     another generation. The brown, moss-covered tombstones appear in
     strong contrast to a plain pine board at the head of a fresh-made
     grave alongside, and bearing the following inscription: 'Henry
     Basler, Company H, One Hundred and Eighteenth Pennsylvania
     Volunteers.'

Loyal during the civil war of England, virtually an independent State
under Cromwell, it is the remarkable destiny of Virginia, so called in
honor of Queen Elizabeth's unmarried state, to have given birth to the
spotless chief who conducted to a triumphant issue the American
Revolution--to the orator who, more than any individual, by speech alone
kindled the patriotic flame thereof--to the jurist whose clear and
candid mind and sagacious integrity gave dignity and permanence to
constitutional law--and to the statesman who advocated and established
the democratic principle and sentiment which essentially modified and
moulded the political character and career of the Republic, and he was
the author of that memorable Declaration of Independence which became
the charter of free nationality. From 1606, when three small vessels,
with a hundred or more men, sailed for the shores of Virginia under the
command of Christopher Newport, and Smith planned Jamestown, to the last
pronunciamento of the rebel congress of Richmond, the documentary
history of Virginia includes in charter, code, report, chronicle, plea,
and protest, almost every possible element and form of political
speculation, civic justice, and seditious arrogance: and therein the
philosopher may find all that endears and hallows and all that
disintegrates and degrades the State as a social experiment and a moral
fact: so that of all the States of the Union her antecedents, both noble
and infamous, indicate Virginia as the most appropriate arena for the
last bitter conflict between the great antagonistic forces of civil
order with those of social peace and progress. There where Washington, a
young surveyor, became familiar with toil, exposure, and responsibility,
he passed the crowning years of his spotless career; where he was born,
he died and is buried; where Patrick Henry roamed and mused until the
hour struck for him to rouse, with invincible eloquence, the instinct of
free citizenship; where Marshall drilled his yeoman for battle, and
disciplined his judicial mind by study; where Jefferson wrote his
political philosophy and notes of a naturalist; where Burr was tried,
Clay was born, Wirt pleaded, Nat Turner instigated the Southampton
massacre, Lord Fairfax hunted, and John Brown was hung, Randolph
bitterly jested, and Pocahontas won a holy fame--there treason reared
its hydra head and profaned the consecrated soil with vulgar insults and
savage cruelty; there was the last battle scene of the Revolution and
the first of the Civil War; there is Mount Vernon, Monticello, and
Yorktown, and there also are Manassas, Bull Run, and Fredericksburg;
there is the old graveyard of Jamestown and the modern Golgotha of Fair
Oaks; there is the noblest tribute art has reared to Washington, and the
most loathsome prisons wherein despotism wreaked vengeance on
patriotism; and on that soil countless martyrs have offered up their
lives for the national existence, whose birth-pangs Virginia's peerless
son shared, and over whose nascent being he kept such holy and intrepid
vigil, bequeathing it as the most solemn of human trusts to those
nearest to his local fame, by whom, with factious and fierce scorn, it
has been infamously betrayed on its own hallowed ground; whose best
renown shall yet be that it is the scene, not only of Freedom's
sacrifice, but of her most pure and permanent triumph.




SHE DEFINES HER POSITION.


  Lingering late in garden talk,
    My friend and I, in the prime of June.
  The long tree-shadows across the walk
    Hinted the waning afternoon;
  The bird-songs died in twitterings brief;
    The clover was folding, leaf on leaf.

  Fairest season of all the year,
    And fairest of years in all my time;
  Earth is so sweet, and heaven so near,
    Sure life itself must be just at prime.
  Soft flower-faces that crowd our way,
    Have you no word for us to-day?

  Each in its nature stands arrayed:
    Heliotropes to drink the sun;
  Violet-shadows to haunt the shade;
    Poppies, by every wind undone;
  Lilies, just over-proud for grace;
    Pansies, that laugh in every face.

  Great bloused Peonies, half adoze;
    Mimulus, wild in change and freak;
  Dainty flesh of the China Rose,
    Tender and fine as a fairy's cheek;
  (I watched him finger the folds apart
    To get at the blush in its inmost heart.)

  Lo, at our feet what small blue eyes!
    And still, as we looked, their numbers came
  Like shy stars out of the evening skies,
    When the east is gray, and the west is flame.
  --'Gather yourself, and give to me,
    Those Forget-me-nots,' said he.

  Word of command I take not ill;
    When love commands, love likes to obey.
  But, while my words my thoughts fulfil,
    'Forget me not,' I will not say.
  Vows for the false; an honest mind
    Will not be bound, and will not bind.

  In your need of me I put my trust,
    And your lack of need shall be my ban;
  'Tis time to remember, when you must;
    Time to forget me, when you can.
  Yet cannot the wildest thought of mine
  Fancy a life distuned from thine.

  ... Small reserve is between us two;
    'Tis heart to heart, and brain to brain:
  Bare as an arrow, straight and true,
    Struck his thought to my thought again.
  'Not distuned; one song of praise,
  First and third, our lives shall raise.'

  Close we stood in the rosy glow,
    Watching the cloudland tower and town;
  Watching the double Castor grow
    Out of the east as the sun rolled down.
  'Yonder, how star drinks star!' said he;
  'Yield thou so; live thou in me.'

  Nay, we are close--we are not one,
    More than those stars that seem to shine
  In the self-same place, yet each a sun,
    Each distinct in its sphere divine.
  Like to Himself art thou, we know;
  Like to Himself am I also.

  What did He mean, when He sent us forth,
    Soul and soul, to this lower life?
  Each with a purpose, each a worth,
    Each an arm for the human strife.
  Armor of thine is not for me;
  Neither is mine adjudged by thee.

  Now in the lower life we stand,
    Weapons donned, and the strife begun;
  Higher nor lower; hand to hand;
    Each helps each with the glad 'Well done!'
  Each girds each to nobler ends;
  None less lovers because such friends.

  So in the peace of the closing day,
    Resting, as striving side by side,
  What does He mean? again we say;
    For what new lot are our souls allied?
  Comes to my ken, in Death's advance,
  Life in its next significance.

  See yon tortoise; he crossed the path
    At noon, to hide where the grass is tall;
  In a slow half sense of the sun-king's wrath,
    Burrowing close to the garden wall.
  --Think, could we pour into that dull brain
  A man's whole life, joy, thought, and pain!

  So, methinks, is the life we lead,
    To the larger life that next shall be:
  Narrow in thought, uncouth in deed;
    Crawling, who yet shall walk so free;
  Walking, who yet on wings shall soar;
  Flying, who shall need wings no more.

  Lo, in the larger life we stand;
    We drop the weapons, we take the tools:
  We serve with mind who served with hand:
    We live by laws who lived by rules.
  And our old earth-love, with its mortal bliss,
  Was the fancy of babe for babe, to this.

  ... Visions begone! Above us rise
    The worlds, on His work majestic sent.
  Floating below, the small fireflies
    Make up a tremulous firmament.
  Stars in the grass, and roses dear,
  Earth is full sweet, though heaven is near.




WHIFFS FROM MY MEERSCHAUM.


I have that same old meerschaum yet--the same that I clasped to my lips
in the days that are gone, and through whose fragrant, wavy clouds, as
they floated round my head, I saw--sometimes clear and bright, sometimes
dimmed by a mist of rising tears--visions of childhood's joyous hours,
of schoolboy's days, of youth, with its vague dreams and longings, of
early manhood, and its high hopes and proud anticipations.

I smoke it still, though the tobacco be not always the choicest--for one
cannot be fastidious in the army, and sutlers do not keep much of an
assortment--and still it brings me sweet dreams, though of a different
color.

Yes, old and tried friend, times have greatly changed in the few years
that we have been together. Sons have been torn from fond parents;
brothers have snatched hasty kisses from tearful sisters, and marched
off to the tap of the drum with firm step and flashing eyes, while,
beneath, the heart beat low and mournfully; young men and maidens, in
the rosy flush of dawning love, have parted in sadness, but proudly
facing the duty and bravely trusting the future and the eternal Right.
Over many a noble fellow, on the bloody fields of Shiloh and Antietam
and Stone River, the wings of the death-angel have fallen; at many a
hearthstone there is mourning for the brave that are dead on the field
of honor--though it is a royal sorrow, and a proud light gleams through
the fast-falling tears.

But you and I, my faithful comrade, are together still. Next to my heart
I have carried you many a weary league; many a dreary and, but for you,
comfortless night we have bivouacked together. Time and roughing it have
made their marks on both of us. Scars mar your polished face, now
changed from spotless white to rich autumnal russet; and mine, too, the
sun, and wind, and other smoke than that of Orinoko have darkened. You
have lost your ornamental silver cap, and amber-mouthed stem, and I my
polished two-storied 'tile' and the tail of my coat. But never mind; if
we are battered and bruised, and scratched and scarred, and knocked
around till the end of time, we will never lose our identity; and if we
live till I am as bald as you are, we will always be good friends. Won't
we, old boy, eh?

And the old boy murmurs an unqualified assent.

Puff! puff! Your face lights up as brightly, and your fragrant breath
comes as freely here by the campfire, as when we were at home, and had
our slippered feet upon the mantelpiece before the old-fashioned
'Franklin,' and were surrounded by our books and our pictures, and the
numerous _little things_, souvenirs, perhaps valueless in themselves,
but highly prized, and reluctantly left to the tender mercies of the
thoughtless and unappreciating.

And it is these _little things_ that the soldier misses most and most
frequently longs for. It is not the feather bed or the warm biscuits
that he thinks of, but that dainty little penwiper, with his initials
worked in it, and those embroidered slippers, that _she_ gave him. He
would not give a contractor's conscience for sweet milk; but he would
like to have his smoking cap.

I once seriously thought of sending home for a certain _terra cotta_
vase for holding cigars--a mantelpiece ornament; but I happened to
remember that I had cigars very seldom, and a mantelpiece not at all,
and concluded not to send.

Many of these little things the young soldier will bring from home with
him, in spite of the pooh-poohs of practical parents, and carry with
him, in spite of the sneers of thoughtless comrades. I know a fellow who
carries in his breast pocket the withered, odorless skeleton of a
bouquet, that was given him on the day he left home, and who will carry
it till he returns, or till it is reddened with his blood. And when I
see a man, in the face of ridicule and brutal scoffing, through long
marches and weary days of dispiriting labor, clinging with fond tenacity
to some little memento of the past, I set him down as a man with his
heart in the right place, who will do his country and God good service
when there is need. And--it is well to practise what one admires in
others--I confess that I have a smoking cap that I have often packed
into my knapsack, at the expense of a pair of socks; and I would rather
have left out my only shirt that was off duty than that it should have
failed to go with me. Yes, dear girls, your little presents, perhaps
forgotten by you, by us are fondly cherished; and around them all hover,
like the perfume of fresh flowers, fragrant memories of the merry days
gone by, and dreams of starry eyes and laughing lips, of floating
drapery and flashing jewels, and moonlit summer nights in the dear
Northland.

May your eyes ne'er grow dim, nor your smiles fade away!




LITERARY NOTICES.


     LEVANA; or, The Doctrine of Education. Translated from the
     German of JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER, Author of 'Flower,
     Fruit, and Thorn Pieces, 'Titan,' 'Walt and Vult,' etc., etc.
     Boston: Ticknor & Fields. For sale by D. Appleton & Co., New York.

The mere annunciation of a book, as yet unknown to the American public,
from the pen of Jean Paul Richter, will be sufficient to awaken the
attention of all cultivated readers. He who has read and loved one book
of this marvellous writer, will not easily rest until he has read them
all. He is known in Germany as Jean Paul der Einzige,--Jean Paul, the
Only--and it is true that he is the unimitated and the inimitable. He is
_utterly_ unlike Shakspeare, and yet more like him in his grand
charities and breadth of range than like any other author. He is the
'Only,' the genial, the humorous, the pathetic, the tender, the satiric,
the original, the erudite, the creative--the poet, sage, and scholar.
But we might exhaust ourselves in expletives, and yet fail to give any
idea of his rich imagery, his wonderful power, his natural and tender
pathos. Besides, who does not already know him as a really great writer,
through the appreciative criticisms of Thomas Carlyle?

'Levana' is a work on Education, written as Jean Paul alone could write
it. In order to give our readers some idea of the nature of the subjects
treated therein, we place before them a part of the table of contents:
Importance of Education; Proof that Education Effects Little; Spirit and
Principle of Education; To Discover and Appreciate the Individuality of
the Ideal Man; On the Spirit of the Age; Religious Education; The
Beginning of Education; The Joyousness of Children; Games of Children;
Children's Dances; Music; Commands, Prohibitions, Punishments, and
Crying; Screaming and Crying of Children; On the Trustfulness of
Children; On Physical Education; On the Destination of Women; Nature of
Women; Education of Girls; Education of the Affections; On the
Development of the Desire for Intellectual Progress; Speech and Writing;
Attention and the Power of Adaptive Combination; Development of Wit;
Development of Reflection, Abstraction, and Self-Knowledge; On the
Education of the Recollection--not of the Memory; Development of the
Sense of Beauty; Classical Education, etc., etc.

We have often wondered why this book was not given to American readers;
it was published in England, in its English dress, at least ten years
ago. It addresses itself to parents, treating neither of national nor
congregational education; it elevates neither state nor priest into
educator; but it devolves that duty where the interest ought ever to be,
on the parents, and particularly on the mother. In closing the preface
to this book, Baireuth, May 2, 1806, Jean Paul says: 'It would be my
greatest reward if, at the end of twenty years, some reader, as many
years old, should return thanks to me, that the book which he is then
reading was read by his parents.'

May this work find many readers, and true, appreciative admiration.


     FLOWER, FRUIT, AND THORN PIECES; or, The Married Life,
     Death, and Wedding of the Advocate of the Poor, Firmian Stanislaus
     Siebenkäs. By JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. Translated from
     the German by EDWARD HENRY NOEL. With a Memoir of the
     Author by THOMAS CARLYLE. Ticknor & Fields: Boston. For
     sale by D. Appleton & Co., New York.

Scarcely had we finished our few remarks on the 'Levana' of Jean Paul,
when we were called upon to welcome another work from the same loved
hand. We have long known and prized 'Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces.'
The writings of Richter have humanity for their text, and it has always
been a matter of astonishment to us that they were not more widely known
in this country. His style is peculiar, it is true, but it is the
peculiarity of originality, never of affectation. His illustrations are
drawn from every source, from science, art, history, biography, national
manners, customs, civilized and savage; his imagery is varied,
exquisite, and natural, and his religion embraces all creeds and sects.
He is the preacher of immortal hopes, of love to God, and all-embracing
human charities. His plots are merely threads to string his pearls,
opals, and diamonds upon. We prefer him greatly to the cold, worldly,
and classic Goethe. His works always have a meaning, for he was a lofty
and original thinker. He was colossal and magnanimous both as man and
writer. Carlyle says of him: 'His intellect is keen, impetuous,
far-grasping, fit to rend in pieces the stubbornest materials, and
extort from them their most hidden and refractory truth. In his Humor he
sports with the highest and lowest; he can play at bowls with the Sun
and Moon. His Imagination opens for us the Land of Dreams; we sail with
him through the boundless Abyss; and the secrets of Space, and Time, and
Life, and Annihilation hover round us in dim, cloudy forms; and
darkness, and immensity, and dread encompass and overshadow us. Nay, in
handling the smallest matter, he works it with the tools of a giant. A
common truth is wrenched from its old combinations, and presented to us
in new, impassable, abysmal contrast with its opposite error. A trifle,
some slender character, some jest, quip, or spiritual toy, is shaped
into the most quaint, yet often truly living form; but shaped somehow as
with the hammer of Vulcan, with three strokes that might have helped to
forge an Ægis. The treasures of his mind are of a similar description
with the mind itself; his knowledge is gathered from all the kingdoms of
Art, and Science, and Nature, and lies round him in huge unwieldy heaps.
His very language is Titanian; deep, strong, tumultuous; shining with a
thousand hues, fused from a thousand elements, and winding in
labyrinthic masses.' We recommend Jean Paul to universal study; he will,
in spite of all his grotesque and broken arabesques, amply repay it.

     BROKEN COLUMNS. Sheldon & Co., 335 Broadway, New York.

An anonymous novel, by one who says: 'I shall not say I have not
aforetime walked openly in the highway of literature, but on this
occasion the public must indulge me with the use of a thick veil; a
veil, albeit, which will allow me to observe whether smiles or frowns
mark the public countenance.'

The author will without doubt find both smiles and frowns on the faces
he would regard. His characters are novel, the situations eccentric, the
denouements unexpected. Love is made the solvent and reformer of vice.
The sinner seems not actually depraved, but ever ready to return to the
path of virtue. Forgiveness is the elixir of reformation and
regeneration. Charity controls the inner life. The work contains
passages of great beauty, though the style is often broken and rugged.
It is philanthropic, and full of pity for the erring. We fail to
understand the characters, because we have never seen coarse vice
associated with tenderness and refinement. It is true, as our author
says, that 'in seeking the reclamation of our fellow creatures, we are
nothing less than co-workers with God.' But it is a solemn task, and
charity itself is subject to the laws of eternal justice.

     THE OLD MERCHANTS OF NEW YORK CITY. By WALTER
     BARRETT, Clerk. Second Series. Carleton, publisher, 413
     Broadway, New York.

The first series of this book had a circulation so extensive that its
author gives to the world another volume. The motto of the work seems to
be, 'The crowning city--whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers
are the _honorable_ of the earth.' It is not a series of biographies,
but light, gossiping sketches of persons, things, manners, the
eccentricities of noted men, the transfers of well-known pieces of
property, the changes in firms, the improvements in streets and
buildings, the gradual extension of old and the introduction of new
branches of trade and business, the intermarriages of families, etc.,
etc. To those familiar with the business habits of New York, acquainted
with its localities, interested in the origin and early history of its
mercantile families, of whom the book contains many personal anecdotes,
we presume it will prove amusing and entertaining.

     VINCENZO; or, Sunken Rocks. A Novel, by JOHN
     RUFFINI, Author of 'Doctor Antonio,' 'Lavinia,' etc. Carleton,
     publisher, 413 Broadway, New York.

'Dr. Antonio' had many admirers both here and in England, and is already
in the second edition. The scene of Vincenzo is laid in Italy, during
the progress of the Italian Revolution. The 'Sunken Rocks' are the
widely differing religious and political views of husband and wife; and
our author closes his tale in saying: 'Would to God, at least, that the
case of the Candias was an isolated one! But no; there is scarcely any
corner in Europe that does not exhibit plenty of such, and worse. God
alone knows the number of families whose domestic peace has been, of
late years, seriously damaged, or has gone to wreck altogether on those
very rocks so fatal to Vincenzo.' Alas! that the present civil war
should have given birth to much of the same domestic alienation and
bitterness in our own midst as we find portrayed in the novel before us.
Suffering of this kind, real and severe, exists among ourselves,
saddening the heart of many a woman, and paralyzing the exertions of
many a man who would else be patriotic and loyal.

     PIQUE. A Novel. Loring, publisher, 319 Washington street,
     Boston. For sale by Oliver S. Fell, 36 Walker street, New York.

We have no doubt that this book will excite considerable attention in
the novel-reading world. It is in all probability destined to become as
popular as the one of which, without being any imitation, it frequently
reminds us--we mean 'The Initials.' The characters portrayed in 'Pique'
develop themselves through the means of spirited conversations, arising
from the surrounding circumstances--conversations always natural and
without exaggeration. The pages are never dull, the story being varied
and full of interest. It is a tale of the affections, of the home
circle, of jealousies, misconceptions, perversions, feelings, the
incidents growing naturally out of the defects and excellences of the
individuals depicted. The scene is laid in England; the local coloring
and characters being thoroughly English. Modern life and modern traits
are portrayed with considerable skill and cleverness. The moral tone is
throughout is unexceptionable. We commend 'Pique' to all lovers of
refined, spirited, and detailed home novels.

     MEDITATIONS ON LIFE AND ITS RELIGIOUS DUTIES. Translated
     from the German of Zschokke. By FREDERICA ROWAN. Boston:
     Ticknor and Fields, 1863. For sale by D. Appleton & Co., New York.

The tendency of these 'Meditations' is eminently practical, and the
subjects treated are of universal application and interest. The
translation is dedicated to Princess Alice, of England, now of Hesse,
and is well executed, preserving the beauty and simplicity of the
original, and supplying a need frequently felt in current religious
literature, where vague reveries too often usurp the place of sensible
counsel and life-improving suggestions.

     PETER CARRADINE; or, The Martindale Pastoral By
     CAROLINE CHESEBRO'. Sheldon &, Company, 335 Broadway.
     Gould & Lincoln, Boston.

We have not yet had time to read this 'Pastoral' for ourselves, but it
is highly commended by Marion Harland, author of 'Alone.' 'The story is
confined within the limits of a country neighborhood, but there is
variety of character, motive, and action. You are reminded that the
authoress writes with a purpose, as well as a power, that the earnest,
God-fearing soul of the philanthropist has travailed here for the good
of her kind, not the mere 'sensation' romancist writer for the
entertainment of an idle hour.' We quote from Marion Harland.

     EXCURSIONS. By HENRY D. THOREAU, Author of
     'Walden,' and 'A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.' Boston:
     Ticknor & Fields. For sale by D. Appleton & Co., New York.

Henry David Thoreau was a man of decided genius, and an ardent lover of
nature. His eye was open to beauty, and his ear to music. He found
these, not in rare conditions, but wheresoever he went. He was sincerity
itself, and no cant or affectation is to be found in his writings. He
was religious in his own way; incapable of any profanation, by act or
thought, although his original living and thinking detached him from the
social religious forms. He thought that without religion no great deed
had ever been accomplished. He was disgusted with crime, and no worldly
success could cover it. He loved nature so well, and was so happy in her
solitude, that he became very jealous of cities and the sad work which
their refinements and artifices made with man and his dwelling. The axe
was always destroying his forest. 'Thank God,' he said, 'they cannot cut
down the clouds.'

We have taken the above traits from the exceedingly interesting
biographical sketch introducing this book, from the masterly hand of
R. W. Emerson. The writings of Thoreau are the result of his character,
modelled from and colored by the tastes and habits of his daily life.
Nature lives in his pages. We know of no more delightful reading. He
says: 'A truly good book is something as natural, and as unexpectedly
and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a wild flower discovered on the
prairies of the West or in the jungles of the East. Where is the
literature which gives expression to nature? He would be a poet who
could impress the winds and streams into his service, to speak for him;
who nailed words to their primitive senses, as farmers drive down stakes
in the spring, which the frost has heaved; who derived his words as
often as he used them--transplanted them to his page with earth adhering
to their roots; whose words were so true, and fresh, and natural that
they would appear to expand like buds at the approach of spring, though
they lay half-smothered between two musty leaves in a library--aye to
bloom and bear fruit there, after their kind, annually, for the faithful
reader, in sympathy with surrounding nature.'

Such a poet is Thoreau, and fair and perfect as the wild flowers of the
prairies are his 'good books.' In the above extract he has himself
described them. Who knows not his 'Autumnal Tints,' and 'Wild Apples,'
and who has ever read them without loving them? Theodore Winthrop's
'Life in the Open Air,' 'Out-door Papers,' by T. W. Higginson, and
'Excursions,' by H. D. Thoreau, are books which could only have been
written in America, and of which an American may justly feel proud. They
are in themselves a library for the country, and we heartily commend
them to all who love nature and the fresh breath of the forest.

     THE GREAT STONE BOOK OF NATURE. By DAVID THOMAS
     ANSTED, M. A., F. R. S., F. G. S., etc. Late Fellow of Jesus
     College, Cambridge; Honorary Fellow of King's College, London.
     Published by George W. Childs, 628 and 630 Chestnut Street,
     Philadelphia, 1863. Received per favor of C. T. Evans, 448
     Broadway, New York.

To popularize scientific knowledge is one of the most difficult of
tasks. Men of real science are rarely willing to spare the necessary
time, and the work is ordinarily undertaken by a class of pseudo
savants, who have just acquired that little learning which is so
dangerous a thing. Deductions and results are all that can be set before
the people, who are unable to follow scientific processes, and who are
hence liable to receive impressions, the truth or error of which must
depend upon the fairness and logical acumen of the individual mind
addressing them. The work before us is evidently written by one
thoroughly conversant with the subject under consideration, and the
author seems careful to assert no fact or affirm no conclusion not
strictly warranted by actual research. Solid works of this kind ought to
be warmly welcomed, and as such we recommend the above to our reading
community.

     REMAINS IN VERSE AND PROSE, OF ARTHUR HENRY HALLAM. With a
     Preface and Memoir. Ticknor & Fields, Boston.

Arthur Henry Hallam possessed the friendship of one who ranks high among
the living poets of England--Tennyson. How bitterly the poet felt his
death, he has himself testified in his 'In Memoriam,' a book which has
many admirers both in England and America. The image of young Hallam
hovers like a lovely shadow over these yearning poems devoted to the
memory of the regretted friend; his 'Remains,' will enable us to
understand why he excited a love so tender and respectful, and left so
deep a grief for his loss when he passed away. 'From the earliest years
of this extraordinary young man, his premature abilities were not more
conspicuous than an almost faultless disposition, sustained by a more
calm self-command than has often been witnessed in that season of life.
The sweetness of temper that distinguished his childhood, became, with
the advance of manhood, an habitual benevolence, and ultimately ripened
into that exalted principle of love toward God and man, which animated
and almost absorbed his soul during the latter period of his life, and
to which his compositions bear such emphatic testimony.'

The 'Remains' of such a spirit cannot fail to be interesting. We were
especially pleased with the 'Oration on the Influence of Italian Works
of Imagination on the same class of compositions in England.' The great
Italians seldom receive their full meed of praise, either from the
English or ourselves. Some very mature remarks are also made upon the
influence of German mind upon English literature.

     THE REJECTED WIFE. By Mrs. ANN S. STEPHENS,
     Author of 'Fashion and Famine,' 'The Old Homestead,' 'Mary
     Derwent,' &c. T. B. Peterson & Brothers, Chestnut street,
     Philadelphia.

A novel in which are depicted the early days of Benedict Arnold. The
characters are well drawn and sustained, and the tale one of
considerable interest. The fright and agony of the fair, young, deserted
wife are delicately and skilfully drawn; most of the scenes in which she
is introduced are full of nature and simple pathos. The pictures of
Puritan manners, lives, and thoughts, are graphic and truthful. We
commend the book to all lovers of a good, pure, domestic novel.

     PINNEO'S ANALYTICAL GRAMMAR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
     Designed for Schools. By T. S. PINNEO, M. A., M. D.,
     Author of 'Primary Grammar,' 'Hemans Reader,' &c. Revised and
     enlarged. New York: Clark, Austin & Smith; Cincinnati: W. B. Smith
     & Co.

This work is intended to succeed the author's 'Primary Grammar,' being,
however, complete in itself. It presents a full view of the
well-established principles of the English language, in their practical
bearing on _analysis_ and _construction_. No space is wasted on the
discussion of curious or unimportant points, which, however interesting
to the critical student, always encumbers an elementary work. Simplicity
in definitions, examples, exercises, and arrangement, has been carefully
studied. The exercises are full and numerous; a large portion of them
designed to teach, at the same time, the _nature_, _properties_, and
_relations_ of words, and the _analysis_ and _construction_ of
sentences.

'Model Class-Books on the English Language have been produced by
Professor Pinneo, and they should be adopted as standard text-books in
the schools of the United States.'-_Educational Reports_.

     THE BRITISH AMERICAN. No. 6. October, 1863. A Monthly
     Magazine devoted to Literature, Science, and Art. Toronto: Rollo &
     Adams, publishers.

Contents: A Further Plea for British American Nationality, by Thomas
D'Arcy McGee; The Maple; A Tale of the Bay of Quinte; Longfellow and his
Poetry; The Cited Curate; The Labradorians; Margaret; The Settler's
Daughter; Song; Historical Notes on the Extinct Tribes of North
America--The Mascoutens--The Neuters--The Eastern Range of the Buffalo;
Sonnet to the Humming Bird; Reviews; The British Quarterlies; The
British Monthlies; American Periodicals, &c., &c.

     THE MASSACHUSETTS TEACHER: A Journal of School and Home
     Education. Resident Editors: Charles Ansorge, Dorchester; Wm. T.
     Adams, Boston; W. E. Sheldon, West Newton, New Series, October,
     1863. Boston: Published by the Massachusetts Teachers' Association,
     No. 119 Washington street, Boston.




EDITOR'S TABLE.


THE LAW OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT.

In the articles contributed to our pages, we do not always exact a
precise conformity to our own views. If we are satisfied with the
general scope and tendency of thought presented by respectable writers
who appear in their own names, we do not care to make known any minor
differences of opinion, or to criticise what we consider the errors of
their productions. Nevertheless, we suppose that a calm and friendly
expression of our own thoughts, on any subject discussed in our pages,
will not be out of place or unkindly received in any quarter.

In the very able and interesting article in our last number, by Mr.
Freeland, that writer announced the doctrine that 'the social,
political, religious, and scientific development of the world proceeds
under the operation of two grand antagonistic principles,' which he
calls respectively, 'Unity,' and 'Individuality.' 'The first of these,'
he says, 'tends to bring about coöperation, consolidation, convergence,
dependence; the second to produce separation, isolation, divergence, and
independence. Unity is the principle which tends to order; Individuality
to freedom.'

We are prepared to admit the existence and operation of these principles
as stated. They constitute the active tendencies of society, and they
perform in the social world precisely what the antagonistic forces of
attraction and repulsion do in the physical. They are the principles of
aggregation and organization, as well as of agitation, conflict, and all
revolutionary or progressive activity. In a more perfect state of
development, they will exhibit themselves as the centripetal and
centrifugal forces of a beautiful system arrived at that stage of
regulated motion which constitutes a stable equilibrium.

But while we admit the universal operation of these two principles, we
think Mr. Freeland has made a serious mistake in the application of
them,--a mistake which seems to run through his entire essay, and to
pervade the whole system of his philosophy. We shall venture upon a
brief criticism, solely with the view of eliminating truth. The
question, though somewhat abstract in its nature, is to us of the
highest interest; and we shall ever be ready to yield our position, when
convinced that it is erroneous and untenable.

We find what we consider the exceptionable doctrine in the following
passage: 'Unity is allied to the affections, which are synthetic in
their character; Individuality, to the intellect, which is mainly
analytical and disruptive in its tendency. Unity is predominant in
religion, which is static in its nature; Individuality to science, which
is primarily disturbing. In the distribution of the mental faculties,
Unity relates to the moral powers, and Individuality to the
intellectual; the former being, as both Mr. Buckle and Professor Draper
have shown, more stationary in their character than the latter. As in
this paragraph the 'affections' are placed in contrast with the
'intellect,' we suppose that by the former the writer intends to
designate the emotions or passions, thus making that most obvious
analysis of the mind into halves--the active impulses and moral
principles on the one hand, and the perceptive and reflective faculties
on the other. There is some little confusion of statement, in afterward
contrasting the 'moral powers' with the 'intellectual;' but we imagine
that the same general classification is intended, although not quite
defined with philosophical accuracy.

If we are correct in this interpretation of the language quoted, we do
not see how the emotional part of human nature can, in any general
sense, be said to be allied to unity. The passions are the basis of all
human agitation and conflict, and have been the cause of all the wars
which have engaged mankind during the past ages of the world. In the
early periods of history the selfish emotions have preponderated over
the benevolent. Hatred, ambition, avarice, have been superior to love,
humility, and charity. It is more than doubtful whether, even now, the
selfish passions of the human race are not still in the ascendant.

It may be said that, in the long run, the emotions tend to harmony, and
that the coöperative and benevolent feelings are continually approaching
their final and complete triumph. This is undoubtedly true; but it is
wholly attributable to the progress of the human intellect, which, day
by day, is demonstrating that man's emotional and moral nature can find
its highest enjoyment and its most perfect development only in the
complete subordination of the selfish and unsocial passions, to those
which promote universal toleration and brotherhood.

But if Mr. Freeland is wrong in the position that the primary tendency
of the passions is to unity, he seems to us equally far from scientific
truth when he asserts that intellect is 'disrupting' in its tendency,
and that science is primarily 'disturbing.' It is true the intellect has
the analytical faculty; but it is equally true that the opposite faculty
of generalization is that which most strongly characterizes it and
distinguishes reason from instinct. So far from analysis being the
earliest predominant tendency of the intellect, almost all its most
familiar and ordinary acts are those of synthesis. In all the phenomena
of perception, the separate sensations are combined by an act of the
judgment into the concrete ideas of form and substance, while the
highest and most permanent characteristic of science is in the
comprehensive attainment of general laws.

The simple truth of the whole case is, that the affections or passions
of men are the motive powers which impel them to action in every field
of human affairs. The intellect, on the contrary, dominates these motive
powers by its faculty of unfolding truth, foreseeing consequences,
exploring the path of practicable progress, and illuminating the objects
of rational desire to humanity. In the passions of men we have the two
antagonistic forces--the attraction and repulsion--the centripetal and
centrifugal tendencies--which ever antagonize each other, and through
all the conflicts and agitations of mankind, are tending to eventual
harmony. The moral faculty is a mere standard of right and wrong, which,
of course, remains comparatively fixed and permanent through all the
ages. The changes of opinion and action, in the sense of morality, are
due wholly to the difference of knowledge at successive periods. Just as
the intellect is capable of determining the bearing and consequences of
human action, and of fixing the intention with reference to such
consequences, will the moral character of such action be pronounced,
more or less correctly, according to the degree of enlightenment of the
parties concerned.

From this analysis it will be plainly seen, that all the force is in the
passions or desires of men. These are enlightened, and therefore
regulated by the intellect, and judged by the moral faculty according to
the consequences foreseen and intended. Ideas alone have the power of
organization. The passions attend upon ideas as their ministers and
servants. Beliefs, which represent the ideas or knowledge prevalent at
successive periods in history, have controlled the destiny of men and
nations, and all human passions have been marshalled and arrayed in
conformity with them.

The error of Mr. Freeland, we respectfully submit, is in placing the
intellect and the passions in antagonism with each other, while, in
truth, it is one passion, or one class of passions, which antagonizes
another. The direction given to society by the predominating force of
all the individual propensities is retrogressive, stationary, or
progressive, revolutionary and destructive, or moderate and safe,
according to the knowledge of facts and the prevision of consequences
which may inform the judgments and enlighten the consciences of the
masses.

At periods of general ignorance and superstition, the announcement of a
great scientific or philosophic truth may produce commotion,
persecution, and discord. But it is evident that these are the results
of ignorance and not of knowledge--of unenlightened passion, and not of
the awakened intellect. Truth is attractive to all minds, and its
tendency is to invite universal assent. In so far, therefore, as the
intellect is capable of discovering truth, its tendency is to unify and
harmonize, and by no means to separate into disorder. In an age of
inquiry, the emancipation of thought may be attended with much
disturbance. The right of individual judgment will necessarily produce
conflict in the very act of emerging from the preceding state of
ignorance and restraint. The state of transition cannot be one of
tranquillity, although it is the inevitable path to a higher and more
complete harmony. But it is inaccurate and philosophically untrue, as we
think, to characterize the intellect as 'disturbing,' or 'disrupting.'
It is disturbing only to ignorance, and disrupting only to the systems
and organizations based upon falsehood.

We think these positions and brief discriminations are accurate, and not
to be overthrown by argument; and as they are fundamental, we have
thought it not improper to state them here, as the basis upon which we
accept the general reasoning of Mr. Freeland as to the law of human
development. Buckle and Draper are right as to the fixed character of
moral standards; but the progressive development of knowledge gives new
applications to moral principles, and requires their perpetual operation
and control. In this sense, morality keeps pace with knowledge, and
though dependent upon new truths for its own advancement, is
indispensable to the progress of mankind in the social benefits to be
derived from every intellectual acquisition.

       *       *       *       *       *

A musical example of a rhythm rare and difficult of treatment in
English--the dactylic.--ED.


GONE!

BY EARL MARBLE.

  Gone from the earth, in her innocence, purity,
    Gone, 'mong her bright sister angels to dwell;
  Gone, to explore the dark shades of Futurity,
    Gone to her final home! Sweet one, farewell!

  On this cold, freezing earth, sensitive, shivering,
    Standing but feebly before its chill blast;--
  Into the Future, her face with joy quivering,
    Into its warmth, its morn genial, at last!

  Gone from her earth-home, where all were but blessing her
    In the cold, heart-chilling language of earth;
  Now, in her heaven-home, all are caressing her,
    Not as the Clay, but the soul of New Birth!

  Slowly, the days which once fleeted so cheerily,
    Floated as though we could never know pain,
  Drag their dull length along, sadly and drearily,
    Wearily praying for Lethe in vain!

  Yet, though 'tis hard that the young and the beautiful,
    From loving hearts should be torn thus away,
  Still will we try to be patient and dutiful,
    Knowing that after the night comes the day.

       *       *       *       *       *


AËRONAUTICS.

Recent British papers and correspondents bring very pleasing accounts of
a balloon ascension, which took place in London on the 9th of October.
This adventure is the more interesting to us, from the fact that the
well-known and experienced aëronauts, Messrs. Coxwell and Glaisher, were
accompanied in their celestial excursion by several private individuals
of distinction, and among the rest by the Hon. Robert J. Walker, of this
country, whose able contributions have done so much to enhance the value
of THE CONTINENTAL. Some years ago, this gentleman had the
scientific curiosity to descend to the bottom of the sea, in a new
diving apparatus, just then invented; and recently he has been driven
through a tunnel on a railway, by the pneumatic process, which in
certain locations and conditions, will probably hereafter be substituted
for the ordinary power of the locomotive engine. He seems to be not only
ready to welcome all valuable improvements in science and mechanics, but
is ready himself to take the risks of dangerous exploration in the
pursuit of knowledge and for the promotion of progress.

But of all such adventures, that into the regions of the atmosphere is
by far the most interesting. Living immersed in this great ocean of air
and moisture which surrounds the earth, and is the theatre of all the
grand, beautiful, benignant, and often terrific phenomena of
meteorology, it is no more than a very natural curiosity which induces
us to seek by aërial exploration to understand its physical
peculiarities, and to make use of the vast resources which it will
doubtless soon afford to the genius and enterprise of the human race.

Until recently, we believe, it has been considered a settled fact, that
the atmosphere was limited to the height of about forty-five miles, that
being estimated as the limit at which the earth's attraction would be
balanced by the expansive force of the particles of air. But in this
problem there is an element of complication in the rotation of the
atmosphere with the earth on its axis. Near the surface, and for a great
distance upward, the air is but a part of the solid globe, or rather an
appendage to it, moving with it in all respects like the denser fluid
which constitutes the mighty ocean. But there must be a point in the
ascent upward, where the centrifugal force of the particles of air, in
the diurnal rotation, must over-balance the power of gravitation; and
from that limit, the motions of the atmosphere must be subject to a law
of a wholly different character--partaking of the nature of planetary
revolution, rather than of axial rotation. The latest speculations as to
the height of the atmosphere, seem to have reached only this degree of
certainty, viz., that it does not extend so far as the orbit of the
moon. Otherwise, it is argued, the superior attraction of that body, in
its immediate vicinity, would aggregate a considerable quantity of the
air about it, which would tend to retard the motions of the satellite in
its orbit, and of the earth on its axis; whereas, the revolutions and
rotations of both are known to have been uniform for a period as far
back as authentic observation extends.

But these speculations, however curious and interesting, are of no
practical importance. We shall never be able to traverse the air to any
great distance above the earth's surface. Independent of mechanical
difficulties, two great impediments will forever prevent the realization
of any such ambitions aspirations. These are the increase of cold and
decrease of pressure in the upper regions of the air, and the deficiency
of oxygen in the rarefied element for the support of animal life. It is
well known that at the earth's surface, the pressure on all parts of the
body, internal and external, by the weight of the superincumbent
atmosphere, is no less than 14½ pounds to every square inch. The
structure of the human body is physiologically conformed by nature to
this pressure, and it cannot survive with any very great change of this
amount, either by increase or diminution. When one descends into the
water, the pressure is doubled at about 32 feet of depth. In ascending
in the atmosphere, the pressure is diminished much less rapidly, of
course, but quite sensibly when the altitude becomes very great.

Messrs. Coxwell and Glaisher are said to have ascended in 1862 to a
height of seven and a half miles. One of these gentlemen became entirely
insensible from cold and want of oxygen, and the other very nearly so,
being obliged to open the valve of the balloon with his teeth for want
of the use of his hands.

Nature provides a partial remedy for the difficulty of breathing in the
upper regions of the atmosphere. In the effort to breathe, the lungs are
found to expand and to develop air cells not ordinarily used, so as to
bring a larger quantity of the rarefied air into contact with the blood.
It has been proposed to assist this effort of nature, and, in order to
enable the aëronaut to reach a greater altitude with safety, to carry up
in bags a supply of oxygen for breathing. As air is carried or forced
down into the water to enable the diver to breathe, so it may be
conveyed upward for the benefit of the aërial adventurer.

But with all possible expedients, it is not probable that man will ever
be able to get far away from the surface of the earth which is his
natural place of abode. If he can explore the lower strata immediately
adjoining his own theatre of action--the strata in which all the great
and important phenomena of meteorology take place--and if he can succeed
in traversing it at his pleasure with safety and some degree of
celerity, as we doubt not he will eventually, this great achievement
will subserve all the useful purposes possible to be derived from such
skill and knowledge.

The atmosphere will still be the vast reservoir of oxygen, nitrogen, and
carbon, from winch all living things in the air, on the earth, or in the
depths of the boundless ocean, whether animal or vegetable, draw far the
greater part of their nutriment. We can never reach the surface of this
atmospheric ocean, for that would be for us a region of inanity and
death; but there is scarcely a doubt that we shall freely use it in the
future for purposes of locomotion, at the same time that we breathe and
assimilate it as the very pabulum and substance of our mortal bodies.

       *       *       *       *       *

IN MEMORIAM!

  Far in the wood he lieth,
    Sleeping alone
  Where the wind of autumn sigheth,
    Making its moan,
  Where the golden beams are leaping
    Bright overhead,
  And the autumn leaves lie sleeping
    Over the dead,
  By the stream that runs forever,
    Hurrying past,
  'Neath the trees that bend and quiver
    Wild in the blast;--
  Deep in the wood he lieth,
    Under the sod,
  Where the wind of autumn sigheth,
    Alone--with his God.

                        E. W. C.

       *       *       *       *       *

The great question of the hour is, that of rebuilding the edifice of the
Republic, which has been rudely shaken and partly thrown down by the
rebellion. All patriotic hearts, in anticipation of the speedy close of
the war, are turned with intense interest to this important work.
Opinions divide upon this as upon all other great subjects, and we have
two antagonistic ideas, organizing their respective parties with
reference to it. One party maintains that the rebellious States have
forfeited all their rights, and can under no circumstances claim to be
recognized in their former relations, except on a re-admission into the
Union upon the terms prescribed by the Constitution for the admission of
new States. The other party denies that any of the States, as such, have
forfeited, or can forfeit any of their rights, and maintains the duty of
the Federal Government to protect all the States in their constitutional
integrity, to put down the rebellion within them, and to restore to them
the republican forms which have been violently overthrown.

In each of these positions, there seems to be a combination of truth and
error. So long as any State is in a belligerent and treasonable
attitude, disclaiming and repudiating her obligations under the
Constitution, she is obviously not entitled to the benefits of the
system which she thus assails and defies. The State being sustained in
rebellion by its whole people, it is vain to say the Government can only
regard the people as individuals, for these are the State, and must be
treated accordingly. But if, laying down her arms, or even after being
conquered, a State returns to her allegiance, to reject her demands
would be to admit that secession had been effectual. It would be a
recognition of the validity, if not of the rightfulness of the movement
which assumed to carry the State out of the Union.

On the other hand, to maintain that the State is still legally in the
Union, even at the moment of violent treason, and is still entitled to
claim her position and rights as such, would be equally, if not more
absurd and injurious to the nation. It is argued, that if there be any
true and loyal citizens in the State, however few, they are entitled to
the protection of the Federal Government, and the recognition of their
State as a member of the Union. This doctrine is unreasonable and
impracticable. Any theory which would carry us to the absurd extreme of
constituting a State of an inconsiderable number of men,--the paltry
minority of a large population--would not be more objectionable to the
good sense of the people, than irreconcilable with the fundamental
principles of our complex government. Such a minority, however small,
would be entitled to the protection and to the highest favor of the
Government; and if they could be built up into a power sufficiently
strong to maintain themselves in the State, then they would fairly be
entitled to claim full recognition. If, by the legitimate exercise of
its war powers, by the just restraint and punishment of treason, the
Federal Government can establish the real political ascendency of the
loyal part of the population, and thus actually restore the State
Government on a fair and substantial basis, even though it be placed in
the hands of a present minority, it would be fully justified in
recognizing this organization as a member of the old Union. But to set
up a mere sham, and pretend to rebuild a State on the basis of
inconsiderable numbers, against even the disloyal sentiments of the
great body of the people, would be unwise and unavailing. Such a
reconstruction would be hollow and deceptive, a danger and a snare,
forever threatening the tranquillity of the country.

The question is one of practical statesmanship; and the Government must
deal with it upon the principles of common sense, without embarrassing
itself by any mere theories which would be troublesome and inapplicable
in any emergency. How long after subjugation the Government will wait
for the return of any State to its allegiance, and what indications of
sincere loyalty will be accepted, as well as what fair and honorable
inducements will be held out to lure the erring population back into the
fold of the Union, are matters for the gravest consideration, and can
only be determined when the occasion for decision shall arise. To thrust
a State back into the Union, and clothe it with all its former
constitutional privileges, while the masses of its people are still
hostile to the Federal authority, would evince a degree of recklessness,
and even insanity, which, it is to be hoped, the Government will never
exhibit. But when a State is fit to return, and may properly and safely
be received, let her be welcomed cordially and heartily, without the
least reminiscence of her sad and disastrous error.

The true difficulty is not in the principle which is to control our
action in any given circumstances. That is sufficiently plain in itself;
it is only the application which is difficult. We cannot acknowledge the
equality and sisterhood of a State, which, though subdued, is still
hostile and not to be trusted in the Union: but we can and will receive
all those which truly accept the result of the war and honestly return
to their allegiance. We cannot create a State in the midst of a hostile
population, and maintain the sovereign right of an inconsiderable few
against the voice of the vast majority; but we can favor, encourage, and
build up the loyal minority when that is sufficiently important, so as
to make it the majority, and clothe it with the power of the
resuscitated State.

So long as there is no loyal State authority fairly representing the
people, the State must be considered as disabled, and its rights _in
abeyance_. There is no necessity of considering the State as
extinguished, while there is hope of a favorable change. To reduce the
States to the condition of territories would be an act of extreme
hostility, and could only be the ultimate result of incorrigible
treason, holding out against subjugation and against all the reasonable
inducements which can be offered to a rebellious people by a magnanimous
Government. We can never receive into the bosom of the Union a hostile
people, full of treason, and always ready for renewed mischief. Though
they be conquered in arms, we cannot compel their thoughts and
affections. Unless they yield these, force cannot win them; and we must
therefore hold the rein of control for our own security. The act of
recognition will be always determined by the will of the Federal
authorities. This right of decision necessarily places in their hands
the supreme control of those conditions which are necessary to our
future security.


END OF VOLUME IV.


       *       *       *       *       *


The peculiar taint or infection which we call SCROFULA lurks in
the constitutions of multitudes of men. It either produces or is
produced by an enfeebled, vitiated state of the blood, wherein that
fluid becomes incompetent to sustain the vital forces in their vigorous
action, and leaves the system to fall into disorder and decay. The
scrofulous contamination is variously caused by mercurial disease, low
living, disordered digestion from unhealthy food, impure air, filth and
filthy habits, the depressing vices, and, above all, by the venereal
infection. Whatever be its origin, it is hereditary in the constitution,
descending "from parents to children unto the third and fourth
generation;" indeed, it seems to be the rod of Him who says, "I will
visit the iniquities of the fathers upon their children." The diseases
which it originates take various names, according to the organs it
attacks. In the lungs, Scrofula produces tubercles, and finally
Consumption; in the glands, swellings which suppurate and become
ulcerous sores; in the stomach and bowels, derangements which produce
indigestion, dyspepsia, and liver complaints; on the skin, eruptive and
cutaneous affections. These all having the same origin, require the same
remedy, viz.: purification and invigoration of the blood. Purify the
blood, and these dangerous distempers leave you. With feeble, foul, or
corrupted blood, you cannot have health; with that "life of the flesh"
healthy, you cannot have scrofulous disease.


~AYER'S SARSAPARILLA~

Is compounded from the most effectual antidotes that medical science has
discovered for this afflicting distemper, and for the cure of the
disorders it entails. That it is far superior to any other remedy yet
devised, is known by all who have given it a trial. That it does combine
virtues truly extraordinary in their effect upon this class of
complaints, is indisputably proven by the great multitude of publicly
known and remarkable cures it has made of the following diseases:
~King's Evil or Glandular Swellings, Tumors, Eruptions, Pimples,
Blotches and Sores, Erysipelas, Rose or St. Anthony's Fire, Salt Rheum,
Scald Head, Coughs from tuberculous deposits on the lungs, White
Swellings, Debility, Dropsy, Neuralgia, Dyspepsia or Indigestion,
Syphilis and Syphilitic Infections, Mercurial Diseases, Female
Weaknesses~, and, indeed, the whole series of complaints that arise from
impurities of the blood. Minute reports of individual cases may be found
in AYER'S AMERICAN ALMANAC, which is furnished to the druggists
for gratuitous distribution, wherein may be learned the directions for
its use, and some of the remarkable cures which it has made when all
other remedies had failed to afford relief. Those cases are purposely
taken from all sections of the country, in order that every reader may
have access to some one who can speak to him of its benefits from
personal experience. Scrofula depresses the vital energies, and thus
leaves its victims far more subject to disease and its fatal results
than are healthy constitutions. Hence, it tends to shorten, and does
greatly shorten the average duration of human life. The vast importance
of these considerations has led us to spend years in perfecting a remedy
which is adequate to its cure. This we now offer to the public under the
name of AYER'S SARSAPARILLA, although it is composed of
ingredients, some of which exceed the best of _Sarsaparilla_ in
alterative power. By its aid you may protect yourself from the suffering
and danger of these disorders. Purge out the foul corruptions that rot
and fester in the blood; purge out the causes of disease, and vigorous
health will follow. By its peculiar virtues this remedy stimulates the
vital functions, and thus expels the distempers which lurk within the
system or burst out on any part of it.

We know the public have been deceived by many compounds of
_Sarsaparilla_ that promised much and did nothing; but they will neither
be deceived nor disappointed in this. Its virtues have been proven by
abundant trial, and there remains no question of its surpassing
excellence for the cure of the afflicting diseases it is intended to
reach. Although under the same name, it is a very different medicine
from any other which has been before the people, and is far more
effectual than any other which has ever been available to them.


~AYER'S CHERRY PECTORAL~

The World's Great Remedy for Coughs, Colds, Incipient Consumption, and
for the relief of Consumptive patients in advanced stages of the
disease.

This has been so long used and so universally known, that we need do no
more than assure the public that its quality is kept up to the best it
ever has been, and that it may be relied on to do all it has ever done.

Prepared by Dr. J. C. AYER & CO., PRACTICAL AND ANALYTICAL CHEMISTS
LOWELL, MASS.

[Illustration: pointing finger] Sold by all Druggists, everywhere.


       *       *       *       *       *


NOW COMPLETE.

THE NEW AMERICAN CYCLOPÆDIA,

A POPULAR DICTIONARY OF GENERAL KNOWLEDGE.

EDITED BY

GEORGE RIPLEY AND C. A. DANA,

ASSISTED BY A NUMEROUS BUT SELECT CORPS OF WRITERS.


The design of THE NEW AMERICAN CYCLOPÆDIA is to furnish the
great body of intelligent readers in this country with a popular
Dictionary of General Knowledge.

THE NEW AMERICAN CYCLOPÆDIA is not founded on any European
model; in its plan and elaboration it is strictly original, and strictly
American. Many of the writers employed on the work have enriched it with
their personal researches, observations, and discoveries; and every
article has been written, or re-written, expressly for its pages.

It is intended that the work shall bear such a character of practical
utility as to make it indispensable to every American library.

Throughout its successive volumes, THE NEW AMERICAN CYCLOPÆDIA
will present a fund of accurate and copious information on SCIENCE,
ART, AGRICULTURE, COMMERCE, MANUFACTURES, LAW, MEDICINE, LITERATURE,
PHILOSOPHY, MATHEMATICS, ASTRONOMY, HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, GEOGRAPHY,
RELIGION, POLITICS, TRAVELS, CHEMISTRY, MECHANICS, INVENTIONS, and
TRADES.

Abstaining from all doctrinal discussions, from all sectional and
sectarian arguments, it will maintain the position of absolute
impartiality on the great controverted questions which have divided
opinions in every age.


PRICE.

This work is published exclusively by subscription, in sixteen large
octavo volumes, each containing 750 two-column pages.

Price per volume, cloth, $3.50; library style, leather, $4; half
morocco, 4.50; half russia, extra, $5.


_From the London Daily News._

It is beyond all comparison the best,--indeed, we should feel quite
justified in saying it is the only book of reference upon the Western
Continent that has ever appeared. No statesman or politician can afford
to do without it, and it will be a treasure to every student of the
moral and physical condition of America. Its information is minute,
full, and accurate upon every subject connected with the country. Beside
the constant attention of the Editors, it employs the pens of a a host
of most distinguished transatlantic writers--statesmen, lawyers,
divines, soldiers, a vast array of scholarship from the professional
chairs of the Universities, with numbers of private literati, and men
devoted to special pursuits.


       *       *       *       *       *


  HOME
  INSURANCE COMPANY
  OF NEW YORK,
  OFFICE, 112 & 114 BROADWAY.


  CASH CAPITAL,                 $1,000,000.
  Assets, 1st Jan., 1860,       $1,458,396 28.
  Liabilities, 1st Jan., 1860,      42,580 43.


THIS COMPANY INSURES AGAINST LOSS & DAMAGE BY FIRE, ON FAVORABLE TERMS.

LOSSES EQUITABLY ADJUSTED & PROMPTLY PAID.

DIRECTORS:

  Charles J. Martin,
  A. F. Willmarth,
  William G. Lambert,
  George C. Collins,
  Danford N. Barney,
  Lucius Hopkins,
  Thomas Messenger,
  William H. Mellen
  Charles B. Hatch,
  B. Watson Bull,
  Homer Morgan,
  L. Roberts,
  Levi P. Stone,
  James Humphrey,
  George Pearce,
  Ward A. Work,
  James Lowe,
  I. H. Frothingham,
  Charles A. Bulkley,
  Albert Jewitt,
  George D. Morgan,
  Theodore McNamee,
  Richard Bigelow,
  Oliver E. Wood,
  Alfred S. Barnes,
  George Bliss,
  Roe Lockwood,
  Levi P. Morton,
  Curtis Noble,
  John B. Hutchinson,
  Charles P. Baldwin,
  Amos T. Dwight,
  Henry A. Hurlbut,
  Jesse Hoyt,
  William Sturgis, Jr.,
  John R. Ford,
  Sidney Mason,
  G. T. Stedman, Cinn.
  Cyrus Yale, Jr.,
  William R. Fosdick,
  F. H. Cossitt,
  David J. Boyd, Albany,
  S. B. Caldwell,
  A. J. Wills,
  W. H. Townsend.

CHARLES J. MARTIN, President. JOHN McGEE, Secretary. A. F. WILLMARTH,
Vice-President.

       *       *       *       *       *

~HUMPHREYS' SPECIFIC HOMOEOPATHIC REMEDIES~

Have proved, from the most ample experience, an entire success. ~Simple~,
Prompt, Efficient~, and ~Reliable~, they are the only medicines
perfectly adapted to ~FAMILY USE~, and the satisfaction they have
afforded in all cases has elicited the highest commendations from the
~Profession~, the ~People~, and the ~Press~.

                                                                    cts.
  No. 1. Cures Fever, Congestion & Inflammation                       25
   "    2.   "   Worms and Worm Diseases                              25
   "    3.   "   Colic, Teething, etc., of Infants                    25
   "    4.   "   Diarrhoea of Children & Adults                       25
   "    5.   "   Dysentery and Colic                                  25
   "    6.   "   Cholera and Cholera Morbus                           25
   "    7.   "   Coughs, Colds, Hoarseness and Sore Throat            25
   "    8.   "   Neuralgia, Toothache & Faceache                      25
   "    9.   "   Headache, Sick Headache & Vertigo                    25
   "   10.   "   Dyspepsia & Bilious Condition                        25
   "   11.   "   Wanting Scanty or Painful Periods                    25
   "   12.   "   Whites, Bearing Down or Profuse Periods              25
   "   13.   "   Croup and Hoarse Cough                               25
   "   14.   "   Salt Rheum and Eruptions                             25
   "   15.   "   Rheumatism, Acute or Chronic                         25
   "   16.   "   Fever & Ague and Old Agues                           50
   "   17.   "   Piles or Hemorrhoids of all kinds                    50
   "   18.   "   Ophthalmy and Weak Eyes                              50
   "   19.   "   Catarrh and Influenza                                50
   "   20.   "   Whooping Cough                                       50
   "   21.   "   Asthma & Oppressed Respiration                       50
   "   22.   "   Ear Discharges & Difficult Hearing                   50
   "   23.   "   Scrofula, Enlarged Glands & Tonsils                  50
   "   24.   "   General Debility & Weakness
   "   25.   "   Dropsy                                               50
   "   26.   "   Sea-Sickness & Nausea                                50
   "   27.   "   Urinary & Kidney Complaints                          50
   "   28.   "   Seminal Weakness, Involuntary
                 Dishcarges and consequent prostration             $1.00
   "   29.   "   Sore Mouth and Canker                                50
   "   30.   "   Urinary Incontinence & Enurisis                      50
   "   31.   "   Painful Menstruation                                 50
   "   32.   "   Diseases at Change of Life                        $1.00
   "   33.   "   Epilepsy & Spars & Chorea St. Viti                 1.00

  PRICE.

  Case of Thirty-five Vials, in morocco case, and Book, complete    $8.00
  Case of Twenty-eight large Vials, in morocco, and Book             7.00
  Case of Twenty large Vials, in morocco, and Book                   5.00
  Case of Twenty large Vials, plain case, and Book                   4.00
  Case of fifteen Boxes (Nos. 1 to 15), and Book                     2.00
  Case of any Six Boxes (Nos. 1 to 15), and Book                     1.00

      Single Boxes, with directions as above, 25 cents, 50 cents, or $1.

[Illustration: pointing finger] ~THESE REMEDIES, BY THE CASE OR SINGLE
BOX, are sent to any part of the country by Mail, or Express, Free of
Charge, on receipt of the Price.~ Address,

  ~DR. F. HUMPHREYS,
  562 BROADWAY, NEW YORK~


       *       *       *       *       *


~BANK LIBRARIES.~

Every well-managed Banking Institution has a Library, small or large, of
standard works on Banking, Bills, Notes, and upon collateral topics, for
the use of the president, cashier, officers, and directors. Such works
should be accessible to every Bank officer, and are especially useful to
the Bank Clerk who aims at advancement in his profession, and whose
services thereby are more valuable to the institution in which he is
employed.

For the convenience of subscribers to the Bankers' Magazine, the
following works are kept on hand at No. 63 WILLIAM STREET, and copies
will be furnished, either by mail or express, to order:

I. Historical and Statistical Account of the Foreign Commerce of the
United States, and of each State, for each year, 1820-1856; the Exports
to and Imports from every Foreign Country, each year, 1820-1856;
Commerce of the Early Colonies; Origin and Early History of each State
8vo., pp. 200. $1.50.

II. The Banking System of the State of New York, with notes and
references to adjudged cases; including an account of the New York
Clearing House. 2. A Historical Sketch of the former and present Banking
Systems of the State. 3. All the existing Statutes relating to Banking.
4. A List of all Banks chartered or established between the years 1791
and 1856. One vol. 8vo., pp. 440. $4.00.

III. A Cyclopædia of Commerce and Commercial Navigation. Edited by J.
Smith Homans, and by J. Smith Homans, Jr., B. S., Author of "An
Historical and Statistical Account of the Foreign Commerce of the U. S."
_Terms_--Muslin, $6; Sheep extra, $6.75; Half Calf extra, $8; Sheep
extra, 2 vols., $8; Law Sheep, 2 vols, $8; Half Calf extra, 2 vols,
$8.75. In one volume octavo, 2000 pages, double columns, containing more
than three volumes of the Encyclopædia Britannica.

IV. A Manual for Notaries Public and Bankers--Containing a History of
Bills of Exchange; Forms of Protest and Notices of Protest; the Laws of
each State in reference to Interest, Damages on Bills, &c.; the latest
decisions upon Bills, Notes, Protests, &c. 1 vol., octavo, pp. 220. $2
(or by mail, postage prepaid, $2.25).

V. The Loan, Revenue, and Currency Acts of 1863. I. An Act to Provide
Ways and Means for the Support of the Government, to June,
1864.--Approved March 3, 1863. II. An Act Amendatory of the Internal
Revenue Laws, and for other purposes.--Approved March 3, 1863. III. An
Act to Provide a National Currency, secured by a Pledge of United States
Stocks, and to provide for the Circulation and Redemption
thereof.--Approved February 25, 1863. With Marginal Notes and an Index.

VI. Fourteen Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, in
reference to Taxation of Government Securities by States and
Cities--including the celebrated cases of--1. "MCCULLOH _vs_. STATE OF
MARYLAND." 2. "WESTON _vs_. CITY OF CHARLESTON," 3. "BANK OF COMMERCE,
N. Y. _vs_. COMMISSIONERS OF TAXES." 4. "BANK OF COMMONWEALTH _vs._
COMMISSIONERS OF TAXES." 5. "HAGUE _vs._ POWERS" (_Constitutionality of
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(_In preparation for Publication shortly_.)

VII. The Merchants and Bankers' Almanac, for 1864, containing--I. A List
of the Banks, arranged alphabetically, in every State and City of the
Union,--Names of President and Cashier, and Capital of each, including
the National Banks formed under the Act of 1863. II. A List of Private
Bankers in the United States. III. A List of the Banks in Canada, New
Brunswick and Nova Scotia--their Cashiers, Managers and Foreign Agents.
IV. Governor, Directors and Officers of the Bank of England, 1862. V.
List of Banks and Bankers in London, December, 1862. VI. List of Bankers
in Europe, Asia, South America, Australia, West Indies, &c. VII.
Alphabetical List of Sixteen Hundred Cashiers in the United States.
VIII. Bank Capital of Towns and Cities. IX. Bank Statistics--New York
City Banks, Boston Banks, Philadelphia Banks, New England Banks. X.
Statement of the Banks in the United States. XI. Lowest and Highest
Quotations of Stocks at New York, each month, 1862. XII. European
Finances and Commerce. XIII. Currency Laws of the United States. XIV.
Revenue Stamps, Taxes, etc.--Revenue Decisions, etc. XV. The Mint of the
United States.--Foreign Coins.

[Illustration: pointing finger] _Bankers' Cards will be inserted in this
volume at Fifteen Dollars each_. All orders must be addressed to ~J. SMITH
HOMANS, Jr.~, NEW YORK


       *       *       *       *       *


~NINE ARTICLES~

THAT EVERY FAMILY SHOULD HAVE!!


The Agricultural Societies of the State of New York, New Jersey, and
Queens County, L. I., at their latest Exhibitions awarded the highest
premiums (gold medal, silver medal, and diplomas), for these articles,
and the public generally approve them.

~1st.--PYLE'S O. K. SOAP,~

The most complete labor-saving and economical soap that has been brought
before the public. Good for washing all kinds of clothing, fine
flannels, silks, laces, and for toilet and bathing purposes. The best
class of families adopt it in preference to all others--Editors of the
TRIBUNE, EVENING POST, INDEPENDENT, EVANGELIST, EXAMINER, CHRONICLE,
METHODIST, ADVOCATE AND JOURNAL, CHURCH JOURNAL, AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST,
and of many other weekly journals, are using it in their offices and
families. We want those who are disposed to encourage progress and good
articles to give this and the following articles a trial.

~2d.--PYLE'S DIETETIC SALERATUS,~

a strictly pure and wholesome article; in the market for several years,
and has gained a wide reputation among families and bakers throughout
the New England and Middle States; is always of a uniform quality, and
free from all the objections of impure saleratus.

~3d.--PYLE'S GENUINE CREAM TARTAR,~

always the same, and never fails to make light biscuit. Those who want
the best will ask their grocer for this.

~4th.--PYLE'S PURIFIED BAKING SODA,~

suitable for medicinal and culinary use.

~5th.--PYLE'S BLUEING POWDERS,~

a splendid article for the laundress, to produce that alabaster
whiteness so desirable in fine linens.

~6th.--PYLE'S ENAMEL BLACKING,~

the best boot polish and leather preservative in the world (Day and
Martin's not excepted).

~7th.--PYLE'S BRILLIANT BLACK INK,~

a beautiful softly flowing ink, shows black at once, and is
anti-corrosive to steel pens.

~8th.--PYLE'S STAR STOVE POLISH,~

warranted to produce a steel shine on iron ware. Prevents rust
effectually, without causing any disagreeable smell, even on a hot
stove.

~9th.--PYLE'S CREAM LATHER SHAVING SOAP,~

a "luxurious" article for gentlemen who shave themselves. It makes a
rich lather that will keep thick and moist upon the face.

THESE ARTICLES are all put up full weight, and expressly for
the best class trade, and first-class grocers generally have them for
sale. Every article is labelled with the name of

  ~JAMES PYLE,~
  350 Washington St., cor. Franklin, N. Y.


       *       *       *       *       *


[Illustration]

Over all Competitors, at the following State and County Fairs of 1863,
for the BEST FAMILY SEWING MACHINES, the BEST MANUFACTURING MACHINE, and
the BEST MACHINE WORK:

  ~New York State Fair~, for the best Family and Manufacturing
  Machine, and best work.

  ~Indiana State Fair~, for the best Machine for all purposes, and the
  best work.

  ~Vermont State Fair~, for the best Family and Manufacturing Machine,
  and best work.

  ~Illinois State Fair~, For the best Machine for all purposes, and the
  best work.

  ~Iowa State Fair~, for the best Family and Manufacturing Machine,
  and best work.

  ~Kentucky State Fair~, for the best Machine for all purposes, and
  the best work.

  ~Michigan State Fair~, for the best Family and Manufacturing
  Machine, and best work.

  ~Pennsylvania State Fair~, for the best Manufacturing Machine,
  and beautiful work.

  ~Ohio State Fair~, for the best Sewing Machine work.

  ~Oregon State Fair~, for the best Family Sewing Machine.

  ~Chittenden Co. (Vt.) Agricultural Society~, for the best
  Family and Manufacturing Machine, and best work.

  ~Franklin Co. (N. Y.) Fair~, for the best Machine for all purposes,
  and work.

  ~Champlain Valley (Vt.) Agricultural Society~, for the
  best Family and Manufacturing Machine, and work.

  ~Hampden Co. (Mass.) Agricultural Society~, for the best
  Family Machine, and work.

  ~Queens Co. (N. Y.) Agricultural Society~, for the best
  Family Machine.

  ~Washington Co. (N. Y.) Fair~, for the best Family Machine.

  ~Saratoga Co. (N. Y.) Fair~, for the best Family Machine.

  ~Mechanics' Institute (Pa.) Fair~, for the best Machine for all
  purposes, and work.

  ~Greenfield (Ohio) Fair~, for the best Family Machine.

  ~Stevenson Co. (Ill.) Fair~, for the best Family Machine.

[Illustration: pointing finger]--The above comprise all the Fairs at
which the ~GROVER & BAKER MACHINES~ were exhibited this year.

~SALESROOMS: 495 BROADWAY, NEW YORK.~


       *       *       *       *       *


~JOHN F. TROW,~

BOOK AND

~JOB PRINTER,~

Nos. 46, 48, & 50 GREENE ST.,

BETWEEN GRAND AND BROOME, NEW YORK.

~STEREOTYPING, ELECTROTYPING~

AND BOOK-BINDING, DONE PROMPTLY, & IN THE
BEST MANNER.



  BEYOND THE LINES;
  OR,
  A YANKEE PRISONER LOOSE IN DIXIE.

~A New Book of thrilling interest. By REV. CAPTAIN J. J. GEER,~

Formerly Pastor of George Street M. P. Church, Cincinnati, and late
Assistant Adjutant-General on the Staff of Gen. Buckland. With an
INTRODUCTION by Rev. ALEXANDER CLARK, Editor of the School Visitor.

This is one of the most thrilling accounts of adventure and suffering
that the war has produced. Capt. Geer was wounded and captured at
the great battle of Shiloh, tried before several prominent Rebel
Generals for his life, among whom were Hardee, Bragg, and
Beauregard,--incarcerated in four jails, four penitentiaries, and twelve
military prisons; escaped from Macon, Georgia, and travelled barefoot
through swamps and woods by night, for 250 miles, was fed by negroes in
part, and subsisted for days at a time on frogs, roots, and berries, and
was at last recaptured when within thirty-five miles of our gunboats on
the Southern coast.

The particulars of his subsequent sufferings as a chained culprit are
told with a graphic truthfulness that surpasses any fiction.

The work contains a fine steel portrait of the author, besides numerous
wood engravings illustrative of striking incidents of his experience
among the rebels. Every Unionist--every lover of his country--every man,
woman, and child should read this BOOK OF FACTS AS THEY ACTUALLY
OCCURRED.

The author has not only succeeded in making a narrative of exciting
interest, but has ingeniously interwoven in the book many original and
eloquent arguments in favor of a vigorous prosecution of the war against
Rebellion and Oppression.

Just published on fine white paper, and handsomely bound in cloth. 285
pages.

Agents wanted in every county and township in the Union, to whom
extraordinary inducements will be offered.

Specimen copies will be sent to any person for $1, postpaid, with
particulars to Agents.

~NOTICES OF THE PRESS.~

"No narrative of personal adventure that has been published since the
war began, equals this in interest. It presents in a still more vivid
light the barbarism and cruelty of Southern rebels; for the account he
gives of the treatment of himself and his fellow prisoners exceeds
anything we have heretofore read."--_Philadelphia Evening Bulletin._

"The Captain's graphic account of affairs in the South during his long
captivity there will be read with great interest. The Introduction is by
Rev. Alexander Clark, which is sufficient in itself to warrant a large
sale."--_Philadelphia Daily Inquirer._ Address all orders to

  ~J. W. DAUGHADAY, Publisher,~
  1308 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia.

[Illustration: pointing finger] Exchanges copying the above or the
substance of it, and sending us a marked copy, will receive a copy of
the work.
                                                         J. W. D.


       *       *       *       *       *


LAW NOTICE.

ROBERT J. WALKER, LATE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY, AND

FREDERIC P. STANTON, LATE CHAIRMAN OF THE NAVAL AND JUDICIARY COMMITTEES
OF CONGRESS,

~PRACTISE LAW~ in the SUPREME and CIRCUIT Courts at Washington, COURTS
MARTIAL, the COURT OF CLAIMS, before the DEPARTMENTS and BUREAUS,
especially in

~LAND, PATENT, CUSTOM HOUSE, AND WAR CLAIMS.~

Aided by two other associates, no part of an extensive business will be
neglected. Address,

  ~WALKER & STANTON,~
  Office, 218 F STREET, WASHINGTON CITY, D. C.

DUNCAN S. WALKER & ADRIEN DESLONDE will attend to Pensions, Bounties,
Prize, Pay, and Similar Claims. WALKER & STANTON will aid them, when
needful, as consulting counsel. Address WALKER & DESLONDE, same office,
care of Walker & Stanton.

       *       *       *       *       *

WARD'S TOOL STORE, (LATE WOOD'S,) Established 1831, 47 CHATHAM,
cor. North William St., & 513 EIGHTH AV.

A GENERAL ASSORTMENT OF TOOLS, CUTLERY, AND HARDWARE, ALWAYS ON HAND.

_Maker of Planes, Braces & Bits, and Carpenters' & Mechanics' Tools,_ IN
GREAT VARIETY AND OF THE BEST QUALITY.

N. B.--PLANES AND TOOLS MADE TO ORDER AND REPAIRED.

This widely-known Establishment still maintains its reputation for the
unrivalled excellence of its OWN MANUFACTURED, as well as its FOREIGN
ARTICLES, which comprise Tools for Every Branch of Mechanics and
Artizans.

MECHANICS' AND ARTIZANS', AMATEURES' AND BOYS' TOOL CHESTS IN GREAT
VARIETY, ON HAND, AND FITTED TO ORDER WITH TOOLS READY FOR USE.

The undersigned, himself a practical mechanic, having wrought at the
business for upwards of thirty years, feels confident that he can meet
the wants of those who may favor him with their patronage.

~SKATES.~

I have some of the finest Skates in the city, of my own as well as other
manufactures. Every style and price.

[Illustration: pointing finger] Skates made to Fit the Foot without Straps.

WILLIAM WARD, Proprietor.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration: artificial leg]

~ARTIFICIAL LEGS~

[Illustration: artificial arm]

(BY RIGHT, PALMER'S PATENT IMPROVED)

Adapted to every species of mutilated limb, unequaled in mechanism and
utility. Hands and Arms of superior excellence for mutilations and
congenital defects. Feet and appurtenances, for limbs shortened by hip
disease. Dr. HUDSON, by appointment of the Surgeon General of the U. S.
Army, furnishes limbs to mutilated Soldiers and Marines.
References.--Valentine Mett, M. D., Willard Parker, M. D., J. M.
Carnochan, M. D. Gurden Buck, M. D., Wm. H. Van Buren, M. D.

Descriptive pamphlets sent gratis. E. D. HUDSON, M. D., ASTOR PLACE (8th
St.), CLINTON HALL, Up Stairs.


       *       *       *       *       *


  The
  Continental Monthly.

The readers of the CONTINENTAL are aware of the important
position it has assumed, of the influence which it exerts, and of the
brilliant array of political and literary talent of the highest order
which supports it. No publication of the kind has, in this country, so
successfully combined the energy and freedom of the daily newspaper with
the higher literary tone of the first-class monthly; and it is very
certain that no magazine has given wider range to its contributors, or
preserved itself so completely from the narrow influences of party or of
faction. In times like the present, such a journal is either a power in
the land or it is nothing. That the CONTINENTAL is not the
latter is abundantly evidenced _by what it has done_--by the reflection
of its counsels in many important public events, and in the character
and power of those who are its staunchest supporters.

Though but little more than a year has elapsed since the
CONTINENTAL was first established, it has during that time
acquired a strength and a political significance elevating it to a
position far above that previously occupied by any publication of the
kind in America. In proof of which assertion we call attention to the
following facts:

1. Of its POLITICAL articles republished in pamphlet form, a
single one has had, thus far, a circulation of _one hundred and six
thousand_ copies.

2. From its LITERARY department, a single serial novel, "Among
the Pines," has, within a very few months, sold nearly _thirty-five
thousand_ copies. Two other series of its literary articles have also
been republished in book form, while the first portion of a third is
already in press.

No more conclusive facts need be alleged to prove the excellence of the
contributions to the CONTINENTAL, or their _extraordinary
popularity;_ and its conductors are determined that it shall not fall
behind. Preserving all "the boldness, vigor, and ability" which a
thousand journals have attributed to it, it will greatly enlarge its
circle of action, and discuss, fearlessly and frankly, every principle
involved in the great questions of the day. The first minds of the
country, embracing the men most familiar with its diplomacy and most
distinguished for ability, are among its contributors; and it is no mere
"flattering promise of a prospectus" to say that this "magazine for the
times" will employ the first intellect in America, under auspices which
no publication ever enjoyed before in this country.

While the CONTINENTAL will express decided opinions on the
great questions of the day, it will not be a mere political journal:
much the larger portion of its columns will be enlivened, as heretofore,
by tales, poetry, and humor. In a word, the CONTINENTAL will be
found, under its new staff of Editors, occupying a position and
presenting attractions never before found in a magazine.


TERMS TO CLUBS.

  Two copies for one year,                    Five dollars.
  Three copies for one year,                   Six dollars.
  Six copies for one year,                  Eleven dollars.
  Eleven copies for one year,                Twenty dollars.
  Twenty copies for one year,            Thirty-six dollars.
                           PAID IN ADVANCE

_Postage, Thirty-six cents a year_, to be paid BY THE
SUBSCRIBER.

SINGLE COPIES.

Three dollars a year, IN ADVANCE. _Postage paid by the
Publisher_.

  JOHN F. TROW, 50 Greene St., N. Y.,
  PUBLISHER FOR THE PROPRIETORS.

[Illustration: pointing finger] As an Inducement to new subscribers, the
Publisher offers the following liberal premiums:

[Illustration: pointing finger] Any person remitting $3, in advance,
will receive the magazine from July, 1862, to January, 1864, thus
securing the whole of Mr. KIMBALL'S and Mr. KIRKE'S new serials, which
are alone worth the price of subscription. Or, if preferred, a
subscriber can take the magazine for 1863 and a copy of "Among the
Pines," or of "Undercurrents of Wall Street," by R. B. KIMBALL, bound in
cloth, or of "Sunshine in Thought," by CHARLES GODFREY LELAND (retail
price, $1. 25.) The book to be sent postage paid.

[Illustration: pointing finger] Any person remitting $4.50, will receive
the magazine from its commencement, January, 1862, to January, 1864,
thus securing Mr. KIMBALL'S "Was He Successful? "and Mr. KIRKE'S "Among
the Pines," and "Merchant's Story," and nearly 3,000 octavo pages of the
best literature in the world. Premium subscribers to pay their own
postage.


       *       *       *       *       *


[Illustration: THE FINEST FARMING LANDS WHEAT CORN COTTON FRUITS &
VEGETABLES]

~EQUAL TO ANY IN THE WORLD!!!~

MAY BE PROCURED

~At FROM $8 to $12 PER ACRE,~

Near Markets, Schools, Railroads, Churches, and all the blessings of
Civilization.

1,200,000 Acres, in Farms of 40, 80, 120, 160 Acres and upwards, in
ILLINOIS, the Garden State of America.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Illinois Central Railroad Company offer, ON LONG CREDIT, the
beautiful and fertile PRAIRIE LANDS lying along the whole line of their
Railroad. 700 MILES IN LENGTH, upon the most Favorable Terms for
enabling Farmers, Manufacturers, Mechanics and Workingmen to make for
themselves and their families a competency, and a HOME they can call
THEIR OWN, as will appear from the following statements:

ILLINOIS.

Is about equal in extent to England, with a population of 1,722,666, and
a soil capable of supporting 20,000,000. No State in the Valley of the
Mississippi offers so great an inducement to the settler as the State of
Illinois. There is no part of the world where all the conditions of
climate and soil so admirably combine to produce those two great
staples, CORN and WHEAT.

CLIMATE.

Nowhere can the Industrious farmer secure such immediate results from
his labor as on these deep, rich, loamy soils, cultivated with so much
ease. The climate from the extreme southern part of the State to the
Terre Haute, Alton and St. Louis Railroad, a distance of nearly 200
miles, is well adapted to Winter.

WHEAT, CORN, COTTON, TOBACCO.

Peaches, Pears, Tomatoes, and every variety of fruit and vegetables is
grown in great abundance, from which Chicago and other Northern markets
are furnished from four to six weeks earlier than their immediate
vicinity. Between the Terre Haute, Alton & St. Louis Railway and the
Kankakee and Illinois Rivers, (a distance of 115 miles on the Branch,
and 136 miles on the Main Trunk,) lies the great Corn and Stock raising
portion of the State.

THE ORDINARY YIELD

of Corn is from 60 to 80 bushels per acre. Cattle, Horses, Mules, Sheep
and Hogs are raised here at a small cost, and yield large profits. It is
believed that no section of country presents greater inducements for
Dairy Farming than the Prairies of Illinois, a branch of farming to
which but little attention has been paid, and which must yield sure
profitable results. Between the Kankakee and Illinois Rivers, and
Chicago and Dunleith, (a distance of 56 miles on the Branch and 147
miles by the Main Trunk,) Timothy Hay, Spring Wheat, Corn, &c., are
produced in great abundance.

AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS.

The Agricultural products of Illinois are greater than those of any
other State. The Wheat crop of 1861 was estimated at 35,000,000 bushels,
while the Corn crop yields not less than 140,000,000 bushels besides the
crop of Oats, Barley, Rye, Buckwheat, Potatoes, Sweet Potatoes,
Pumpkins, Squashes, Flax, Hemp, Peas, Clover, Cabbage, Beets, Tobacco,
Sorgheim, Grapes, Peaches, Apples, &c., which go to swell the vast
aggregate of production in this fertile region. Over Four Million tons
of produce were sent out the State of Illinois during the past year.

STOCK RAISING.

In Central and Southern Illinois uncommon advantages are presented for
the extension of Stock raising. All kinds of Cattle, Horses, Mules,
Sheep, Hogs, &c., of the best breeds, yield handsome profits; large
fortunes have already been made, and the field is open for others to
enter with the fairest prospects of like results. Dairy Farming also
presents its inducements to many.

CULTIVATION OF COTTON.

The experiments in Cotton culture are of very great promise. Commencing
in latitude 39 deg. 30 min. (see Mattoon on the Branch, and Assumption
on the Main Line), the Company owns thousands of acres well adapted to
the perfection of this fibre. A settler having a family of young
children, can turn their youthful labor to a most profitable account in
the growth and perfection of this plant.

THE ILLINOIS CENTRAL RAILROAD

Traverses the whole length of the State, from the banks of the
Mississippi and Lake Michigan to the Ohio. As its name imports, the
Railroad runs through the centre of the State, and on either side of the
road along its whole length lie the lands offered for sale.

CITIES, TOWNS, MARKETS, DEPOTS.

There are Ninety-eight Depots on the Company's Railway, giving about one
every seven miles. Cities, Towns and Villages are situated at convenient
distances throughout the whole route, where every desirable commodity
may be found as readily as in the oldest cities of the Union, and where
buyers are to be met for all kinds of farm produce.

EDUCATION.

Mechanics and working-men will find the free school system encouraged by
the State, and endowed with a large revenue for the support of the
schools. Children can live in sight of the school, the college, the
church, and grow up with the prosperity of the leading State in the
Great Western Empire.

       *       *       *       *       *

PRICES AND TERMS OF PAYMENT--ON LONG CREDIT.

  80 acres at $10 per acre, with interest at 6 per ct. annually
  on the following terms:

  Cash payment                 $48 00

  Payment in one year           48 00
     "    in two years          48 00
     "    in three years        48 00
     "    in four years        236 00
     "    in five years        224 00
     "    in six years         212 00


  40 acres, at $10 00 per acre:

  Cash payment                 $24 00

  Payment in one year           24 00
     "    in two years          24 00
     "    in three years        24 00
     "    in four years        118 00
     "    in five years        112 00
     "    in six years         106 00





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VI, December 1863, by Various

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