T^HE CENTURY
ILLUSTRATED MONTHLY
MAGAZINE.

THE CANADIAN MECCA.

Had you been a pagan Iroquois on the war-path from Onondaga⁠[1] in the summer of 1661, standing on the Isle of Orleans, below Quebec, with the scalps of your Huron and French foes at your belt, you would have seen the remnant of the hated Christian Indians paddling in their bark canoes across the St. Lawrence to the northern shore. From the bluff of land where the picturesque church of St. François has stood for over a century and a half, you would have seen your enemies who had sold their ancient birthright for a mess of French rum and trinkets, steering for havens of refuge amid a rich panorama of forest and mountain—some of them up stream, where they found shelter under the guns of Quebec; most of them toward a great peak of the Laurentian chain of hills, where, close to the shore, a small stone chapel and a few houses marked the site of Petit Cap,—one of the oldest settlements on one of the oldest roads in Canada. Had you stolen before day-break at low tide across the water, and paddled through the marsh, you might have listened until you heard the bell for morning vespers, and then gliding ashore, you might have crept behind the brush and watched a procession of French and their Huron allies, headed by the priests, slowly marching to the chapel, and repeating the invocation: “Jésus, Marie, Joseph, Joachim, et Anne, secourez-nous,” while your blood boiled with hate, and your fingers tingled to get at their hair. About a century later, had you been a loyal English colonist of New York, you might have followed the Highlanders in their attack on the French and Hurons along this same road, and in this same little village, then named Sainte Anne. And if tradition be true,—and a possible fable is as good for a gobemouche as a positive fact,—you might have seen the same little chapel delivered by the mysterious interposition of the saint herself, when the troops tried three times in succession to set it on fire, after the rest of the village had been burned. And now, one hundred and twenty-two years later, you may quietly run down on a holiday trip from Donnacona’s ancient throne, the peaceful citadel of Quebec, to this same little village, now called “Ste. Anne de Beaupré,” or more affectionately, “La Bonne Ste. Anne,” and known as the most venerated shrine of the Roman Catholic Church in Canada—the soul and center of reputed miracles as wonderful as any that stirred the heart of mediæval Europe. Though not accepted without reserve by the more educated classes, they are as sacred to the superstitious habitant along the St. Lawrence as is the mother-shrine of Ste. Anne d’Auray, in Brittany, to the credulous sailors in the Morbihan.

The heathen red-skin of Onondaga has long since been Christianized, and is passing away. The English colonies, which had a sworn foe in the New France at the north, have become a great and independent nation. The old French colony, with its brilliant story, has disappeared in the Dominion of Canada, and Richelieu’s grand scheme of a French transatlantic empire has its mockery in the small fishing-islands of Miquelon and St. Pierre, off the south coast of Newfoundland. Little did Richelieu imagine, when he excluded the Huguenots from France and her colonies, that he was doing as much as possible to add to the wealth of the Protestants of Europe and to the prosperity of the Puritans of New England, and that one of the results of his policy was to be the perpetuation of the very heresy he hated. Persecution often makes a [Pg 2]barren cause prolific. It has been the mother of great men and great nations. Little did Champlain imagine, when he prohibited the psalms of the Huguenots on the St. Lawrence, that a few more years would see the fleur-de-lis lowered forever from the city he founded; and France, once the mistress of the whole American continent north of Mexico, reduced to a few fishing-islands, equal to a square of fifteen miles! There that little remnant of French-American territory lies, as if to remind us of the past glory of a noble nation. Amid all these vicissitudes, our little Canadian shrine has slept its Rip van Winkle sleep; until to-day, with the revival in Europe of the mediæval trust in miracles, and in the efficacy of pilgrimages, an effort is here being made to waken the Canadian mind to the belief that La Bonne [Pg 3]Ste. Anne is as advantageous to faith as Michael Angelo believed the climate of Arezzo was favorable to genius. There was no obstacle at any time in Canada to the full development of the Gallican church of France; and it is no wonder that pilgrimages should become an institution of the old French province, and that it should be claimed that more miracles have been wrought through the relics of a dead saint than are known to have been performed by Christ. Though Quebec city, with its sixty dioceses, is mentioned in a bull of Pius IX. as the metropolis of the church in America, you will need to rub your eyes to make sure that you are not in Belgium. Under the French régime it was the heart of the colony, and was a spiritual as well as a material fortress. Ste. Anne de Beaupré was one of its outposts.

But who was this saint so revered long ago by the Canadian voyageur and habitant, and whose intercession, all the world over, now seems to be supplanting that of all other saints? It might be enough to know that, in 1876, the Pope declared Ste. Anne to be patroness of the Province of Quebec, though it is not stated how this affects the claim of St. Joseph, who has long been the patron of all Canada. But who was Ste. Anne? Tradition says she was the mother of the Virgin Mary, born of one of the family of David, and that her mother had predicted the birth through her of the Saviour. Having died at Jerusalem, she was buried in the family vault. When you are at our Canadian shrine you may see, in a little glass case, a confused mass of dried, broken bones, which you are told are those of the saint. You will naturally be curious to know how they got out of the family vault in Jerusalem into a little hamlet in Canada. In the time of Marcus Aurelius, the infidels destroyed all the monuments in the Holy Land, but, “according to tradition,” one coffin could be [Pg 4]neither burned nor opened, and being thrown into the sea, floated off to the town of Apt, in Provence, where it lay for a long time buried in the sand. One day some fishermen caught in their net an enormous fish, which clearly by its actions showed that fishes have instinct and reason, and that St. Anthony knew more than we give him credit for, when he preached to them. This fish struggled so hard that it made a deep hole in the sand on the shore, and when the fishermen dragged it out, the coffin of Ste. Anne appeared in the hole. No one in Apt could open the coffin. The bishop Aurelius placed it in a crypt, put a burning lamp before it, and had it hermetically walled up. Seven hundred years later, Charlemagne, moved by the appeal of a deaf and dumb boy, caused a certain wall to be destroyed, in which the coffin was found.

I remember visiting a beautiful cathedral in Apt, on the bank of the Calavon, said to have been erected on the exact spot where the fish leaped and the coffin was found. A short journey from the Celtic monuments of Carnac, in Brittany, is the little hamlet of Ste. Anne d’Auray, the most famous shrine of the saint in the world. On a fête-day, a few years ago, I saw the special pilgrimage, and its associations with our Canadian shrine made the visit one of much interest. I must say, however, that the Canadian pilgrimages are never the scene of such debauchery as those in Brittany, for the devil seemed to have made it his holiday at the two Old-World pilgrimages witnessed by me. Religious ceremonies clashed with vulgar open-air dancing, and peasants who had just kissed the saintly relics, came out of church and boastingly swallowed brandy, glass after glass, in a deliberate effort to make themselves drunk.

Our Canadian Mecca has an authentic date back to 1658. A habitant of Petit Cap gave the parish priest of Quebec a portion of land, upon condition that in that year a church should be begun on the spot. The site was accepted, duly consecrated, and dedicated to Ste. Anne, the patroness of sailors. The foundation-stone was laid by the French governor. It is said that a peasant of Beaupré, who had “pains in his loins,” went, out of devotion, to lay three stones of the foundation, and was suddenly cured; and that a woman who had been bent double for eight months by some affliction began to invoke the saint as soon as she heard of the miracle, and was “instantly [Pg 6]able to stand on her feet, and as well able to move all her limbs as she had ever been.” Miracle after miracle followed, until the sleepy little hollow was the talk of all New France. Soldiers, as they paced their beat on the fort, looked down the river as if they expected to see a vision. The peasantry grouped together in large family circles, just as they love to do to-day, and as the big logs crackled in the great fire-place, some one who had been to the shrine recounted his experience and gave reins to his imagination, and all piously crossed themselves when he had concluded. Pilgrims flocked to the New-World wonder on the St. Lawrence, and during the seventeenth century there were never less than a thousand on the feast-day of Ste. Anne. At all seasons of the year, individual pilgrims were seen going afoot along the Côte de Beaupré, and in winter in their sleighs on the frozen river. The Micmac Indians came regularly from New Brunswick for trade, and before feast-days their canoes were seen coming up stream to the shrine, where they built birch-bark huts to shelter the pilgrims. In fact, the whole country was excited by the mystery, and many churches were built in honor of the saint. It was a regular custom of vessels ascending the St. Lawrence to fire a broadside salute when passing the place. We who live in this age of electricity, and who affect to be beyond astonishment, but gape at every new sensation as if the world was yet in its teens, may imagine the thrill of wonder which would run through the minds of the simple peasantry, and the superstitious voyageurs, when the miracles were told.

It was not with the touching and simple spirit which led many to flock to the holy place in Jerusalem, in the time of the old Jewish law, that I went to La Bonne Ste. Anne. Nor was it with the unquestioning devotion of the Canadian peasant. I was simply a holiday lounger in search of the picturesque, with no more faith in La Bonne Ste. Anne than in the dozens of other shrines I had seen in Europe, and with a strong belief in the statements that, after the Crusades, innumerable relics were sold to the Latins by the cunning Greeks and Syrians, and that several skulls of the same saint were found within a hundred miles of each other. What I had seen of the pilgrimages in Brittany and Belgium did not raise them in my estimation. The picturesque in Brittany could not conceal the dirt and mental degradation. I remembered, too, an incident upon the arrival of our train, when little Breton boys and girls met us with offers, for a sou, to say prayers for us. One who is familiar with the many genial and admirable traits of the French-Canadian peasantry, the superior moral and spiritual tone, and the respectability, cleanliness, and sobriety which put them above the same class of Continental people, would have no thought of seeing here the vice and licentiousness [Pg 7]common to the Breton gatherings. The French-Canadian peasant may not know how to read; he may fear the spiritual threats of his priest more than the punishment of the civil law; but as a rule he is a peaceful Christian according to his light. Ste. Anne, to many of them, is as sacred as was Jerusalem to the Jews, and no doubt our good countryman pities and prays for me and my heresy; and, had he been born a Mohammedan, would no doubt have believed that he who died without making a pilgrimage to Mecca might as well die a Jew or a Christian.

Almost any morning in summer you may get the early boat just below Dufferin Terrace, and see dozens of quiet people muttering their devotions to themselves, each carrying his or her burden of trouble to Ste. Anne. The crowded pilgrimages which are undertaken by whole parishes en masse have much the appearance of an ordinary picnic, and most of the pilgrims suggest the idea that they come “more for the green way than for devotion.” But you cannot mistake the sincerity and superstition of those individual pilgrims who go down to the shrine without ostentation. They are mostly women, many widows, and nearly all dressed in the conventional black dress, with black bonnet and long crape veil. You may go down by steamer or by road. If you go by water you can study these people better; but when you see the rich landscape you will wish you had taken the road; from the Côte de Beaupré you see the lovely water-scape, and then you will wish you had gone by steamer; so I will indulge you in both. We need no scrip, staff, or scallop-shell; no unshod feet—though once I saw a bare-footed pilgrimage below Cacouna; no gray gabardine girt with cincture; no asceticism, but a comfortable steamer or a double carriage, with every modern comfort cheek-by-jowl with much mediæval usage.

The river was alive with boats, steamers, barges. Half a dozen steam-yachts, used as tugs, were puffing consequentially, and scudding between Quebec and Pointe Levi. One little David had steamed up to a Goliath of a ship which had just crossed the Atlantic, and had taken the conceit out of the monster by lashing itself in some way to its side and puffing up the river with it, like a dwarf arresting a giant. After the usual jargon we were off, and had time to look about among our passengers. They were mostly pilgrims, and all French of the poorer class. But, no matter how poor, the French-Canadian is a model of tidiness. Like a sunflower amid ivy, there was the traditional young man from the country, arrayed, on a hot day, in black kid gloves, a flower in his coat, and a feather in his cap. Beside him—very much beside him—his “own sweet Genevieve,” blushing in colors enough to make the rainbow pale, and every part of her jacket and the white veil over her face covered with little bits of red glass balls; a poor mother, holding a sick child in her arms, walking up and down the deck in a sort of penitential agony, and refusing any help, though many of the kind-hearted women proffered their aid; several very desolate-looking widows. I had been told that few, if any, ever went to Ste. Anne’s to return thanks for blessings received, but the uncharitable statement was here refuted, for several poor women were en route especially to express gratitude for the recovery of personal health. One dear old lady, rheumatic and almost blind, was led about tenderly by her son. As I saw her thin gray hair and bended frame, and watched the affection of her boy, my heretical spirit found a feeling that made us kin, and, while refusing to believe in Ste. Anne, I prayed inwardly for her recovery. I would have sung my pæans of praise had the dear old soul found the fountain of youth in the waters of Ste. Anne, and had she been able to leave her crutch among those on the pyramid in the church. Alas! I saw her returning in the afternoon more feeble than when she came. One pale, thin girl had fasted for five days, having read that, like Moses and Elias, Ste. Anne and her husband fasted entirely for forty days, “and wept perpetually.” A girl with inflamed and bandaged eyes was going with her father to perform a novena, or nine days’ religious exercise. Two nuns were chatting together; a solemn servant of some convent held in one hand a five-minute sand-glass, which she turned as the sand ran out, saying her prayers at the same time. Two rubicund priests promenaded the deck. The rest of the pilgrims were fair types of the ordinary peasant, and were either ignorant or weak-minded.

Look at the splendid scenery before, behind, on either side. The Isle of Orleans, with its broad brow, is in front. The ships for England sail off to the southern channel. One fancies he can smell the sea here, and it may not be mere fancy, for the tide rises ninety miles above Quebec, and the water is brackish. It is out this morning, and there along the shore and up among the shiny rocks, the bateaux and wood-boats lie waiting for the flow. Just below us, as we keep to the left of Orleans, we meet two steamers tugging two great rafts, and the hardy Indian and French voyageurs wave their hats to us. There lies the Church of St. Pierre, upon the hill of Minigo, as the Indians called Orleans, built one hundred and twelve years [Pg 8]ago, on the site of a chapel erected in 1651. Looking to the left now, we see Montmorenci Falls, shining in the morning sun like a broad ribbon of molten silver, the dark shadows of the right bank casting long lines of gloom into the glen. As we pass the falls, we are wedging in between Orleans on the right, and gaps and grooves on the main-land to the left, eaten by ice and rains. Zigzag footpaths run up to the hill-tops from the river and road-side; narrow strips of land, fenced into all sorts of geometrical figures, straggle up over the hills into the horizon; clumps of pines are seen along the shore; and above and about the trees are the picturesque white farm-houses, with their gray, brown, and red roofs—a perfect chain, long drawn out, of quaint hamlets set in frames of mountain and river; peeps of the blue Laurentian Mountains far behind; the white houses of Château Richer hugging the shore; and behind them the hills rolling up into waves of land, until they run to a peak of two thousand six hundred and eighty-seven feet to form Mount Ste. Anne, then droop into the valleys, and again run up against the blue sky to form the home of the bear and the blue-berry—Cape Tourmente. Here and there you see the stone churches and bright spires, both on the main-land and on the island. Look back now from the stern. I once heard a world-wide traveler say he had [Pg 9]never anywhere seen such a picture as this view back at the city. Quebec and Pointe Levi seem to be blended in one semicircular bay of bright water, lapping a dazzling array of glittering gems. The citadel looks clear cut, as if its masonry had been run into a mold. We see barges, with loads of hay or wood, and with only two hands on board, trusting to a rough sail and a stout oar to get to their destination; fresh-water sailors in heavy boats, pushing their oars before them as they face the bow, as one sees so often on Continental rivers and as often elsewhere on the St. Lawrence, about Quebec. The Isle of Orleans reposes like an emerald in the water at the point where the fate of a continent was decided. There on its bosom St. François sleeps, as if the dread Iroquois had never yelled their war-whoop on its hills; and if history has no echoes to stir you, come with me from that quiet little hamlet some autumn, with gun and rod, on the broad meadows of Argentenay, or among the marshes of the Château Richer, and I will promise you as fine a bag of snipe and duck as you can get anywhere within sight of civilization on this side of New Brunswick. What feasts of wild fowl, what epicurean relishes with Parisian cookery, they must have had in the way of game when peace reigned in the old château of St. Louis on the rock, the castle of the French governor, and life in this part of New France, brilliant with the wit and song of the nobility of Louis XIV., was more feasting than fasting; when Orleans was called the Isle of Bacchus, because of its great grape-vines, and of the fish, honey, and melons with which the red-skins regaled Jacques Cartier. I wonder Parisian wit did not try upon the Indian the civilizing influence of Parisian cookery; for it is related of a convert who lay at the point of death that he anxiously inquired if, in the pale-face heaven to which he was going, he would get pies to equal those which the French had given him. All about here—on mountain, in valley, on island, on river—you can trace the richest pages of Canadian and much of American history. Memories of Jacques Cartier, Sir William Phipps, Champlain, Frontenac, Wolfe, Montcalm, Carleton, Arnold, Montgomery, Murray, rise from the surroundings. And then you may come down from your imagining and see Huron and Iroquois merging into French and English, and the queer jumble of Indian, Norman, Breton, English, in name, in face, in speech, in religion, slowly but surely blending, as the centuries roll away, to form one people. Is it not a bit of early British history—the story of the Norman, Dane, and Saxon—being repeated in the New World?

But now we see the sun playing on the convent-spire of Ste. Anne; Cape Tourmente and Orleans seem to meet, and the river has the appearance of a great bay. Long ribbons of the characteristic Canadian fence run crookedly up to the crest of pines; a fringe of houses lies along the shore. And now the main-land and the island divide; the open river shows the line of the hazy shore downstream, and we are approaching the long wharf and the toll-gatherer of our Mecca. But come back with me to Quebec, and drive through the romantic hamlets of the Côte de Beaupré, with its endless interest in life, character, [Pg 10]and scenery. This is by far the most charming way to visit Ste. Anne’s, especially if you have good company, if you like walking, and can talk the patois. If, too, you ever have walked through Normandy and Brittany, you can find no more fascinating trip for its associations than this Côte de Beaupré. If you are fresh from the story of “Evangeline,” you will enjoy it doubly, for though the people are losing a good deal of their picturesque character, and you will rarely see the toque bleu of the habitant, yet in the same room you may often see grandmother at her spinning-wheel and granddaughter at her sewing-machine; you may cut into by-ways, and even get peeps into the low-roofed and high-peaked houses as you pass, that will bring back the poet’s words and carry you into the eighteenth century. There are old men and old women, old houses and old habits, old agricultural and domestic implements and furniture, and old china enough to gladden the heart of any antiquarian. I fear, though, that the province is being stripped of its old clocks.

This trip by land is delightful. Early one morning we left the St. Louis Hotel in Quebec. If you are going ten miles into the country here, you are sure to receive “bon voyage!” as often as if you were going to Hong-Kong. Passing through St. Roche’s and crossing the bridge over the St. Charles River, we were soon out in the open country. We were at once struck with the fondness of the people for flowers. Little squares and bits of land are devoted to their culture. They hang from gallery and window, around wall and well, and grow in wooden boxes, old jars, and miniature birch-bark canoes. Big and beautiful dahlias of all colors nod their full heads to us; the marigold, whose seeds were brought from France by the early explorers; the holly-hock, fox-glove, China-aster, and Normandy’s flaming favorite, the sunflower, and other old-fashioned flowers of old-fashioned people, beautify and brighten the surroundings. Little houses, like stables, often just big enough to shelter a cow or a horse, and little gardens, are characteristic of this truly Canadian road. Springs of crystal water run down the hill into troughs for the horses, as in Swiss villages. All along for miles from Beaupré, the hill-side is luxuriant with wild plums, which are gathered and sent to the city market.

Along this road you will see some of the choicest specimens of the early French farmhouses, built of rough stone and mortar, with high-peaked roof and big chimney, often built out beyond the level of the gable, and with projecting eaves and dormer-windows. Some of these old houses are contemporaneous with the conquest of Canada. Most of them are close to the road, and the fences on each side are as a rule very ragged, except among the best farmers. Little picket-fences, some of them over a century old, are characteristic—many of them so tattered that they remind you of the broken hedges of Tipperary, where, when a pig goes through a hole, he finds he is still on the same side of the hedge. The tall Lombardy poplar is an old-time favorite of the Canadian farmer. Some of the stables and barns have thatched roofs and a peculiar projection, at the gable or at the sides, several feet beyond the line of the foundation. At the same time you can see here as fine modern farm-houses and barns as in any other part of the province.

Montmorenci Falls is the first rest. Then you have a charming drive over the hills until you come to the quaint hamlet of Ange Gardien, where there is a small oratory at the entrance and another at the exit, and in the middle of the village the old church. As our carriage rolls on, little boys and girls with bare head and feet chase beside us, holding out bouquets in the hope that we will buy. They do not turn hand-springs like the waifs who follow the traveler’s carriage in England. Sometimes children offer you a glass of spring-water, or raspberries or strawberries in cones of birch-bark. They are an improvement upon the way-side beggars of Savoi in Switzerland; for our Canadians have not arrived at the high art of mendicancy—singing songs in groups, chanting ballads in honor of Ste. Anne, or blowing Laurentian horns in lieu of Alpine. The children one meets on this road are most interesting. The Côte de Beaupré is historically prolific in babies, and you may see many charming children, such as one diminutive artist in mud-pies, or the little vagabond who roosts on the fence and sings out his “Bon jour, Monsieur,” as you pass; or the three little graces whom we meet coming out of school, in their pretty Canadian hats and aprons. And here are two genuine rustic boys from the hill-tops, going to Ste. Anne’s to sell bottles at the holy fountain. You will never forget the native courtesy of these little men and women, as they doff their hats or curtsey to you. The grace, the look of the eye, and the movement of the body—surely it is nature’s own, and la belle France can show none lovelier.

One of the institutions of this road is the healthy beggar, who is usually a good pedestrian, and with no such show of feigned affliction as the fraternity of the south and west of Ireland. Generally they are masterpieces of patchwork. Invariably they are as dirty as Bretons. Every village has its tolerated staff of these creatures, who go about as if they [Pg 11]had some sort of succession from the beggars of scriptural times. If the apostles had lived in our day and traveled on the road to Ste. Anne, they would not have had to go out into the lanes to bring in the beggars. The beggars would have swarmed on the road to welcome the apostles.

If you have seen the dogs used in small carts in Belgium by the market-peddlers, either tandem or abreast, you will recognize their lineal descendants along the Côte de Beaupré. Even the women who drive them will remind you of Ghent and Bruges. These dogs are to the peasant here what the pig is to the peasant of Münster. They lie on the galleries or sun themselves undisturbed at the door, and are allowed the run of the house. They are large black mastiffs, patient beasts of burden, without enterprise enough to bark. They do a great deal of hard work, are more domesticated than the coolie, and a sort of aid-de-camp to the horse at whose heels, or under whose cart, they trot. Near them sits an old lady on a bench knitting socks, wearing a cap the fashion of which her great-grandmother brought from St. Malo.

In a few moments we trot into the heart of our Mecca and pull up at “The Retreat,” a cozy and clean hotel, kept by an English family who are as intelligent as they are hospitable. Mine host has a telegraphic instrument in the house. It was regarded with superstition by the habitant, whereas it is one of superstition’s worst foes. We had arrived several hours before an expected grand pilgrimage coming down the river in chartered steamers, like the traines de piété at Lourdes. The village consists of one long street, and, were it paved with stone, would bear a strong resemblance to village streets in Switzerland, with the projecting signs, gables, and galleries of the many little auberges. Every house is an improvised inn, and all the fishermen are amateur inn-keepers. The street lies at the foot of the hill, and, as you go through it, you will see faces and figures that constantly remind you of the coarse women seen in similar streets in Swiss villages. Most French-Canadian country-women become stout and wrinkled in middle life, owing to the excessive heat of the houses in winter, badly cooked food, and hard work; but those who have to go up and down these steep hills become especially clumsy. It is wonderful to see these heavy women going up the zigzag hill-roads, swinging their arms at right angles from their shoulders, and climbing fences like a man.

One of the characters of Ste. Anne is our jolly harness and shoe maker—a woman on the shady side of sixty. If her deportment has been neglected, she is thoroughly honest and happy, as she smokes her clay pipe and shoves her spectacles up on her forehead to take a better look at her visitors. You may laugh at her ancient cap, but if you could find out why she laughs at you, you would learn that she laughs at your modern bonnet. Just over the way we saw, through an open window, a real live Evangeline, in her pretty Norman cap, at a spinning-wheel.

Let us walk down to the other end of the village: what has become of the ancient church built in 1660? To the right of the road stands a large structure a few years old, disagreeable in its ostentatious modernness. What right had they ruthlessly to destroy the old one? We are told that the walls were cracking. So much the better. To the left stands a small chapel, also modern, yet wearing a genial aged look. This was built out of the stones of the ancient chapel. The picturesque double bell-tower of the old building surmounts this chapel, and a part of the old interior was utilized, but one misses the plain façade, with its rose-window and its Norman doors; gone altogether is the atmosphere of antiquity which hovered about the old interior.

Look down the road toward “The Retreat.” Is it not as if you were transported to a Swiss village? Painted on the gable-end of one house, you read: “Ici Bonne Maison de Pension.” And there, fastened to a stable, is the sign: “Bureu de Poste Ofcie,” in very unclassical French. And what is this huge sign projecting out into the street? “E. Lachance, Epoux de Dlle. Mercier. Maison de Pension” (E. Lachance, husband of Miss Mercier. Boarding-house). And next door has another, surmounted by a fish: “Maison de Pension. Dlle. Mercier.” Thereby hangs a tale: The house of Mercier had two daughters, one of them “fair, fat, and forty,” who was the belle of the parish. Many a pilgrim from Quebec went to Ste. Anne more to see this maiden than to pray. An enterprising rival, who kept the hotel next door, cast sheep’s-eyes upon the goddess; she succumbed, and became his wife, and transferred her interest in the hotel business to her liege lord. The old house still kept up the old sign of “Miss Mercier,” and the ingenious benedict took down his old one and had it repainted, so as to announce to the world that he had married, and was in possession of the great attraction of the rival house.

But there the steamers come, and soon two thousand pilgrims land on the wharf. A brass band leads the way, and the people file up in long procession, dusty but devoted, many, no doubt, with mingled hopes and fears. Over [Pg 12]forty cripples limp along on crutches, or supported by friends, and a pitiable sight it is. The procession enters the new church, where, at the high altar and at the sides, a number of priests preside. As you enter, you see a large money-box, of ancient date and curious construction, fastened to a pillar by iron stanchions. The quaint padlock is opened by an old-fashioned bed-key. Over the side doors are rude ex voto paintings, representing wonderful rescues from peril by water through intercession to Ste. Anne. Over the altar is a picture of the saint by Le Brun, the eminent French artist, and the side altars contain paintings by the Franciscan monk Lefrançois, who died in 1685. Hung upon a decorated pedestal is a handsome oval frame or reliquary like a large locket, surrounded with garnets, and having in its center a rich cross of pearls. Besides this, you see the collection of bones said to be the relics of the saint, consisting of a piece of one finger-bone, obtained in 1663, by Bishop Laval, from the chapter of Carcassonne, and which was first exposed to view on the 12th of March, 1670. In another case there is a piece of bone of the saint, obtained in 1877, but the Redemptorist Fathers, who have charge of the mission, [Pg 13]do not know to what part of the body it belongs. The dry bones of the saint do not appear to differ in glory from those of a sinner. The church also claims to own a piece of the true cross upon which our Saviour died, and a piece of stone from the foundation of the house in which Ste. Anne lived, brought from France in 1879. Also there may be seen a superb chasuble, given by Anne of Austria, mother of Louis XIV., and some silver crucifixes.

Nothing, however, will excite more curiosity than the great pyramid of crutches, and aids to the sick and the crippled, twenty-two feet high, divided into six tiers, and crowned by a very old gilt statue of the saint. The collection is very curious and principally home-made, comprising plain walking-sticks, odd knobbed fancies of sexagenarians, queer handles, and padded arm and shoulder rests, made of pine, oak, birch, ash, hickory, rock-elm—of all common and many novel designs. A half-leg support testifies to a reputed removal of anchylosis of the knee-joint by intercession to the saint. I have no desire to sneer, but that there is some imposition and much imagination about these “miracles” no impartial mind can doubt. One may carry his charity to the verge of believing that implicit faith in intercession to a saint, with mingled hope and fear and a strong determination to force a cure, may in some cases really throw off disease; but the power of mind and will over the body without any such intercession is familiar to every student, and is no doubt an undeveloped branch of medical science. A coincidence is not a miracle, neither is this power of the will over the body a miracle. Among the long list of reputed miracles, the following from a manual of devotion will be sufficiently suggestive: “In the year 1664, a woman broke her leg. As the bone was fractured in four places, it was impossible to set it. For eight months she was unable to walk, and the doctors gave up all hope of a cure. She made a novena, in honor of the saint, and vowed that if she was cured she would visit the shrine every year. She was carried to the church, and during the communion she put aside her crutches and was cured at once.” Sworn testimony is given as to instant recovery in diseases said by physicians to be incurable by ordinary means, and among the particular favors accorded to the parish, the temporal as well as spiritual is not forgotten. The Bishop of Montreal says that it is Ste. Anne who obtains for it “rain in the time of drought.” “For it is a pious tradition among you,” says he, “that a little picture representing Ste. Anne, with her august [Pg 14]daughter, is the instrument of God’s mercy towards you.”

During the service in the church, the pilgrims crowd up to the altar and kneel in long rows in front of the balustrade. The officiating priests carry the relics in one hand and a handkerchief in the other, and touch the glass cover to the lips of the worshipers, wiping it after each kiss.

As you come out, you see pilgrims around the fountain, drinking its water and filling bottles to carry home. It is not the original well, which is said to have been the scene of cures as miraculous as those performed at Lourdes; but if it was justifiable to move the church, why not the well? As you turn to the left, you see a picturesque way-side oratory, built of rough stones and mortar, from which a stream of water comes from the hill. A walk along this road is very interesting. You may see the black cross against the wall of every house. The heraldic emblem of Berne is not more revered in that city than the statue of Ste. Anne here, and in every house you see it in plaster, brass, or picture. An old cemetery here has been used so much that the beadle told me he had himself laid three long rows of people, burying them indiscriminately side by side, and on top of each other—“first come, first served.” Those who pay from twenty-five to a hundred dollars may be buried under the new church, the vaults of which are specially reserved for this purpose.

Little rustic booths do an active business in memorials of the saint, in the shape of medals, which the pilgrims pin on their coats and dresses, like the shells worn by the pilgrims who have visited the shrine of Ste. Anne in Brittany. Heaps of little brass and plaster statues, photographs, beads, and other trinkets, attract the visitor. The air is full of babble from the crowds of tired yet talkative people sitting on the grass or the benches, eating their luncheon out of huge carpet-bags. Two girls, who had heard from me of the wonderful well in Brittany, were throwing pins into the fountain to find out their matrimonial prospects, and laughing heartily over their efforts. When the pins fell head foremost, hope grew sick; when the points first touched the water, the prospect of marriage within a year was certain. I noticed that, like the Chinese praying to his favorite idol for “more money,” they both persisted until the test turned the right way.

Coming back to our hospitable “Retreat,” we saw a fascinating study of life and character. A tidy, handsome village girl had a boy seated on a stool on the sidewalk in front of her house, and was vigorously clipping his shaggy locks, catching the débris in her apron, which she had tucked around the lad’s neck. “Surely some pilgrim to Ste. Anne will lose his heart if he risk his hair to the pretty barber,” thought I. It turned out that some pilgrim had, and that she was a fisherman’s wife.

Every house seems to share in the profits of the pilgrimages, for though the older habitants hardly ever spend a sou, youth and beauty must have its fling. You see barrels of root [Pg 15]or spruce beer, huge slices of brown bread and butter, berries, gingerbread, boiled corn on the cob, and other Canadian luxuries, on the sills of the windows, or on rough deal tables at the doors. Inside you see long rows of solemn white cups and saucers, and piles of plates. In one little auberge there is a queer character, with a monstrous hump on her back and another on her nose. She has been living at Ste. Anne’s for seven years, interceding every day for the reduction of her deformity, but it increases with her age.

But what song is that stealing over the water, like a Canadian voyageur’s refrain? [Pg 16]A boat laden with pilgrims from the Isle of Orleans is making for our shore, and the voices rise and fall with the dip of the oars in the true rhythm of the canotier:

W. George Beers.

[Copyright, 1882, by The Century Co. All rights reserved.]

Chelsea, 4th Oct., 1849.—I will now, my long confused wayfarings of the summer being ended, endeavour to write down with all despatch what I can remember of them. After much sorting of paper-rubbish, reading over of all the Irish letters to my wife and kindred, and in some measure clearing the decks (not for “action” yet, alas, no, no!) set about this, which I partly consider a clearing of my own mind, as some kind of “preparation for action.” Faxit.

REMINISCENCES OF MY IRISH JOURNEY.

Saturday, 30th June, 1849 .—After endless “agonies of preparation,” natural to a poor stationary, sedentary, biliary, and otherwise much bewildered mortal, about eight in the morning I got on board the Chelsea steamer here, at the Cadogan Pier; left my poor wife gazing sorrowfully after me, and, in a close, damp-sunny morning, was wafted swiftly down the river. Memory now is a blank nightmare till I reach the wooden platform swinging on the river just above London Bridge, north side, and call earnestly for some boatman to take my luggage and me “to the Athlone, at Alderman Stairs.” Boatman comes, a ragged, lean greasy and sooty creature, with hurried toilsome eyes and shallow shelf chin—“a wholesome small nature, terribly beaten upon and stunted”—who cheerfully takes me in; zealously descends the river with me, tide against him; whisks his way like a needle thro’ innumerable impediments of ships, rafts, barges; sweating, panting, eyes looking still more toilsome, jacket doffed, shelf-chin still more protruded; and at half-past nine, reaches the Athlone, a dingy dirty-looking Dublin steamer (but a steamer and mode of travel I had chosen against my lazy wishes, and in obedience to my insights and determinations); and, after rowing round (steward or third-mate at first refusing to let down the steps) puts me on board—takes 1s. 6d. with protest, the double his fare, and splashes away again about his business. There am I on board.

Steamer lying all, to an unexpected degree, as if in a kind of greasy sleep. £2 fare demanded by some landsman interested seems the liveliest fact. Canaille of various kinds, Irish by look, getting itself located in the fore-deck; one yellow-faced, roughish, very slight-made Irish figure in cap half-drunk fixes my attention, by his endless talk to stewards etc., seemingly about nothing at all or next to nothing: a sorrowful phenomenon often confirmed afterwards. Half-pay Serjeant looking figure,—clean old Lancashire physiognomy of fifty (old Indian soldier, now at Falmouth, as I learned afterwards) is talking insipidities about the news from the papers, I forget what. Other figures—the more spectral in my memory, somewhat like spectral flies in a spectral gluepot! I was very sick in body, perhaps still more so in soul; and had, by no means, a lively mirror of attention to hold up to them. At ten o’clock, nevertheless, with unexpected precision, a bell rang, the steam mechanism began growling, and we jumbled forth on our way.

To the river-mouth I remember little with distinctness; the day had settled into grey; with more than enough of east-wind now that our own velocity was added to it. The brick-chaos and ship-and-boat-chaos of big London till after Greenwich lies across my remembrance like an ugly indistinct smear, full of noise and confusion, no figure distinct in it. Passengers, one after one, came on board; at Greenwich a great many soldiers “recruits and invalids” Irish both, the latter from India, and “bad subjects” mostly, as I learned afterwards,—these came on board at Gravesend in great number, drunk many of them, with or without officers (without it afterwards turned out); a nasty sight rather. Pilot-boats hooked themselves astern of us, and went shoving thro’ the foam; sometimes as many as 4 boats at once: “pilots looking out for a job,”—favored by the steamers. A tall antelope or panther figure in red coat (about Gravesend, I think) misses the proper boarding-place from his boat; steps into one of these pilot-boats, cool he amid the tumult of noises and splashing of spray; and twists gallantly aloft over the stern; dashes the spray from self and papers, and with a brisk calmness which I could not but admire, stept smiling forwards to his place, the foredeck: a corporal of foot; commander he, as I found, of the broken military there. An exceedingly tall lank simple-looking Irish gentleman came on board thereabouts too, whom I afterwards named to myself the “Irish Toots” (see Dickens). A very short well-conditioned cockney-looking gentleman had likewise come. I took him for the captain of these Majesty’s forces of ours; but found afterwards he was a tourist, “looking [Pg 18]at all the capital Cities,” Paris last year, Dublin this; he had a small tear-store (from which I guessed a wife too); his big blue eyes, silly as he was, had at times a beautiful sorrow in them while he sat silent in the evening on deck for a while; a rough pug-face—tamed into perfect peaceable politeness, had in it an air of limited rationality, veracity and English wholesomeness, which pleased me. But I must get on! Somewhere on the river a big fat Englishman of fifty stept on board, burly, black, pock-marked, one eye shut (seemingly out, but it proved to be in too, on occasion): some trader (one would have hoped, in bacon and edibles) to the Plymouth region, I afterwards found. Our other cabin passenger, where entering I noticed not, was an elderly Lancashire or Cumberland man, you could not say of what quality below a gentn.; feeble-minded, good-humoured, his old wrinkly face grew quite blown-out at last, the eyes almost shut up, by inflammatory regimen of whiskey &c. and want of sleep before the voyage ended. I did not in the least hate, yet how little either, did I pity this poor old man. Alas, wrapt up in our own black cares (which we ought to conquer, and keep moderately conquered, if we stood to our post), shut up the soul of man from feeling for his brother,—surely an ignoble state! let this suffice for our ship’s loading. I remember very vaguely Erith, much more so Southend or rather the name of “Southend and its long Pier” (a cockney bathing-place). I have a dim tint of grey-green country and spectral objects enough there rushing past me all that day and afternoon. Our Captain, an excellent, civil, able, old Welshman, kept aloft on the platform; very obliging when you spoke to him. I went twice there with a cigar, looked down into the sea of Irish rabble, and began to decipher type-faces of the Irish. The “light boats,” we passed near to two or three of them; the dreariest objects I ever in this world saw; the Girdler Tongue &c. on their several shoals of those names; must keep a light burning at night; the two men have no function else whatever; I suppose they can eat terribly, and sleep nearly the whole day. Their boats were bobbing and capering in the wild surf; narrow was the share otherwise these poor fellows had of this Universe. It is a wild expanse of shoals and channels, this Thames mouth. I had never been on that side of it, at least never in daylight, having usually in former voyages passed by the Nore. Of Broadstairs and Ramsgate, nothing but a tremulous cloudy shadow remains. Ditto of Deal. I saw Walmer Castle, Duke of Wellington’s, looking down on us with wings of planted wood; less memorably some big Hotel, perhaps more than one, its windows glittering in the bleared windy sunset,—not beautiful to me they, or anything, in that sad mood. Dover (lived at twenty-four years before, one autumn) looked grim enough in the twilight; I could recognise almost nothing of my old localities, the new “entrance of the tunnel” was not recogniseable except as a small blotch. How I took tea &c. and went to bed is quite abolished from recollection; too well can I recollect the snoring of my one-eyed provision friend,—whose eating at tea, whole chickens and plates of ham vanishing before him, I do now recollect! Also that I got up, probably about midnight; was told we were opposite Brighton, but could see no token of that or of anything but a dim flat coast with some kind of luminous gleam all along where sea met land; whereupon I had to smoke a pipe, and descend to my lair again. Cyclops snoring still more effectively now—seldom or never heard such snoring, which was not a stream, diastole and systole, but a whirlpool rather, or system of whirlpools, bottomless maelstroms and sandy systis conjoined (ah me!), for the man was nearly suffocated by cloud curtains and by vanished plates of ham. I have a dim but certain recollection of jumping out of my bed or drawer at last, indignantly dashing his curtains open, with some passionate demand to “cease that beastly gurgling and gluddering, in the name of all the devils!” Whereby at least my heavy provisional friend did awake; and I fell asleep and heard no more of him for that night. Poor fellow; not a bad creature, after all; there seemed a kind of healthy banter in him, a merry vivid eye; probably an excellent dealer in bacon, praiseworthy as a British citizen of 1849; but he did eat excessively, and his snoring was to me at once hateful and terrible,—poor fellow after all!

Sunday morning (1 July) at seven came on deck: beautifully sunny morning, Isle of Wight, Ventnor region lying close at hand, and the ship motionless waiting for the turn of the tide—wind had gone round from east to west in the night: we hung for about an hour with little, at first with next to no motion, opposite that southwest region of the little Island. The special localities, none of which were known to me beforehand, I did not get committed to memory. A straggling hamlet (perhaps about Dunnose, I can’t now find on the map any name that fixes itself as the name then given me) with a kind of bay and clayey unbeautiful coasts, this stood distinct; less so other struggling human objects; and now only Ventnor itself figures as absorbing the whole vivid past of the scene. A steepish slope, very green but rather treeless; houses and little gardens [Pg 19]sprinkled over a good part of it, connected by oblique paths; grass-surface very beautiful everywhere, shrubberies apparently flourishing; a pleasant group of dwellings hung out there against the morning sun,—and one of them, I know not which, had been John Sterling’s last dwelling! I looked intently, with many thoughts. Bonchurch not visible now—had it been? I knew also (what was curious to think of) that John Forster, little dreaming of my whereabout, was in one White’s at Bonchurch, down from London that very morning. Far elsewhither was I bound. With eye or with glass, looking never so intently I could discover no human or even living figure; which proves perhaps that our distance was greater than the short distance it appeared to be. “Toots” very loquacious when he could get a chance, came talking about Dr. McHale of Tuam (“Chuam” he called it) and Nangles of Achil Island; and how John had “cursed them all with bell, book, and candle” etc. which I shook off, not believing it at all literally in spite of Toots’s evident bona fides, and wishing indeed to see Ventnor rather than it. After Ventnor, talk with the half-pay Serjt. Major; Wight now flitting faster by us, the ship being under full movement again. Of Indian soldiering; mainly about the economics, difficulties, etc., of locomotion for armies; but above all things the prices of articles in the various markets, allowances of grog—what you could get, and pocket or swallow, by your soldiering in India—this was the theme of my half-pay Serjt. A most healthy practical man; simplicity itself, and yet savoir-faire enough, tough as leather, and a stroke in him (I could see) like that of a quarter staff of oak. Man worth remembering, told me of his pensions, promotions, appointment now (to some military charge of a district, I think) at Falmouth: “as good as one hundred pounds in all, sir, which is very well, you see”; more total absence of bragging, nay of self consciousness or of any unwholesome element it was impossible to see or figure. Soldiering like working, in such men; strong both ways, as native oak: the strongest kind of men. After Wight, Needles &c. (terribly worn, almost dilapidated and ruinous ugly-looking) had rapidly flowed past,—perhaps before ten o’clock,—the coast left us; Southampton &c. far in the distance, passed unnoticed, and I think I must have taken to read Quaker Pim’s book on Ireland which else passed unnoticed. Or perhaps I went to sleep? Probably that was it? Yes, in my notebook (pencil) it is marked so “fell asleep on deck a little in the sun towards noon.”

N. B. After three days more there is not even a pencil scrap, nothing but the letters to help me to decipher what was the exact day of this or that occurrence still remembered by me.

It turned out now there had a man been lost last night. The good old Captain so reported it. On Saturday evening, most of the poor Irish wretches of “invalids” got more or less completely drunk; some of them even on entering, had needed no completing. One of them, a lean, angry, misguided, entirely worthless looking creature, age perhaps forty, came staggering upon the quarter-deck, and made a turn there: turn nearly completed, he came right upon the captain who of course ordered him off,—which order, tho’ given mildly enough, the poor drunk wretch felt to be insulting to his honour, and swore fiercely not to comply with. A scuffle had ensued (Captain’s hand got “twisted”): all of us started up to conjure the poor wretch &c.; he did then turn off, abashed, perhaps repentant, had taken more drink for consolation; was “last seen about midnight”: it was now he that was never to be seen more! The Irish physiognomies I studied often from the upper platform: besides my yellow friend with the cap, I had made out some five or six type-physiognomies, which I could recognize as specimens of Irish classes of faces: there was the angry-bewildered, for instance the poor wretch that went overboard, or a still better yet left on board, a lean withered show of a creature with hanging brows, droop nose, mouth-corners drooping, chin narrow, narrow eyes full of sorrow and rage; “I have a right to be here, sir, I want my ration!” said he once. There was there a blonde big tiger-face (to whom I lent a light for his pipe); this is of mixed breed, I think a north-country face: noble possibility quite marred. Irish sailor at the helm in wig and storm hat; bulky, with acquiline face and closed mouth, wild cunning little eye: like Jock McDonald of my early years. Ah me! These faces are still very clear to me; and were I a painter, I could draw them; others, one or two, not thought of again till now, have got erased; I was struck in general with the air of faculty misbred, and gone to waste, or more or less “excellent possibility much marred,” in almost all these faces. The man had found himself so enveloped in conditions which he deemed unfair, which he had revolted against, but had not been able to conquer, that he had so to speak, lost his wa; a sorry sight, the tragedy of each of these poor men; but here too surely is a “possibility”; if the Irish faculty be good, you can breed it, put it among conditions which are fair or at least fairer.

[Pg 20]

“Portland Bill”: it was on awakening from one of my deck sleeps, well on in the afternoon that this object: a muddy-beached little Island, I found,—perhaps an Island only at high tide:—shaped rather like a battle bill: was that the origin of the name? From this point the Coast continued our neighbour again; by degrees Dorsetshire passed, and then Devonshire with its gnarled rocks (as if they were whinstone or limestone, and Scotch rocks) winded rapidly off, as the evening sank—viewless now, damp, and rather windy, as we were running into the teeth of the breeze. Many caves, gnarled promontories, rock islets; trim houses and fields, no human creature visible; a silent English sabbath country,—like the dream of a sabbath. Mate, of whom anon, points out Plymouth light in the thickening dusk; past ten we make the light: Breakwater with its red lamp with its sudden calm of sea, and tumult of boats;—we were in some most dark, strait place, with rain beginning, and they called it Plymouth Harbour. Toots’s talk to me, while the bustle went on, about an Irish lord (just dead?) and his brother, transcendent blackguards, beautiful once, dance or dinner of innumerable improper-females in London once—pity rather that I have forgotten that: but of Toots who could do anything but forget? Smooth-flowing shallow shameless river of talk; always in one or two minutes, when I could not bodily get away from him, my thoughts slid far away. These transcendent Irish lords were connected, somehow by marriage with the late Duke of Gordon. Of my night in this harbour there remains yet sad memorial; in a scrawl of a letter begun about midnight to my wife! Enough here to record the stages or chief epochs: 1. To bed very sleepy. Toots and the Lancashire Non-significant, talking serious jargon for about an hour in the cabin, wouldn’t let me; I remember, the poor cockney tourist had been asking “for a pen,” remembered Post Office here, and started up to write, by way of deliverance from that ear-torment:—2. Writing with ear-torment still worn near at hand, my Provisional friend (O Heaven I thought he had been gone, never to snore more) stept in, evidently full of food and porter; at sight of him I start, can write no farther; lock up my writing case, wait impatiently that Toots and Non-significant would end. 3. Try bed again; can’t at all. Toots and Non-significant stumble in, rain patters on the deck, Provisional friend takes to snoring—“blubber—gurgle—gludder!” I start up and don my clothes; find in the cabin too a poor under-steward snoring, loudly but humanly, and have not the heart to awaken him. Uncertain what to do, fly on deck, smoke (under my umbrella), try not to despair; find at last a side cabin with nothing in it but rubbish of clothes, a sofa and an open window; fling myself down there, thanking Heaven, and fall sound asleep—till eight next morning.

Monday, 2d July.—All busy when I came on deck; sunny morning, boxes, bales, persons getting or got on board; soon sail; have seen nothing of Plymouth, see little even of the harbour except confusion of ropes and ships;—size of it guessable at less than I expected. Tract of town (Cutwater they called it?) stretching back on the right as we sailed out; buildings like public storehouses, or official houses farther down; two neat women step hurriedly on board there. Misventurous Irishwomen, giving up their plan of emigration to Australia, and cowering back to Ennis in Clare, as I afterwards learned; sisters, Misses Hewit by name. Breakwater a stone glacis, with light-tower (perhaps Cannon-tower too) and small esplanade at the end, some frigates scattered about; it was Plymouth Sound; pretty enough in the summer morning after such a night. Various new figures now on board; new prey to Toots. I spoke to none; hoped they would leave at Falmouth where we were to call. Sick gentleman in big wicker cradle lay on the deck; poor fellow! “paralytic in the lower extremities,” going to Dublin for surgery, attended only by a rough clown of a servant; his eyes look mild and patient, tho’ sad; intelligent white face; age probably about thirty-five; they shifted him round out of the sun; not to embarrass him, we had to forbear looking at his cradle or him.

Cornish coast, as that of Devonshire had been, gnarled rocky; indented all along, harbour and sound (when once you had “opened” it) at the bottom of each little bay “Pol”—something or other, when you asked the name. An interesting event to me. Looe: “that is Looe,” that strait hardly perceptible crack or notch in the rocks there.—Poor C. Buller, poor old years of his and mine! Fowey-harbour entrance was marked by white spots, a couple, painted on the rocks; not find it otherwise. Toots preying on the newcomers. “Hum-m-m. Drum-m-m!” with a strong Irish intonation in it. Many trim sloops of one pattern, with red sails and conspicuous label (“P. H. No. 1,” etc.? something like that) were nimbly cutting about: “Pilchard-boats, sir!” All busy here, crowded steamer crossed us on the left; pleasure-trip, Falmouth—to the Eddystone probably. Half-pay Serjeant did the honours of the Coast as we approached his new home; has liberty [Pg 21]seemingly of the quarter-deck, but feeds and sleeps in some region of his own. About noon or after, past St. Mawes and on the left past Pendennis,—Falmouth; and moor there “for about an hour”—which proved two hours and more.

I might, had I foreseen that latter fact, have gone ashore to see “Barclay Fox” and Co., if nothing better; nay, I was near going, had my foot on the ladder towards a boat, but in the scrambling tumult gave it up again, and decided to stay and look about me and pensively smoke and consider. John Sterling’s house was there too; but nobody could tell me which; tho’ one, a brisk young damsel did point out the warehouse of the Foxes, a big house near the sea. Falmouth might contain three or four thousand souls (as the look suggested to guess); it hung, pleasantly enough, tho’ much too bare-looking, on the slope of the acclivity and down close to the Sea; reminded me a little of Kirkcaldy, except that this was squarish in shape, not “a long town” rather a “loose town,” as I judged; one street near the sea, main street I suppose, on the level; the sloping thoroughfares I judged to be mostly lanes. The country looked bare; the harbour land-locked is beautiful, and if deep must be excellent. Assisted clown to screen the poor invalid gentleman in his cradle from the hot windless sun; fixed up my own umbrella over him, which the clown afterwards told me, in confidential gratitude, was “a graat suppoart”—Sent a card ashore to Fox; admired the clean, sturdy, clear-looking boatmen; watched their long dangerous loading and disloading. Toots had gone, Provisional friend (O joy!) had gone; hoped we should now have a stiller time. About two the steam growled again, and we got under way, close to the little pleasant Castle of Pendennis this time, a trim castellated height with trim paths &c. (one company in it, Serjt. Halfpay had said); and so again out to the open deep.

Our 2 Irishwomen “from Ennis in Clare” with their clean summer bonnets (mere clean calico, folded full over paste board, with a tack or two; much admired by me) had come to the quarter-deck; wished evidently to be spoken to; were by me after others of us. Father had been a Lieutenant of foot with pension, mother too with pension; both being dead, resources were all out: parson had advised emigration, “free passage to Australia” was certain if we would deposit £12 in advance; deposited, sold off, came to Plymouth, found the “free passage” a passage among parish paupers, and shrinked (of course) at the notion of it! Officers had been extremely helpful and polite; got us back, with difficulty, our £12 and here we are, wending our sad way home again! A more distressing story I had not lately heard. For both the women, “ladies” you could not have hesitated even in the poor-house to call them, were clearly of superior faculty and quality: the elder some forty-five perhaps, a ruggid brave-looking woman; the younger delicate, graceful, and even still beautiful, tho’ verging towards middle-age also. The two unfortunates, was there nothing other for them by way of career in the world but this! The younger was quite pleasant company; but at “the Lizard” or earlier began to grow sick, grew ever sick, and I had to lead her to her place, a horrible den called “Second Cabin,” and there leave her sister and her. Ill-nature of the stewardess, tiff between the good old captain and her because of these poor Miss Hewits. “Bring me our basket, pray sir! Stewardess will give it you!” were the last words of the elder from her dark den. Stewardess knew nothing of their basket, not she; old captain awoke from his after dinner nap, reproached the woman for her greedy hard character, ordered her to “know” the basket, which, with very angry tears, assisted by me and my soothing eloquence, the creature at last did. Base, in many cases, under certain aspects, is the mind of man!

The “Lizard point” we would pass before dinner; stormy place of cliffs, high cliffs, rough water; I found that in shape it did resemble somewhat the head of a lizard,—at least on the western sides it does. We were past the “southern” most land of Britain then; but the tossing of the water did not abate as promised; the evening light glared wild and sad upon the solitary sea, to the Land’s-end, that was the word now. Coast still high and all rock; Land’s-end stretching out black ahead; it was towards sunset when we actually reached it; passed it round the lighthouse at the distance perhaps of a mile. The wildest most impressive place I ever saw on the coasts of Britain. A lighthouse rises on a detached rock some considerable space ahead; many detached rocks, of a haggard skeleton character, worn haggard by the wild sea, are scattered about between the lighthouse and end of the firm cliff; that cluster, where the lighthouse is, had seemed to me like the ruins of a cathedral for some time. Very wild and grim, impressive in itself and as the notablest of British capes. A farmhouse called by sailors “First and last” stands very near to the extremity; farther round to the west are villages and many houses visible, “mining village” you are told; the promontory itself is among [Pg 22]the highest I have seen (much higher than St. Bees I thought); sheer and black. A boat or two, poor specks of piscatory human art, were seen rocking and paddling among the angry skeleton rocks in these ever-vexed waters; where they were to land, or how get up to “First and last” one didn’t well see. But here at last is the spectre of the mixed cathedral,—a lighthouse among haggard sea-beat rocks, namely; and we are round the Land’s-end, getting round towards the western side of it, and had better look well our last. The sunshine now went out, angry breeze blew colder from dark cloudy skies,—baddish night, probably? Some poor laboring ship, with patched sails and not otherwise of prosperous aspect met us just past the lighthouse, borne into the grim evening, it on its way, we on ours; and the Land’s-end was among the things that had been; “standing for the Tuscar, sir!”—Tuscar light on the coast of Wexford, one hundred and thirty miles off. And so the evening and the morning had been a new day.

As there was nothing to be seen on deck but the dim tumult of sea and sky, I suppose I must have gone early to bed: I can remember shutting my little cabin door, (for the harsh stewardess, in hope probably of a shilling, had volunteered to make a bed for me in the place where I had found refuge the night before) with a satisfied feeling, and turning in with great hope: but, alas, it proved far otherwise. My first experience in the new bed was a jolt that nearly threw me out: the wind had risen, was still rising; the steamer pitched, rolled, tumbled, creaked and growled: doors banging, men’s feet and voices sounding, and the big sea booming and roaring: not a wink of sleep could be had all night, hardly could one’s place in bed be maintained. Some time, perhaps between three and four I went on deck to smoke; a wild wet stormy dimness everywhere; the mate dripping from every angle of his face and person—with thin wet shoes on, I remember—approached my shelter, talking, sea stoicisms to me, admitting that it was a roughish night: noticeable fellow this; very civil, very good-humoured, sliding about (for he trailed his limbs and feet with thin shoes) to put this and that detail in order always; voice thin, creaky, querulous—hesitatory, and as if it couldn’t be troubled to speak; a rocking, sliding, innocent-hearted “sea-pedant” (as such I had classed him); with lips drawn in, puckered brow, and good-humoured eyes pretending to be wearier than they were; came from the Medway, had been wrecked, traded to Aberdeen, was now puddling about in these seas;—may he prosper, poor fellow! I flung myself next on the sofa, under miscellaneous wrappage, and did then get some stony sleep till the morning fairly broke.

Tuesday, 3rd July.—On deck between eight and nine, all hands looking out for “the Tuskar” when doing nothing else; old captain and a wretched passenger or two trying to walk the quarter-deck (impossible for any two-footed land animal); big sheets of spray dashing over them from time to time. A wild grey tumult; sight and sound everywhere of the rather dismal sort in sea and in sky. One ship or perhaps two at various times visible; elsewhere no Tuskar, no motion that was not of the chaotic powers. Sailors made a wave or motion or sound of some sort from the platform, captain too looked; Tuskar at last! In a few instants more I also could see it; white pillar or tower rising steady amid the tumult of the waters, strange and welcome; some twelve miles off, they said. We turned now gradually to the right: for Arklow head, for Wicklow do., then was Dublin itself to come. Wind, as we turned from it on our new course, grew softer somewhat and water smoother, but all day it was gusty, very uncomfortable and too cold. The poor sick gentleman had passed the night on deck, his cradle well screened under tarpaulins; and didn’t seem much hurt by the rough weather. Lancashire Non-significant, who took a little punch perhaps too often, seemed greatly out of sorts; his poor face, red as vermilion in parts, and swollen as if you had blown up all its old wrinkles with wind;—poor devil; yet he ate again at breakfast, and made no complaint, took nothing amiss.

“Wexford Harbour,” visible only as a blank on the line of coast, was a mere tradition to us. Wexford and Wicklow hills (I supposed about Eniscorthy and Ferns) many commonplace looking hills of moderate height and complex arrangement now visible. Vinegar Hill, a peaked flat cone, conspicuous enough among the others. Thought of the “Battle of Vinegar Hill,” but not with interest, with sorrow rather and contempt; one of the ten times ten thousand futile fruitless “battles” this brawling unreasonable people has fought,—the saddest of distinctions to them among peoples! In heaven’s name learn that “revolting” is not the trade which will profit you. The unprofitablest of all trades, if you exceed in it! In heaven’s name either be at peace, or else try to fight with some chance of success! “Hill of Tarah” visible too, of conical shape; but not the historical-illustrious Tara,—that is in Meath, I think; tho’ that too is but moderately “illustrious” to me.

Arklow Town I didn’t see at all; understood there was next to no town, but remembered [Pg 23]“Wooden Ludlow’s” adventure there, and could have liked to take some picture of the ground with me. Wicklow head, beautiful trim establishment of a light-house there, properly three towers (one or else two of them having proved wrong built), accurately whitewashed, walled in, with paths &c., a pleasure to look at upon the brown way. These generally like that of Devonshire or the lower forms of Scotch coast; interior not ill-cultivated; houses trim enough from the distance, fields fenced and some small stragglings of plantation even. Behind Wicklow Head, in a broad shallow bay looking rather bleared, found Wicklow Town, kept looking at it as we sailed northward right away from it; lies in a hollow on the southern side of the bay screened by Wicklow head from the east winds—rather a feeblish kind of County Town; chapels, a steeple, slate roofs, thin cloud of smoke; perhaps 2 or towards 3 thousand inhabitants, as I judged. In all these seas we saw no ship. Absolutely none at all but one Wicklow Fishing-sloop, of the same form but quite rusty and out of repair as the Cornish Pilchard-sloops of yesterday;—alas one, & in this state of ineffectuality. A big steamer farther on, making from Dublin towards “Bristol” (I think our captain said); this and a pilot boat not employed by us; except these three we saw no other ships at all in those Irish seas that day. Wonderful & lamentable! chorus all my Irish friends; and grope for their pikes to try and mend it! Bray Head I had seen before; and Bray, but couldn’t make my recollections correspond. Beautiful suburban country by the shores there, on the Dublin side. Works of Wicklow Railway, hanging over the sea, I remember, probably about Bray Head. Afternoon sinking lower, wind cold, bleary, loud; no dinner till one got to Dublin: wish we were there. Dublin Bay at last; Kingston with its small exotic rows of Villas hanging over the saltwater; Dalkey Islet, with ruined church, close on the other side of us; Kingstown Harbour, huge square basin within granite moles, few ships, small business in it, wild wind was tossing some filament of steam about (mail steamer, getting ready I suppose for Holyhead), and the rest was idle vacancy. Long lines of granite embankment, a noble channel with docks, miles of it (there seemed to me), and no ship in it, no human figure on it, the genius of vacancy alone possessing it! Will “be useful some day” I suppose? The look of it, in one’s own cold wretched humour, was rather sad.—Dublin Harbour at last; a few ships actually moored here, along the keys nearest to the City. Tumult, as usual; our key was on the north bank. Miss Hewits came up, specially begged me not to leave their luggage once on shore till they themselves came with the remainder of it: did so, tho’ little able to wait; was hardly ever in a more deplorable state of body than even now. Despatched the Miss Hewits; got into a cab myself escaping from the unutterable hurlyburly. “Imperial Hotel, Sackville street!”—and was safely set down there, in wind and dust, myself a mass of dust and inflammatory ruin, about 6 or 7 in this evening of Tuesday, July 3.—What a pleasure to get fairly washed, and into clean linen and clothes, once more! small wholesome dinner in the ground storey; fine roomy well-ordered place: but, alas, at the Post Office there was no admittance, “all shut at seven.” I had to take that disappointment, and instead of receiving letters write letters.

Imperial-Hotel people, warned I suppose by Fitzgerald (Miss Purcell the proprietress’s nephew) had brightened up into enthusiastic smiles of welcome at sound of my name: all was done for me then that human waiterage in the circumstances could do; I had a brisk-eyed deft Irish youth by way of special attendant, really a clever, active, punctual youth, who seemed as if he would have run to the world’s end for me at lifting of my finger: he got me cloakpins (my little bed-room the “quietest” they had, wanted such); bath tubs, attended to my letters, clothes, messages, waited on me like a familiar fairy. Could they have got me into a room really “quiet,” where I might have really slept, all had been well there. But that was not possible; not there, nor anywhere else in Inns. One’s “powers of observation” act under sad conditions, if the nerves are to be continually in a shatter with want of sleep and what it brings! Under that sad condition, as of a gloomy pressure of waking nightmare, were all my Irish operations, of observation or other, transacted; no escape from it; take it silently therefore, say nothing more of it, but do the best you may under it as under a law of fate.

About 10 at night, still writing letters, I received “John O’Hagan’s” visit; a note from Duffy, who was dining there, had lain waiting for me before—brisk innocent modest young barrister, this John O’Hagan; Duffy’s sister-in-law did by no manner of means let rooms; so her offer of one, indicated in Duffy’s note, had to be at once declined: Duffy himself “would be here in half an hour.” Wrote on to my mother or to Jane: Duffy came soon after the time set. Drank a “glass of lemonade” from me, I a glass of punch; took my letters of introduction home with him to scheme out a route, gave me a road series “drive here first, then there, &c.” for Dublin [Pg 24]introductions on the morrow; and after a silent pipe I tumbled into bed.

Wednesday, 4th July.—Breakfast in the Public room: considerable company; polite all, and less of noise among them than when I was formerly there: arrangements all perfect; “toasted bacon,” coffee, toast, all right and well served—No letters for me at the Post-Office! strange, but no help. Car (“a shilling an hour”) about noon (I think) to go and deliver my introductions; got a body of letters just as I was stepping out on this errand: all right, I hope, Postmaster mistaken before! M’Donnel of the National Schools, “engaged,” very well; to Board of Works, Poor-law Power not come; Larcom just coming, read my letters in his room, go away then as he has not yet got his business done. In Merrion Square Doctor Stokes in: clever, energetic, but squinting, rather fierce, sinister-looking man,—at least some dash of that suspectible in him: to dine there, nevertheless, to-morrow evening—Doctor Kennedy not at home, Sir R. Kane do. (out of town); Sir Duncan Macgregor, found him, an excellent old Scotchman, soldierly, open, genial, sagacious: Friday night to dine with him; left my other military letters there, and drove to Mrs. Callan’s (Duffy’s sister-in-law);—had missed Pim the Quaker before; “in London”; left Forster’s letter, declining to see the other members of the firm just now. Long talk with Mrs. Callan, Dr. C., and Mrs. Duffy; Duffy in his room ill of slight cold. Home to Imperial again; with a notice that I will go and bathe at Howth;—find Dr. Evory Kennedy at the door as I am inquiring about that; go in with him, talk; he carries me in his vehicle to the Howth Station, not possible for this night; can do it at Kingston, drives off for the station thither, with repeated invitations that I will dine with him,—finds on the road that Kingston also will not do, and renews his entreaties to dine, which seeing now no prospect for the evening, I comply with Ky.; drives me all about; streets beautiful, but idle, empty; charming little country house (name irrecoverable now), beyond some iron-foundry or forge-works, beyond “Rev. Dr. Todd’s,” on the Dundrum or Ranelagh side: wife and sisters all out to receive us: sisters, especially elder sister, expected to be charmed at sight of “Thomas Carloil!” tho’ whether they adequately were or not, I cannot say.—Pleasant enough little dinner there; much talk of Pitt Kennedy, a brother now with Napier in India; vivid inventive patriotic man, it would appear, of whose pamphlets they promised me several (since read, not without some real esteem of the headlong Pitt Kennedy); other brother is Lord Bath’s agent in Monaghan,—hence chiefly those attentions to me. Ladies gone,—pale, elderly earnest-eyed lean couple of sisters, insipid-beautiful little wife.—“Dr. Cooke Taylor” is announced, a snuffy, babbling, baddish fellow, whom I had not wished at all specially to see.—Strange dialect of this man, a Youghal native, London had little altered that; immense lazy gurgling about the throat and palate regions, speech coming out at last not so much in distinct pieces and vocables, as in continuous erudition, semi-masticated speech. A peculiar smile too dwelt on the face of poor snuffy Taylor; I pitied, but could not love him—with his lazy gurgling, semi-masticated, semi-deceitful (and self-deceiving) speech, thought and action. Poor fellow, one of his books that I read “On the Manufacturing regions in 1843,” was not so bad; Lord Clarendon, a great Patron of his, had got him a pension, brought him over to Ireland:—and now (about a fortnight ago, end of Septr.) I learn that he is dead of cholera, that, better or not so good, I shall never see him again! We drove home together that night, in Dr. Kennedy’s car; I set him out at his house (in some modest clear street, near Merrion Square); two days after, I saw him at the Zoölogical breakfast; gurgle-snuffle, Cockney-and-Youghal wit again in semi-masticated dialect, with great expressions of regard for me, as well as with other half or whole untruths;—and so poor Taylor was to vanish, and the curtains rush down between us impenetrable for evermore. Allah akbar, Allah Kerim!

Thursday, 5th July.—What people called, what bustle there was of cards, and people, and appointments, and invitations in my little room, I have quite forgotten the details of (letters indicate more of it perhaps): what I can remember is mainly what I did, and not quite definitely (except with effort) all or the most of that.

Notes and visitors, hospitable messages and persons, Macdonnel, Colonel Foster, Dr. Kennedy—in real truth I have forgotten all the particulars; of Thursday I can remember only a dim hurly-burly, and whirlpool of assiduous hospitable calls and proposals, till about four o’clock when a “Sir Philip Crampton,” by no means the most notable of my callers, yet now the most noted in my memory, an aged, rather vain and not very deep-looking Doctor of Physic, came personally to “drive me out,”—drive me to the Phoenix Park and Lord Lieutenant’s, as it proved. Vapid-inane looking streets in this Dublin, along the quays and everywhere; sad defect of waggons, real business vehicles or even gentleman’s carriages; [Pg 25]nothing but an empty whirl of street cars, huckster carts and other such “trashery.” Sir P’s. talk, Twistleton mainly—Phoenix Park, gates, mostly in grass, monument, a pyramid, I really don’t remember in “admonition” of what,—some victory perhaps? Frazer’s “Guide-book” would tell. Hay going on, in pikes, coils, perhaps swaths too; patches of potatoes even: a rather dimmish wearisome look. House with wings (at right angles to the body of the building) with esplanade, two sentries, and utter solitude, looked decidedly dull. Sir P., some business inside, tho’ Ldship. out, leaves me till that end; I write my name, with date merely, not with address, in his Lordship’s book (“haven’t the honor to know her Ladyship,”) am conducted through empty galleries, into an empty room in the western (or is it northern?) wing, am there to wait. Tire soon of waiting; walk off leaving message. Sir P. overtakes me before we reach the gate; sets me down at my hôtel again, after much celebration of his place in the Wicklow Hills, etc., after saluting an elderly roué Prince or Graf something, a very unbeautiful old boiled-looking foreign, dignitary (Swede, I think) married to somebody’s sister;—and with salutations, takes himself away, muttering about “Zoölogical society breakfast on Saturday,” and I, barely in time now for Stokes’s dinner, behold no more.

Stokes’s dinner was well replenished both with persons and other material, but it proved rather unsuccessful. Foolish Mrs. Stokes, a dim Glasgow lady, with her I made the reverse of progress,—owing chiefly to ill-luck. She did bore me to excess, but I did not give way to that; had difficulty however in resisting it; and at length once, when dinner was over, I answering somebody about something chanced to quote Johnson’s, “Did I say anything that you understood, Sir?” the poor foolish lady took it to herself; bridled, tossed her head with some kind of indignant-polite ineptitude of a reply; and before long flounced out of the room (with her other ladies, not remembered now), and became, I fear, my enemy for ever! Petrie, a Painter of Landscapes, notable antiquarian, enthusiastic for Brian Boru and all that province of affairs; an excellent simple, affectionate lovable soul, “dear old Petrie,” he was our chief figure for me: called for punch instead of wine, he, and was gradually imitated; a thin, wrinkly, half-ridiculous, yet mildly dignified man; old bachelor, you could see; speaks with a panting manner, difficult to find the word; shews real knowledge, tho’ with sad credulity on Irish antiquarian matters; not knowledge that I saw on anything else. Burton, a young Portrait-Painter; thin-acquiline man, with long thin locks scattered about, with a look of real Painter-talent, but thin, proud-vain; not a pleasant “man of genius.” Todd, antiquarian parson (Dean or something), whose house I had seen the night before: little round-faced, dark-complexioned, squat, good humored and knowing man; learned in Irish Antiquities he too; not without good instruction on other matters too.—These and a mute or two were the dinner; Stokes, who has a son that carves, sitting at the side; after dinner there came in many other mutes who remained such to me. Talk, in spite of my endeavours, took an Irish-versus-English character; wherein, as I really have no respect for Ireland as it now is and has been it was impossible for me to be popular! Good humor in general, tho’ not without effort always, did maintain itself. But Stokes, “the son of a United Irishman” as I heard, grew more and more gloomy, emphatic, contradictory: after eleven I was glad to get away. Petrie and others in kindly mood going with me so far as our roads coincided; and about twelve (I suppose) I got to bed,—and do not suppose, also, but know, that there was a wretched wakeful night appointed me: some neighbouring guest taken suddenly ill, as I afterwards heard. (I must get on faster, be infinitely briefer in regard to all this!)

Friday, 6th July.—Still in the bath-tub, when my waiter knocked at the door, towards 9; and so soon as let in, gave me a letter with notice that some orderly, or heiduc, or I know not what the term is, was waiting in some vehicle for an answer. Invitation from Lord Clarendon to dine with him on Saturday: here was a nodus! For not having slept, I had resolved to be out of Dublin and the noise without delay; Kennedy had pressed me to his country-house for a dinner on Saturday, and that, tho’ not yet in words I had resolved to do, his hospitality being really urgent and his place quiet;—and now has the Lord Lieutenant come, whose invitation abolished by law of etiquette all others! Out of the cold bath, on the spur of the moment, thou shalt decide, and the heiduc waits! Polite answer (well enough really) that I am to quit Dublin that evening, and cannot come. Well so far; so much is tolerably ended. New very polite note came from Lord Clarendon offering me introductions &c. an hour or two after; for which I wrote a 2nd note, “not needed, thousand thanks.” This morning I had to breakfast with O’Hagan, where were two young “Fellows of Trinity” great admirers &c. and others to be.

Fellows of Trinity, breakfast and the rest of it accordingly took effect: Talbot Street—I [Pg 26]think they called the place,—lodgings, respectable young barrister’s. Hancock the Political-Economy Professor, whom I had seen the day before; he and one Ingram, author of the Repeal Song “True man like you man,” were the two Fellows; to whom as a mute brother one Hutton was added, with “invitation to me” from the parental circle, “beautiful place somewhere out near Howth,”—very well as it afterwards proved. “Dr. Murray,” Theology-Professor of Maynooth, a big burly mass of Catholic Irishism; he and Duffy, with a certain vinaigrous pale shrill logician figure who came in after breakfast, made up the party—Talk again England versus Ireland; a sad unreasonable humour pervading all the Irish population on this matter—“England does not hate you at all, nor love you at all; merely values and will pay you according to the work you can do!” No teaching of that unhappy people to understand so much. Dr. Murray, head cropt like stubble, red-skinned face, harsh grey Irish eyes; full of fiery Irish zeal too, and rage, which however he had the art to keep down under buttery-vocables: man of considerable strength, man not to be “loved” by any manner of means! Hancock, and now Ingram too, were wholly English (that is to say, Irish-rational) in sentiment. Duffy very plaintive with a strain of rage audible in it. Vinaigrous logician, intolerable in that vein, drove me out to smoke. Not a pleasant breakfast in the humour I was then in!

University after, along with these two fellows: Library and busts; Museum, with big dark Curator Ball in it; many knick-knacks,—Skull of Swift’s Stella, and plaster-cast of Swift: couldn’t write my name, except all in a tremulous scratchy shiver, in such a state of nerves was I. Todd had, by appointment, been waiting for me; was gone again. Right glad I to get home, and smoke a pipe in peace, till Macdonnel (or somebody) should come for me!—Think it was this day I saw among others, Councillor Butt, brought up to me by Duffy: a terrible black burly son of earth: talent visible in him, but still more animalism; big bison-head, black, not quite unbrutal: glad when he went off “to the Galway Circuit” or whithersoever.

Sad reflexions upon Dublin, and the animosities that reign in its hungry existence—Not now the “Capital” of Ireland; has Ireland any Capital, or where is its future capital to be? Perhaps Glasgow or Liverpool is its real “capital city” just now! Here are no longer lords of any kind; not even the sham-lords with their land-revenues come hither now. The place has no manufactures to speak of; except of ale and whisky, and a little poplin-work, none that I could hear of. All the “litigation” of Ireland, whatever the wretched Irish people will still pay for the voiding of their quarrels, comes hither; that and the sham of Government about the Castle and Phoenix Park,—which could as well go anywhither if it were so appointed. Where will the future capital of Ireland be! Alas, when will there any real aristocracy arise (here or elsewhere) to need a Capital for residing in!—

About four p. m. as appointed, Macdonnell with his car came. “Son of a United Irishman,” he too. Florid handsome man of 45 with grey hair, keen hazel eyes, not of the very best expression: active, quick, intelligent, energetic, with something smelling of the Hypocrite in him, disagreeably limiting all other respect one might willingly pay him. Talis qualis, with him through the Streets. Glassnevin tollbar, woman has not her groat of change ready; streaks of irregularity, streaks of squalor noticeable in all streets and departments of things. Glassnevin Church; woody, with high enclosures, frail-looking old edifice, roof mainly visible:—at length Glassnevin model-farm—nearly the best thing, to appearance, I have yet seen in Ireland. Modest slated buildings, house, school and offices, for real use, and fit for that. Slow-spoken heavy-browed, schoolmaster, croaks out sensible pertinent speech about his affairs: an Ulster man (from Larne, I think; name forgotten), has forty-five pupils, from seventeen to twenty-one years; they are working about, dibbling, sorting dungheaps, sweeping yards. Mac. speaks to several: coarse rough-haired lads, from all sides of Ireland, intelligent well-doing looks thro’ them all. Schooling alternates with this husbandry work. Will become National Schoolmasters,—probably factors of estates, if they excel and have luck. Clearly, wherever they go they will be practical missionaries of good order and wise husbandry, these poor lads; anti chaos missionaries these: good luck go with them, more power to their elbow! Such were my reflections, expressed partly in some such words. Our heavy-browed croaking-voiced friend had some thirty Cows; immense pains to preserve all manure, it is upon this that his husbandry turns. A few pigs, firstrate health in their air. Some thirty acres of ground in all; wholly like a garden for cultivation: best hay, best barley; best everything. I left him and his rough boys, wishing there were 1000 such establishments in Ireland: alas, I saw no other in the least equal to it; doubt if there is another. Mac. talking confidentially and with good insight too of Archbishop Whately [Pg 27]& C., set me down at the Hôtel, to meet again at dinner. Hasty enough toilette, then Sir Dn. McGregor’s close Car, and I am whisked out to Drumcoudra where the brave Sir Dn. himself with wife and son, and a party including Larcom and two ancient Irish Gentlemen &c. are waiting.

Pleasant old country-house; excellent quietly genial and hospitable landlord: dinner pleasant enough really. McDonnell sat by me, somewhat flashy; Larcom opposite, perhaps do. but it was in the English style. Ancient Irish gentn. were of really excellent breeding, yet Irish altogether: these names quite gone (if ever known, according to the underbreath method of introduction), their figures still perfectly distinct to me. In white neck cloth, opposite side, a lean figure of sixty; wrinkly, like a washed blacksmith in face, yet like a gentn. too,—elaborately washed and dressed, yet still dirty-looking; talks of ancient experiences, in hunting, claret drinking, experiences of others his acquaintances, all dead and gone now, which I have entirely forgotten; high Irish accent; clean dirty-face wrinkled into stereotype, of smile or of stoical frown you couldn’t say which: that was one of the ancient Irishmen; who perhaps had a wife there? The other, a more florid man with face not only clean but clean-looking, and experiences somewhat similar; a truly polite man in the Irish style: he took me home in his car. Sir Dn. had handed me a general missive to the Police Stations “Be serviceable, if you ever can, to this traveller,”—which did avail me once. At home lies Kennedy’s letter, enjoining me to accept the Lord Lieutenant’s dinner, whither he too is going; which I have already refused! What to do to-morrow night? Duffy is to be off to Kilkenny; to lodge with “Dr. Cane the Mayor”; who invites me too (Duffy, on the road to O’Hagan’s breakfast, shewed me that), which I accept.

Saturday, 7th July.—Wet morning; wait for Kennedy’s promised Car,—to breakfast in the Zoölogical gardens. Smoking at the door, buy a newspaper, old hawker pockets my groat, then comes back saying “Yer Hanar has given me by mistake a three-penny!” Old knave, I gave him back his newspaper, ran upstairs for a penny,—discover that the threepenny has a hole drilled in it, that it is his,—and that I am done! He is off when I come down—Petrie under an umbrella, but no Kennedy still. We call a car, we two; I give him my “Note to Chambers Walker, Barrister,” whom he knows, who will take me up at Sligo, when he (P) will join us, and we shall be happy. Well;—we shall see—Muddy Street, rain about done; Carboy coming over one of the bridges, drives against the side of our car, seemed to me to see clearly for some instants that he must do such a thing, but to feel all the while that it would be so convenient to him if he didn’t,—a reckless humour, ignoring of the inevitable, which I saw often enough in Ireland. Even the mild Petrie swore, and brandished his umbrella. “How could I help it?; could I stop, and I goin’ so rapid!” At the gate of Zoölogical which is in Phoenix Park, were Hancock, Ball of the Museum, another Ball of the Poor-law, Cook Taylor (for the last time, poor soul!), and others strolling under the wet boscage: breakfast now got served in a dim very damp kind of place (like some small rotundo, for limited public-meetings),—unpleasant enough wholly; and we got out into the gardens, and walked smoking, with freer talk (of mine mainly) good for little. Animals &c.,—public subscription scanty—Government helps:—adieu to it. In Kennedy’s car to Sackville Street; Poor-law Ball and a whole set of us; pause at Sackville street, part go on, part will take me to Royal Irish Academy, after I have got my letters of this morning’s post. With Hancock I settle that Hutton this night shall lodge me at Howth; that he and Ingram shall escort me out thither, when I will bathe. Nerves and health—ach Gott, be silent of them!

Royal Irish Academy really has an interesting museum: Petrie does the honours with enthusiasm. Big old iron cross (Smith’s name on it in Irish, and date about 1100 or so, ingenious old smith really); Second Book of Clogher (tremendously old, said Petrie), torques, copper razor, porridge-pots, bog butter (tastes like wax), bog-cheese (didn’t taste that, or even see); stone mallets (with cattle-bones copious where they are found,—“old savage feasting-places”): really an interesting museum, for everything has a certain authenticity, as well as national or other significance, too often wanting in such places. Next to Petrie, my most assiduous expositor was the Secy., whom I had seen at Stokes’s; a mute, but who spoke now and civilly and to the purpose. Bustle-bustle. Evory Kennedy and others making up a route for me in the library room; at length, in a kind of paroxysm, I bid adieu to them all, and get away,—to the hotel to pack and settle.

Larcom next comes: for an hour and half in Board of Works with him. Sir W. Petty’s old survey of Irish lands (in another office from L’s); Larcom’s new one,—very ingenious; coloured map, with dots, figures referring you to tables, where is a complete account of all estates, with their pauperisms, liabilities, [Pg 28]rents, resources: for behoof of the Poor-law Commrs. and their “electoral divisions”; a really meritorious and as I fancy most valuable work. Kirwan a western squire accidentally there; astonished at me, poor fellow, but does not hate me, invites me even. Larcom to hotel door with me: adieu, adieu! to the hotel people too, who have done all things zealously for me, and even schemed me out a route for the morrow (wrong, as it proved, alas!) I bid affecting adieus; and Ingram and Hancock bowl me off to the Howth Railway. Second-class, say they, but gentn. tho’ crowded: Dublin cockneys on a Saturday.

The Hutton house, that evening amid “Josinian” really well-conditioned people: much should not be said of it. Hospitality’s self: tall silent-looking Father Hutton (for they live at Ballydoyle, this side of Howth) meets me with “hopes” &c. at the Station there: car is to follow us to Howth, where I am to bathe, whither we now roll on. Bathe, bad bathing-ground, tide being out, wound heel in the stones (slippers were in the Bathing Machine, but people didn’t tell me); Cornish Pilchard-sloops fishing here; dirty village; big old Abbey over-grown with thistles, nettles, burdocks and the extremity of squalor, to which we get access thro’ dark cabins by the back windows,—leaving a few coppers amid hallelujahs of thanks. Car, get wrapped, and drive to Lord Howth’s gate: admittance there, to those of us on foot, not without difficulty: beautiful avenue, beautiful still house looking out over the still sea at eventide; among the beautifullest places I ever saw. Lord Howth a racer, away now, with all his turf-equipments; Cornish people obliged to come and fish his Bay,—his mainly for 500 years back, I believe. Call in by a Cousin Hutton (poor George Darley’s class-fellow, a barrister, I afterwards find) who is to go with us; twilight getting darker and darker,—I still without dinner, and growing cold, reduced to tobacco merely! Arrive at last; succedaneum for dinner is readily provided, consumed along with coffee; night passes, not intolerably, tho’ silence for me was none; alas, on reflecting, I had not come there for silence! Cousin Hutton and Ingram off; a clever indignant kind of little fellow the latter. Mrs. Hutton, big black eyes struggling to be in earnest; four young ladies sewing,—schöne kinder truly.—At last do get to bed; sleep sound till 6, bemoaned by the everlasting main. “No train (Sunday) at the hour given by Imperial Hotel people,” so it appears! The good Huttons have decided to send me by their carriage. Excellent people; poor little streetkin of Ballydoyle fronting a wide waste of sea-sands (fisher people, I suppose): peace and good be with you!

Sunday, 8th July.—Escorted by Hancock and young Hutton, am set down at Imperial Hotel, and thence my assiduous Familiar brings out luggage, in a Car to Kildare Railway Station, (in the extreme west,—King’s or Temple-bridge, do they call it?): three-quarters of an hour too soon; rather wearisome the waiting. Fields all about have a weedy look, ditches rather dirty; houses in view, extensive some of them, have a patched dilapidated air—lime-pointing on roofs (as I gradually found) is uncommonly frequent in Ireland; do. white-washing to cover a multitude of sins: grey time-worn look in consequence—lime is everywhere abundant in Ireland; few bogs themselves but are close in the neighborhood of lime.

Start at last: second class but not quite Gentn. this time; plenty of room however. Irish traveller alone in my compartment; big horse-faced elderly; not a bad fellow (a Wexforder?),—for Limerick I suppose. Two Irish gents (if not gentn.) in the next compartment (for we were all visible to one another); mixed rusticity or cockneity, not remembered, in the other. Gents had both of them their tickets stuck in hatband; good, and often seen since in Scotland and there: talked to one another, loud but empty: first gent beaming black animal eyes, florid, ostentatious, voracious-looking: a sensual gent; neighbour had his back towards me, and he is lost: both went out awhile before me.—Kildare Station between twelve and one (I think): indifferent porterage—Country with hay and crops, in spite of occasional bogs, had been good,—waving champaign with Wicklow Hills in the distance; railway well enough, tho’ sometimes at Stations or the like some little thing was wrong.—Letter of the Inscription knocked off, or the like. This then is Kildare:—but alas I nowhere see the City; above all, see no Peter Fitzgerald, whom I expected here to receive me. In the open space, which lies behind the station, get a view of Kildare, round tower, black and high, with old ruin of cathedral, on a height half a mile off; poor enough “City” to all appearance! Ask for St. Bridget’s “Fire Tower-house” that once was; nobody knows it; one young fellow pretends (and only pretends I think) to know it. Two gentlemen, fat fellows, out of the train seemingly had seen the label on my luggage; rush round to ask me eagerly, “Are you Mr. Thomas Carloil?” I thought they had been Fitzgerald, and joyfully answered and enquired: alas, no they were Mr. Something else altogether, and had to roll away again next instant. Seeing no Fitzgerald [Pg 29]I had to bargain with a car-man (I think there was but one), and roll away towards Halverstown—up a steepish narrow road to Kildare first.

Kildare, as I entered it looked worse and worse: one of the wretchedest wild villages I ever saw; and full of ragged beggars this day (Sunday),—exotic altogether, “like a Village in Dahomey.” Man and Church both, knots of worshipping people hung about the streets, and every-where round them hovered a harpy-swarm of clamorous mendicants, men, women, children:—a village winged, as if a flight of harpies had alighted in it! In Dublin I had seen winged groups, but not much worse than some Irish groups in London that year: here for the first time was “Irish beggary” itself!—From the centre or top of the village I was speeding thro’, when the Cathedral and Round Tower disclose, or properly had disclosed, themselves on my right: I turn a little to survey them; and here Fitzgerald and lady, hospitable pair, turn up and make themselves known to me à la bonne heure.

Beggars, beggars; walk through the wretched streets, Nunneries here, big chapel here, my hosts are Catholics: I went smoking in their carriage till they make a call; won’t give beggars anything who depart, all but 2 young fellows, cowering nearly naked on opposite sides of me 20 yards off “Take this groat and divide it between you!” Explosion of thanks; exeunt round the corner—resented one: “Ach, yer honor! He won’t give me the two pence”—“Then why don’t you lick him, you blockhead, till he either die or give it you?” Two citizens, within hearing, burst into a laugh.—Home to Halverstown, pleasant rough-cultivated Country, ragged hedges, fertile weedy fields, one good farmstead or two: Mrs. Purcell welcomes us with genial smiles.

Monday, 9th July 1849.—Went from Halverstown to Glendalough, wonderful passage, especially after Holywood a desolate hamlet among the hills. Scarecrow figures all busy among their peats, ragged all, old straw hats, old grey loose coats in tatters, vernacular aspect all. Horse unwilling to perform uphill, at length down hill too; we mostly walk. Young shepherd, very young gossoon (had been herding with somebody for no wages), was now sent home to “the Churches,” where he had a brother (minor) and sister left,—fibbed to me (as I found in the begging line), otherwise good and pitiable, I made him mount downhill. Resemblance to Galloway, in the hills, or to the pass beyond Drevien; hills all black and boggy some very craggy too; cattle kylors, sheep mongrels: wild stony huts, patches of corn few yards in area. [Woman near Kilcullen milking a goat in the morning—goats frequent enough here, pick living in the ditches] Wicklow Gap; Lead Mines; stones on the road. Guide (a sulky stupid creature) drives over it eyes open.—Like much here, like potato-culture. Cottages mostly cabins to the right hand under the road, and more frequent all the way down. Some mine-works (water wheel going), many mine shafts all the way down. At bottom inn, shop, swift river steps; beggars, churches, churchyard, wreck of grey antiquity grown black; round tower—“Cathedral,” small Church with arch roof still entire, and little round belfry (? windows in it) at one end. Third church there; then lower and upper lake opening. Strait cul-de-sac of a glen, a spoke (or radius) making an angle with Wicklow Gap Glen: fit pot among the black mountains for St. Kevin to macerate himself in. Scarecrow, boatman; big mouth, rags, hunger and good humour, has his “chance” (of this best with strangers) by way of wages. Woman squirrel clambering on the rocks to shew St. Kevin’s Bed; which needed no “shewing” at all; husband had deserted her, children all dead in workhouse but one; shed under a cliff; food as the ravens. New carman, rapid, good-humoured and loquacious; miner hurt among the hills; man galloping for doctor and priest; howl of woman’s lamentation heard among the twilight mountains; very miserable to hear. No whiskey at Twainer’s; handsome gift of milk by pretty daughter brought sixpence all the same. Home about ten; expense enormous, 30/ or more to me.

Tuesday 10th July.—Lane, the Scotch farmer; excellent farming; Gentn. (Burrowes) that wouldn’t allow draining. 800 people took the Common; priest had petitioned Peel 10 years ago, but took no notice; peasant vagaries did, and here their cabins and grottos all are. Fitz’s brother (a useful good servant) has a cabin and field there, with wife in it; good ground if it were drained. All Commons have been settled that way; once they were put away from, and the ditches levelled twice (so said our first Carman, a fine active lad) the third time it held, and so they stay. O’Connor (Mrs. Purcell’s brother) a smart dandyish landlord, complained dreadfully of these “Commoners” now mostly paupers; nobody’s property once, now his (to bed). All creatures, Love among the rest, cling to the potatoe, as the one hope or possibility they have or ever dream of; look upon the chance of failure, as our Sulky did upon the stone “perhaps I’ll get over it.” In the afternoon Curragh of Kildare, best of race-courses, a sea of beautiful green land, with [Pg 30]fine cropt furze on it here and there, a fine race-stand (like the best parish church) at one end, saddling house, &c.; racing apparatus enough; and work for about 10,000 people if they were set to it instead of left to beg, (circle of 3 miles, 4,000 acres, look?) Newbridge village and big barrack; Liffey both at Kilcullen and it; Monastery Mrs. P. saluted priest; people all lounging, village idle, silent, many houses down.—Railway, whirl of dust, smoke and screaming uproar, past Kildare again, past Athy (A-thigh) old walls, now a village, Wexford hills on this hand, Q’s County hills on that: good green waving country alternating with detestable bogs to Carlow—saw into the grey old hungry-looking stones as we whirled past in the evening sun—Railway Station, broken windows there (done by mischievous boys), letters knocked off, &c., now and then all the way from Dublin. Car at Bagnalstown, eloquent beggar. “More power to you wherever you go! The Lord Almighty preserve your honor from all sickness and hurt and the dangers of the year!” &c., &c. Never saw such begging in this world; often get into a rage at it. On to Kilkenny (over the Barrow &c.); noisy vulgar fellow, talks, seems to know me. Castle Inn door; Dr. Cane’s, where I now am [writing in dressing gown] 7 a. m. not having slept; morning the flower of summer; town old decayed and grey.

(To be continued.)

Thomas Carlyle.

A single season brought the operatic adventurers in Astor Place to bankruptcy. Following upon two splendid performances (one of Romeo by the veteran prima-donna, Catarina Barili-Patti, in which, notwithstanding the lack of freshness in her voice, she delighted the most appreciative part of her audience by her splendid and truly imposing display of the grand style in the old Italian school of singing, and one by Truffi of the Jewess in Verdi’s “Nabucco,” in which, by her nobility of person and of action, and no less by her fine musical declamation, she made an impression never to be effaced from the memories of those who received it), the doors of the new and beautiful lyric theater were closed, with great uncertainty as to when and by whom they would be re-opened.

New York was not, however, left without Italian opera, and that of no mean order. The Havana company returned in the spring of 1848, and appeared at Niblo’s Theater. Their visits to New York were regular for a few years, and were events of musical importance. Not only was the number of the principal artists large, and their merit great, but such a chorus, and an orchestra so well filled and so ably directed (always by Arditi), American audiences were not accustomed to; nor were operatic performances of such completeness common even in Europe, except in some two or three of the great capitals. And these performances were given at a very low price; the object of the manager, Señor Marty, of Havana, being less to make money by the visits of his company to America, than to keep them together and preserve their health, and diminish his expenses during the sickly season in Cuba. Their visit this season was made remarkable by the appearance of a tenor, Salvi, who, as a vocalist, among the eminent tenors who have been heard in New York, was second only to Mario, the greatest of his time, and since whose retirement the world has heard none worthy even to be called his successor. Although Salvi was past his youth when he first sang in New York, his voice was yet in perfect preservation. It lacked nothing that is to be expected in a tenor voice of the first class: and it had that mingling of manliness and tenderness, of human sympathy and seraphic loftiness, which, for lack of any other or better word, we call divine. As a vocalist, he was not in the first rank; but he [Pg 32]stood foremost in the second. His presence was manly and dignified, and he was a good actor. But it was as a vocalist pure and simple that he captivated and moved his audiences. He was heard in America at brief intervals during a few years, and his influence upon the taste of the general music-loving public was very considerable and wholly good. Singing at Niblo’s, at Castle Garden, and other like places, at which the price of admission was never more than one dollar, and was generally fifty cents, he gave to multitudes who would otherwise have had no such opportunity, that education in art which is to be had only from the performances of a great artist. In purity of style he was unexceptionable. He lacked only a little higher finish, a little more brilliancy of voice and impressiveness of manner, to take a position among tenors of the very first rank. Of these, however, there are never two in the world at the same time, scarcely two in the same generation; and so Salvi prepared the public for the coming Mario. His forte was the cantabile, and his finest effects were those in mezza voce, expressive of intense suppressed feeling. More than once, when he sang “Spirto gentil,” as he rose to the crescendo of the second phrase, and then let his cry pass suddenly away in a dying fall, I have heard a whole house draw suspended breath, as if in pain; so nearly alike in their outward manifestations are pain and fine, keen pleasure.

With the Havana company came also at this time Signora Steffanone, a soprano, without some mention of whom these sketches would be thought ungratefully imperfect by all those who remember her satisfying voice, her admirable style, and her pleasing although notably ample person. It seemed as if she might and should have been a great prima-donna; and, always pleasing to the most exacting hearers, at certain moments, on certain nights, she rose to grandeur, and aroused her audiences to enthusiasm. But as time went on she deteriorated rather than improved; and it was said—truly, I believe—that she was addicted to habits of self-indulgence, which in the end are ruinous to a man and are swiftly destructive to a woman.

In this year, 1848, Max Maretzek made his appearance in the New York musical world, in which he was destined to fill the place both of musical director and operatic manager, sometimes [Pg 33]one, sometimes the other, sometimes both, for more than a decade, with distinction, and not without success. He was a clever and well-instructed musician, but was inclined to seek success by the art of management rather than by the management of his art. He cannot be said to have done anything to educate or to elevate the public taste; but it would be unjust not to say that he appears never to have done anything willingly to degrade it. Under his baton, sometimes under his management, there were unseasonable seasons and disjointed performances of many old operas and some new ones, by companies made up of a jumble of all or some of the materials—disjecta membra—of companies which had gone to pieces; most of this leading only to insolvency, and nothing of it being here worthy of special mention. But Maretzek himself always showed ability. He merely could not do what was impossible.

In the summer of 1850, Señor Marty’s company came again from Havana to New York, and this time with an array of musical force that had in it something of grandeur. The chorus was large, and rich in well-trained voices; the orchestra was filled in like manner, Bottesini being the first contra-basso and Arditi the musical director and conductor; and the leading vocal artists were Tadesco, Steffanone, Salvi, Badiali, Marini, and others second only to them. The Park Theater had been burned to the ground in 1848, just half a century after it was first opened, and this noble opera company went almost perforce to Castle Garden, having gone first for a short time to Niblo’s, and afterward to Astor Place. Castle Garden, which has been given over for many years to the invading hordes from Europe, was at one time (and to the present elder generation of New-Yorkers it must seem not long ago) the most widely known and generally frequented place of popular amusement in the city. It began to be so used in the days when the lower part of Broadway and Greenwich street were “fashionable,” and when the Battery was the favorite promenade; the great walk being thronged, on fair afternoons, by elegant folk who took there their daily needed “constitutional” of air and gossip.⁠[2] At Castle Garden were the grand exhibitions of fire-works; from Castle Garden balloons went up in the days when that peril supplied the craving for excitement now afforded by the flying trapeze; at Castle Garden the American Institute had its first fairs; at Castle Garden there were concerts and theatrical performances and operas; and there Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony was performed, and well performed, at a time whereof those who went with large eyes and long ears to hear it at Steinway Hall, big with a consciousness of first discovery of its greatness, have no memory. There, or at Niblo’s, in the summer of 1850, this great company performed “Norma,” Verdi’s “Attila,” “La Favorita,” “Lucia,” “L’Elisir d’Amore,” “I Puritani,” “Lucrezia Borgia,” and, of course, “Ernani,”—no opera season then without “Ernani,” if there were a soprano in the company equal to it, and generally, also, if there were not. And the Havana troupe had in Steffanone and Tadesco two admirable Elviras, the former always singing with intelligence and dramatic power, and the voice of the latter gushing out in great floods of limpid sound that drowned the ear in sensuous delight.

In the Havana company at this time, however, there was an artist who gave New York a fresh and fine sensation of musical pleasure, such as it had not had for years. This was Angiolina Bosio. She appeared without any heralding; and, indeed, she was then entirely without reputation. But it was one admirable trait in the management of this noble company that there was never any preliminary puffing, either of its individual members or of it as a whole. There was the company. It would perform “Norma,” or “Ernani,” or “Lucia” to the best of its ability; come and hear it. Bosio’s name had never been heard or seen in New York, until it appeared on the play-bills. When she came upon the stage her audience saw a woman not very young, slender and not tall, with little beauty of feature, except a pair of luminous and expressive dark eyes,—a person, indeed, quite insignificant, except for those eyes and for a certain distinction and elegance of manner. When she sang she displayed a voice not remarkable for either power or compass; nor could her style be called either impressive or brilliant. But ere long,—in the course of a few evenings,—she was recognized as an artist of a very high grade of merit, and became—this entirely unknown and not beautiful woman—the prime favorite of the company. Angiolina Bosio, born at Turin, in 1824, and educated in music at Milan, had sung in Italy, in Spain, and in Denmark with some success, but not enough to attract any attention in London, or Paris, or St. [Pg 34]Petersburg, or at New York. She, however, appeared in Paris at the Théatre Italien, in 1848, but obtained no recognition of her talent, “not even,” as her biographer records, “a passing remark.” Her immediate engagement for Havana by Marty brought her to New York, where a different reception awaited her; and I believe that I myself had the pleasure of writing the first criticisms in which her vocal talent was recognized. I remember, too, that as I was writing one night (after her performance of Lucrezia Borgia, I believe), I thought of the charm that was in her face, notwithstanding its lack of beauty, and of her lustrous eyes, and I wrote her name Lady Beaux yeux; and she must have forgiven me for spelling it wrong, for she took the blunder with her to Europe, where she was known by it afterward. Like Malibran, and like Bottesini, Bosio, soon after her great success in New York, attained a great reputation in Europe. Soon; not immediately, however. She was engaged at the Royal Italian Opera, at London, where she appeared in June, 1852, as Norina in “L’Elisir d’Amore,” one of the parts in which she was most admired in New York. But, as her biographer says, “she did not create by any means a favorable impression; her voice appeared ‘worn,’ and her intonation sharp; * * * and she was pronounced ‘a good second-rate singer, nothing more.’” At the end of the season, however, Madame Grisi having declined to sing in “I Puritani,” Bosio was asked to undertake Elvira. She did so; and all at once Philistia woke up to the perception that Bosio was a great artist. She became the talk of musical London. Mr. [Pg 35]Gye engaged her immediately for three years. She went to Paris, and there had like success—she who only a year or two before, and after she had completed her studies, and was in the first freshness of her voice, had sung there without exciting a passing remark. From this time she was recognized as one of the great prima-donnas of her day. Her voice was a pure, silvery soprano, remarkable alike for its penetrating quality and for a charm so fine and delicate that it seemed almost intellectual. But she was not a remarkably dramatic singer, even in light comedy parts, which best suited her; and her style was not at all declamatory. She sang; and in her vocalization she showed the results of intelligent study in the old Italian school. Her phrasing was incomparably fine, and the delicacy of her articulation has been surpassed by no modern prima-donna, not even by Alboni. Thus much of her as a vocal artist; but her charm was greatly personal. Although her acting was always appropriate and in good taste, and at times—as, for example, in the saucy widow of “Don Pasquale”—very captivating, she never seemed to throw herself wholly into her part. She was always Angiolina Bosio, and appeared on the stage like a lady performing admirably in private theatricals. Her bearing was a delight to her audience, and seemed to be a performance, whereas it was only herself. She sang the music of all the great operatic composers to the admiration of the public and the critics of the most exacting disposition; but she was greatest in Rossini’s operas, and in Bellini’s and Donizetti’s. Yet her exquisitely charming and finished performance of Zerlina should not be passed over unmentioned. In 1856 she went to St. Petersburg, where she got gain and glory, which tempted her to return there again and yet again; and there, after having been nominated by the Emperor première cantatrice to the imperial court (she being the first who ever had that honor), she suddenly died in April, 1859, in the prime of her life and of her powers; for she was not yet quite thirty-five years old. This was the career of the woman of whom her biographer says, after recording the indifference with which she had been received in Paris, and before recounting the details of her slow recognition in London, that between these two non-eventful and semi-eventful periods, being in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, “she was ardently admired by the Americans.” Possibly if the writer had known more, or had known anything of “the Americans,” and of the capacity for the recognition of musical talent which they have never failed to show, she might have given more importance to their ardent admiration of the unknown Bosio.

Such recognition as Bosio received in New York is always more or less reciprocal in its benefit, and her performances here for two seasons were an education of the public taste in the appreciation of all the most delicate refinements of the art of vocalization. In this respect we owe her hardly less than we owe to any one of the greatest among her predecessors and successors, although they were Malibran, Caradori, Jenny Lind, and Alboni.

And yet another vocal artist of distinction belonging to this company, being, indeed, its musical manager, received at this time in New York his first recognition. This was the baritone Badiali—the great baritone, as he was afterward called in Europe. Signor Badiali, too, brought no reputation to New York, simply because he had none to bring. He had never before been heard of anywhere. But his noble voice, his fine style, and his remarkable powers as a dramatic vocalist were at once appreciated by the critics and the public of New York, and he became a prime favorite, and so continued for some years. Afterward he went to London, where he was so much admired that he said, “I wonder that I never thought of coming to London before.”

In this year, 1851, New York enjoyed a performance of Norma by Caterina Barili-Patti. It was the last time that the grand old Italian style of singing was heard in America. I am inclined to think that it has never since been heard even in Europe;—that large simplicity of manner, severe and yet not hard; that thoroughness, that constantly present sense of the decorum of art, died out before we, who were brought up on Donizetti and on Verdi, came to the enjoyment of operatic delights. Catarina Barili-Patti, the eminent mother of a still more eminent daughter, uttered the last notes of an expiring school, and closed her own career in the town in which Adelina Patti, her child but not her pupil, began her splendid course of triumph as the most brilliant vocalist of her day.

Perhaps it should be remarked that about this time Signorina Teresa Parodi appeared in New York as a prima-donna, and won great and well-deserved favor. She was an excellent Norma, a part which she much affected. She did not, however, produce any appreciable effect upon public taste, and was soon forgotten.

The two great musical events of the second half of the nineteenth century in America, as before in Europe, were now impending; I mean, it is hardly necessary to say, the appearance of Jenny Lind and of Marietta Alboni. Jenny Lind’s career has no claim upon our attention here; and, indeed, any remarks upon it would be out of place; for before she crossed the Atlantic she had abjured the stage, and [Pg 36]during her long sojourn in the United States she was heard only in the concert-room. Moreover, there has recently appeared in the pages of this magazine a full and appreciative account of her American experiences.⁠[3] There remains to be remarked upon her only the fact that so closely and exclusively did she rivet the attention of the musical public upon herself that, prudent although she was, she was in this unlike Prudence—that when she was present all the other divinities were absent. Little interest was manifested by New-Yorkers in operatic or concert music of a high order, other than hers, during her performances. When she left the city for other places, fashion would assemble at the opera, if there were one; and, indeed, mere fashion did this at all times; but the true music-lovers of the most cultivated society did not thus quickly and rudely disturb their memories of the great artist. Perhaps Mlle. Parodi might have made a stronger impression upon the public of New York had she not had the ill-fortune to make her American début in the first flush and fury of the Lind excitement.⁠[4] She sang, during the next few months, with good acceptance in “Norma,” “Lucrezia,” “Gemma di Vergy,” “Giovanna di Napoli,” “Il Barbiere,” “Semiramide.” About the same time, Truffi appeared in “Parisina” and “Il Giuramento,” and Mr. Maurice Strakosch brought out at Astor Place his very clever opera, “Giovanna di Napoli,” which, however, did not obtain more than a succès d’estime, that most unsuccessful of all so-called successes.

In 1851, Jenny Lind was singing in New York, from the first week in May until the 6th of June; and then came the Havana company again, and with it the enchanting Bosio. I find in my scrap-book an article which I wrote on the 9th of June, 1851, which is noticeable because of its laudation of her, and because her biographer says that she returned to Europe in 1851, and was engaged by Mr. Gye for the season of 1852, for the Royal Italian Opera of London, where she obtained her first European success. She was, therefore, in the summer of 1851 on the eve of departure from the scene of her triumphs.

From this time, although there was opera at Astor Place in the spring of 1852, and Jenny Lind returned as Madame Goldschmidt to give a series of concerts, there was no musical event of any note until the appearance of Alboni at Metropolitan (or Tripler) Hall, on the 23d of June in that year. Her coming had been announced, of course, and something of her reputation was known to all musical people; but nothing had been done to get up an excitement or even to awaken an interest in her movements in the general unmusical public. Thus it was, too, when she came before the public in London and in Paris. In London she had appeared, “almost unknown” in the midst of the Jenny Lind craze (April, 1847), with Grisi and Tamburini, [Pg 37]in “Semiramide.” Her success was assured before the end of the first act. Nevertheless, when she sang, the following October, in Paris for the first time, many of the Parisians asked, “Who is this Alboni?” They found out who she was on the next morning. It was because of this neglect to blow her own trumpet that the audience at her first concert here, although large enough to be respectable, even in relation to her merits, was not crowded, not a throng, and that she never had what the newspapers call “ovations.” Her audiences were always large; and they were composed almost exclusively of the most earnest and most cultivated lovers of music.

Alboni was probably the greatest singer the world has seen since Malibran. She was not, in all respects, fitted to be a great operatic prima-donna; but as a vocalist, pure and simple, she was, both by her natural gifts and by her art, first among the foremost of her generation. When she came to New York, in 1852, she was thirty years old, and was, like Jenny Lind, in the full maturity of her marvelous powers. She had been taught the elements of vocalization by Bagioli, but to his schooling she had the incomparable good fortune to add instructions from Rossini, who saw her talent, and at a time when, in his own words, she sang “like an itinerant ballad-singer,” predicted her success. To his teaching may probably be attributed her love of his music and her mastery of it. She sang his great contralto parts as they had not been sung since the time of Pisaroni, the greatest contralto and the ugliest woman that ever trod the Italian stage. Alboni had appeared at Vienna, at Dresden, and at St. Petersburg before making her great success at London and at Paris, which was in 1847, five years before her visit to America. All that was known of her was that she was much thought [Pg 38]of in Europe, and that she was very stout; so that there was a poor joke current at the time that “she was not all bony, but all fatty.” There was not even the first spark of such a raging blaze of excitement as there had been about Jenny Lind. As to what she was, and how she sang, and the impression she produced, I do not know that I can do better than to quote from the article I wrote on the night of her first appearance in New York, and from its two immediate successors, the following passages:⁠[5]⁠

“Madame Alboni herself then appeared for the grand cavatina in ‘Semiramide.’ As we saw her before we heard her, our first thought was that she had been unjustly and ungallantly treated on the point of her personal attractions. Although her amplitude exceeds even the most accommodating standard of symmetry, her features are unquestionably fine, and her face needs only a little attenuation to be decidedly handsome. [In fact, Alboni’s face was a noble one of the pure Italian type, and very charming in its expression. Her hair grew around her broad, low, white brow in that arched outline which is found in the finest antique statues, and her mouth was beautiful. Her smile was charming, and not only because it revealed the whitest of coral-set teeth; and her laugh infected the air around her with hilarity. It was impossible not to laugh with her. But to resume my next morning’s criticism.] Madame Alboni’s voice impresses the ear at once with its sumptuous quality. There is not a moment’s question as to the imperial rank of this gift of nature to her. Its powers are instantly manifest, and not only so, but in a moment they are all displayed. Its supremacy was as completely asserted at the close of the recitation of the first air as at the end of the concert. The impression was reiterated. It could not have been deepened. In this voice is the chief power of the singer. It is what we hear that we enjoy, not the thought that what we hear brings up. And it is in the quality, the calibre, and the copiousness of the voice, rather than in its extent or its flexibility, that its charm is found. It has a cool lusciousness which is peculiar. It comes bubbling, gurgling, gushing from that full throat and those gently parted lips, and reminds us of draughts of which poets have sung, but of which Bacchantes have only dreamed. Perfect equality throughout it has not; its rather thin, plaintive, and hautbois-like tone in the upper register being somewhat inconsistent with the large and pompous character of the lower portion; but this is an inequality of quantity only. The quality is throughout an extensive range (from F in the bass clef to C in alt of the G clef) identical. In all [Pg 39]other respects it seems to us, on a single hearing, to be unimpeachable. Her style is not peculiar in any particular, save in the ease and freedom by which it is marked. Many hearers will be charmed by the carelessness of her manner. She seems to give no thought to what she does, but merely to let the flood of song pour itself forth. There are some who will regard this as the perfection of art. Her recitative in the cavatina from ‘Semiramide’ was large, simple, and grand, and her execution of the aria admirable, but the most charming performance of the evening would have been the duet from ‘Don Pasquale,’ were it not for the ‘wanton heed and giddy cunning’ with which she threaded the mazes of Non piu mesta. The duettino was so exquisitely sung, expressed so fully the fair, serene loveliness of the composition, that those who are curious in pretty sayings might well have called it moonlight made audible. As to the rondo from ‘Cenerentola,’ was there ever anything heard like it, or will there ever be again? Milton’s charming paradoxical phrase, which we have already applied to it, alone helps us to express the quiet recklessness with which she thridded the intricate mazes of this lovely rondo. Every group of notes was a cluster of gems; every note was perfectly beautiful in itself, and beautiful in its place; and with these vocal jewels she played with a seeming pleased and unconscious carelessness, as if an infant sought a moment’s sport in unstringing and scattering priceless pearls.”

“That which is perfectly beautiful in its kind seems the more beautiful the more its beauties are scanned; and whatever may be the relative rank which æsthetic criticism may hereafter assign to the style of Madame Alboni, there can be no doubt, we think, in the mind of any one gifted with the ability to judge, that, in her style, her singing is as purely and absolutely beautiful as it is possible for anything earthly to be. There seems to be nothing wanting in the concurrence of voice, style, and method to make every phrase she utters complete in its expression of richness of resource, and of elegance, and in its sensuous charm. Added to this there is an indefinable something, more delicate than expression, yet akin to it, which makes her song float like a seductive aroma around her hearer, penetrating to the most delicate fibers of his being, and pervading him with a dreamy delight. This was manifest even in Di piacer, which, by the way, seems more suited to her style than Una voce. It is in the music of Rossini that the peculiar character of Madame Alboni’s talent finds its best expression. The geniality, the fullness of life, the impressible gayety of soul and conscious animal enjoyment which pervaded his music, even in its most dignified passages, in detail and in their union suit her. Their union, indeed, is her nature. She and Rossini have souls akin; and she is, to use a phrase of the day, but his ‘medium.’ Yet, last evening, Bellini had in her such an interpreter of one of his loveliest and most pathetic compositions as is rare even among great prima-donnas. Ah non credea as sung by her will be a treasured memory with all the devotees of music who were fortunate enough to hear it. How grandly was it phrased! how delicately accentuated!”

Yes, indeed; now, after almost thirty years, I can hear with my mind’s ear the marvelously, almost miraculously, beautiful way in which she uttered the few notes of this simple phrase

with which she closed this movement, and which, passing in an instant, almost in the twinkling of an eye, yet had in every note, and in this relation, of each note to its predecessor and its successor, and in its conception as a whole, and in its execution, an enchanting, subduing charm which produced a feeling of mingled transport and humiliation. One was tempted to go and kneel down before her and do something abject in grateful acknowledgment of this manifestation of supreme musical divinity.

My readers will probably observe in these paragraphs a varied and gradually enhanced appreciation of the great contralto. Yet it is difficult to explain how it was that with her unique voice,—a voice to which no other that has been heard for fifty years can be compared either in volume or in quality,—and with a method absolutely perfect, and a style the charm of which can hardly be expressed in words, she failed to stir her audiences as deeply as other singers did, who were less gifted and less accomplished. This negative trait of her performances became more apparent when she appeared in opera, which she did on the 27th of December, 1852, at the Broadway Theater, a large house then standing in Broadway, nearly opposite the old Hospital, in which, during its short existence,—of about ten years,—there was much good acting and singing. There Alboni went through a brief operatic season, beginning with “La Cenerentola” and including “La Figlia del Reggimento” and “La Sonnambula.” The stage did not increase her attractions. She was not an actress; she was not a great operatic prima-donna; she was a singer simply and absolutely—the greatest singer of her half-century; [Pg 40]nothing more. Not that she was awkward on the stage, or that her acting was without intelligence; but that it was matter-of-course acting; she did pretty well what she had seen others do better, and, at times, pleased her audience by the personal expression of her own gayety of heart and rich animal nature. Nor was her figure at all suited to Cinderella, to Amina, or to the Daughter of the Regiment. As she appeared with her képi and her canteen, one could not but think of a young Falstaff in short petticoats, and of the old Falstaff’s death being “a march of twelve score.” Yet this woman had in her heart a yearning to perform the grandest dramatic part known to the modern lyric stage.

One day I was with her in her own apartments, she avowed to me her disappointment with the degree of her success in America, where Mlle. Lind had gained a fortune, and she “hardly enough to buy wine with.” Presently, nodding her handsome head to me, she said:

“Un segreto!” and then drew back, and looked at me with an arch smile, like a child.

“Per esser felice!” I rejoined, luckily thinking of the Brindisi which she sang so splendidly.

“Si, si!” she merrily cried, clapping her fat hands, and breaking into a soft peal of laughter, so charming and so infectious that a Grand Inquisitor, Torquemada himself, much more a young man fanatico per la musica, must have joined in it. Then, with mock gravity, she said: “Quando io sarò stata buon’ ragazza per lungo tempo, voglio mi fare una presenta” [When I have been a good little girl for a long time I mean to make myself a present], adding, in reply to my look of inquiry, “La Norma. Lo canterò per piacere solo” [Norma. I shall sing it only for pleasure].

“Why not sing it now?” I asked.

“Ah,” she replied, “one must scream a little to sing Norma, and I do not yet know how to scream.”

Yes, this queen of contraltos, not content with all the triumph she had achieved, hankered after Norma, the part of all parts for which she was most unfitted both in voice and in person, and to which her style was not less unsuited. Nor was she able to restrain her impatience for the long time which she had at first proposed; for on the 28th of January, 1853, she appeared at the Broadway Theater for the first time as Norma. To my surprise, she not only sang the music with passion and with fervor, but in her action showed intuitions of dramatic power which I had never before remarked in her. In the second act she was even fiercely impetuous. She must have brooded over the part until it took complete possession of her. It was a very great performance, regarded from a certain point of view; but Norma-ly it was open to objection. Much of the music was transposed; and, on the other hand, her figure was composed of such a connected system of globes and ellipses that it was impossible to accept her as the Grand Priestess of the Druids, although we had not yet seen Grisi. I have not discovered any record of her performance of this part in Europe; and New York has at least the distinction of Alboni’s first appearance, if not that of her only appearance, as Norma, as an incident in its operatic annals. Excepting Malibran, no singer, not even Jenny Lind, did so much as Alboni did to elevate and purify the taste of the higher class of music-lovers. She became the model, the standard by which others were to be tried. In the summer of 1853, she returned to Europe, and in July was married to the Conte di Pepoli. She was wealthy, but did not withdraw entirely from her prima-donna life until some years had passed. She is now not heard of, even in her retirement.

We must turn back a little from our continued companionship with the great contralto to give our attention to a soprano of hardly less eminence and of a more splendid career—Sontag, who made her first appearance in America at Metropolitan (Tripler) Hall, on the 27th of September, 1852. This was a very remarkable event; for Sontag was born in 1805; and she, who had sung with Malibran, and had been her rival, and then her reconciled friend (as we have already seen in the first of these sketches), was here in New York, where Malibran had more than a quarter of a century before taken her first step to glory, and had given America its first operatic sensation, opening the rich and varied musical spectacle of which I have been able to give but a sketch made up of outlines and of dots; and Malibran’s rival was here in all her early beauty of person and of voice.

The occasion was briefly this. Henrietta Sontag, after a musical career in which all the possible experiences of a prima-donna of the first class were ideally combined,—after enchanting all Europe by her voice, her singing, her acting, and her beauty,—was married in 1828 to Count Rossi, a Sardinian nobleman. The marriage was secret on account of the opposition of the Count’s family, although Mlle. Sontag, whose position among artists was exceptional, had been ennobled by the King of Prussia, under the title of Mlle. de Lauenstein. The marriage, however, transpired in 1829, under circumstances painful to the beautiful and unimpeachable young matron. [Pg 41]Ere long she retired from the stage, and lived in such privacy as was possible to one who was not only the wife of a noble diplomat but herself a distinguished person. The revolution of 1848 ruined what there was to ruin in Count Rossi; and the Countess, laying aside her title and resuming the name under which she had acquired a reputation still remembered all over Europe, returned to her public artist-life. To the surprise and delight of Europe, she was still the enchanting Henrietta Sontag of twenty years before. After two or three years of renewed European success, she came to New York. The end of my article on her first concert is the following paragraph:

“Madame Sontag began last evening a strange and brilliant phase of her eventful career. When she gathered her first laurels, the metropolis of China might as soon have tempted her seaward as the metropolis of this Republic, which then held no such position. But since that lovely woman who last evening charmed thousands by the mere grace of her presence, first awoke the enthusiasm of Europe, we have become a mighty nation, and this has become a great city, one of the great centers of art and civilization on the globe. We have been growing old; and in our wearying, wearing struggles onward, the whole nation has become haggard and care-worn, even to making us a proverb and a by-word; but she seems to have drunk of the fabled spring which bestowed eternal youth and loveliness; and now to our faded youth comes this blooming matron, with all the bright gifts that were ever hers only mellowed by the gentle touch of enamored Time. It seems as if she might go on singing and charming the world forever; and as if our children might be enchanted, as we are now, by her who, save for the unimpeachable purity of her life, might then, if not now, be called, for her unfading youth and grace, the Ninon de l’Enclos of song.”

Sontag, however, was only forty-seven when she came to New York. But she looked, in the concert-room at least, not more than twenty-seven: and a middle-aged musical connoisseur, a French gentleman, who had heard her in Paris in her youth, said to me that he found no change in her voice, except perhaps a little, a very little, loss of fullness and strength in the lower notes. Her singing was just what it had been before. A more remarkable preservation is not known in the annals of art. Hardly less astonishing had been her vocal precocity. It is told of her that at eight years of age she stood upon a table and there sang the grand aria of the Queen of Night in the “Zauberflöte,” doing this in childish simplicity, “her arms hanging beside her, and her eye following the flight of a butterfly, while her voice, pure, penetrating, and of angelic tone, flowed as unconsciously as a limpid rill from a mountainside.” Afterward she had the advantage of singing children’s parts under the direction of Von Weber, then director of the orchestra at the Prague theater.

Sontag’s voice was an absolute soprano, of full but not of extraordinary compass or remarkable power. Its peculiar beauty lay in its quality, that angelic tone which, as we have seen, it had even in her childhood, and in its union of flexibility with firmness. She rivaled the most skillful violin-players in the rapidity, the exactness, and the solidity of tone with which she ran scales, diatonic and chromatic, and with which she executed fioriture, and trills singly and in succession, and even staccato scales of two octaves. But she never sank into an accurate musical machine. There was always the inexplicable enchantment of quality, the angelic tone, in whatever she sang; and her style, although never grand, impressive, or deeply pathetic, was always charming. In person she was like her voice, not grandly beautiful, but very pretty, bewitching in her ways, and always elegant,—probably the most lady-like prima-donna that ever trod the stage; unless we must except that captivating embodiment of stately elegance, Mlle. Frezzolini, who came here in 1857, when her personal and vocal attractions were on the wane, but who preserved in the expression of her face and in her bearing a beauty that could never fade. She was the ideal of a beautiful great lady of the olden time. Sontag was always graceful, always seemed to express a certain daintiness of soul and body; she was personally reserved and retiring; and kept herself as aloof from the borders of Bohemia as if she had been a crown princess. Twenty years of life in courts, where, from the position of her husband, she sometimes had precedence of all other embassadors’ wives, had developed and perfected in the ennobled Mlle. de Lauenstein a social sentiment in this regard which was innate, and which was part of the charm that had made kings and princes of the finer sort her ardent and respectful admirers. Her figure was pretty; but she was celebrated for no beauty but that of her hands and feet. Her complexion was fair; her large eyes were a soft, pale blue; her hair a light auburn, in which, when she was here, she did not attempt to conceal a few streaks of gray, just perceptible in society, but invisible on the stage.

At her first concerts here, the wonderful young violinist, Paul Jullien, appeared with her. He was then a mere boy, hardly more than a child, for he was but ten years old; but his performance was already that of a virtuoso, and his tone and style were nearly those of a great master of the instrument. One evening, after Madame Sontag had been [Pg 42]here about a month, I went, at one of her concerts, to her private room, where she had been kind enough to receive me before, for she was one of the very few prima-donnas with whom I was on familiar terms. “Entrez!” said a male voice when I knocked at the half-open door. I entered, and what should I see but Count Rossi and Paul Jullien sitting together over a basin of water, which was between them on the sofa. Count Rossi looked up and smiled as he held out his hand without rising, and then blew into the bowl. He was engaged with Paul (who a few minutes before had astonished a delighted and cultivated audience) in sailing paper-boats, which the little fellow had begged the Count to make for him from concert programmes. The basin from Madame Sontag’s wash-stand furnished the sea on which the fragile fleet was launched. The boy continued his amusement until Madame Sontag entered, and then hastily drying his hands upon another concert bill, took up his violin, and while I was yet musing in wonder at the strangeness of the scene, my rumination was disturbed by the outburst of applause which greeted the entrance of the little boat-sailer upon the stage.

Madame Sontag soon appeared in opera at Niblo’s Theater, where she performed Rosina in “Il Barbiere,” Marie in “La Figlia del Reggimento,” Amina in “La Sonnambula,” Lucia di Lammermoor, Lucrezia Borgia, Adina in “L’Elisir d’Amore,” and Zerlina in “Don Giovanni.” Her dramatic success was not great. As Rosina she was captivating; as Marie she was pleasing; but in the serious parts of even “La Sonnambula” and “Lucia” she failed to impress her audience, except by her exquisitely finished singing, and as Lucrezia Borgia she failed wholly, except in rendering the tender and delicate beauty of “Quanto e bello.” I felt obliged to say this very plainly, and at last, owing to a perversion of what I had said, to declare that “every tragic opera, and every act of every tragic opera, and every scene of every act of every tragic opera, in which she has appeared, have plainly shown to close observation that whatever knowledge, and taste, and hard work may have done for her, she is wholly deficient in tragic power.” Nor, indeed, had she much dramatic power of even the comic sort. She was arch and elegant—she never could be other than elegant—as Rosina; but in “La Figlia del Reggimento” she was entirely lacking in that comic power, which, for example, we have all admired so much in Minnie Hauk’s performance of Carmen. Moreover, she looked older on the stage than in the concert-room. In her ordinary dress no one ever thought of her age, only of her charm; but when she was tricked out and touched up as the daughter of the regiment, it put ten years upon her face, and she looked like a middle-aged woman playing young.

I found her most youthful and most charming in private, and in particular on one occasion when I dined with her and her husband just before she left New York for the South and Mexico.⁠[6] Even in the concert-room she lost somewhat of that seductive personal charm, partly intellectual, partly physical, which had made her, next to Malibran, the most idolized prima-donna of modern days. She was very intelligent, talked with spirit, with wit, and sometimes even with humor. And at table she showed the wondrous beauty of her hands. I have known no woman, except Mrs. J. S., with such hands. Of her conversation, I chiefly remember her lively but rueful description of the boredom of high society in England, which she underwent as the Countess Rossi, wife of the Sardinian diplomat. Her visit to America was fatal to her. She died in Mexico, on the 17th of June, 1854, of cholera.

[Pg 43]

One artist’s manager, a little German Hebrew, was so incensed at my severe criticisms that he gave me notice that I should not be admitted to his concerts, even with my bought ticket; but in the end he thought better of this. Furious at his inability to modify my criticisms, or to approach me in any way, he went to the editor of the paper in which they were published (with which I had then no connection), and accused me of being paid by a rival artist to injure his business. He was detained and a messenger dispatched for me, the office in which I was a student being near by. To his evident surprise I soon came in; and he was then invited to repeat his accusation. He could not refuse. I stepped up to him and said:

“You know that you are lying, and if you don’t confess it, I’ll ——” and I stretched out my hand.

He fled precipitately, but soon returned with a lawyer, and said that he would have me arrested and bound over to keep the peace, unless I would give him my word, in the presence of the lawyer and the editor, that I would not harm him. I, laughing, told him he might do as he pleased, but assured those gentlemen that I would not touch him. His accusation was utterly disregarded, and he was sent about his business; for the editor—the late Charles King—knew me well, as his junior, Mr. Henry J. Raymond, also did, and I went on my way unquestioned. This fellow, however, who was a shrewd, able business man, and as unscrupulous as an adder, threatened me with vengeance, and fulfilled his threat by scattering abroad his insinuations, sowing them in willing and often in fruitful ears. The fact that, from my strict adherence to my prescribed course, they could not possibly be true, was my consolation; but it did not help me with the writers for the other papers, who, with one exception,—Mr. Curtis,—pursued quite a contrary course. It was under these circumstances that Count Rossi called upon me, and said that his wife would like to know me. I told him frankly my rule, and the reason for it.

“Dame,” he replied, “vous avez raison. Mais, ne soyez pas trop difficile. Venez nous voir, je vous prie, sans façon. Nous ne sommes pas comme les autres.”

I accepted the invitation, but not until I had written two or three more articles. And it was some time after I had written my partly adverse articles that I received a dinner invitation from the “Count and Countess Rossi”; for I remarked that in her private relations she took her rank. Jenny Lind was not so magnanimous. When she first appeared, my criticisms withheld from her an acknowledgment of eminence in the Italian dramatic school of singing. At this she took offense; which not all my praise of her singing in what is sometimes called the classical school could do away. I was among the most enthusiastic of her admirers, and the journal in which my articles appeared gave her more attention than any other singer that ever came to New York, and did more for her than any other journal at that time could do. But she never forgave my first qualification of my praise, and she showed her pique in various ways. And thus it was that I never spoke with Jenny Lind, or saw her except upon the platform of a concert-room. Nor did I ever meet Grisi and Mario, who soon followed her to New York, and who will next engage our attention.

Richard Grant White.

The country residence of Mr. John Hinckman was a delightful place to me, for many reasons. It was the abode of a genial, though somewhat impulsive, hospitality. It had broad, smooth-shaven lawns and towering oaks and elms; there were bosky shades at several points, and not far from the house there was a little rill spanned by a rustic bridge with the bark on; there were fruits and flowers, pleasant people, chess, billiards, rides, walks, and fishing. These were great attractions, but none of them, nor all of them together, would have been sufficient to hold me to the place very long. I had been invited for the trout season, but should, probably, have finished my visit early in the summer had it not been that upon fair days, when the grass was dry, and the sun was not too hot, and there was but little wind, there strolled beneath the lofty elms, or passed lightly through the bosky shades, the form of my Madeline.

This lady was not, in very truth, my Madeline. She had never given herself to me, nor had I, in any way, acquired possession of her. But as I considered her possession the only sufficient reason for the continuance of my existence, I called her, in my reveries, mine. It may have been that I would not have been obliged to confine the use of this possessive pronoun to my reveries had I confessed the state of my feelings to the lady.

But this was an unusually difficult thing to do. Not only did I dread, as almost all lovers dread, taking the step which would in an instant put an end to that delightful season which may be termed the ante-interrogatory period of love, and which might at the same time terminate all intercourse or connection with the object of my passion; but I was, also, dreadfully afraid of John Hinckman. This gentleman was a good friend of mine, but it would have required a bolder man than I was at that time to ask him for the gift of his niece, who was the head of his household, and, according to his own frequent statement, the main prop of his declining years. Had Madeline acquiesced in my general views on the subject, I might have felt encouraged to open the matter to Mr. Hinckman, but, as I said before, I had never asked her whether or not she would be mine. I thought of these things at all hours of the day and night, particularly the latter.

I was lying awake one night, in the great bed in my spacious chamber, when, by the [Pg 44]dim light of the new moon, which partially filled the room, I saw John Hinckman standing by a large chair near the door. I was very much surprised at this for two reasons. In the first place, my host had never before come into my room, and, in the second place, he had gone from home that morning, and had not expected to return for several days. It was for this reason that I had been able that evening to sit much later than usual with Madeline on the moonlit porch. The figure was certainly that of John Hinckman in his ordinary dress, but there was a vagueness and indistinctness about it which presently assured me that it was a ghost. Had the good old man been murdered? and had his spirit come to tell me of the deed, and to confide to me the protection of his dear ——? My heart fluttered at what I was about to think, but at this instant the figure spoke.

“Do you know,” he said, with a countenance that indicated anxiety, “if Mr. Hinckman will return to-night?”

I thought it well to maintain a calm exterior, and I answered:

“We do not expect him.”

“I am glad of that,” said he, sinking into the chair by which he stood. “During the two years and a half that I have inhabited this house, that man has never before been away for a single night. You can’t imagine the relief it gives me.”

And as he spoke he stretched out his legs and leaned back in the chair. His form became less vague, and the colors of his garments more distinct and evident, while an expression of gratified relief succeeded to the anxiety of his countenance.

“Two years and a half!” I exclaimed. “I don’t understand you.”

“It is fully that length of time,” said the ghost, “since I first came here. Mine is not an ordinary case. But before I say anything more about it, let me ask you again if you are sure Mr. Hinckman will not return to-night?”

“I am as sure of it as I can be of anything,” I answered. “He left to-day for Bristol, two hundred miles away.”

“Then I will go on,” said the ghost, “for I am glad to have the opportunity of talking to some one who will listen to me; but if John Hinckman should come in and catch me here, I should be frightened out of my wits.”

“This is all very strange,” I said, greatly puzzled by what I had heard. “Are you the ghost of Mr. Hinckman?”

This was a bold question, but my mind was so full of other emotions that there seemed to be no room for that of fear.

“Yes, I am his ghost,” my companion replied, “and yet I have no right to be. And this is what makes me so uneasy, and so much afraid of him. It is a strange story, and, I truly believe, without precedent. Two years and a half ago, John Hinckman was dangerously ill in this very room. At one time he was so far gone that he was really believed to be dead. It was in consequence of too precipitate a report in regard to this matter that I was, at that time, appointed to be his ghost. Imagine my surprise and horror, sir, when, after I had accepted the position and assumed its responsibilities, that old man revived, became convalescent, and eventually regained his usual health. My situation was now one of extreme delicacy and embarrassment. I had no power to return to my original unembodiment, and I had no right to be the ghost of a man who was not dead. I was advised by my friends to quietly maintain my position, and was assured that, as John Hinckman was an elderly man, it could not be long before I could rightfully assume the position for which I had been selected. But I tell you, sir,” he continued, with animation, “the old fellow seems as vigorous as ever, and I have no idea how much longer this annoying state of things will continue. I spend my time trying to get out of that old man’s way. I must not leave this house, and he seems to follow me everywhere. I tell you, sir, he haunts me.”

“That is truly a queer state of things,” I remarked. “But why are you afraid of him? He couldn’t hurt you.”

“Of course he couldn’t,” said the ghost. “But his very presence is a shock and terror to me. Imagine, sir, how you would feel if my case were yours.”

I could not imagine such a thing at all. I simply shuddered.

“And if one must be a wrongful ghost at all,” the apparition continued, “it would be much pleasanter to be the ghost of some man other than John Hinckman. There is in him an irascibility of temper, accompanied by a facility of invective, which is seldom met with. And what would happen if he were to see me, and find out, as I am sure he would, how long and why I had inhabited his house, I can scarcely conceive. I have seen him in his bursts of passion, and, although he did not hurt the people he stormed at any more than he would hurt me, they seemed to shrink before him.”

All this I knew to be very true. Had it not been for this peculiarity of Mr. Hinckman, I might have been more willing to talk to him about his niece.

“I feel sorry for you,” I said, for I really began to have a sympathetic feeling toward this unfortunate apparition. “Your case is [Pg 45]indeed a hard one. It reminds me of those persons who have had doubles, and I suppose a man would often be very angry indeed when he found that there was another being who was personating himself.”

“Oh, the cases are not similar at all,” said the ghost. “A double or doppelganger lives on the earth with a man, and, being exactly like him, he makes all sorts of trouble, of course. It is very different with me. I am not here to live with Mr. Hinckman. I am here to take his place. Now, it would make John Hinckman very angry if he knew that. Don’t you know it would?”

I assented promptly.

“Now that he is away I can be easy for a little while,” continued the ghost, “and I am so glad to have an opportunity of talking to you. I have frequently come into your room, and watched you while you slept, but did not dare to speak to you for fear that if you talked with me Mr. Hinckman would hear you, and come into the room to know why you were talking to yourself.”

“But would he not hear you?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” said the other, “there are times when any one may see me, but no one hears me except the person to whom I address myself.”

“But why did you wish to speak to me?” I asked.

“Because,” replied the ghost, “I like occasionally to talk to people, and especially to some one like yourself, whose mind is so troubled and perturbed that you are not likely to be frightened by a visit from one of us. But I particularly wanted to ask you to do me a favor. There is every probability, so far as I can see, that John Hinckman will live a long time, and my situation is becoming insupportable. My great object at present is to get myself transferred, and I think that you may, perhaps, be of use to me.”

“Transferred!” I exclaimed. “What do you mean by that?”

“What I mean,” said the other, “is this: Now that I have started on my career I have got to be the ghost of somebody; and I want to be the ghost of a man who is really dead.”

“I should think that would be easy enough,” I said. “Opportunities must continually occur.”

“Not at all! not at all!” said my companion, quickly. “You have no idea what a rush and pressure there is for situations of this kind. Whenever a vacancy occurs, if I may express myself in that way, there are crowds of applications for the ghostship.”

“I had no idea that such a state of things existed,” I said, becoming quite interested in the matter. “There ought to be some regular system, or order of precedence, by which you could all take your turns like customers in a barber’s shop.”

“Oh dear, that would never do at all!” said the other. “Some of us would have to wait forever. There is always a great rush whenever a good ghostship offers itself—while, as you know, there are some positions that no one would care for. And it was in consequence of my being in too great a hurry on an occasion of the kind that I got myself into my present disagreeable predicament, and I have thought that it might be possible that you would help me out of it. You might know of a case where an opportunity for a ghostship was not generally expected, but which might present itself at any moment. If you would give me a short notice, I know I could arrange for a transfer.”

“What do you mean?” I exclaimed. “Do you want me to commit suicide? Or to undertake a murder for your benefit?”

“Oh, no, no, no!” said the other, with a vapory smile. “I mean nothing of that kind. To be sure, there are lovers who are watched with considerable interest, such persons having been known, in moments of depression, to offer very desirable ghostships, but I did not think of anything of that kind in connection with you. You were the only person I cared to speak to, and I hoped that you might give me some information that would be of use; and, in return, I shall be very glad to help you in your love affair.”

“You seem to know that I have such an affair,” I said.

“Oh, yes,” replied the other, with a little yawn. “I could not be here so much as I have been without knowing all about that.”

There was something horrible in the idea of Madeline and myself having been watched by a ghost, even, perhaps, when we wandered together in the most delightful and bosky places. But, then, this was quite an exceptional ghost, and I could not have the objections to him which would ordinarily arise in regard to beings of his class.

“I must go now,” said the ghost, rising, “but I will see you somewhere to-morrow night. And remember—you help me, and I’ll help you.”

I had doubts the next morning as to the propriety of telling Madeline anything about this interview, and soon convinced myself that I must keep silent on the subject. If she knew there was a ghost about the house she would probably leave the place instantly. I did not mention the matter, and so regulated my demeanor that I am quite sure Madeline never suspected what had taken place. For some time I had wished that Mr. [Pg 46]Hinckman would absent himself, for a day at least, from the premises. In such case I thought I might more easily nerve myself up to the point of speaking to Madeline on the subject of our future collateral existence, and, now that the opportunity for such speech had really occurred, I did not feel ready to avail myself of it. What would become of me if she refused me?

I had an idea, however, that the lady thought that, if I were going to speak at all, this was the time. She must have known that certain sentiments were afloat within me, and she was not unreasonable in her wish to see the matter settled one way or the other. But I did not feel like taking a bold step in the dark. If she wished me to ask her to give herself to me, she ought to offer me some reason to suppose that she would make the gift. If I saw no probability of such generosity, I would prefer that things should remain as they were.

That evening I was sitting with Madeline in the moonlit porch. It was nearly ten o’clock, and ever since supper-time I had been working myself up to the point of making an avowal of my sentiments. I had not positively determined to do this, but wished gradually to reach the proper point, when, if the prospect looked bright, I might speak. My companion appeared to understand the situation—at least, I imagined that the nearer I came to a proposal the more she seemed to expect it. It was certainly a very critical and important epoch in my life. If I spoke, I should make myself happy or miserable forever, and if I did not speak I had every reason to believe that the lady would not give me another chance to do so.

Sitting thus with Madeline, talking a little, and thinking very hard over these momentous matters, I looked up and saw the ghost, not a dozen feet away from us. He was sitting on the railing of the porch, one leg thrown up before him, the other dangling down as he leaned against a post. He was behind Madeline, but almost in front of me, as I sat facing the lady. It was fortunate that Madeline was looking out over the landscape, for I must have appeared very much startled. The ghost had told me that he would see me some time this night, but I did not think he would make his appearance when I was in the company of Madeline. If she should see the spirit of her uncle, I could not answer for the consequences. I made no exclamation, but the ghost evidently saw that I was troubled.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said—“I shall not let her see me; and she cannot hear me speak unless I address myself to her, which I do not intend to do.”

I suppose I looked grateful.

“So you need not trouble yourself about that,” the ghost continued; “but it seems to me that you are not getting along very well with your affair. If I were you, I should speak out without waiting any longer. You will never have a better chance. You are not likely to be interrupted; and, so far as I can judge, the lady seems disposed to listen to you favorably; that is, if she ever intends to do so. There is no knowing when John Hinckman will go away again; certainly not this summer. If I were in your place, I should never dare to make love to Hinckman’s niece if he were anywhere about the place. If he should catch any one offering himself to Miss Madeline, he would then be a terrible man to encounter.”

I agreed perfectly to all this.

“I cannot bear to think of him!” I ejaculated aloud.

“Think of whom?” asked Madeline, turning quickly toward me.

Here was an awkward situation. The long speech of the ghost, to which Madeline paid no attention, but which I heard with perfect distinctness, had made me forget myself.

It was necessary to explain quickly. Of course, it would not do to admit that it was of her dear uncle that I was speaking; and so I mentioned hastily the first name I thought of.

“Mr. Vilars,” I said.

This statement was entirely correct, for I never could bear to think of Mr. Vilars, who was a gentleman who had, at various times, paid much attention to Madeline.

“It is wrong for you to speak in that way of Mr. Vilars,” she said. “He is a remarkably well educated and sensible young man, and has very pleasant manners. He expects to be elected to the legislature this fall, and I should not be surprised if he made his mark. He will do well in a legislative body, for whenever Mr. Vilars has anything to say he knows just how and when to say it.”

This was spoken very quietly, and without any show of resentment, which was all very natural, for if Madeline thought at all favorably of me she could not feel displeased that I should have disagreeable emotions in regard to a possible rival. The concluding words contained a hint which I was not slow to understand. I felt very sure that if Mr. Vilars were in my present position he would speak quickly enough.

“I know it is wrong to have such ideas about a person,” I said, “but I cannot help it.”

The lady did not chide me, and after this [Pg 47]she seemed even in a softer mood. As for me, I felt considerably annoyed, for I had not wished to admit that any thought of Mr. Vilars had ever occupied my mind.

“You should not speak aloud that way,” said the ghost, “or you may get yourself into trouble. I want to see everything go well with you, because then you may be disposed to help me, especially if I should chance to be of any assistance to you, which I hope I shall be.”

I longed to tell him that there was no way in which he could help me so much as by taking his instant departure. To make love to a young lady with a ghost sitting on the railing near by, and that ghost the apparition of a much-dreaded uncle, the very idea of whom in such a position and at such a time made me tremble, was a difficult, if not an impossible, thing to do; but I forbore to speak, although I may have looked my mind.

“I suppose,” continued the ghost, “that you have not heard anything that might be of advantage to me. Of course, I am very anxious to hear, but if you have anything to tell me, I can wait until you are alone. I will come to you to-night in your room, or I will stay here until the lady goes away.”

“You need not wait here,” I said; “I have nothing at all to say to you.”

Madeline sprang to her feet, her face flushed and her eyes ablaze.

“Wait here!” she cried. “What do you suppose I am waiting for? Nothing to say to me indeed!—I should think so! What should you have to say to me?”

“Madeline,” I exclaimed, stepping toward her, “let me explain.”

But she had gone.

Here was the end of the world for me! I turned fiercely to the ghost.

“Wretched existence!” I cried. “You have ruined everything. You have blackened my whole life. Had it not been for you——”

But here my voice faltered. I could say no more.

“You wrong me,” said the ghost. “I have not injured you. I have tried only to encourage and assist you, and it is your own folly that has done this mischief. But do not despair. Such mistakes as these can be explained. Keep up a brave heart. Good-by.”

And he vanished from the railing like a bursting soap-bubble.

I went gloomily to bed, but I saw no apparitions that night except those of despair and misery which my wretched thoughts called up. The words I had uttered had sounded to Madeline like the basest insult. Of course, there was only one interpretation she could put upon them.

As to explaining my ejaculations, that was impossible. I thought the matter over and over again as I lay awake that night, and I determined that I would never tell Madeline the facts of the case. It would be better for me to suffer all my life than for her to know that the ghost of her uncle haunted the house. Mr. Hinckman was away, and if she knew of his ghost she could not be made to believe that he was not dead. She might not survive the shock! No, my heart could bleed, but I would never tell her.

The next day was fine, neither too cool nor too warm; the breezes were gentle, and nature smiled. But there were no walks or rides with Madeline. She seemed to be much engaged during the day, and I saw but little of her. When we met at meals she was polite, but very quiet and reserved. She had evidently determined on a course of conduct, and had resolved to assume that, although I had been very rude to her, she did not understand the import of my words. It would be quite proper, of course, for her not to know what I meant by my expressions of the night before.

I was downcast and wretched, and said but little, and the only bright streak across the black horizon of my woe was the fact that she did not appear to be happy, although she affected an air of unconcern. The moonlit porch was deserted that evening, but wandering about the house I found Madeline in the library alone. She was reading, but I went in and sat down near her. I felt that, although I could not do so fully, I must in a measure explain my conduct of the night before. She listened quietly to a somewhat labored apology I made for the words I had used.

“I have not the slightest idea what you meant,” she said, “but you were very rude.”

I earnestly disclaimed any intention of rudeness, and assured her, with a warmth of speech that must have made some impression upon her, that rudeness to her would be an action impossible to me. I said a great deal upon the subject, and implored her to believe that if it were not for a certain obstacle I could speak to her so plainly that she would understand everything.

She was silent for a time, and then she said, rather more kindly, I thought, than she had spoken before:

“Is that obstacle in any way connected with my uncle?”

“Yes,” I answered, after a little hesitation, “it is, in a measure, connected with him.”

She made no answer to this, and sat looking at her book, but not reading. From the expression of her face, I thought she was somewhat softened toward me. She knew [Pg 48]her uncle as well as I did, and she may have been thinking that, if he were the obstacle that prevented my speaking (and there were many ways in which he might be that obstacle), my position would be such a hard one that it would excuse some wildness of speech and eccentricity of manner. I saw, too, that the warmth of my partial explanations had had some effect on her, and I began to believe that it might be a good thing for me to speak my mind without delay. No matter how she should receive my proposition, my relations with her could not be worse than they had been the previous night and day, and there was something in her face which encouraged me to hope that she might forget my foolish exclamations of the evening before if I began to tell her my tale of love.

I drew my chair a little nearer to her, and as I did so the ghost burst into the room from the door-way behind her. I say burst, although no door flew open and he made no noise. He was wildly excited, and waved his arms above his head. The moment I saw him, my heart fell within me. With the entrance of that impertinent apparition, every hope fled from me. I could not speak while he was in the room.

I must have turned pale, and I gazed steadfastly at the ghost, almost without seeing Madeline, who sat between us.

“Do you know,” he cried, “that John Hinckman is coming up the hill? He will be here in fifteen minutes, and if you are doing anything in the way of love-making, you had better hurry it up. But this is not what I came to tell you. I have glorious news! At last I am transferred! Not forty minutes ago a Russian nobleman was murdered by the Nihilists. Nobody ever thought of him in connection with an immediate ghostship. My friends instantly applied for the situation for me, and obtained my transfer. I am off before that horrid Hinckman comes up the hill. The moment I reach my new position, I shall put off this hated semblance. Good-by. You can’t imagine how glad I am to be, at last, the real ghost of somebody.”

“Oh!” I cried, rising to my feet and stretching out my arms in utter wretchedness, “I would to Heaven you were mine!”

“I am yours,” said Madeline, raising to me her tearful eyes.

Frank R. Stockton.

The spontaneous action of the prominent citizens of London and New York, without distinction of creed, in protest against the Russian atrocities committed upon the Jews, happily renders unnecessary any denunciation on the part of a Jewess. In the April number of The Century Mme. Ragozin set forth the “Russian side” of the question, which appears to her sufficient explanation of a state of affairs characterized by the London “Times” as “a scene of horrors that have hitherto only been perpetrated in mediæval days during times of war.” Murder, rape, arson, one hundred thousand families reduced to homeless beggary, and the destruction of eighty million dollars’ worth of property,—such, in fewest words, are the acts for which an excuse is sought. The perusal of a single book—the work of Mr. Jacob Brafmann, a Jewish apostate in the pay of the Russian Government—has forever demolished, in her mind, the fallacy that the Christians have been persecuting the Jews, and has established in its stead the conspicuous fact that the Jews have been always, and still are, persecuting the Christians, especially in Russia. This great truth—that a handful of wretched Jews are “undermining the well-being” of the largest empire of the globe—Mme. Ragozin is confident will commend itself to the acceptance of all unprejudiced minds.

Let us first disabuse our readers of the sophistical distinction made by Mme. Ragozin, in common with many other writers, between the “two kinds of Jews,” and the idea that “a vast dualism essentially characterizes this extraordinary race.” Behind this subtle error lurk all the dangers that have threatened the existence of the people, for whatever calumnies be refuted by a Jewish spokesman, the answer is ever ready: “These charges do not apply to you, and such as you. But how can you be sure that such outrages are not committed by some barbarous sect of your tribe?” Now, we can be sure of the Jews—more so, perhaps, than of any other [Pg 49]people in the world, their history being the oldest among civilized nations, their social and moral code having remained unaltered through all time, and the vicissitudes of their fate having exposed them to almost every test which can affect individual or national character. The dualism of the Jews is the dualism of humanity; they are made up of the good and the bad. May not Christendom be divided into those Christians who denounce such outrages as we are considering, and those who commit or apologize for them? Immortal genius and moral purity, as exemplified by Moses and Spinoza, constitute a minority among the Jews, as they do among the Gentiles, but here ends the truth of the matter. Facts disprove even the plausible theory that, where Judeaphobia has longest prevailed, there has been a corresponding fundamental degeneracy in the race, for their suppleness and elasticity seem almost without bounds. From the identical conditions which Mme. Ragozin describes in Russia as fatal to the moral and intellectual development of the Jews (the internal restrictions of the kahal and the cramping tyranny of external laws) sprang in Germany, as soon as a breathing-place was opened, the generation of Moses Mendelssohn and his gifted family, including Felix, Fanny Hensel, and Dorothea Schlegel, Heine the poet, Edward Gans, Ludwig Börne, Doctor Zunz, Rahel von Ense, Henrietta Herz, and others. And to-day, after little more than fifty years of Jewish enfranchisement, the German Christians are making a piteous outcry that the Jews are usurping the intellectual, political, and financial control of the state.

“It is not the Jews of the Bible, but the Jews of the Talmud, to whom we object,” assert the Russians, and the uninitiated Gentile is willing to believe that the Talmud is but a compendium of barbarous laws and puerile catch-words; consequently that its votaries must be a peculiarly degraded, narrow, and obnoxious set. The truth is that all (orthodox) Jews with whom Americans and Europeans are acquainted are Talmudists. The Talmud is, in great part, a modification of the barbarous injunctions contained in the Bible, which continues to be also one of the text-books of Christendom. Many of the most ridiculous, hair-splitting subtleties of the Talmud are simply introduced for the purpose of rendering impossible the fulfillment of harsh Scriptural commandments. As for the intrinsic merits of the book, the life and precepts of the Rabbi Hillel, therein narrated, anticipate those of Jesus; even the “golden rule” is formulated in its pages, while the literary beauty of its purely poetical passages is occasionally of the highest order. In Southern Russia and the Crimea lives a certain small sect of dissenting Jews, said to be fast dying out, called the Karaïtes, who reject the Talmud, and who have always been ostentatiously favored by the Government. In the midst of the prevailing Jewish reign of terror, they have lately been accorded full rights of citizenship. They number less than five thousand among the three million Jews of the Russian empire. When, therefore, the Czar and his apologists exclaim: “How can you accuse us of persecuting the Jews? It is not the Jews but the Talmudists whom we abhor: consider our kindness to the Karaïtes,”—it is just as if a savage race, bent upon exterminating the Christians, were to make an exception in favor of the Quakers, or as if the Turks were to say: “We bear no grudge against Europeans. True, we oppress and kill Montenegrins, Roumanians, and Bulgarians, but who ever heard of our touching an American missionary!” Mme. Ragozin dilates upon Mr. Brafmann’s heroic act of conversion to Christianity, and explains the “tremendous obstacles” and dire penalties that lie in the way of such a feat on the part of a Jew. What can be more natural than that one who has safely defied, as Mr. Brafmann has done, the withering curse of the kherem, which Mme. Ragozin quotes in full, should reveal the secrets of the prison-house whence he has escaped? Now, be it submitted to the common sense of any reasonable being: Is it an advantage to-day, socially, civilly, or politically, to be a Jew? Is not every bribe, both spiritual and secular, held out by modern society to persuade the Jew to become a proselyte? Naturally, the Jewish church itself does not offer reward to renegades, but it is not to be supposed that the emancipated Jew stands greatly in awe of a malediction in which he no longer believes. Mme. Ragozin, as a Russian, cannot be ignorant of the fact that if, in a single instance, the anathema which she transcribes were pronounced over the head of a baptized Jew, the priest who had uttered it would be denounced without delay to the authorities, and the midnight arrest, condemnation without trial, and the mines of Siberia would be his portion. There are hundreds of converted Jews in Russia, going about freely and transacting business among their own people as well as among Christians. Such a thing as an indignity, much less an injury, offered to them at the hands of their former co-religionists, has never been heard of.

The path from Judaism to Christianity, so far from being encompassed with terrors, is in reality made smooth and easy by every device which can be invented by missionary societies on the part of the Christians, and [Pg 50]every temptation that can be suggested by practical convenience and worldly ambition in the mind of the Jew.⁠[7] Mme. Ragozin, then, bases her entire arraignment of Jewish character and institutions upon the documents supplied by a Jewish convert, at the request of the Russian Government. What would Christendom have thought of a statement put forward by the Turks after the Bulgarian massacres, drawn up by a renegade Christian who had entered the service of the Ottoman court? Yet it is precisely such a document as this which we are asked to accept in extenuation of the outrages committed by Russian mobs.

There is but one answer to the charges against the Jews, which Brafmann professes to base upon quotations from the Talmud: they are singly and collectively false. They have not even the doubtful merit of originality, being simply a revamping of the wearisome old perversions, garblings, distortions, mistranslations of the spirit and letter of the text, which have been fully refuted by documents familiar to the whole reading public. For the subtle meaning of the Talmud we need not go to a bribed renegade and thief, who had the documents “abstracted” for him (“convey the wise it call!”), “not without danger, by a friend from the Jewish archives.” Charges of a similar nature to Mr. Brafmann’s, but incomparably worse, were satisfactorily refuted two hundred years ago by Manasseh ben-Israel, in his famous petition to Oliver Cromwell.

If a Moslem were to print an expurgated copy of the Bible, citing all the barbarous passages and omitting all the humane and noble features, what would Islam think of the corner-stone of Christianity? Yet this is precisely what the Jew-haters have done with the Talmud. Modern philosophical criticism, no less than a study of Jewish history, and a dawning appreciation of the nobility of the Jewish type of character, have dispelled among all thinking and cultivated minds the web of calumny spun by bigotry and folly around these remarkable volumes.

For a general reply to such libels as Brafmann’s, I refer such of my readers as are disposed to credit them to the writings of Emmanuel Deutsch, the Jewish scholar, said to be the original of George Eliot’s “Mordecai,” and to the works of the orthodox Christian clergyman, Dr. Franz Delitzsch, one of the greatest living Orientalists. “The Talmud” (says the latter in his “Talmud Jews,” published in 1881, in answer to the attacks of a Jew-baiter) “is a parliament in which the voices of five centuries hold converse. It can easily be believed that nonsense by the side of sense, absurdity by the side of wit, cordial humanity beside harsh intolerance, ludicrous superstition beside true faith, are to be found therein, especially when we remember the character of the age in which it was produced, and whose testimony it is. Obscure phrases, and sentences in the spirit of the New Testament, flourish side by side.” The malicious trick of picking out the evil of the book, to build up a monumental protest against Jewish character, has been performed again and again. Jews who have been driven into the obscure recesses of noisome Ghettos have been invariably accused of practicing all these degrading customs which Mr. Brafmann has exposed. How does it happen that, whenever the full light of civilization has been allowed to stream upon the Jews, these shadowy horrors vanish without leaving a trace? Has the Jew changed his code? No, not since the days of Moses. But the Christian has granted him the freedom of the sunshine, and the mere light of day has revealed the unreality of the nightmares of darkness.

The mysterious clew to the Jewish question which Mme. Ragozin has discovered is no secret document, but a book called “Le Livre du Kahal,” published at St. Petersburg in French and Russian in 1869. “Surely no government could tolerate for a single moment so monstrous an anomaly” as the community therein described. “Certainly not with its eyes open!” And yet here, on her own showing, the “hundred Argus-eyes” of the Russian Government, the most absolute of modern despotisms, have been opened for twelve consecutive years, and the kahal still exists with the sanction of the law. If half—nay, if a single one of these allegations could have been substantiated—could not the three million Jews of the empire have been transported en masse to Siberia for felony and treason?

Stripped of all circumlocution, the kahal is simply a Jewish congregation under the spiritual direction of the minister and the temporal direction of wardens and trustees. Mme. Ragozin’s representation of its powers and functions would lead one to suppose that she was describing the court of the Russian autocrat himself. Are we actually to believe that Christendom is a watery lake, and that the Gentiles are silly fish, to be baited, hooked, and devoured by a race of miserable pariahs? A tolerable acquaintance with history would have taught Mme. Ragozin, on the contrary, that the property of Jews has been always [Pg 51]considered the “natural patrimony” of Christian potentates and people, who found means to despoil their victims without even making a pretense of being “snugly sheltered by the law.” Here is her account of the unholy processes of the Jews: “The proposed victim is tempted into borrowing, and enticed on and on by proffered facilities as long as it is supposed he still has a chance of rescue. When he has become entangled in the meshes of renewed bills and compound interest, wholly beyond the range of his resources, the blow descends, and the fortunate purchaser enters into open possession of his secretly long-cherished property.”

Ridicule, not argument, is the only possible reply. What mystic powers are inherent in the Jew to enable him to “entice into borrowing” any sane man who does not wish to avail himself of the convenience of modern commercial exchange? Would not a man ignorant of the rules of “renewed bills and compound interest” be held responsible by all rational people for his own recklessness and stupidity, not to say unscrupulousness, if he borrowed money wholly beyond the range of his resources to repay? With what words would Mme. Ragozin characterize a Jew who borrowed money of a Christian on such terms, and when “the blow descended” (i. e., when the bill came in), protested that he was innocent of the debt, and had been abused by a Christian sharper? Mme. Ragozin does not even represent (as, indeed, she could not truthfully do) that the Jew speculates in this manner upon the ignorant peasant. “Jews do not live in villages—there is nothing for them to do there; they prefer more populous and wealthier centers.” Thus, it is the rich, experienced merchants of Warsaw and Moscow whom we are to imagine as falling a helpless prey into the meshes of a band of wretched outcasts, who are watched with untiring vigilance and suspicion by the officers of the law. Whoever wishes to know what “exploitation” really means may turn to Wallace’s “Russia,” page 464:

“The peasant who accepted land from a proprietor rarely brought with him the necessary implements. * * * He was obliged, therefore, to borrow from his landlord, and the debt thus contracted was easily converted into a means of preventing his departure if he wished to change his domicile. * * * The proprietors were the capitalists of the time. The muzhik was probably then, as now, only too ready to accept a loan without taking the necessary precautions for repaying it. The laws relating to debt were terribly severe, and there was no powerful judicial organization to protect the weak.”

Now, who is guilty of “sucking out the blood of the people”? The Russian Christian who “exploits” the benighted peasant, or the persecuted Jew who lends money, on well-established conditions, to wealthy business men?

That the Jews should ever form a hostile “state within the state” is rendered impossible by a solemn Biblical injunction commanding fidelity to the ruling government: “And seek the welfare of the city whither I have banished you, and pray in its behalf unto the Lord, for in its welfare shall ye fare well.”⁠[8] There is no such thing, therefore, as an independent disloyal Jewish community, in Russia or out of Russia.

Mme. Ragozin tells us that the Jews “trade upon the weakness” of the innocent creatures around them, by entering largely into the liquor business. “All the public-houses in Russia,” she says, “are kept by Jews.” She seems to forget that drunkenness is notoriously the national vice of Russia, and is spread over the whole empire of which the Jews inhabit one seventh part. Recent statistics prove that drunkenness in Russia increases in inverse ratio to the proportion of Jews in the population, being worst in those provinces whence they are excluded, while the old kingdom of Poland, where they swarm, is less affected by the national vice than any other part of the empire. Mme. Ragozin excuses the weakness of her compatriots by explaining that the vodka, or whisky, is, in moderation, a necessity of existence to the poor, half-starved peasant—“warmth in the inhuman winter cold, mirth in his rare hours of rest, * * * medicine in sickness. * * * But how easy the slip into excess!” The impartial observer will, of course, agree with Mme. Ragozin that, when the fatal “slip into excess” occurs, the responsibility lies, not with the self-indulgent peasant, but with the inn-keeper who offers for sale that which, “in moderation,” is the staff of life! A credible eye-witness informs me that he saw a Jewish inn-keeper threatened with violence for refusing to sell any more liquor to peasants already stupefied with intoxication. If the Russian Christian would imitate the virtue of his fellow-countryman, the Moslem Tartar, who contrives to resist the “inhuman winter cold” notwithstanding the fact that his religion exacts a rigid sobriety, the trade of the Jewish inn-keeper would be curtailed in a more humane and legitimate manner than any yet suggested by Russian legislators.

Mme. Ragozin accuses the Jews of monopolizing the butcher trade, and feeding whole districts upon meat which is little better than carrion—selling the refuse of their market to Christians, in accordance with the [Pg 52]injunction of the Mosaic law: “Ye shall not eat of anything that dieth of itself; thou shalt give it unto the stranger that is in thy gates, that he may eat it, or thou mayest sell it unto an alien, for thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God.” (Deut. xiv. 21.)

(“The Devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.”) The above verse alludes to meat which Christians do not object to use, but which is forbidden by Jewish law. According to the latter many maladies, such as perforation of internal organs, hardening of tissues, etc., render unfit for food meat which no Gentile would reject. Every Jew knows that to sell diseased or tainted meat to Christians is as unorthodox as it is immoral, and would lead, moreover, directly to the penitentiary. If any one believes that Mme. Ragozin’s construction of the text be true, let him look over the fourteenth chapter of Deuteronomy, breathing, as it does, the broadest spirit of hospitality, humanity, and what is called nowadays “Christian” charity. Moses specifies the food from which his people must abstain, and enjoins them, after collecting the tithe of their increase, to turn this into money and spend it according to their hearts’ desire, and enjoy it with their households, and with the Levite that is within their gates. “Thou shalt not forsake him, for he hath no part or inheritance with thee. And the Levite, * * * and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow which are within thy gates, shall come and shall eat, and shall be satisfied, that the Lord thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine hand which thou doest.” (Deut. xiv. 27–29.)

Such is the spirit of this barbarous Mosaic code, which has been superseded in Russia by the law of love! Moreover, even on Mme. Ragozin’s own showing, the Christians who are willing to pay the same price as the Jews can have the best meat! We know that, in the Middle Ages, numberless people were willing to swear at the stake that the Jews had poisoned all the wells of Europe; the old foe simply wears a new face, and the Jews are at their old tricks of wholesale murder.

We learn from Mme. Ragozin that the Jews, while “equally sheltered by the laws with all their fellow-subjects” (which is false), “scrupulously perform every year a public religious ceremony [the Kol-Nidreh], which offers a loop-hole of release from the obligation of keeping any oath or promise made to the Government, or to individuals belonging to the state religion.” Here is the truth about the Kol-Nidreh: On the Day of Atonement, which is a solemn fast for the Jews, the hasty vows that have been forgotten during the previous year are remitted by means of a special prayer, called the Kol-Nidreh. Lest there should be any misunderstanding concerning this prayer, a note appears in all Jewish rituals (Russian as well as American), to the effect that the formula “has been contrived in order to remit to the public their hasty vows, but not to absolve any one from an obligation or a judicial oath.” The prayer is responded to by the entire congregation in these words: “They shall all be null and void, without power or confirmation. And it shall be forgiven to the whole congregation of Israel, and to the stranger who sojourneth among them; for all the people did it ignorantly.” How little of a conspiracy against the ruling government is intended by this innocent form is evinced additionally by the fact that, directly after this, comes the prayer for the Government. The Gentile, whose promises are forgiven, gains fully as much indulgence from the formula as the Jew. The high commercial standing of the Jews in America (not to speak of their record in all other civilized countries where they have been treated like human beings) proves this people to be scrupulously observant of promises, oaths, and business engagements. “In the great financial scandals of our day, notably in Belgium,” says Emile de Laveleye, “only Christians have figured.”⁠[9]⁠

As for the Jews being “equally sheltered before the Russian law with their Christian fellow-subjects,” if any further proof be needed than the recent unpunished outrages upon their lives and property, I will cite the latest authority upon the subject, M. A. Leroy-Beaulieu, whose magnificent work “L’Empire des Tsars,” now in course of publication, affords the fullest and clearest exposition yet made of the actual condition of Russia: “Even since the latest reforms, the Israelites still remain in regard to their domicile, their property, and their elective functions, subject to certain restrictions, which make them a separate class even in the midst of the classes to which they belong. This inferior position entailed upon the Jews has, doubtless, much to do with the participation of a certain number of them in the political crimes of recent years, while the rigors demanded against them from time to time, by the patriots of Moscow, Kiev, and Petersburg, are little calculated to inspire them with love and respect for the imperial laws.” (Page 283.)

It is false that the Jews are “kept aloof by their own rulers” from modern culture. Witness the disproportionate number of Jews and Jewesses thronging the universities, to which [Pg 53]they have only recently been granted admission. More than fifty per cent. of the students at Kiev University are said to be Jews. They are not allowed, except in specially privileged cases, to live in Kiev proper; they live outside, and walk in and out of the town morning and night. There is but one limit fixed to the tyranny of Russian laws against Jews, and that is the caprice of absolutism. Over and above the law is enthroned the Czar. Hence, although until the year 1861 the Jews were literally reduced to the level of pariahs by the stereotyped phrase “to all people, with the exception of the Jews,” which followed every clause of the Russian code, the Czar reserves the arbitrary right to confer whatever honor he please upon any individual Jew.

If Russian Jews be as Mme. Ragozin represents them, they are what Russian Christians have made them. Was it not Heine who said: “Every country has the Jews it deserves”? Mme. Ragozin says the Jews are hated not because of different race, religion, dress, peculiar customs, etc., but because of their “servility, their abjectness, their want of manliness, their failure to stand up for themselves and resent injuries.” Any one who aims at being as strictly logical as Mme. Ragozin might know that it is in vain to expect the virtues of freemen from a community of slaves. Of this same people, a prominent American Christian clergyman (Rev. Dr. Howard Crosby) publicly declared a few weeks ago: “It is the glory of America that she finds among the Israelites the purest and strongest elements of republican liberty.” The Hon. J. W. Foster, late United States minister at St. Petersburg, writes: “I do not mean to convey the impression that the Jews of Russia are equal in intelligence and social standing with their co-religionists of the most enlightened countries of Europe and America. Far from it. But they are superior in education and thrift to the same class among whom they belong.” The cry against the Jews, in most countries where they have had protection from the law, is not that they are servile, but that they are arrogant.

According to Mme. Ragozin’s statement, the Jews, “herding together in unutterable filth and squalor, are a loathsome and really dangerous element—a standing institution for the propagation of all kinds of horrible and contagious diseases.” We know how rigidly the sanitary and hygienic laws of the Mosaic code have been obeyed by Jews in all countries, and how frequently the almost miraculous vitality of this people has been ascribed to such obedience. On the other hand, we have authoritative testimony concerning the unclean habits of the poorer classes of Russia. I quote again from M. Leroy-Beaulieu:

“The very precautions necessitated by the cold are far from wholesome. In order to resist the winter, Russians have to live in a heavy, thick atmosphere of vitiated air, which is seldom renewed. In his wooden izba, often surrounded with an embankment of dung, the peasant huddles with his whole family around the enormous stove, on which they all sleep at night. The climate is as unfavorable to cleanliness as to health. * * * The peasant is condemned to live in a stifling atmosphere, impregnated with miasma. The hot, infected air of his cabin germinates myriads of insects, and all kinds of parasites swarm around. The ordures thrown out of the house disappear in the snow, and recover all their fetidness in the spring. Nothing can exceed the stench of a Russian thaw. Even in the towns, the filth cannot always flow freely through the sewers, which are stopped up by the ice. The snow, which resembled sand or pounded glass under the sleighs, is transformed into a thick, nauseous mud, from which one’s boots carry the emanations indoors. Under such sanitary conditions, it is no wonder to see this people a prey to all sorts of epidemics, and even the plague itself make its appearance still in European Russia, as it did at Vetlianka in 1879. * * * The necessity for being well muffled up is for the people an obstacle to cleanliness as well as to health. The peasant sleeps in his clothes, and passes night and day in the same sheepskin touloup. It is true that he takes a vapor-bath once a week, but unfortunately he is obliged to put his clothes on again, which are infested with vermin.” (“L’Empire des Tsars,” pp. 129, 130.)

Mme. Ragozin will have difficulty in convincing those who are conversant with such facts as the above that the Jews are the cause of Russian pestilence. It must be borne in mind that Russia forcibly retains this canker in her body politic. Emigration as well as immigration is prohibited to the Jews. When General Ignatieff proclaimed, a short time ago, that he “confidently expected the Western frontiers to be soon opened to the Israelites,” probably very few Americans realized that this generous extension of privilege meant freedom to leave, not to enter, the empire. The present emigration is effected by means of wholesale and public bribery of Government officials, in which the Jews have to squander thousands of rubles. Mme. Ragozin seems to think that, in acts of official corruption, the criminal is he who offers, not he who accepts, a bribe, and she wishes to guard her country against the evil effects of “the unlawful favors shown to the Jews.” Let it be remembered, too, that the Jew offers a bribe to protect his property and life, the Christian accepts it to enrich himself surreptitiously at the expense of others. Mme. Ragozin melts with compassion to think of the “long line of exiles emigrating across the Amoor, driven out by the extortion of the Jews.” It has been popularly supposed that the mines of Siberia, the notorious Third Section of the late Czar’s Imperial Chancellerie, [Pg 54]and several articles of the Russian code, had some connection with the restlessness of the Russians. But Mme. Ragozin assures us it is a petty tribe of clever Jewish traders, gagged, bound, and restricted in every way by the tyranny of unjust laws, who are “sucking out the blood” of all the Russians.⁠[10] A companion-picture to Mme. Ragozin’s fancy-sketch of the melancholy procession of moujiks may be actually seen by any American who crosses the ferry to Ward’s Island, New York, where are huddled together hundreds of homeless refugees, among whom are not a few men of brilliant talents and accomplishments,—the graduates of Russian universities, scholars of Greek as well as of Hebrew, and familiar with all the principal European tongues,—engaged in menial drudgery and burning with zeal in the cause of their wretched co-religionists. There are the results of every kind of atrocity, which impelled these despoiled exiles, not from one district to another of their own country, but across the wide Atlantic to an unfamiliar land. No American who has seen them, and heard from their own lips the simple narration of their sufferings, will have much compassion left to spare for the whisky-ruined peasants described by Mme. Ragozin. Of these horrors, no one in whose veins flows a drop of Jewish blood can speak with becoming composure.⁠[11] The position of the Jews in Russia has been likened to that of the Chinese in the United States, but the two cases bear no analogy. The Jews have not emigrated to Russia: they are in the land of their forefathers. Says ex-Minister Foster: “It is true that for centuries past Russia has had laws prohibiting the immigration of the Jews; but the conquest of the provinces in the South-west brought in more than two million Jews as subjects of the empire.”

Mme. Ragozin points with dignified complacency to Russia’s “millions of Mohammedan subjects living peaceably amidst the Christians. Who ever heard of an outbreak against them?” Let us not be deceived by this specious plea. Russia is only semi-European; fully two-thirds of her enormous bulk lies in Asia. While the Mohammedans of European Russia bear about the same numerical relation as the Jews do to the Christian population, yet she is bounded on the south by the Ottoman Empire itself; at her eastern gate lies Persia, a Mohammedan power which she is ever anxious to conciliate, and a large part of her territory embraces provinces which are wholly Mohammedan. “In Asiatic Russia,” says M. Leroy-Beaulieu, “the Tartars have for congeners as well as co-religionists the Khirgiz, the most extensive of all the Turkish branches; in Turkestan the Turcomans and the Osbegs; in the Caucasus the Kumuks and other small tribes, and even in Siberia Mohammedans who have more or less claim to the title of Tartars.” (Pp. 88, 89.) India, with her population of fifty million Mohammedans, generally supposed to be the ulterior aim of all Russia’s policy, lies not far distant.

Now, if we imagine a huge Jewish sovereignty intrenched on the borders of the Russian Empire, and powerful allies scattered about in every direction, it is not difficult to believe that the outbreaks against the Russian Jews would be as infrequent as are those against the Mohammedans. The latter have their mosques, their schools in which the Koran is the basis of instruction, and their mollahs, or umpires, just as the Jews have their synagogues, their beth-din, and their kahal. But the Russians have not yet found it necessary to see in such institutions a standing menace to the existence of the Russian Empire.

That the Jews are as a rule shrewd, astute, and sharp at a bargain no one will deny; that a rapacious envy of their gains is at the bottom of all the religious and political outbreaks against them, I am as firmly convinced as is Mme. Ragozin herself. But none the less is it a fact that this envy, ashamed to appear under its proper name, seeks to disguise itself under the mask of any and every [Pg 55]other sentiment—patriotism, self-preservation, religious zeal, righteous indignation in a thousand forms. But is it not as puerile as it is monstrous to assert that the Christians, who outnumber the Jews by millions, who have the whole power of the law and the throne to back them, not to speak of the prejudice of the whole civilized world in their favor, can find no other weapons than tyranny, violence, and murder to preserve them against the Jew, who has nothing but his wits? When Peter the Great was petitioned to grant the right of settling in Russia to a colony of Jewish merchants, he replied, jestingly, “Why, they would starve to death among the Russians.” Concerning Russian business habits, Bielinski, one of the most distinguished of their contemporary authors, writes: “When I go shopping in the city, while my ears are deafened and my human dignity is insulted by the vulgar policy of our national business community, advertising its own wares and almost forcibly dragging purchasers into the shops, then do I realize that I have fallen among the greatest swindlers in the world! What is to be done? The Russian is born so! We condemn this Asiatic ostentation, this cringing politeness bordering on servility, this shameless boasting, and can only say, like the fish to the angling-line, it has always been thus in Russia.”⁠[12] “Down with the Jews!” say the Loyalists; “they are at the bottom of Nihilism!” “Down with the Jews and all the property-holding classes!” yell the Nihilists. “When the pitcher falls upon the stone,” says the Talmud, “woe unto the pitcher! When the stone falls upon the pitcher, woe unto the pitcher! Whatever befalls, woe unto the pitcher!”

Mme. Ragozin tells us that “in all cases Jewish riots begin spontaneously”! In other words, we are to accept them as natural phenomena, like volcanic eruptions or earthquakes, for which only the inscrutable laws of Providence are responsible. According to her, race-animosity or religious intolerance has never been at work in connection with them, and she continues, with truly feminine logic: “The difference between the Middle Ages and now, apart from the mild form of the recent paroxysms consequent on the general softening of men’s natures, is chiefly this: then, religious feeling was actively mixed up with economical grievances, while now it is totally absent, and never could this mediæval specter be dragged forth to the light of our very sober, unfanatical age. Let us once and forever drop this sentimental Liberal slang, invented by the Liberal press of Germany, which is controlled by emancipated Jews.” To a Russian mind and heart, the recent paroxysms may seem to have assumed a very mild form indeed, “consequent on the general softening,” etc. To an American, they do not appear in such a rosy light. Here is the picture the Hon. W. M. Evarts draws of them—not from accounts of German Hebrews, but of English journals, such as the London “Times,” which have sent a thrill of horror through all civilized Christendom. “These persecutions, these oppressions, these cruelties, these outrages, have taken every form of atrocity in the experience of mankind, or which the resources of the human tongue can describe. Men have been cruelly murdered, women brutally outraged, children dashed to pieces, or burnt alive in their homes,” etc., etc. Is this what Mme. Ragozin calls the “sentimental Liberal slang of a Hebrew journalist, inflamed by a mistaken national zeal”?⁠[13]⁠

“Amid the vast amount of savage prejudice still existing against the Jews,” says the “Pall Mall Gazette,” “cultivated dislike had better hold its tongue.” The Russian persecution of the Jews, of which we are only now receiving the horrible details, has been going on for fully three years. The outbreak at Ielizavetgrad, which furnishes Mme. Ragozin with a “convenient introduction,” was by no means the beginning of the trouble. In March, 1879, nine Jews were brought up for trial in the Caucasus, on the charge of having slain a Christian child and tapped its blood for Passover; and the same hideous fiction, the identical “mediæval specter,” was revived simultaneously in several districts, invariably leading to riot, pillage, and murder. The cold-blooded tone in which Mme. Ragozin relates “the disturbance” at Ielizavetgrad enables us to realize, as we could not otherwise have done, the spirit in which such outrages are perpetrated. “The mob behaved with remarkable coolness and discrimination.” What did they do? Why, they simply sacked, gutted, and ruthlessly destroyed the homes of hundreds of innocent people, made a bonfire of their effects, tore up like waste paper bank-notes to the amount of thousands of rubles, offered in ransom by the wretched victims, and not being able to resist their only weakness, they drank themselves into a state of hopeless intoxication, and were in some cases almost drowned in the liquor that had bestialized them. Is not this a pleasant picture of humanity? That the riot was prompted by no love of gain [Pg 56]is proved in Mme. Ragozin’s eyes by the fact that the rioters retained nothing, and their object was simply to despoil and cripple, not to enrich themselves. Some simpletons who came in from the country, and took possession by the wagon-load of the valuables piled up in the market-place, actually did not know they were committing a blamable act! Sancta simplicitas! what precious innocents these Russians must be! Mme. Ragozin is obliged to confess that such extenuation, however, cannot be admitted of the conduct of some “well-dressed women in carriages,” who carried off jewels which they were afterward obliged by the officers of the law to relinquish. Of course, the consideration that the law was bound to interfere, at some time or other, to protect even Jewish subjects had no connection whatever with the “extraordinary moderation” the rioters evinced in destroying, rather than retaining, their spoils! No lives were lost, owing to the “prudence” of the Jews. The poor creatures at bay shut themselves up in their houses, and only when they were occasionally so foolish as to fire a pistol in defense of their hearths and homes did this “good-natured mob” show “manifest signs of irritation.” “Hebrew lawyers and physicians were not molested, they being considered useful members of society”! At Odessa, Kiev, and Warsaw, Mme. Ragozin cannot say as much for her countrymen. She is obliged to confess that blood was shed, and even, by a lamentable mistake, some innocent Christians were sacrified who happened to be passing through the streets.

Mme. Ragozin, in her account of the outrages, so far from exculpating her compatriots, has taken from them the one human excuse (not justification) which even a mob may plead in self-defense—the influence of unbridled passion. She simply reduces them to the level of fiends, as calculating and cunning as they are merciless. But it were an insult to our readers to fancy that any extenuation, however plausible, of such horrors could have a moment’s weight with them. Were Mme. Ragozin’s (or Brafmann’s) statements ten times true, rather than the stale and flimsy libels which they are, they would bear no relation whatever to the deeds she attempts to explain. Mr. Evarts has put the question upon the only ground which Americans need consider or act upon: “It is not that it is the oppression of Jews by Russians—it is that it is the oppression of men and women by men and women: and we are men and women!”

Emma Lazarus.

It is little short of impertinent to write of a painter who, in his own work, has already expressed himself a thousand times better. But there are many who never see his pictures, and many who, seeing them, lack the habit of judging and do not understand. The natural refuge of the writer on art is the commonplace of praise, extracted either from the comments of the artist on his own productions, or from utterances, private or public, on the part of his friends. For who cares to be dogmatic in the analysis of work which the painter alone understands, and he not always thoroughly? By much more is the hazard greater when one comes to consider the subtler processes which go before the work—namely, the mental and moral processes which give that work its value. We meet with a picture that gives us a pleasant feeling; it is a graceful figure that one would like to have in one’s home; or a landscape that recalls memories of happy days. Having become possessed of it, there [Pg 58]is a period of enjoyment which ends either pleasurably or ill. In one case, it fits into place and becomes a spiritual comrade; in the other tedium sets in, and one feels that its absence would be a relief. But now and then we come upon a picture that may not be certainly and at once pleasurable in its effect, but it arrests the attention with a shock. We may be troubled before it; but if we are not hampered by prejudices or schooled learning,—if we have resolved not to take opinions at second-hand, but to be brave enough to admire what gives us sensations of pleasure, or akin thereto,—we may be sure that, to us at least, the work of art is a masterpiece. Our taste may change. Ten years hence we may have come to other conclusions, sounder or less sound. But, for the time being, this is the picture that reveals to us a glimpse of that shadowy paradise of which the gate-keeper is genius.

Some such shock has befallen the writer while looking at more than one—yes, more than ten—of the landscapes of George Inness. A private opinion, to be sure, and perhaps worth no more and no less than that of anybody else. But when one has such a sensation, it is interesting to follow it back and see if there is not good reason for its existence. Are the technical processes by which the artist reaches these effects marked by the freedom and variety, the grasp and certainty, which characterize a master of his profession? And behind the technical work does there lie a mental labor which will explain to some extent the excitement produced in the mind of the observer? These few pages are scant space in which to make the trial, but possibly a more pretentious medium would only serve to show more plainly how threadbare is the attempt.

Looking at the life of Inness from the outside, it is merely that of a thousand other artists. He had few advantages of education; became an engraver; was overtaken by ill health. He had his days of enthusiasm and hope. He married and brought up children—one a painter of promise, with children of his own. When fortune smiled he enjoyed three stays in Europe—the last, and most fruitful of beautiful work, being of four years’ duration. He shared the struggles of American art before the war—its well-meant but not always wise encouragements after the war, its period of dejection and loss of prestige. There have been years in his life when he sold pictures quickly at very high prices, succeeded by more years when he made nothing. He has felt the fallacious stimulus of our “good times,” and endured the wholesome discipline of our “hard times.” And what is the upshot of it all? Well, for one thing, the lack of pettiness seen in his work might reasonably be attributed to this varied experience. As devoted to his studio as J. J., the painter drawn by Thackeray, and as careless of the [Pg 59]business portion of his profession, nevertheless, Inness has not been able to escape the usual lot of men. Black Care has peeped over his shoulder and insisted on having a hand in his work. Another thing is the absence of early paintings. What has become of all the pictures painted before 1860, when the pre-Raphaelite movement was beginning to have its echoes on this side of the water? Sold to all sorts of people, at all sorts of prices, in all sorts of ways; destroyed, many of them, painted over by their maker, scattered to the four quarters of the earth. There would have been no chance for this artist to coddle his pictures and concentrate his art upon itself, even if it had been strongly in his nature to do so. Another result: no possibility of becoming self-conscious and affected, like too many of his English cousins in art. Severely as the social fabric of New York handled him, there was breadth in its treatment. If it did not buy his pictures, it was either because it was honestly ignorant of their value, or because it thought it could not afford the money. But there was no social caste to drive artists and writers into one of two fatal paths—either into revolt at the fretting and pervasive tyranny, or into those grimaces which often prove a passport to success.

Inness has suffered; but there has never been a necessity here, as there was in England, that painters of genius should band themselves together into a Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which answered scorn for scorn, and social snubbing by artistic snubbing. Elastic, like our government, the social atmosphere in which he found himself was full of crudities, but full of life; if there was no great support in it, there was no demoralizing influence exerted by it upon his art. He fought his way along by his own methods, without the depressing feeling that, let his genius be ever so great, ninnies were being born every day whom a large body of his fellow-citizens would rank above him. The acid that bit into the soul of Carlyle was present in America in such a feeble, dilute condition that the painter need never feel its presence.

Inness seems never to have had even so much of social ambition as to make him wish to knock at those doors in his city which are least ready to open to men neither rich nor well-accredited. Sufficient for him were his own family, his studio, and his private circle of friends. A steady workman at his profession, he would go to nature for impressions, simply, neither with boast nor with too much hope. Sometimes it is plain that he has labored hard at his sketches; hours and days pass while struggling at one scene. In such cases the work is minute, painstaking, almost painful. For his nature is most excitable, and can only be made to apply itself by the strongest exercise of will. But then the benefit of self-restraint shows unerringly in the sketch. On other occasions, he has been an impressionist in the fullest sense of the term. [Pg 60]Overwhelmed by the beauty of a scene, the play of light and shade, the balance of clouds, distant hills and nearer masses of forest, he has dashed his paint on with hardly a line of pencil or charcoal to guide him, working in that rapt condition of mind during which the lapse of time is not felt, in which the mind seems to extend itself through the fingers to the tip of the brush, and the latter, as it moves on the prepared surface, seems to obey the general laws of nature which fashioned the very landscape that is being counterfeited at the instant. These were moments of the painter’s ecstasy, rare enough in comparison with cooler moods, but leaving their mark with equal unerringness. From sketches taken under such varying circumstances have arisen in the quiet of his studio the procession of landscapes issuing from his hand during the past thirty years. Grave landscapes and gay, landscapes noble and plain, expressive landscapes and those that told of indifferent moods. Some touch a height of magnificence that gives one cause to remember the great men of former days—Claude, Poussin, Rosa, Ruysdael, Constable, Turner. Others have the sturdy look of Rousseau. But Inness is not an imitator or follower of any of these; if he had one merit only, it would be originality. Genius more varied is not unknown and genius that has broader limits. But in his own lines as a landscapist and colorist he is like no one else. Consider his “Stone Pines at Monte Mario,” and “Hickory Grove at Medfield, Mass.,” his “Coming Storm,” and “Light Triumphant.”

It is only at a distance that the work of Inness seems to be unvaried. It is always landscape, and always one feels the individual manner which has not been allowed to degenerate into mannerism. But the moods in which the different pictures have been conceived are often varied, and then another key-note of color is struck. Sometimes that note is laid down on the canvas at the start; its complementary color is added; then follow the other colors and their shades of color, all with reference to the first. Again, it may seem better to reverse the order somewhat: the key color is washed over later. Inness has learned to subordinate his materials; they flow plastic under his brush or thumb. A disciple of the older school, he seldom uses the palette-knife or brushes of extraordinary character, yet, if he thought better effects could be gained through them, he would not hesitate a moment to use them. This may seem trivial; it is only mentioned to show that, notwithstanding the intensity of certain of his convictions, which will presently be mentioned, he has no narrowness regarding the methods of his work or the tools employed. When the right mood is on he becomes dramatic, [Pg 61]although always as a landscapist, and reaches closely to the borders of the sublime. There is a moorland piece which shows this trait well. Heavy bowlders encumber the moor; one almost hides a farm-house, whose gray roof, were it not for the smoke at its chimney, might be taken for another mass of rock. A figure is detected in the open central space. The sky is magnificent with heavy, black rain-clouds, that reflect the ruggedness of the moor; in the center, and as a counterpart of the farm-house roof, is a brilliant white cloud that has caught the sunlight. There is a fine glowing effect in the heavens and in the distant moor that is aided by the smoke and the little curling white clouds above the heavier masses. This is not direct work from nature—it is pure dramatic imagination. It is based on a very different scene. The original is a comparatively sober copy of a real landscape, in which thickets and woods stand for the bowlders, a peaceful train of cattle fills a green meadow in the center, and in which the bed of the wild stream, that seems at one time to have spun the bowlders about like curling-stones, is a placid river. The narrow realist will be likely to object to a picture which he will say is one of chic. But what then? Suppose it is. Chic is a great thing—if you are great enough in art to use and not abuse it!

[Pg 62]

It has become almost hackneyed to divide the works of a painter into so many “styles,” more or less representative of varying periods of his development. The habit is convenient as affording a method of obtaining a comprehensive view; it is also the natural method, for artists often do materially change their styles. With Inness, distinctions of the kind are not sharply defined, yet they exist all the same. His art has been very slow in development. He does not accept philosophical ideas suddenly, nor without great stress of thought—a veritable spiritual combat. Three epochs may be distinguished in his work, but their borders overlap, and it would be rash to affirm absolutely in every case to which of the three a picture belongs. With due deference, therefore, to the possibility of mistake, these three styles may be postulated: An ante-war style, consisting of painstaking, rather stiff, analytical work, similar to that of many of his comrades in the “Hudson River School,” etc. Secondly, a war style, which we may consider the result of the agitation produced by the four years of tumult and national anguish, and which shows itself in fluidity of outlines, a breaking-up of the old rigidity, a new grasp of what is magnificent in landscape breadth, a throwing overboard of the pettiness of the former style. This may also be called the “Italian” style of Inness, not so much because he learned from the Italian masters,—his influences were rather French, Flemish, and Dutch,—but because he painted Italian scenes. Finally, a post-war style, in which he now works without loss of the good in his previous efforts, but with complete control of his art. If big words are not out of place, the present may be called his synthetic style as opposed to the analytic of the days before the war. In the figure he was never grounded, partly because of an overwhelming tendency to landscape, but also because of illness in youth and the lack of sound instruction to be had in New York when he was a boy. It is heresy to suggest that in the end the omission has served him. But is it not imaginable that the lack of early training, such as artists get easily to-day, kept him poor and humble and forced him to greater efforts in the only branch of painting he could follow?

There remains the personality behind the artistic product. A painter deserving the name of artist works, consciously or unconsciously, from inner rules which he has, as it were, invented for himself. It is easily conceivable that he may be a great artist, and yet unequal in his work; a genius, and surpassed by lesser men in deftness of hand. But behind his pictures he must have intellectual and moral forces more potent than those of the ordinary craftsman of his profession, and also possess naturally either a fair share of facility [Pg 63]in the expression of his ideas, or else such indomitable will that he overcomes that lack in his temperament by hard labor. Now, Inness piques himself on the logic displayed in the management of his landscapes. His methods are the result of much observation of nature and the pictures of modern and ancient masters. Particulars are reasoned out with a rigidity of logic that sounds dry. His groping after truth has been as constant as it was earnest. Yet there is plenty of imagination and poetry in the scenes. Back of the landscapes, in whose confection rules founded on logic that can be expressed in the mathematical terms have been strictly followed, lies the whole world of immaterial spirits, of whom Swedenborg was the latest prophet. Not for Inness the wild extravagances of technique belonging to the later pictures of Turner. The so-called “Slave-ship” is a bugbear. He has a horror of the illogical presence of floating iron chains and of marine monsters unknown to the merely human eye—neither fish, flesh, nor good red herring. His contempt for the “Slave-ship” is so great that one is half persuaded that there is self-illusion at the bottom, and that some day Inness will awake to the fact that the picture which shocked him so much is just the picture he would prefer out of all the other eccentricities of Turner. He regards as unmanly, if not positively ignorant, the fashion Turner had of placing the vanishing point—that point to which all the parallel lines seem to tend—to the left or the right of the picture, instead of near the center, thus disturbing its repose. But—paradox as it may seem—along with such dry and technical axioms, such Philisterschaft, in a true artist goes the fact that to Inness the whole cosmogony of inner spirits superintends the creation of the pictures. He is nothing if not an idealist.

He is, in fact, without being of a complicated nature, an artist with more than one side to his character. Alternately one might take him for a poet or a Philistine; an idealist or a hide-bound realist; an impressionist or a pre-Raphaelite. Beginning under the influence of Durand, he saw the limitations of that good but restricted painter. From Thomas Cole he had the same repulsion that shows in his criticism of Turner. The pre-Raphaelite influences in their English shape were strong enough to make him try more than one study in that direction. But good sense—or, shall we say, the intuition of genius?—saved him from exhibiting much that smacked strongly of a movement wholesome as a preparation but misleading when taken literally. The impressionists also leave him cold, for has he not been, on many occasions, an impressionist? Some of his studies are faithful imitations of nature pursued for weeks at a time. Others, as we have said, are dashed in during the heat of imaginative creation.

Like some of the great Dutchmen, like their reverential followers Constable, Corot, Rousseau, landscape is to this artist the highest walk of art. It not only represents the nature that we see and the human feelings that move us when we look on nature, but something that includes both. It is an expression—feeble enough, to be sure, but still an expression—of the Godhead. In the mind of Inness, religion, landscape, and human nature mingle so thoroughly that there is no separating the several ideas. You may learn from him how the symbolization of the Divine Trinity is reflected in the mathematical relations of perspective and aërial distance. That such ideas are not mere whims with him is attested by various papers published in the magazines where he has given some of his thoughts. He not only believes what he says, but tries to carry out in his pictures this interrelation of art and religion. He is too much of an artist to make the result hard and absolute, as, to choose an extreme example in the opposite direction, Holman Hunt did in “The Shadow of the Cross.” Holman Hunt seeks to return to the simplicity of the Van Eycks in treating religious questions, and would like to make himself a pious burgher of the tenth century in order to accomplish it. Inness is a modern to the last degree, and, thrown in upon himself by a scoffing world, tries to express his religious opinions under the veil of landscape. Perhaps even that is saying too much. Do his landscapes hint of religion? Does he try to express religion? We should say no. It is rather the methods by which he does them that are governed in his own mind by religious ideas. The result is fine, but, to the world, too far removed to be understood as religious in motive. Let us, then, rather say of his religion that he does not express, but hides it, in his art. Holman Hunt uses religious scenes to point a moral. Inness uses his convictions of a “world religion” in order to “adorn a tale.” Out of all the landscape-painters stimulated and over-stimulated by the civil war, a few are emerging here and there into the position of masters. A rough and unideal schooling has been theirs: the public ignorant and uncritical; the press ignorant and hypercritical, or else fulsome in praise. Here an artist would be ruined by the injudicious support of friends and followers; there another was starved mentally and pinched actually by lack of notice. The survivors in the struggle are such landscape-painters [Pg 64]as Homer Martin, George Fuller, and others. Inness belongs to the scanty band.

He is often compared to Rousseau. No doubt Rousseau had some effect in crystallizing the ideas of Inness in landscape art, but the latter is in no sense his follower. The limitations of Rousseau have not been maintained—who knows whether wisely or not? Truly American in this, Inness has demanded more elbow-room than his great Parisian contemporary. Inside his own wider field he is also more versatile. Strangely enough, he approaches in temperament and physique a type that is considered Gallic. Black, slender, agile, not tall, vivacious of gesture, rapid in talk, easily moved, imaginative within sharply defined bounds, he is more of a Gaul than the average Frenchman. The name Inness means “island” in the Irish and Highland Scotch dialects of the Celtic. Mr. Inness is probably of comparatively pure Celtic blood, and may, for that reason, be dowered with ideality, opinionativeness, enthusiasm. In talk he becomes so carried away by the subject that he forgets how time is flying. What pleases him best is to have many pictures in process of making at one time. Then, having them arranged about his room, he likes to attack one or the other, as the mood strikes him. It is the insatiable craving for movement and variety which makes him picturesque even while at work on what are often considered sober landscapes. No painter labors harder; but the intensity of his work must find relief in change of mood and method. Habit has made him love the chains that bind him in his studio, but his excitable mind must have vent. For that reason one can see in his studio, side by side on different easels, a careful wood interior that has just escaped the commonplace by a happy flood of light which he has poured into a blue patch of sky, caught again on a trickling stream and reflected off on the nodding heads of blackberry vines; a wild stretch of desolation on a moor, with an accompanying drama of cloud-forms; or a railway embankment with laborers and supply-train on the long sweep of red clay, and, beyond them, the steeples of a New Jersey town. There are even genre pictures—small groups of girls at play, and such attempts at work foreign to his best vein. But in these the landscape is always the valuable part.

Inness paints Nature as the Ossian of the Highlands sang of it—in its great outer, rather than in its little inner, form.

Henry Eckford.

CHAPTER XIV.

During the hot days and nights of the next few weeks, Tredennis found life rather a dreary affair. Gradually the familiar faces he met on the avenue became fewer and fewer, the houses he knew one after another assumed their air of summer desertion, offering as their only evidences of life an occasional colored servant sunning him or herself on the steps; the crowds of nursery-maids with their charges thinned out in the parks, and the freshness of the leaves was lost under a coating of dust, while the countenances of those for whom there was no prospect of relief expressed either a languid sense of injury or the patience of despair.

“But after all,” Tredennis said, on two or three occasions, as he sat in one of the parks in the evening,—“after all, I suppose most of them have—an object,” adding the last two words with a faint smile.

He was obliged to confess to himself that of late he found that the work which he had regarded as his object had ceased to satisfy him. He gave his attention to it with stern persistence, and refused to spare himself when he found his attention wandering; he even undertook additional labor, writing in his moments of leisure several notable articles upon various important questions of the day, and yet he had time left to hang heavy on his hands and fill him with weariness; and at last there came an evening when, after sitting in one of the parks until the lamps were lighted, he rose suddenly from his seat, and spoke as if to the silence and shadow about him.

“Why should I try to hide the truth from myself?” he said. “It is too late for that. I may as well face it like a man, and bear it like one. Many a brave fellow has carried a bullet in his body down to his grave, and seldom winced. This is something like that, I suppose, only that pain——” And he drew a sharp, hard breath, and walked away down the deserted path without ending the sentence.

He made many a struggle after this to resist one poor temptation which beset him daily—the temptation to pass through the street in which stood the familiar house, with its drawn blinds and closed doors. Sometimes, when he rose in the morning, he was so filled with an unreasoning yearning for a sight of its blankness that he was overwhelmed by it, and went out before he breakfasted.

“It is weakness and self-indulgence,” he would say, “but it is a very little thing, and it can hurt no one—it is only a little thing, after all.” And he found a piteous pleasure—at which at first he tried to smile, but at which before long he ceased even to try to smile—in the slow walk down the street, on which he could see this window or that, and remember some day when he had caught a glimpse of Bertha through it, or some night he had spent in the room within when she had been gayer than usual, or quieter—when she had given him some new wound, perhaps, or when she had half-healed an old one in some mood of relenting he had not understood.

“There is no reason why I should understand any woman,” was his simple thought. “And why should I understand her unless she chose to let me? She is like no other woman.”

He was quite sure of this. In his thoughts of her he found every word and act of hers worth remembering and even repeating mentally again and again for the sake of the magnetic grace which belonged only to herself, and it never once occurred to him that his own deep sympathy and tender fancy might brighten all she did.

“When she speaks,” he thought, “how the dullest of them stir and listen! When she moves across a room, how natural it is to turn and look at her, and be interested in what she is going to do! What life I have seen her put in some poor, awkward wretch by only seating herself near him and speaking to him of some common thing! One does not know what her gift is, and whether it is well for her or ill that it was given her, but one sees it in the simplest thing she does.”

It was hard to avoid giving himself up to such thoughts as these, and when he most needed [Pg 66]refuge from them he always sought it in the society of the professor; so there were few evenings when he did not spend an hour or so with him, and their friendship grew and waxed strong until there could scarcely have been a closer bond between them.

About two weeks after Richard Amory’s departure, making his call later than usual one evening, he met, coming down the steps, Mr. Arbuthnot, who stopped, with his usual civility, to shake hands with him.

“It is some weeks since we have crossed each other’s paths, Colonel,” he said, scrutinizing him rather closely. “And, in the meantime, I am afraid you have not been well.”

“Amory called my attention to the fact a short time ago,” responded Tredennis, “and so did the professor. So, perhaps, there is some truth in it. I hadn’t noticed it myself.”

“You will presently, I assure you,” said Arbuthnot, still regarding him with an air of interest. “Perhaps Washington doesn’t agree with you. I have heard of people who couldn’t stand it. They usually called it malaria, but I think there was generally something——” He checked himself somewhat abruptly, which was a rather unusual demonstration on his part, as it was his habit to weigh his speech with laudable care and deliberation. “You are going to see the professor?” he inquired.

“Yes,” answered Tredennis.

The idea was presenting itself to his mind that there was a suggestion of something unusual in the questioner’s manner—that it was not so entirely serene as was customary, that there was even a hint of some inward excitement strong enough to be repressed only by an effort. And the consciousness of this impressed itself upon him even while a flow of light talk went on, and Arbuthnot smiled at him from his upper step.

“I have been to see the professor, too,” he was saying, “and I felt it was something of an audacity. His invitations to me have always been of the most general nature, but I thought I would take the liberty of pretending that I fancied he regarded them seriously. He was very good to me, and exhibited wonderful presence of mind in not revealing that he was surprised to see me. I tried not to stay long enough to tire him, and he was sufficiently amiable to ask me to come again. He evidently appreciated the desolation of my circumstances.”

“You are finding it dull?” said Tredennis.

“Dull!” repeated Arbuthnot. “Yes, I think you might call it dull. The people who kindly condescend to notice me in the winter have gone away, and my dress-coat is packed in camphor. I have ceased to be useful, and even if Fate had permitted me to be ornamental, where should I air my charms? There seems really no reason why I should exist, until next winter, when I may be useful again, and receive, in return, my modicum of entertainment. To be merely a superior young man in a Department is not remunerative in summer, as one ceases to glean the results of one’s superiority. At present I might as well be inferior, and neither dance, nor talk, nor sing, and be utterly incapacitated by nature for either carrying wraps or picking up handkerchiefs—and you cannot disport yourself at the watering-places of the rich and great on a salary of a hundred dollars a month, and you could only get your sordid ‘month’s leave,’ if such a thing were possible.”

“I—have been dull myself,” said Tredennis, hesitantly.

“If it should ever occur to you to drop in and see a fellow-sufferer,” said Arbuthnot, “it would relieve the monotony of my lot, at least, and might awaken in me some generous emotions.”

Tredennis looked up at him.

“It never has occurred to you so far, I see,” was Arbuthnot’s light reply to the look, “but if it should, don’t resist the impulse. I can assure you it is a laudable one. And my humble apartment has the advantage of comparative coolness.”

When Tredennis entered the library, he found the professor sitting in his usual summer seat near the window. A newspaper lay open on his knee, but he was not reading it—he seemed, indeed, to have fallen into a reverie of a rather puzzling kind.

“Did you meet any one as you came in?” he asked of Tredennis, as soon as they had exchanged greetings.

“I met Mr. Arbuthnot,” Tredennis answered, “and stopped a few moments on the steps to talk to him.”

“He has been entertaining me for the last hour,” said the professor, taking off his glasses and beginning to polish them. “Now, will you tell me,” he asked, with his quiet air of reflective inquiry into an interesting subject,—“will you tell me why he comes to entertain me?”

“He gave me the impression,” answered Tredennis, “that his object in coming was that you might entertain him, and he added that you were very good to him, and he appeared to have enjoyed his call very much.”

“That is his way,” responded the professor, impartially. “And a most agreeable way it is. To be born with such a way as a natural heritage is to be a social millionaire. And the worst of it is, that it may be a gift entirely apart from all morals and substantial virtues. Bertha has it. I don’t know where she got it. [Pg 67]Not from me, and not from her poor mother. I say it may be apart from all morals and substantial virtues. I don’t say it always is. I haven’t at all made up my mind what attributes go along with it in Arbuthnot’s case. I should like to decide. But it would be an agreeable way in a criminal of the deepest dye. It is certainly agreeable that he should in some subtle manner be able to place me in the picturesque attitude of a dignified and entertaining host. I didn’t entertain him at all,” he added, simply. “I sat and listened to him.”

“He is frequently well worth listening to,” commented Tredennis.

“He was well worth listening to this evening,” said the professor. “And yet he was light enough. He had two or three English periodicals under his arm, one of them was ‘Punch,’ and—and I found myself laughing quite heartily over it. And then there was something about a new comic opera, and he seemed to know the libretto by heart, and ran over an air or so on the piano. And he had been reading a new book and was rather clever about it—in his way, of course, but still it was cleverness. And then he went to the piano again and sang a captivating little love-song very well, and after it, got up and said good-night—and on the whole I regretted it. I liked his pictures, I liked his opera, I liked his talk of the book, and I liked his little love-song. And how should he know that an old dry-bones would like a tender little ballad and be touched by it, and pleased because his sentiment was discovered and pandered to. Oh, it is the old story. It’s his way—it’s the way.”

“I am beginning to think,” said Tredennis, slowly, “that ‘his way’ might be called sympathy and good feeling and fine tact, if one wanted to be specially fair to him.”

The professor looked up rather quickly.

“I thought you did not like him,” he said.

Tredennis paused a moment, looking down at the carpet as if deliberating.

“I don’t think I do,” he said at length, “but it’s no fault of his—the fault lies in me. I haven’t the way, and I am at a disadvantage with him. He is never at a loss, and I am; he is ready-witted and self-possessed, I am slow and rigid, and I suppose it is human that I should try to imagine at times that I am at a disadvantage only because my virtues are more solid than his. They are not more solid; they are only more clumsy and less available.”

“You don’t spare yourself,” said the professor.

“Why should I spare myself?” said Tredennis, knitting his brows. “After all, he never spares himself. He knows better. He would be just to me. Why should I let him place me at a disadvantage again by being unjust to him? And why should we insist that the only good qualities are those which are unornamental? It is a popular fallacy. We like to believe it. It is very easy to suspect a man of being shallow because we are sure we are deep and he is unlike us. This Arbuthnot—”

“This Arbuthnot,” interposed the professor, with a smile. “It is curious enough to hear you entering upon a defense of ‘this Arbuthnot.’ You don’t like him, Philip. You don’t like him.”

“I don’t like myself,” said Tredennis, “when I am compared with him—and I don’t like the tendency I discover in myself—the tendency to disparage him. I should like to be fair to him, and I find it difficult.”

“Upon my word,” said the professor, “it is rather fine in you to make the effort, but”—giving him one of the old admiring looks—“you were always rather fine, Philip.”

“It would be finer, sir,” said Tredennis, coloring, “if it were not an effort.”

“No,” said the professor, quietly, “it would not be half so fine.” And he put out his hand and let it rest upon the arm of the chair in which Tredennis sat, and so it rested as long as their talk went on.

In the meantime, Arbuthnot walked rather slowly down the street, quite conscious of finding it necessary to make something of an effort to compose himself. It was his recognition of this necessity which had caused him to change his first intention of returning to his bachelor apartment after having made his call upon Professor Herrick. And he felt the necessity all the more strongly after his brief encounter with Colonel Tredennis.

“I will go into the park and think it over,” he said to himself. “I’ll give myself time.”

He turned into Lafayette Park, found a quiet seat, and took out a very excellent cigar. He was not entirely surprised to see that, as he held the match to it, his hand was not as steady as usual. Tredennis had thought him a little pale.

The subject of his reflections, as he smoked his cigar, was a comparatively trivial incident taken by itself, but he had not taken it by itself, because in a flash it had connected itself with a score of others, which at the times of their occurring had borne no significance whatever to him.

His visit to the professor had not been made without reasons, but they had been such reasons as, simply stated to the majority of his ordinary acquaintance, would have been received with open amazement or polite discredit, and this principally because they [Pg 68]were such very simple reasons indeed. If such persons had been told that, finding himself without any vestige of entertainment, he had wandered in upon the professor as a last resource, or that he had wished to ask of him some trivial favor—or that he had made his call without any reason whatever—they would have felt such a state of affairs probable enough, but being informed that while sitting in the easiest of chairs, in the coolest possible negligee, reading an agreeable piece of light literature, and smoking a cigar, before his open window, he had caught sight of the professor at his window, sitting with his head resting on his hand, and being struck vaguely by some air of desolateness and lassitude in the solitary old figure, had calmly laid aside book and cigar, had put himself into conventional attire, and had walked across the street with no other intention than that of making the best of gifts of entertainment it was certainly not his habit to overvalue—those to whom the explanation had been made would have taken the liberty of feeling it somewhat insufficient, and would in nine cases out of ten privately have provided themselves with a more complicated one, cautiously insuring themselves against imposture by rejecting at the outset the simple and unvarnished truth.

Upon the whole, the visit had been a success. On entering, it is true, he found himself called upon to admire the rapidity with which the professor recovered from his surprise at seeing him, but as he had not been deluded by any hope that his first appearance would awaken unmistakable delight, he managed to make the best of the situation. His opening remarks upon the subject of the weather were not altogether infelicitous, and then he produced his late number of “Punch,” and the professor laughed, and, the ice being broken, conversation flourished, and there was no further difficulty. He discovered, somewhat to his surprise, that he was in better conversational trim than usual.

“It is a delusive condition to be in,” he explained to the professor, “but experience has taught me not to be taken in by it and expect future development. It wont continue—as you no doubt suspect. It is the result of entire social stagnation for several weeks. I am merely letting off all my fireworks at once—inspired to the improvidence by your presence. I am a poor creature, as you know, but even a poor creature is likely to suffer from an idea a day. The mental accumulations of this summer, carefully economized, will support me in penury during the entire ensuing season. I only conjure you not to betray me when you hear me repeat the same things by installments at Mrs. Amory’s evenings.”

And saying it, he saw the professor’s face change in some subtle way as he looked at him. What there was in this look and change to make him conscious of an inward start, he could not have told. It was the merest lifting of the lids, combined with an almost imperceptible movement of the muscles about the mouth, and yet he found it difficult to avoid pausing for a moment. But he accomplished the feat, and felt he had reason to be rather proud of it. “Though what there is to startle him in my mention of Mrs. Amory’s evenings,” he reflected, “it would require an intellect to explain.”

Being somewhat given to finding entertainment in quiet speculation upon passing events, he would doubtless have given some attention to the incident even if it had remained a solitary unexplained and mystifying trifle. But it was not left to stand alone in his mind.

It was not fifteen minutes before, in drawing his handkerchief from his breast-pocket, he accidentally drew forth with it a letter, which fell upon the newspaper lying upon the professor’s lap, and for a moment rested there with the address upward.

And the instant he glanced from the pretty feminine envelope to the professor’s face, Arbuthnot recognized the fact that something altogether unexpected had occurred again.

As he had looked from the envelope to the professor, so the professor looked from the envelope to him. Then he picked the letter up and returned it.

“It is a letter,” Arbuthnot began,—“a letter——” and paused ignominiously.

“Yes,” said the professor, as if he had lost something of his own gentle self-possession. “I see it is a letter.”

It was not a happy remark, nor did Arbuthnot feel his own next effort a particularly successful one.

“It is a letter from Mrs. Amory,” he said. “She is kind enough to write to me occasionally.”

“Yes,” responded the professor. “I saw that it was from Bertha. Her hand is easily recognized.”

“It is an unusual hand,” said Arbuthnot. “And her letters are very like herself. When it occurs to her to remember me—which doesn’t happen as frequently as I could wish—I consider myself fortunate. She writes as she talks, and very few people do that.”

He ended with a greater degree of composure than he had begun with, but to his surprise he felt that his pulses had quickened and that there had risen to his face a touch of warmth suggestive of some increase of [Pg 69]color, and he did not enjoy the sensation. He began to open the letter.

“Shall I——” he said, and then suddenly stopped.

He knew why he had stopped, but the professor did not, and to make the pause and return the letter to its envelope and its place in his pocket without an explanation required something like hardihood.

“She is well, and seems to be taking advantage of the opportunity to rest,” he said, and picked up his “Punch” again, returning to his half-finished comment upon its cartoon as if no interruption had taken place.

As he sat on his seat in the park, apparently given up to undivided enjoyment of his cigar, his mind was filled with a tumult of thought. He had not been under the influence of such mental excitement for years. Suddenly he found himself confronting a revelation perfectly astounding to him.

“And so I am the man!” he said, at last. “I am the man!”

He took his cigar out of his mouth and looked at the end of it with an air of deliberate reflection, as is the masculine habit.

“It doesn’t say much for me,” he added, “that I never once suspected it—not once.”

Then he replaced his cigar, with something like a sigh.

“We are a blind lot,” he said.

He did not feel the situation a pleasant one; there were circumstances under which he would have resented it with a vigor and happy ingenuity of resource which would have stood him in good stead, but there was no resentment in his present mood. From the moment the truth had dawned upon him, he had treated it without even the most indirect reference to his own very natural feelings, and there had been more sacrifice of himself and his own peculiarities in his action when he had returned the letter to his pocket than even he himself realized.

“It was not the letter to show him,” was his thought. “She does not know how much she tells me. He would have understood it as I do.”

He went over a good deal of ground mentally as he sat in the deepening dusk, and he thought clearly and dispassionately, as was his habit when he allowed himself to think at all. By the time he had arrived at his conclusions, it was quite dark. Then he threw the end of his last cigar away and rose, and there was no denying that he was pale still, and wore a curiously intense expression.

“If there is one thing neither man nor devil can put a stop to,” he said, “it is an experience such as that. It will go on to one of two ends—it will kill her or she will kill it. The wider of the mark they shoot, the easier for her, and as for me,” he added, with a rather faint and dreary smile, “perhaps it suits me well enough to be merely an alleviating circumstance. It’s all I’m good for. Let them think as they please.”

And he brushed an atom of cigar-ash from his sleeve with his rather too finely feminine hand, and walked away.

CHAPTER XV.

He paid the professor another visit a few days later, and afterward another and another.

“What,” said the professor, at the end of his second visit, “is it ten o’clock? I assure you it is usually much later than this when it strikes ten.”

“Thank you,” said Arbuthnot. “I never heard that civility accomplished so dexterously before. It is perfectly easy to explain the preternatural adroitness of speech on which Mrs. Amory prides herself. But don’t be too kind to me, Professor, and weaken my resolution not to present myself unless I have just appropriated an idea from somewhere. If I should appear some day au naturel, not having taken the precaution to attire myself in the mature reflections of my acquaintance, I shouldn’t pay you for the wear and tear of seeing me, I’ll confess beforehand.”

“I once told you,” said the professor to Tredennis, after the fourth visit, “that I was not fond of him, but there had been times when I had been threatened with it. This is one of the times. Ah!” with a sigh of fatigue, “I understand the attraction—I understand it.”

The following week, Tredennis arrived at the house one evening to find it in some confusion. The coupé of a prominent medical man stood before the pavement, and the servant who opened the door looked agitated.

“The professor, sir,” he said, “has had a fall. We hope he ain’t much hurt, and Mr. Arbuthnot and the doctor is with him.”

“Ask if I may go upstairs,” said Tredennis, and, as he said it, Arbuthnot appeared on the landing above, and, seeing who was below, came down at once.

“There is no real cause for alarm,” he said, “though he has had a shock. He had been out, and the heat must have been too much for him. As he was coming up the steps he felt giddy, and lost his footing and fell. Doctor Malcolm is with him, and says he needs nothing but entire quiet. I am glad you have come. Did you receive my message?”

“No,” answered Tredennis. “I have not been to my room.”

[Pg 70]

“Come into the library,” said Arbuthnot. “I have something to say to you.”

He led the way into the room, and Tredennis followed him, wondering. When they got inside, Arbuthnot turned and closed the door.

“I suppose,” he said, “you know no more certainly than I do where Mr. Amory is to be found.” And as he spoke he took a telegram from his pocket.

“What is the matter?” demanded Tredennis. “What has——”

“This came almost immediately after the professor’s accident,” said Arbuthnot. “It is from Mrs. Amory, asking him to come to her. Janey is very ill.”

“What!” exclaimed Tredennis. “And she alone, and probably without any physician she relies on!”

“Some one must go to her,” said Arbuthnot, “and the professor must know nothing of it. If we knew of any woman friend of hers we might appeal to her, but everybody is out of town.”

He paused a second, his eyes fixed on Tredennis’s changing face.

“If you will remain with the professor,” he said, “I will go myself, and take Doctor Wentworth with me.”

“You!” said Tredennis.

“I shall be better than nothing,” replied Arbuthnot, quietly. “I can do what I am told to do, and she mustn’t be left alone. If her mother had been alive, she would have gone,—if her father had been well, he would have gone,—if her husband had been here——”

“But he is not here,” said Tredennis, with a bitterness not strictly just. “Heaven only knows where he is.”

“It would be rather hazardous to trust to a telegram reaching him at Merrittsville,” said Arbuthnot. “We are not going to leave her alone even until we have tried Merrittsville. What must be done must be done now. I will go and see Doctor Wentworth at once, and we can leave in an hour if I find him. You can tell the professor I was called away.”

He made a step toward the door, and as he did so Tredennis turned suddenly.

“Wait a moment,” he said.

Arbuthnot came back.

“What is it?” he asked.

There was a curious pause, which, though it lasted scarcely longer than a second, was still a pause.

“If I go,” said Tredennis, “it will be easier to explain my absence to the professor.” And then there was a pause again, and each man looked at the other and each was a trifle pale.

It was Arbuthnot who spoke first.

“I think,” he said, without moving a muscle, “that you had better let me go.”

“Why?” said Tredennis, and the unnatural quality of his voice startled himself.

“Because,” said Arbuthnot, as calmly as before, “you will be conferring a favor on me, if you do. I want an excuse for getting out of town and—I want an opportunity to be of some slight service to Mrs. Amory.”

Before the dignity of the stalwart figure towering above his slighter proportions, he knew he appeared to no advantage as he said the words, but to have made the best of himself he must have relinquished his point at the outset, and this he had no intention of doing, though he was not enjoying himself.

A certain cold-blooded pertinacity which he had acquired after many battles with himself was very useful to him at the moment.

“The worst thing that could happen to her just now,” he had said to himself, ten minutes before, “would be that he should go to her in her trouble.” And upon this conviction he took his stand.

In placing himself in the breach, he knew that he had no means of defense whatever—that any reasons for his course he might offer must appear, by their flimsiness, to betray in him entire inadequacy to the situation in which he seemed to stand, and that he must present himself in the character of a victim to his own bold but shallow devices, and simply brazen the matter out; and when one reflects upon human weakness, it is certainly not to his discredit that he had calmly resigned himself to this before entering the room. There was no triviality in Tredennis’s mood, and he made no pretense of any. The half-darkness of the room, which had been shaded from the sun during the day, added to the significance of every line in his face. As he stood with folded arms, the shadows seemed to make him look larger, to mark his pallor, and deepen the intensity of his expression.

“Give me a better reason,” he said.

Arbuthnot paused. What he saw in the man moved him strongly. In the light of that past of his, which was a mystery to his friends, he often saw with terrible clearness much he was not suspected of seeing at all, and here he recognized what awakened in him both pity and respect.

“I have no better one,” he answered. “I tell you I miss the exhilaration of Mrs. Amory’s society, and want to see her, and hope she will not be sorry to see me.” And having said it, he paused again before making his coup d’état. Then he spoke deliberately, looking Tredennis in the eyes. “That you should think anything detrimental to Mrs. [Pg 71]Amory, even in the most shadowy way, is out of the question,” he said. “Think of me what you please.”

“I shall think nothing that is detrimental to any man who is her friend,” said Tredennis, and there was passion in the words, though he had tried to repress it.

“Her friendship would be a good defense for a man against any wrong that was in him,” said Arbuthnot, and this time the sudden stir of feeling in him was not altogether concealed. “Let me have my way,” he ended. “It will do no harm.”

“It will do no good,” said Tredennis.

“No,” answered Arbuthnot, recovering his impervious air, “it will do no good, but one has to be sanguine to expect good. Perhaps I need pity,” he added. “Suppose you are generous and show it me.”

He could not help seeing the dramatic side of the situation, and with half-conscious irony abandoning himself to it. All at once he seemed to have deserted the well-regulated and decently arranged commonplaces of his ordinary life, and to be taking part in a theatrical performance of rather fine and subtle quality, and he waited with intense interest to see what Tredennis would do.

What he did was characteristic of him. He had unconsciously taken two or three hurried steps across the room, and he turned and stood still.

“It is I who must go,” he said.

“You are sure of that?” said Arbuthnot.

“We have never found it easy to understand each other,” Tredennis answered, “though perhaps you have understood me better than I have understood you. You are quicker and more subtle than I am. I only seem able to see one thing at a time, and do one thing. I only see one thing now. It is better that I should go.”

“You mean,” said Arbuthnot, “better for me?”

Tredennis looked down at the floor.

“Yes,” he answered.

A second or so of silence followed, in which Arbuthnot simply stood and looked at him. The utter uselessness of the effort he had made was borne in upon him in a manner which overpowered him.

“Then,” he remarked at length, “if you are considering me, there seems nothing more to be said. Will you go and tell the professor that you are called away, or shall I?”

“I will go myself,” replied Tredennis.

He turned to leave the room, and Arbuthnot walked slowly toward the window. The next moment Tredennis turned from the door and followed him.

“If I have ever done you injustice,” he said, “the time is past for it, and I ask your pardon.”

“Perhaps it is not justice I need,” said Arbuthnot, “but mercy—and I don’t think you have ever been unjust to me. It wouldn’t have been easy.”

“In my place,” said Tredennis, with a visible effort, “you would find it easier than I do to say what you wished. I——”

“You mean that you pity me,” Arbuthnot interposed. “As I said before, perhaps I need pity. Sometimes I think I do,” and the slight touch of dreariness in his tone echoed in Tredennis’s ear long after he had left him and gone on his way.

CHAPTER XVI.

It was ten o’clock and bright moonlight when Tredennis reached his destination—the train having brought him to a way-side station two miles distant, where he had hired a horse and struck out into the county road. In those good old days when the dwelling of every Virginia gentleman was his “mansion,” the substantial pile of red brick before whose gate-way he dismounted had been a mansion too, and had not been disposed to trifle with its title, but had insisted upon it with a dignified squareness which scorned all architectural devices to attract attention. Its first owner had chosen its site with a view to the young “shade-trees” upon it, and while he had lived upon his property had been almost as proud of his trees as of his “mansion”; and when, long afterward, changes had taken place, and the objects of his pride fell into degenerate hands, as the glories of the mansion faded, its old friends the trees grew and flourished, and seemed to close kindly in about it, as if to soften and shadow its decay.

On each side of the drive which led down to the gate-way, grew an irregular line of these trees, here and there shading the way from side to side, and again leaving a space for the moonlight to stream upon. As he tied his horse, Tredennis glanced up this drive-way toward the house.

“There is a light burning in one of the rooms,” he said. “It must be there that——” He broke off in the midst of a sentence, his attention suddenly attracted by a figure which flitted across one of the patches of moonlight.

He knew it at once, though he had had no thought of seeing it before entering the house. It was Bertha, in a white dress and with two large dogs following her, leaping and panting when she spoke in a hushed voice, as if to quiet them.

She came down toward the gate with a [Pg 72]light, hurried tread, and, when she was within a few feet of it, spoke.

“Doctor,” she said, “oh, how glad I am—how glad!” and, as she said it, came out into the broad moonlight again and found herself face to face with Tredennis.

She fell back from him as if a blow had been struck her—fell back trembling, and as white as the moonlight itself.

“What!” she cried, “is it you—you?”

He looked at her, bewildered by the shock his presence seemed to her.

“I did not think I should frighten you,” he said. “I came to-night because the professor was not well enough to make the journey. Doctor Wentworth will be here in the morning. He would have come with me, but he had an important case to attend.”

“I did not think you would come,” she said, breathlessly, and put out her hand, groping for the support of the swinging gate, which she caught and held.

“There was no one else,” he answered.

He felt as if he were part of some strange dream. The stillness, the moonlight, the heavy shadows of the great trees, all added to the unreality of the moment; but most unreal of all was Bertha herself, clinging with one trembling hand to the gate, and looking up at him with dilated eyes.

“I did not think you would come,” she said again, “and it startled me—and——” She paused with a poor little effort at a smile, which the next instant died away. “Don’t—don’t look at me!” she said, and, turning away from him, laid her face on the hand clinging to the gate.

He looked down at her slight white figure and bent head, and a great tremor passed over him. The next instant she felt him standing close at her side.

“You must not—do that,” he said, and put out his hand and touched her shoulder.

His voice was almost a whisper—he was scarcely conscious of what his words were—he had scarcely any consciousness of his touch. The feeling which swept over him needed no sense of touch or sound—the one thing which overpowered him was his sudden sense of a nearness to her which was not physical nearness at all.

“Perhaps I was wrong to come,” he went on; “but I could not leave you alone—I could not leave you alone. I knew that you were suffering, and I could not bear that.”

She did not speak or lift her head.

“Has it been desolate?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered, in a hushed voice.

“I was afraid so,” he said. “You have been alone so long—I have thought of it almost every hour of the day; you are not used to being alone. Perhaps it was a mistake. Why do you tremble so?”

“I don’t know,” she answered.

“My poor child!” he said. “My poor child!” And then there was a pause which seemed to hold a life-time of utter silence.

It was Bertha who ended it. She stirred a little, and then lifted her face. She looked as he remembered her looking when he had first known her—only that she was paler, and there was a wearied softness in her eyes. She made no attempt at hiding the traces of tears in them, and she spoke as simply as a child.

“I thought it was the doctor, when I heard the horse’s feet,” she said; “and I was afraid the dogs would bark and waken Janey. She has just fallen asleep, and she has slept so little. She has been very ill.”

“You have not slept,” he said.

“No,” she replied. “This is the first time I have left her.”

He took her hand and drew it gently through his arm.

“I will take you up to the house,” he said, “so that you can hear every sound; but you must stay outside for a little while. The fresh air will do you good, and we can walk up and down while I tell you the reason the professor did not come.”

All the ordinary conventional barriers had fallen away from between them. He did not know why or how, and he did not ask. Suddenly he found himself once again side by side with the Bertha he had fancied lost forever. All that had bewildered him was gone. The brilliant little figure with its tinkling ornaments, the unemotional little smile, the light laugh, were only parts of a feverish dream. It was Bertha whose hand rested on his arm—whose fair young face was pale with watching over her child—whose soft voice was tremulous and tender with innocent, natural tears. She spoke very little. When they had walked to and fro before the house for a short time, she said:

“Let us go and sit down on the steps of the porch,” and they went and sat there together—he upon a lower step and she a few steps above, her hands clasped on her knee, her face turned half away from him. She rarely looked at him, he noticed, even when he spoke to her or she spoke to him; her eyes rested oftener than not upon some far-away point under the trees.

“You are no better than you were when you went away,” he said, looking at her cheek where the moonlight whitened it.

“No,” she answered.

“I did not think to find you looking like this,” he said.

“Perhaps,” she said, still with her eyes [Pg 73]fixed on the far-away shadows, “perhaps I have not had time enough. You must give me time.”

“You have had two months,” he returned.

“Two months,” she said, “is not so long as it seems.” And between the words there came a curious little catch of the breath.

“It has seemed long to you?” he asked.

“Yes.”

She turned her face slowly and looked at him.

“Has it seemed long to you?” she said.

“Yes,” he replied, “long and dreary.”

She swayed a little toward him with a sort of unconscious movement; her eyes were fixed upon his face with a wistful questioning; he had seen her look at her children so.

“Was it very hot?” she said. “Were you tired? Why did you not go away?”

“I did not want to go away,” he answered.

“But you ought to have gone away,” she said. “You were not used to the heat, and——Let the light fall on your face so that I can see it!”

He came a little nearer to her, and as she looked at him the wistfulness in her eyes changed to something else.

“Oh,” she cried, “it has done you harm. Your face is quite changed. Why didn’t I see it before? What have you been doing?”

“Nothing,” he answered.

He did not stir, or want to stir, but sat almost breathlessly still, watching her, the sudden soft anxiousness in her eyes setting every pulse in his body throbbing.

“Oh,” she said, “you are ill—you are ill! How could you be so careless? Why did not papa——”

She faltered—her voice fell and broke. She even drew back a little, though her eyes still rested upon his.

“You were angry with me when you thought I did not take care of myself,” she said; “and you have been as bad as I was, and worse. You had not so many temptations.” And she turned away, and he found himself looking only at her cheek again, and the soft side-curve of her mouth.

“There is less reason why I should take care of myself,” he said.

“You mean”—she asked, without moving—“that there are fewer people who would miss you?”

“I do not know of any one who would miss me.”

Her hands stirred slightly, as they lay in her lap.

“That is underrating your friends,” she said, slowly. “But”—altering her tone—“it is true, I have the children and Richard.”

“Where is Richard?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“When you heard from him last,” he began.

“He is a bad correspondent,” she said. “He always finds so much to fill his time when he is away. There is an understanding between us that he shall write very few letters. I am responsible for it myself, because I know it spoils everything for him when he has an unwritten letter on his conscience. I haven’t heard from him first yet since he went West.”

She rose from her seat on the step.

“I will go in now,” she said. “I must speak to Mrs. Lucas about giving you a room, and then I will go to Janey. She is sleeping very well.”

He rose, too, and stood below her, looking up.

“You must promise not to think of me,” he said. “I did not come here to be considered. Do you think an old soldier, who has slept under the open sky many a night, cannot provide for himself?”

“Have you slept so often?” she asked, the very triviality of the question giving it a strange sweetness to his ears.

“Yes,” he answered. “And often with no surety of wakening with my scalp on.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed, and made an involuntary movement toward him.

He barely restrained his impulse to put out his hands, but hers fell at her sides the next instant.

“I am a great coward,” she said. “It fills me with terror to hear of things like that. Is it at all likely that you will be ordered back?”

“I don’t know,” he replied, his uplifted eyes devouring all the sweetness of her face. “Would that——”

The very madness of the question forming itself on his lips was its own check.

“I don’t want to think of it,” he said. Then he added, “As I stand here I look up at you. I never looked up at you before.”

“Nor I down at you,” she returned. “You are always so high above me. It seems strange to look down at you.”

It was all so simple and inconsequent, but every word seemed full of the mystery and emotion of the hour. When he tried afterward to recall what they had said, he was bewildered by the slightness of what had been uttered, even though the thrill of it had not passed away.

He went up the steps and stood beside her.

“Yes,” he said, speaking as gently as he might have spoken to a child. “You make me feel what a heavy-limbed, clumsy fellow I am. All women make me feel it, but you more than all the rest. You look almost like a child.”

“But I am not very little,” she said; “it is only because I am standing near you.”

[Pg 74]

“I always think of you as a small creature,” he said. “I used to think, long ago, that some one should care for you.”

“You were very good, long ago,” she answered softly. “And you are very good now to have come to try to help me. Will you come in?”

“No,” he said, “not now. It might only excite the child to-night if she saw me, and so long as she is quiet, I will not run the risk of disturbing her. I will tell you what I am going to do. I am not going to leave you alone. I shall walk up and down beneath your window, and if you need me you will know I am there, and you have only to speak in your lowest voice. If she should be worse, my horse is at the gate, and I can go for the doctor at once.”

She looked up at him with a kind of wonder.

“Do you mean that you intend to stand sentinel all night?” she said.

“I have stood sentinel before,” was his reply. “I came to stand sentinel. All that I can do is to be ready if I am wanted.”

“But I cannot let you stay up all night,” she began.

“You said it had been desolate,” he answered. “Won’t it be less desolate to know that—that some one is near you?”

“Oh, yes! Oh, yes!” she said. “But——”

“Go upstairs,” he said, “and promise me that, if she still sleeps, you will lie down and let your nurse watch her.”

The gentle authority of his manner seemed to impress her curiously. She hesitated as if she scarcely understood it.

“I—don’t—know,” she faltered.

“You will be better for it to-morrow,” he persisted, “and so will she.”

“I never did such a thing before,” she said, slowly.

“I shall be beneath the open window,” he said, “and I have the ears of an Indian. I shall know if she stirs.”

She drew a soft, troubled breath.

“Well,” she said, “I will—go.”

And, without another word, she turned away. He stood and watched her as she moved slowly across the wide porch. At the door she stopped and turned toward him.

“But,” she said, faint lines showing themselves on her forehead, “I shall be remembering that you—are not asleep.”

“You must not remember me at all,” he answered.

And then he stood still and watched her again until she had entered the house and noiselessly ascended the staircase, which was a few yards from the open door, and then, when he could see her white figure in the darkness no more, he went out to his place beneath the window, and strode silently to and fro, keeping watch and listening until after the moon had gone down and the birds were beginning to stir in the trees.

CHAPTER XVII.

At six o’clock in the morning, Bertha came down the stairs again. Her simple white gown was a fresh one, and there was a tinge of color in her cheeks.

“She slept nearly all night,” she said to Tredennis, when he joined her, “and so did I. I am sure she is better.” Then she put out her hand for him to take. “It is all because you are here,” she said. “When I wakened for a moment, once or twice, and heard your footsteps, it seemed to give me courage and make everything quieter. Are you very tired?”

“No,” he answered, “I am not tired at all.”

“I am afraid you would not tell me if you were,” she said. “You must come with me now and let me give you some breakfast.”

She led him into a room at the side of the hall. When the house had been a “mansion,” it had been considered a very imposing apartment, and, with the assistance of a few Washingtonian luxuries which she had dexterously grafted upon its bareness, it was by no means unpicturesque even now.

“I think I should know that you had lived here,” he said, as he glanced around.

“Have I made it so personal?” she replied. “I did not mean to do that. It was so bare at first, and, as I had nothing to do, it amused me to arrange it. Richard sent me the rugs and odds and ends, and I found the spindle-legged furniture in the neighborhood. I am afraid it won’t be safe for you to sit down too suddenly in the chairs, or to lean heavily on the table. I think you had better choose that leathern arm-chair and abide by it. It is quite substantial.”

He took the seat, and gave himself up to the pleasure of watching her as she moved to and fro between the table and an antique sideboard, from whose recesses she produced some pretty cups and saucers.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“I am going to set the table for your breakfast,” she said, “because Maria is busy with the children, and the other nurse is with Janey, and the woman of the house is making your coffee and rolls.”

“You are going to set the table!” he exclaimed.

“It doesn’t require preternatural intelligence,” she answered. “It is rather a simple thing, on the whole.”

It seemed a very simple thing as she did it, [Pg 75]and a very pretty thing. As he leaned against the leathern back of his chair, beginning vaguely to realize by a dawning sense of weariness that he had been up all night, he felt that he had not awakened from his dream yet, or that the visions of the past months were too far away and too unreal to move him.

The early morning sunlight made its way through the vines embowering the window, and cast lace-like shadows of their swaying leaves upon the floor, and upon Bertha’s dress when she passed near. The softness of the light mellowed everything, and intensified the touches of color in the fans and ornaments on the walls and mantel, and in the bits of drapery thrown here and there as if by accident, and in the midst of this color and mellowed light Bertha moved before him, a slender, quiet figure, making the picture complete.

It was her quietness which impressed itself upon him more than all else. After the first moments, when she had uttered her cry on seeing him and had given way in her momentary agitation, he had noticed that a curious change fell upon her. When she lifted her face from the gate all emotion seemed to have died out of it; her voice was quiet. One of the things he remembered of their talk was that they had both spoken in voices so low as to be scarcely above a whisper.

When the breakfast was brought in, she took a seat at the table to pour out his coffee and attend to his wants. She ate very little herself, but he rarely looked up without finding her eyes resting upon him with wistful interest.

“At least,” she said once, “I must see that you have a good breakfast. The kindest thing you can do this morning is to be hungry. Please be hungry, if you can.”

The consciousness that she was caring for him was a wonderful and touching thing to him. The little housewifely acts with which most men are familiar were bewilderingly new to him. He had never been on sufficiently intimate social terms with women to receive many of these pretty services at their hands. His unsophisticated reverence for everything feminine had worked against him, with the reserve which was one of its results. It had been his habit to feel that there was no reason why he should be singled out for the bestowal of favors, and he had perhaps ignored many through the sheer ignorance of simple and somewhat exaggerated humility.

To find himself sitting at the table, alone with Bertha in her new mood,—Bertha quiet and beautiful,—was a moving experience to him. It was as if they two must have sat there every day for years, and had the prospect of sitting so together indefinitely. It was the very simplicity and naturalness of it all which stirred him most. Her old vivid gayety was missing: she did not laugh once, but her smile was very sweet. They talked principally of the children, and of the common things about them, but there was never a word which did not seem a thing to be cherished and remembered. After a while, the children were brought down, and she took Meg upon her knee, and Jack leaned against her while she told Tredennis what they had been doing, and the sun creeping through the vines touched her hair and the child’s, and made a picture of them. When she went upstairs, she took Meg with her, holding her little hand and talking to her in pretty maternal fashion, and after the two had vanished, Tredennis found it necessary to pull himself together with a strong effort, that he might prove himself equal to the conversational demands made upon him by Master Jack, who had remained behind.

“I will go and see Janey again,” she had said. “And then, perhaps, you will pay her a visit.”

When he went up, a quarter of an hour later, he found his small favorite touchingly glad to see him. The fever from which she had been suffering for several days had left her languid and perishable-looking, but she roused wonderfully at the sight of him, and when he seated himself at her bedside, regarded him with adoring admiration, finally expressing her innocent conviction that he had grown very much since their last meeting.

“But it doesn’t matter,” she hastened to assure him, “because I don’t mind it and mamma doesn’t, either.”

When in the course of the morning Doctor Wentworth arrived, he discovered him still sitting by the bedside, only Janey had crept close to him and fallen asleep, clasping both her small hands about his large one, and laying her face upon his palm.

“What!” said the doctor. “Can you do that sort of thing?”

“I don’t know,” answered Tredennis, slowly. “I never did it before.”

He looked down at the small, frail creature, and the color showed itself under his bronzed skin.

“I think she’s rather fond of me—or something,” he added with naïveté, “and I like it.”

“She likes it, that’s evident,” said the doctor.

He turned away to have an interview with Bertha, whom he took to the window at the opposite end of the room, and after it was over they came back together.

[Pg 76]

“She is not so ill as she was yesterday,” he said, “and she was not so ill then as you thought her.” He turned and looked at Bertha herself. “She doesn’t need as much care now as you do,” he said, “that’s my impression. What have you been doing with yourself?”

“Taking care of her,” she answered, “since she began to complain of not feeling well.”

He was a bluff, kindly fellow, with a bluff, kindly way, and he shook a big forefinger at her.

“You have been carrying her up and down in your arms,” he said. “Don’t deny it.”

“No,” she answered, “I won’t deny it.”

“Of course,” he said. “I know you—carrying her up and down in your arms, and singing to her and telling her stories, and holding her on your knee when you weren’t doing anything worse. You’d do it if she were three times the size.”

She blushed guiltily, and looked at Janey.

“Good heaven!” he said. “You women will drive me mad! Don’t let me hear any more about fashionable mothers who kill their children! I find my difficulty in fashionable children who kill their mothers—and in little simpletons who break down under the sheer weight of their maternal nonsense. Who was it who nearly died of the measles?”

“But—but,” she faltered, deprecatingly, “I don’t think I ever had the measles.”

“They weren’t your measles,” he said, with amiable sternness. “They were Jack’s, and Janey’s, and Meg’s, and so much the worse.”

“But,” she interposed, with a very pretty eagerness, “they got through them beautifully, and there wasn’t a cold among them.”

“There wouldn’t have been a cold among them if you’d let a couple of sensible nurses take care of them. Do you suppose I’m not equal to bringing three children through the measles? It’s all nonsense, and sentiment, and self-indulgence. You like to do it, and you do it, and, as a natural consequence, you die of somebody else’s measles—or come as near it as possible.”

She blushed as guiltily as before, and looked at Janey again.

“I think she is very much better,” she said.

“Yes,” he answered, “she is better, and I want to see you better. Who is going to help you to take care of her?”

“I came to try to do that,” said Tredennis.

Bertha turned to look at him.

“You?” she exclaimed. “Oh, no! You are very good, but now the worst is over, I couldn’t——”

“Should I be in the way?” he asked.

She drew back a little. For a moment she had changed again, and returned to the ordinary conventional atmosphere.

“No,” she said, “you know that you would not be in the way, but I should scarcely be likely to encroach upon your time in such a manner.”

The doctor laughed.

“He is exactly what you need,” he said. “And he would be of more use to you than a dozen nurses. He wont stand any of your maternal weakness, and he will see that my orders are carried out. He’ll domineer over you, and you’ll be afraid of him. You had better let him stay. But you must settle it between you after I am gone.”

Bertha went down-stairs with him to receive a few final directions, and when she returned, Tredennis had gently released himself from Janey, and had gone to the window, where he stood evidently awaiting her.

“Do you know,” he said, with his disproportionately stern air, when she joined him,—“do you know why I came here?”

“You came,” she answered, “because I alarmed you unnecessarily and it seemed that some one must come, and you were kind enough to assume the responsibility.”

“I came because there was no one else——” he began.

She stopped him with a question she had not asked before, and he felt that she asked it inadvertently.

“Where was Laurence Arbuthnot?” she said.

“That is true,” he replied, grimly. “Laurence Arbuthnot would have been better.”

“No,” she said, “he would not have been better.”

She looked up at him with a curious mixture of questioning and defiance in her eyes.

“I don’t know why it is that I always manage to make you angry,” she said; “I must be very stupid. I always know you will be angry before you have done with me. When we were down-stairs——”

“When we were down-stairs,” he put in hotly, “we were two honest human beings, without any barriers of conventional pretense between us, and you allowed me to think you meant to take what I had to offer, and then, suddenly, all is changed, and the barrier is between us again—because you choose to place it there, and profess that you must regard me, in your pretty, civil way, as a creature to be considered and treated with form and ceremony.”

“Thank you for calling it a pretty way,” she said.

And yet there was a tone in her low voice which softened his wrath somehow—a rather helpless tone, which suggested that she had [Pg 77]said the words only because she had no other resource, and still must utter her faint protest.

“Is it for me,” he went on, “to come to you with a civil pretense instead of an honest intention? I am not sufficiently used to conventionalities to make myself bearable. I am always blundering and stumbling. No one can feel that more bitterly than I do, but you have no right to ignore my claim to do what I can when I might be of use. I might be of use because the child is fond of me, and in my awkward fashion I can quiet and amuse her as you say no one but yourself can.”

“Will you tell me?” she asked, frigidly, “what right I have to permit you to make of yourself a—a nursemaid to my child?”

“Call it what you like,” he answered. “Speak of it as you like. What right does it need? I came because——”

His recollection of her desolateness checked him. It was not for him to remind her again by his recklessness of speech that her husband had not felt it necessary to provide against contingencies. But she filled up the sentence.

“Yes, you are right,” she said. “As you said before, there was no one else—no one.”

“It chanced to be so,” he said; “and why should I not be allowed to fill up the breach for the time being?”

“Because it is almost absurd,” she said, inconsequently. “Don’t you see that?”

“No,” he answered, obstinately.

Their eyes met, and rested upon each other.

“You don’t care?” she said.

“No.”

“I knew you wouldn’t,” she said. “You never care for anything. That is what I like in you,—and dread.”

“Dread?” he said; and in the instant he saw that she had changed again. Her cheeks had flushed, and there was upon her lips a smile, half-bitter, half-sweet.

“I knew you would not go,” she said, “as well as I knew that it was only civil in me to suggest that you should. You are generous enough to care for me in a way I am not quite used to—and you always have your own way. Have it now—have it as long as you are here. Until you go away I shall do everything you tell me to do, and never once oppose you again—and—perhaps I shall enjoy the novelty.”

There was a chair near her, and she put her hand against it as if to steady herself, and the color in her face died out as quickly as it had risen.

“I did not want you to go,” she said.

“You did not want me to go?”

“No,” she answered, in a manner more baffling than all the rest. “More than anything in the world I wanted you to stay. There, Janey is awakening!”

And she went to the bed and kneeled down beside it, and drew the child into her arms against her bosom.

(To be continued.)

THE SONS OF CYDIPPE.

THE HELLENIC AGE OF SCULPTURE.

With Alexander the Great begins a new era in the history of Greece and in the history of the world. Like a tornado, bearing all before it, we see this Greek conqueror sweeping over the East, overturning vast empires, and shaking the hoary civilizations of Asia to their very center. But in his wake follow the clarifying influences of Hellenic culture. Spreading, now, far beyond the narrow limits of Greece, it leaves its impress on that great period which, extending down to the prevalence of Roman dominion throughout the ancient world, is generally called the Hellenic age.

The kingdoms of the Ptolemies, of the Seleucidæ, of Thrace, and of Macedon now occupy the foreground of history; and the smaller Greek states of old are bandied back and forth between the jealous sovereigns, or, as in the case of Rhodes, preserve an almost uninterrupted neutrality. The once proud republics of Greece thus became dependent on the favor of the most powerful. The old historic rights were gone. Should we add to this picture the terrible crimes of most of the ruling houses, their breaches of faith, their cruel selfishness in disregarding the rights of others, we should have some idea of what the historian has recorded of these troublous times. But, besides these distresses within, barbarians, wild, devastating hordes of Gauls, or Galatians, as the ancient Greeks called them, overran Greece from the north, and, passing the Hellespont, spread terror, also, among the flourishing cities and states of Asia Minor.

Following Alexander, in his course, to the shores of the Nile and far into the heart of Asia, we may trace the life-giving influence of Greek civilization, and watch its growth. We see, springing up all over the vast region he conquered, numberless Greek cities, not the monotonous conglomerates of the Orient, but corporations, having vigorous internal life, and calling into play the powers of the individual citizen. The story that Alexander founded sixty cities among the barbarians, Droysen declares, is not exaggerated, and the fact that this great Greek colonizer only began the work, is abundantly proved by what is recorded of his successors. But how brief are the accounts given of the way in which these cities were laid out; of their temples, palaces, and theaters, and of the wealth of statuary and relief which adorned them! The stories of the splendor of Alexandria and of Antioch, of the palaces and [Pg 80]triumphal arches there to be seen, of the sacred images in the groves, the costly pictures and statues in the private apartments, are tantalizing in their meagerness. And yet, by gleanings from the poets and inferences from the imitative art of the ensuing age, many features in the activity of these Hellenic times have already been traced. Thus, looking through a thick veil, the practiced eye has read backward, as it were, from the familiar ruins of Roman times up to greater Hellenic originals behind them. So Helbig, in his “Untersuchungen über die Campanische Wandmalerei,” has most skillfully traced the paintings of Pompeii back to the decorations of the Greek houses in this post-Alexandrian age, and has shown, as well, that much of the sculpture of the Roman time is only the echo of stronger, more original, art that had gone before.

Of late, excavations have happily come to the rescue in disclosing the treasures of that obscured age. The discovery in Samothrace of a number of temples, with their sculptural decoration, and the glorious figure of victory-bringing Niké, is followed by astounding revelations at Pergamon. How much more remains hidden for us beneath the soil of Asia Minor, where numberless beautiful Greek cities flourished, it would be hazardous to conjecture; and one need but question the topographer of Asia Minor, to find how many ancient sites are, as yet, untouched, and how sanguine are his hopes for a rich harvest, in the future, from this virgin soil. The Greeks, who, in an earlier age, had been confined to the narrow limits of their native land, now had the world opened up to them, and, indeed, were driven out into this greater world, by those highly wrought and varied activities which burst the bonds of soil, seeking a freer outlet. Sometimes as thrifty tradesmen or bold adventurers, again as travelers or physicians, and often as hireling soldiery, Greeks were met with everywhere, from the Indies in the East to Massilia (modern Marseilles) in the West. This wider field and intenser life brought with it, among other features of the time, an increased pursuit of knowledge. The stirring tempests and ever-changing scenes through which the age passed, stimulated to thought and reflection. The history of literature, the sciences of archæology, philosophy, grammar, and astronomy, now flourished as never before. Anatomy was raised by men like Erasistratus to the rank of an independent study, wielding, as monuments show, a powerful influence on artists and art. Asiatics, in their turn, now visited Greece, and everywhere, as the nations were thrown together and became better acquainted, a feeling of brotherhood was awakened. The sharp distinction between Greek and barbarian now disappeared; the Greeks recognized many admirable traits in those they had once despised, and even at the courts of Demetrius Poliorcetes a semi-Hellenic, semi-oriental, etiquette was introduced. The products of oriental art were, also, eagerly sought after, as we learn from literary notices, and from oriental remains in Greek graves, such as those discovered in the tomb of a Greek lady, in Southern Russia. Although oriental art exercised much influence on Greek drapery and the minor decoration of the time, as appears from the paintings on vases, it seems to have little affected sculpture, except, perhaps, in rousing it to use of more fantastic combinations, as well as to more splendid undertakings, as we see in new marbles from Pergamon.

Hand in hand with Greeks, wherever they emigrated, went their love of art. Alexander tarried long at Ephesus, in the society of the painter Apelles, before launching out upon the sea of Asiatic conquest; he enjoyed, likewise, the intimate friendship of the gifted sculptor, Lysippus. The eagerness with which people in high position, as well as in private life, collected art treasures, and the large sums they paid, testify to a general appreciation of the beautiful. Mnason, of Elatea, we learn from Pliny, paid to Aristides a sum equal to twenty thousand dollars for a picture of the battle with the Persians, and to Asclepiodorus seven thousand dollars for a picture of the twelve gods, and for each hero painted for him by Theomnestus he gave three hundred and ninety dollars. King Attalus, of Pergamon, is said to have bid one hundred and seventeen thousand eight hundred and eighty dollars for a picture by Aristides, at the sale of the Corinthian booty, after Mummius’s conquest; and Aristotle tells us that, even in his time, statues and paintings formed an indispensable part of the furniture in rich houses. Indeed, so highly were works of art prized, that through them political favor was sometimes sought. Aratus, of the Achæan League, says Plutarch, sent pictures of the old Sicyon school to Alexandria, to win the aid of the Egyptian King Ptolemy III. for his imperiled cause. Nicomedes, of Bithynia, so longed to own Praxiteles’s Aphrodite, that he offered to pay off the entire debt of the city of Cnidus; his offer, however, was declined. Besides thus encouraging art, by making generous purchases, building temples, laying out new cities, and the like, some of these rulers, as Plutarch tells us, even tried their hand as practical artists. Attalus III., the last king of Pergamon, modeled in wax and cast and chiseled [Pg 82]in bronze. Antiochus Epiphanes sought recreation in the studios of artists in metal. A familiarity with art processes seems to have been shared by private citizens as well.

The prevalence of monarchical institutions doubtless produced changes in society which affected art. Hitherto, the individual had been greatly influenced by his participation in public affairs. Now, as the guidance of state affairs became concentrated in the hands of the monarch, this essential groundwork of the old Hellenic civilization was gone. From motives of self-interest, or preference, men now developed in a single direction. They became, in a word, specialists, and the professions were sharply sundered, as they had not been in older Greece. Protogenes, who was living in Rhodes, during the siege of that city, painted quietly in his garden, which stood in the midst of the enemy’s camp; and when asked by the hostile leader, Demetrius, how he ventured to remain outside the walls, replied that he knew Demetrius warred against Rhodes, and not against art. Here Protogenes frequently received the besieger, who proved his appreciation of the painter’s work by sparing a certain quarter of the city, for fear of injuring his picture of “Ialysus and the Dog.” Men of each calling—poets, learned men, and actors—naturally clubbed together, and the professional classes became sharply defined. It is not strange that these new classes, each bearing its peculiar and characteristic stamp, should have offered a fruitful and attractive field for art. So comedy, we find, caught the unique features of city life, developing to great perfection the type of the adventurous soldier, the wealthy citizen, the artist, the artisan, the parasite, etc.; idyllic verse busied itself with the rural classes, shepherds, hunters, and fisher-folk; and sculpture and painting did not fall behind the sister art of poetry. So the fisherman, as sung in verse,—weather-beaten and tough-skinned,—appeared in statues, doubtless, like the one in the Vatican, where the humble costermonger is crying the fish he carefully holds in a basket. So the actor was represented as wearing the mask and other curious paraphernalia of his calling, such as the false stomach, etc., as seen in many statues in the Villa Albani. One, for instance, has taken off his mask, as if in answer to the applause of the public.

The social position of woman was also greatly changed. Issuing from the almost oriental seclusion of former times, she took a more prominent part in public affairs; and there was, besides, far greater freedom of intercourse between the sexes. Ladies appear, moreover, to have had an intriguing influence in the affairs of government. A species of gallantry began to show itself. An astronomer called a comet “Berenice’s Hair,” and a poet makes the warlike hero of old Achilles cover the hand of Deidamia with kisses, doubtless reflecting the customs of the day in his verse. On the one hand, the ladies of the court seem to have become more stately, and on the other, there was a tendency to coquettishness which, perhaps, is reflected for us in the more elaborate and ambitious toilets, as represented on the monuments. In spite of the social and political fermentation of this age, mercantile activity was great, and material prosperity developed extensively, under the patronage of wise rulers. As a striking instance, the vigorous republic of Rhodes, a noted center of ancient trade, succeeded in amassing great wealth, which was devoted largely to the patronage of art. Here, towering above the harbor, was to be seen that renowned colossus of the sun-god, one of the seven wonders of the world. But Rhodes boasted more than a hundred colossi, any one of which would have made any other city celebrated. Her artists seem to have formed a new and independent school, whose ramifications extended into Asia Minor.

With this general increase in wealth came a wide-spread luxuriousness. The size and magnificence of enduring works, such as the Samothrace Niké, the Pergamon altar, etc., as well as the lavishness with which art was applied to beautify ephemeral public festivals, are characteristic of this time. The fashion was set by Alexander’s unbounded extravagance in piling up a mountain of precious treasure to be burned on the funeral pyre of his beloved Hephæstion. Ten thousand talents were set apart for this purpose, and an additional two thousand were contributed by friends, high dignitaries, and the Babylonians. A part of the wall of Babylon was torn down to furnish material for the structure, which arose, in five divisions, to a height of two hundred feet. The whole gleamed with gold, purple cloth, decorative paintings, and statuary. On its summit stood sirens of costly workmanship, out of which sounded the funeral dirge. Amid sacrifices, mourning processions, and songs of lament, this gorgeous pyre was given to the flames. Offerings now followed in honor of the hero Hephæstion, Alexander himself consecrating the first gifts. Ten thousand bullocks were slain as sacrifices to the glorified friend, and the whole army was invited to a grand repast, still other festivities following on the ensuing days. Alexander’s successors vied with one another in gorgeous pageantry and lavish public ceremonies.

Great but silent revolutions were taking place in the old modes of thought and feeling. [Pg 83]In older times, the conception of the gods, their working and overruling providence, had expressed itself in sacred stories and incidents, analogous to human deeds and sufferings. These the exuberant Greek fancy had multiplied indefinitely, each tribe, each locality indeed, modifying them, and adapting them to their peculiar circumstances and local beliefs. Out of this very profusion grew the necessity of order and arrangement. Once these myths were the expression of what mankind, in its childhood, had seen and felt; but could they suffice to solve the problems of a thinking age? Stretching their hands out beyond the old cosmogonies, men sought to grasp the eternal principles of the world, and of the very gods themselves. They found a spiritual power over all, which molded existing matter, and striding forward, they arrived at a rational philosophy, which recognized, and at last embraced, a pure and noble deism. And yet, although affected by this new atmosphere, the people still clung to the religious traditions of old. The Athenians might laugh at impious jokes in comedy, and admire the bold infidelity of a Diagoras, yet they continued to celebrate their festival in honor of Athene in the old way, and punished with great severity those who made light of the sacred mysteries. It is not strange, then, that we do not hear in this period of the development in plastic art of new ideals of the great gods, but only of the repetition and variation of that perfect array created by the genius of the centuries gone before. Nor is it strange that, when representing inferior mythical beings, the artist’s fancy, like that of the poets, seems to break loose from the more sober ancient myths, and to riot in new fantastic creations of tremendous power, as we see in the great frieze of the Pergamon altar, recently discovered,—or that it finds vent in a garrulous, story-telling language, as in the representation of the Telephus myth, in the small frieze of the same altar, which will be considered later. This straining after higher satisfaction than the old gods and myths could give, was, moreover, greatly stimulated by external conquest, with its widened fields of vision. The opportunities for studying and observing the religions and worship of conquered nations confirmed the dissatisfaction with local worship. Hence, it was possible for Alexander to worship the deities of Babylon and Egypt, as well as his own, and to honor, in the God of the Jews, that highest power in which Aristotle had recognized the eternal, creating reason. With such a widened religious horizon, the Greek god Hades could wander to Alexandria, there to be honored with statues, temples, and altars as the Græco-Egyptian Serapis; and, on the other hand, the Egyptian deities Isis, Anubis, and Harpocrates, in Hellenic form, could find worshipers in the Greek states of Asia Minor, as well as in Athens, Corinth, and the interior of the Peloponnesus.

But this very acceptance of so much that was foreign was fraught with many dangers to the Greek world. Turning to strange and unknown superstitions, the mysteries of Isis, of Mithras, and of the Cabiri gained importance. Astrology, witchcraft, and the dreaded influence of the sibyls worked like a species of intoxication.

If we may judge from existing remains, sculpture seems now to have well-nigh deserted its old home in Athens and the Peloponnesus, and to have found a regal welcome in the rich kingdoms of Asia Minor, and in the island republic of Rhodes. The few monuments in Athens which may be traced to the third century B. C., compared with the same class in the preceding century, show great sinking in ability and conception. The beautiful large tombstones of careful workmanship are supplanted by monuments very small and carelessly executed. A law made by Demetrius, of Phalerus, in the latter part of the fourth century B. C., limited the size of tombstones. Doubtless, the troublous times, [Pg 84]and the insecurity of property at Athens, had much to do with this falling off. The story that the Athenians raised three hundred and sixty statues to Demetrius, of Phalerus, in thirty days, and then destroyed them, to raise new ones to his successful enemy, though hard to believe in detail, suggests that there must have been much activity of a servile kind. Moreover, we cannot doubt that sculptors continued to be employed to a certain extent, since Demosthenes’ nephew succeeded in having a statue of the great orator put up in Athens in the midst of those trying times, and many votive reliefs bear the marks of this age. These are, however, mainly interesting on account of their mythological information and inscriptions. Like these Athenian reliefs in composition, but superior in workmanship, is that graceful tablet from Gallipoli, now in Vienna. It represents a grotto sacred to the nymphs and to Pan. This small semi-goat, semi-human god, sits in the corner, with legs crossed, and is blowing his rustic syrinx. Toward an altar below him, Hermes, with staff—the kerykeion or Latin caduceus—in hand, leads three nymphs, a sisterly group of gracefully moving figures, their drapery blown by the wind. In feature and elaborate coiffure they resemble strongly a beautiful little marble head recently found in Patras, as well as that larger head of the same type which is one of the great treasures of the Munich Glyptothek, and which, doubtless, came originally from Greece.

We know, alas, very little of the art of the third century B. C., but such heads as these, and the terra cottas from Tanagra and Corinth, seem to indicate that taste and artistic ability were still at no low ebb in Greece itself.

The direct channels by which the influence of the richly developed art of the Phidian and the following age passed over to new fields of activity, are only partially known. We know that the influence of Alexander’s court sculptor, Lysippus, passed over to Rhodes through his pupil Chares, of Lindus. The recent German excavations on the summit of Pergamon have brought to our knowledge still another skillful master of the school of Lysippus in Asia Minor, one Xenocrates, who executed bronze statues, and was also a celebrated writer on art. Xenocrates’ name may still be read on a slab belonging to one of the pedestals which stood near the temple of Athene, on its ancient piazza. Here were once to be seen bronze figures, which we may now believe were originals of such celebrated works as the statue popularly known as the “Dying Gladiator.” R. Bohn’s view of this beautiful ancient square, restored from accurate study of the site, and from fragments there discovered, may give us, even to-day, a distinct idea of the spot where Xenocrates’ work was to be seen. On still another pedestal, from this beautiful site, may be read the fragmentary name ραξιτελης (raxiteles), doubtless a part of the word Praxiteles, and, perhaps, pointing to a descendant of the renowned Athenian master of the same name, since it was customary among the Greeks to pass on the same name in a family for many generations. If this Praxiteles was, then, really a grandson of the older master, [Pg 85]the fact would indicate the influence of Athenian as well as Peloponnesian art in Asia Minor. But the extent of this relationship with the older Greek art-centers is still uncertain. We do not yet know to what degree art developed independently in these new fields, since safe comparisons are only beginning to be made on the basis of the excavations which are still unearthing new treasures in Asia Minor.

And yet, in the monuments from the Hellenic age, different streams of artistic expression are already evident. An intensified realism in detail and tremendous action are found, combined with ideal form of great power, as seen in the colossal Niké of Samothrace, who sweeps down with lightning speed,—the powerful form, with its rushing drapery, seeming to force us to make way for the imposing goddess of victory as she passes. This great statue, now in the Louvre, was erected in the sacred shrine at Samothrace by Demetrius Poliorcetes, early in the third century B. C., in thanks for a naval victory, as is shown by comparison with his coins. The goddess, towering above the green of the holy place, appeared on the prow of a marble ship, discovered, also, on this now wasted site. She seemed rushing by, with raised wings and trumpet, heralding victory. As fragments recently adjusted to the bosom show, both arms were raised. With one hand she held the trumpet to the mouth, and with the other, probably, held high the wreath of victory. Before long, the statue, with its magnificent drapery and intense life, will be raised again on its ancient prow, forming one of the greatest attractions of the Louvre; a worthy sister of the Venus of Melos, and a speaking witness to the power of the sculptor of the third century before our era. There are, moreover, in the Hellenic age, signs of a going back to the excessive simplicity of archaic work, as illustrated in a head from Pergamon, now in Berlin, in which the lack of detail and the stiff severity seem a protest against the luxurious forms of the other monuments there found, calling to mind the preraphaelite tendency of to-day.

But a great striving of that age, starting in [Pg 86]science with Aristotle, seems to have been to grasp the reality of things. So, in history, not merely the great main facts were given, but every particular. When Xenophon, of an elder day, described a historical person, he mentioned only what was essential to his character; but now, descriptions of appearances, clothing, and habits were added, making the picture more vivid. The same tendency appears, also, in marble and bronze portraits of this time, some of which have recently been excavated; others are preserved to us in Roman imitations. The sculptors represented men just as they lived and walked among them, and grasped characteristics of form and face with startling force and naturalness, quite different from the ideal generalization of the earlier age. Let us but compare the portrait of Pericles, now in the Vatican, with that of Demosthenes in the Royal Gardens at Athens. Although the former is only a feeble copy from an original of the fifth century B. C., it is evident that the artist has shown us the great Pericles through the veil of ideality. Demosthenes, on the other hand, we seem to see bodily before us. His furrowed brow, knitted eyebrows, closely pressed lips, we feel confident, show us the noble patriot as he appeared to the Athenians daily, and make us regret that the speaking head is so fragmentary.

An original of this time is the magnificent life-size bronze portrait-head recently brought to light by the excavations at Olympia. It was found in a part of the sacred grove, far removed from the great temple where the statue to which it belonged doubtless stood. The neck shows signs of having been roughly cut away from the trunk, and its site and mode of concealment indicate that this head had been hidden by the plunderer, whose intention was to dispose of it, as he had already done with the metal body. In this head we see a powerful athlete, as the wreath in his hair indicates; so brutal are his features that we are tempted to associate him with professional prize-fighters. That he had won the Olympic victor’s wreath of wild olive, appears from a single leaf of sheet-bronze still above the right temple, showing that other leaves had, also, been fastened on to the shaggy hair after the head was cast. The swollen ears mark him as a combatant in the boxing-game, and his portrait-features may indicate that he was one of those thrice victorious, to whom the honor of a portrait-statue, in the sacred grove, was allowed. What a contrast this profile to the ideal faces with which we are familiar in earlier Greek art! Gone is the line of beauty in forehead and chin—a brush-like beard making more pronounced the projection of the brutal chin far beyond the upper part of the face. In contrast to portrait-heads of an earlier time, each detail of skin and hair is brought out by the most skillful use of the burin, the locks being made more natural by strong furrows, graven parallel with their general flow. The same care in chiseling is seen also in the skin, and not only in parts in tension over [Pg 87]the forehead, but also in the wrinkled folds about the eyes, especially in the uninjured right side of the face. Indeed, the characteristics of this ancient athlete have been so admirably caught, that we do not wonder that his great strength and determined will won the prize on the ancient boxing-ground.

By comparing this head with those of the fourth century B. C., and with the Pergamon marbles, and remembering that with Lysippus a strongly realistic style of portraiture was encouraged, we gain a clew to its age. Placed alongside the so-called Mausolos of the British Museum, from the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, this bronze athlete seems much more realistic in its conception. The Mausoleum was erected about the middle of the fourth century B. C., and hence we may conclude that this athlete, with its more developed portraiture, belongs to a later date. Contrasted, on the other hand, with any one of the giants of the Pergamon frieze, which are from the second century B. C., this head seems reserved in style. Compare, for instance, the bold modeling of the disheveled eyebrows of the Pergamon giants with the careful regularity with which those of this athlete’s head are graven. Such characteristics in treatment make it probable that this bronze head is somewhat older than the giant’s, and belongs to the third century B. C.

But, besides such accurate and admirable portraits of living persons, of which other examples are found on coins of this time, the poets and sages of the past received similar life-like forms. This tendency was pronounced in Alexander’s great sculptor, Lysippus, and the efforts to portray persons of whom no iconical statues existed continued after him. So old Æsop, the poet of fable, and the seven wise men, who had lived in the sixth century B. C., came in for a share in plastic portraiture. Among the recently discovered Pergamon inscriptions is one showing that the monument once supported a portrait of the ancient lyric poet Alcæus, Sappho’s admirer. Fortunately, among existing monuments there are a few masterpieces of this kind, showing how out of the sayings of these old men the character had been read and brought to marvelous expression. In heads of Homer, the blind old man and divinely inspired singer of Greek imagination seems represented to us bodily. Æsop almost speaks to us in that marble in the Villa Albani which Burckhardt calls “the concentrated ideal of a witty cripple.” In the head of Hippocrates we see the kindly and genial physician. So, probably, the idea of Socrates developed, in this age, under the immediate influence of Plato’s vivid description of the great philosopher.

But this fondness for reality, as seen in the portraits of that time, did not stop with them. Many other subjects which occupied the attention of poets and artists were treated in a like realistic manner. Life, after Alexander, as we have seen, had greatly changed in many respects. The multiplication of large cities throughout the civilized world, with their dense populations, the more intense and excited life, the over-refinement which pervaded some ranks, and the sharp isolation of the different classes, were influences which tended to introduce artificiality and shut men out from direct communion with nature. The idyl deals, by preference, with the children of nature, untainted by civilization, and living in unclouded union with fountain, forest, field, and flock, and the sculptor’s fancy busies itself with fishermen, shepherds, or merry, rollicking childhood. In consequence of this spirit, many walks in life which had been hitherto well-nigh unheeded in art are now represented in all their attractive and many of their forbidding features: the fisherman, already alluded to, appears with his excessively plain face and horny skin, as well as the plump form of the baby, in all its roundness and presumptuous strength; wrestling, perhaps, with an animal, or playing with a huge mask, or carrying a vase. Such statues, we learn, were often used as significant [Pg 88]decorations of fountains; those of children being, also, not infrequently found as tombstone monuments.

The Boy Extracting a Thorn from his Foot, a marble statue of rare workmanship in the British Museum, and, in general composition, but not in detail, like the Bronze Boy of the Capitol, is a speaking witness to this spirit of the Hellenic age. Volumes have been written on the severer bronze figures at Rome, discussing the probability of the Bronze Boy’s being an original of the archaic period of Greek art. Furtwängler, in a masterly argument, has shown, however, that its spirit can only be that of an early naïve time, and the discovery of the fine naturalistic marble of the British Museum seems clearly to confirm his brilliant theory. This marble boy, bending over his raised foot, with open mouth and intent gaze, is so deeply absorbed in extracting the offending brier that our sympathy with the rustic lad is at once enlisted, and we hope that he may succeed. How true the vigorous form and homely peasant face, and how charming the workmanship of the marble! Although not ideal, the features appeal to us, and were we asked to choose to-day some pleasing ornament for garden or shady fountain, we could not do better than select this rustic, with his wounded foot, who in ancient times, likewise, decorated a fountain, as may be inferred from the holes in his rocky seat. This fondness for homely scenes at this time passed out beyond every-day life, and invaded the realms of mythology as well. In Hellenic poetry, even the Olympic gods engage in trivialities like every-day people. Thus, Hermes is made to blacken his face with ashes, in order to scare the naughty children of the gods. Little Artemis, three years old, as she visits Hephæstus’s workshop, climbs upon Briareus’s knee, and plucks out of his shaggy breast a handful of hair. Aphrodite offers a reward to any one who will bring [Pg 89]back her runaway child, Eros, or she takes the infant god to learn music of a shepherd, to whom, however, the little mischief-maker teaches love. In plastic art, like any human child, Eros plays with the weapons of the mighty heroes. It is this merry, roguish child of later myth who has become the pet figure among the Greek gods in modern times. How different this chubby busybody is from the youth of earlier art,—the dreamy, love-whispering god, personifying a world of soul-influence, who has been shown by Furtwängler, in an article entitled “Eros in der Vasen Malerei.” No less interesting is the transformation among the followers of Dionysus, that changes the almost sentimental, graceful satyrs of the fourth century B. C. into homely forms suggested by the peasantry, and overflowing with roguish fun and mischief. This is admirably illustrated by a male satyr, six inches high, recently discovered in Pergamon, now one of the choice treasures of the Berlin Museum. Here the sylvan sprite has become a thorough rustic in character and form. Drawing back, he raises his right hand, which once doubtless held his short shepherd’s crook, and parries a blow. So brimming full of mischievous glee is his homely, almost bestial face, that we seem to hear his boisterous laugh, and are tempted to join in his contagious merriment. In his left hand he carries the syrinx, an attribute which seems to have been borrowed from the god Pan. The merry, pleasure-loving satyr of an older art took life too easy to be at enmity with any being. But this satyr expresses fully the changed ideas of the new times, even though in pose he reëchoes that of Myron’s Marsyas, a master-work of a previous century, transmitted to us in a marble copy in the Lateran Museum. Thus, the Pergamon satyr fights in earnest, like any young mortal, although the old, roguish satyr-look lights up his face, and his large mouth, low nose, and pointed ears tell us of his animal nature.

An admirable head in the Munich Glyptothek, [Pg 90]about life-size, and originally from the Villa Albani, is so like in spirit and workmanship to the works of this age after Alexander that we may give it a glance. It shows us another of these merry followers of Dionysus, his face alive with smiles, and his features so much like those of a simple peasant lad, that, were it not for his large, pointed ears, we might be tempted to consider him a genuine shepherd. Unfortunately, the modern neck and bust, on which the head rests, do not correspond well with the features. We naturally expect a face so merrily laughing to be roguishly tipped, but it has been restored as most primly erect. By covering the neck and bust while looking at this head, the expression of fun and hilarity in the face, now seeming to verge toward a grimace, now toward the merriest sport, will be astonishingly enhanced. Although somewhat nobler in feature than the Pergamon bronze, there is no mistaking the same rustic character and naïve boorishness here also given to one of Dionysus’s suite, and rendered with a startling naturalness in the minutest detail.

Not the least of the attainments of sculpture, during this age, was the noble rendering of race peculiarities. This is well illustrated by the fragment of a statue in the British Museum—a rare bronze head, which was discovered at a depth of eleven feet under the mosaic pavement of the cella in the temple of Apollo at Cyrene, in Northern Africa. Here we see the curly hair, thick lips, and other features of the negro given, in striking contrast to the Greek and Roman types. The eye-sockets, once doubtless filled to imitate life, are now empty, but the marvelous details of hair and beard are still perfect. So vigorous is the conception of this head, and, in workmanship, so like the head of the bronze athlete found at Olympia, that we may safely believe it to belong to the same age, that is, the third century B. C. It was then that the Greek colonies of Cyrenaica were in a flourishing condition, and it would have been most natural that some African king from a neighboring province should there have dedicated a statue of himself in the temple of the Greek god Apollo. In this matter of race-portraiture, however, Pergamon stands at the front, offering us celebrated works of great power, representing the sturdy form and face of the ancient Galatians. Most widely known among these statues is, doubtless, that fallen figure of the Capitol, which is commonly called the “Dying Gladiator.”

Wandering back in imagination to the time of the Apocalypse, we find that Pergamon was then the seat of one of the seven churches in Asia, but, passing on, still farther back, to two centuries B. C., we find it the capital of a powerful Greek kingdom. To-day, traveling due north from Smyrna, and following up the river Caicus twenty miles inland, we should come upon this ancient site, now called Bergama, a flourishing Turkish town. From the blue sea, even, we may descry, at the base of mountain ranges in the background, the craggy summit of the Acropolis, from which, in those ancient times, there went out great power into the surrounding world, shattering and hurling back hordes of barbarian Galatian invaders. And here it is that modern excavations have discovered great art-treasures, throwing untold light on the sculpture of that remote age.

The origin of the Pergamon dynasty was as follows: Lysimachus, one of Alexander’s generals, and an aspirant to regal power, being hard pressed, left a vast treasure, $14,000,000, in Pergamon’s impregnable fortress, in the keeping of a faithful servant, Philetærus. But Lysimachus, having killed his own son, incurred the just indignation of many of his followers. Among these was Philetærus, who was so outspoken in the condemnation of his master as to incur the enmity of the ruling house. Driven, in self-defense, 280 B. C., to take possession of the fortress and treasure, he declared himself [Pg 91]independent, and thus founded a dynasty, which was to become one of the richest and most attractive of the age. From the time of its foundation by the obscure Philetærus, the character of this Pergamon house compared most favorably with that of the other ruling houses of the day. Public and private virtue was a marked feature of its rulers. Elsewhere we find brother turned against brother, and father even against son; here the members of the family were devoted to each other. The devotion of the royal sons of Attalus I. to their mother, a woman of humble birth but noble character, expressed itself in temples dedicated to her, one of which, it is recorded, was sculptured with mythic and other scenes illustrating the devotion of sons to mothers. An inscription just discovered at Pergamon, on a pedestal which occupied the beautiful piazza about Athene’s temple on the Acropolis, makes still more vivid this family affection, the stone letters telling us that Attalus II. put up this statue “to his mother, Queen Apollonis, because of her love to him.”

Moreover, the Pergamon princes were not oriental despots, but desired the good opinion of their subjects and allies, to whom, even though Romans, they were always true. They manifested a great regard for Greece itself, and the intercourse was lively between this rising city and the old seats of culture in Hellas. In Sicyon, Attalus I. raised a heavy mortgage on an Apollo temple, and restored it to free use. In 197 B. C., he made a present of ten talents of silver and ten thousand measures of wheat to the same city. For the former favor the citizens had erected to him a colossal statue on the market-place, near Apollo’s statue, but now they honored him with a golden statue, and a yearly festival. After the earthquake at Rhodes, in the third century B. C., that city also experienced the munificence of this monarch. These Pergamon princes encouraged the sciences and arts most liberally. As memorials of their large-minded wisdom in these matters, were the royal library at Pergamon and their sculptural monuments, recently discovered, which were the admiration of the ancient world, and give to us astonished moderns a glimpse of those days of departed glory. These princes were, moreover, Greek rulers of a Greek people, thus forming a happy union which did not exist in all the other empires of the day, and which was, doubtless, [Pg 92]most favorable to awakening those capabilities which still lay dormant in Greek art.

But for the achievement of anything great and noble in this art, there was needed the inspiration and impulse of a heroic spirit and glorious deeds, just as much as in the old days of Phidias. Fortunately, once more the Greeks were privileged to win glorious victory, not over the Greeks or jealous rivals alone, but such as the Athenians had once won at Marathon over invading barbarians. As Miltiades and his braves had conquered the Persians on the plain of Marathon, so now Attalus and his people overwhelmed the barbarian Galatians who threatened their homes. The Galatians of Christian times are well known to us, through the Apostle Paul’s epistle, but we are less familiar with the deeds of their fierce forefathers who, about the third century before the apostle’s time, were tempted away from their northern homes by stories of marvelous treasure piled up in Greek temples and shrines. Pouring down into Macedonia and Hellas, plundering, burning, and massacring wherever they went, they even attacked Apollo’s sacred shrine at Delphi. Passing over into Asia Minor, they levied heavy tribute everywhere, and spread panic and terror before them. Pausanias, in describing their deeds in Greece, cannot find words strong enough to depict their atrocities. He also tells us how they raged against the weak of their own number, killing those who could not follow in the flight. Suffice it that we have some idea of the anguish and distress they left behind them, and of the formidableness of the foe Attalus had to meet. To appreciate this fully, however, we must hear what Pausanias relates of the fierce bravery and fearless scorn of death of these half-naked barbarians. The only protection they had in [Pg 93]battle, he tells us, was their shields, and they had little knowledge of the science of war. Like wild beasts they attacked the enemy, with a vehemence and courage which is almost unparalleled. Nor did their fury cease so long as breath was in their bodies, even when felled by the battle-ax or sword, or when pierced by arrow or spear. Some even drew the spear out of their wounds and hurled it at the enemy, or used it in close hand-to-hand fight. The giant-like stature and the power of these barbarians are also described by Diodorus, who makes the picture more vivid still, by telling of their tough skin and bristling hair, made still stiffer by the use of a peculiar salve, and by being brushed off from the forehead down toward the neck, as is seen in the heads of Pan and satyrs, by which treatment it became thick, and much resembled horses’ manes. A few had the beard entirely shaven; others, and especially those of rank, left only the mustache, but so long and full as to cover the mouth. They carried into battle a bent horn and a large shield. Their favorite adornment, he adds, was the twisted neck-band of metal, called the torque, still found in Celtic graves. From inscriptions recently discovered in Pergamon, it seems that Attalus and Eumenes did not have to contend with the Galatians alone, but also with their ally, Antiochus Hierax, whom, also, the Pergamon princes finally overcame. When those barbarians, some time before, had swarmed about Apollo’s sacred shrine at Delphi, it was piously believed the god himself had appeared, descending from the high heavens in light supernal, and, shaking the glittering eyes, had wrought deliverance from their mad attacks. In accordance with a time-honored custom, the Greeks then consecrated statues to the delivering deities, as thank-offerings, among which were bronze statues, one of them, doubtless, being the original of the Apollo Belvidere and its numerous copies of later times. Pliny, in a tantalizingly short sentence, tells us that several artists represented the battles of Attalus and Eumenes against the Galatians, mentioning Isigonus, Pyromachus, Stratonicus, and Antigonus.

One of the discoveries recently made at Pergamon throws unexpected light on these works, showing us where they stood, telling us what victories they celebrated and the gods they honored, as well as the names of a few of the artists; two of which, although mutilated, correspond with Pliny’s record. The fragments containing this information go by the name of the “battle monument,” and consist of inscribed slabs of dark gray marble, which made up different pedestals, as R. Bohn has shown after careful study of the subject. On the top slabs, traces of the feet of statues are to be seen, of such a character that we may be sure they were of bronze; bits of bronze fingers and drapery have also been found, but, as might be expected, the valuable metal statues themselves have long since [Pg 94]disappeared. Wandering, to-day, over the ancient pavement of the lofty terrace of the Acropolis of Pergamon, cleared at last of rubbish and grass, we look upon a glorious view spread out at our feet; we trace the beautiful Caicus valley out into the plain and see the blue Mediterranean beyond. Gazing immediately around us, we behold to our right the fragments of the ancient temple of Athene Polias, the revered goddess of this height. Turning to the north and east, the eye falls upon the spot where the columns of Attalus II.’s stoa, rising in two stories, form a stately colonnade, inclosing two sides of the holy square. Filling out the picture, we would delight to dwell upon the balustrade of the upper gallery, sculptured all over with trophies of war, shields (like that on which falls the Dying Gladiator), helmets, chariots, spears, etc., so suggestive in their composition that, as we study them in beautiful fragments, preserved in Berlin, we almost see the confusion of battle, and hear the din of clanging armor.

Besides decorating their own Acropolis, the Pergamon rulers remembered also Athens, the ancient seat of Greek glory. There Attalus II. likewise built a stoa, and Attalus I. sent thither votive offerings of sculpture, which were seen in the ancient citadel by Pausanias, who tells us that these figures stood on the south wall, and measured about four feet in length. Here were represented (1) the historic victory of Marathon over the Persians, and (2) its mystic prototype, the battle of the Athenians with the Amazons; two other groups, the counterparts of these, as it were, completing the offering. In one, Attalus’s victory over the Galatians was represented, and, in the other, a speaking mythic parallel, the combat of the gods with the giants. One of the statues of these gods, Dionysus, Plutarch informs us, was precipitated, in a great storm, from the lofty Athenian Acropolis into the theater below, but the fate of the remainder is recorded by no ancient writer. The rough mass of the long pedestal was discovered a few years since by Böttcher, on the south wall of the Acropolis, but no statues were found. The keen eye of Brunn, however, has detected, scattered through the galleries of Europe, marble statues corresponding in size and subjects to those mentioned by Pausanias. Awakened by Brunn’s observation, others have identified additional statues sent by Attalus to Athens, of which ten are now known to us, there being three in Venice, four in Naples, one in the Vatican, one in the Louvre, and one at Aix. Nine of these admirable little marble statues may be traced to their discovery in the neighborhood of the baths of Alexander Severus at Rome, early in the sixteenth century, proving that they are not, as some have conjectured from their realistic character, the work of the contemporaries of Michael Angelo. They were, no doubt, brought from Athens, at the time when Greek works were imported on a wholesale scale, to the capital of the Roman state. All the statues represent warriors from the conquered side: one a beautiful Amazon; another, a muscular, shaggy-haired [Pg 95]giant; another, a youthful Persian. How powerfully the passions of war and the peculiar features of races not Greek were represented, will appear from a glance at the bristly-haired and sinking, but still fighting, Galatian of the Venice Museum, or at the cowering Persian of the Vatican. We are impressed by the striking similarity in the attitude of one other of these little statues to that of the so-called “Dying Gladiator.” That greater marble works, similar in character to those described, were also executed by the ancient sculptors of Pergamon is evident from the statues of finer workmanship, but similar in subject, in the museums of Rome. One of these is the so-called “Dying Gladiator” of the Capitol, the other, that less celebrated but equally powerful work in the Villa Ludovici, representing a despairing warrior, standing on his long, oval shield. With one hand he plunges a dagger into his own neck, with the other he holds, in his relaxed grasp, the arm of his wife, dying at his side. The sight of this victim of the warrior’s mad despair, and the pathos of her sinking, alone alleviate the painfulness of this terrible scene. So great is the resemblance between this upright figure of the Villa Ludovici and the so-called Gladiator of the Capitol, that we could easily believe them to be brothers. Notice, besides, how all the characteristics of the Galatians of old, as known from history, are expressed in both these forms: the giant frame, tough, leathery skin, bristling hair, long, overhanging mustache, circling torque, large shield, bent horn, and nudity in battle, as well as the wild, unbridled passion of the barbarian.

Comparing the dying figure of the Capitol and the Ludovici group with the small statues of Galatians, Attalus’s votive gifts to Athens, above described, we find, moreover, a striking similarity, which makes it clear that these two greater statues, likewise, represent Pergamon’s fierce northern enemies. That they once decorated Pergamon’s summit seems confirmed by the recent discovery there of a marble torso of a similar fallen warrior, of beautiful workmanship. The Dying Galatian and the Ludovici group were, moreover, discovered together, in the sixteenth century, in the gardens of Sallust, in Rome, and are of a kind of marble found only in Asia Minor. This discovery in Rome, and not Pergamon, is explained by the well-known mania of the Romans for pirating Greek art, and since the last ruler of Pergamon left by will his treasures to that greedy people, it would be natural for them to remove many statues they found in his city to the Tiber.

How admirably the sculptor in Pergamon caught the strongly pronounced physique of the barbarian foe! Not only the general features, giant size, powerful build, and ruggedness of that people, who terrified even warlike Romans as well as more peaceable Greeks, are given in these statues, but the details of their firmly knit muscles, callous skin (toughened by exposure), the broad skull, pointed chin, low-bridged nose, high cheek-bones, overhanging eyebrows, and bristling, thick hair,—peculiarities still met in some branches of the Teutonic race. The difference in the treatment of the skin, with its leathery folds, in these barbarians, especially at the waist, appears in contrast to the Hermes of Praxiteles, with its soft skin of the ideal Greek race. The partial polish of the statue of the Dying Galatian seems to be a most successful imitation of the smooth surface of bronze, the peculiarities of which are even more closely followed in the treatment and minute details of the short, stiff hair. On the supposition that these statues once stood in the Acropolis of Pergamon, Bohn, in his restored view of the open square about the temple of Athene, has put the Ludovici [Pg 96]group and the Dying Galatian on the long pedestal in the front of the picture.

In these statues, the innermost being of the Galatians is, moreover, powerfully portrayed. The fury of wild beasts, we are told, seemed to seize them as they rushed naked into battle. If they lost the day, they gave way to a frenzy of despair, taking their own lives as well as those of the wounded and feeble among them. On a relief in Rome we see a barbarian plunging a dagger into his own breast, under the very hoofs of his victor’s horse. Brennus, the Galatian chieftain who had dared to storm Apollo’s shrine, we are told, took his life when vanquished. So, also, the Ludovici Galatian, having slain his wife, now destroys himself. The dying warrior of the Capitol no longer shows brave defiance. Death has stricken him, too, probably in consequence of a fatal stab received at the enemy’s hand. It has often been supposed that, like the Ludovici Galatian, he had taken his own life, but his manner of falling, the one fact that the wound is on the side away from the heart, and the other that some one has withdrawn the weapon from the gash, seem to prove that a victorious enemy has robbed him of his life. The sword in this statue is a later addition.

How different these intensely tragic and realistic monuments from the Greek sculptures preserved to us from earlier times. The Pergamon artist, in common with the spirit of his time, could not have represented otherwise the barbarian who had just overrun his land and caused him so much distress. Prince and people had seen and fought the dreaded enemy too recently, and knew his uncouth face and powerful frame too well, and had suffered too much at his hand, to be satisfied with only ideal or symbolic representation of him. The sculptor did not then hold on to the older, colorless type of the barbarian, characterizing him by mere accessories of national costume or armor, while giving him ideal beauty of form and soul, but represented him just as he saw him in nature. The square and rugged forms do not, therefore, impress by symmetry and exquisite grace of proportion, but by fullness and overflow of power; their very divergence from the Greek bringing out more strongly such wild force.

But let us not imagine that the ancient sculptor in Pergamon was content with expressing thanks for victory to the gods. His fancy took still higher flights in ideal creations of great power and absolute beauty, as revealed in the sculptures of the “Greek Altar” recently discovered at Pergamon, and now in the Berlin Museum,—the tragedy of the ruthless Galatians being mirrored in the tremendous conflicts of gods with giants. But this topic must be reserved for a final paper.

Lucy M. Mitchell.

In a liberal sense, and somewhat as Emerson stands for American thought, the poet Lowell has become our representative man of letters. Not as our most exact scholar, though of a rich scholarship, and soundly versed in branches which he has chosen to follow. Not as an indomitable writer, yet, when he writes, from whom are we surer to receive what is brilliant and original? Nor yet chiefly as a poet, in spite of the ideality, the feeling, the purpose, and the wit that belong to his verse and that first brought him into reputation. But, whatsoever the conjunction that has enabled Mr. Lowell to reach and maintain his typical position, we feel that he holds it, and, on the whole, ought to hold it. His acquirements and versatile writings, the conditions of his life, the mold of the man, and the spirit of his whole work, have given him a peculiar distinction, and this largely without his thought or seeking. Such a nimbus does not form around one who summons it: it glows and gathers almost without his knowledge,—and not at once, but, like the expression of a noble face, after long experience and service.

I have spoken of one poet as excelling others in the adroitness of a man of the world. Mr. Lowell’s qualities secure him honor and allies without the need of adroitness. He is regarded not only as a man of letters, but as a fine exemplar of culture, and of a culture so generous as to be thought supra-American by those observers who, while pronouncing him a citizen of the world, are careful to exclude this country from his range. Professor Dowden, for instance, says: “Taken as a whole, the works of Lowell do not mirror the life, the thoughts, and passions of the nation. They are works, as it were, of an English poet who has become a naturalized citizen of the United States; who admires the institutions and has faith in the ideas of America, but who cannot throw off his allegiance to the old country and its authorities.” But here is a manifest assumption. Doubtless, Lowell’s mirror does not reflect Dr. Dowden’s conception of the life, the thoughts, and passions of this nation, but the critic might revise his conception if better informed. In the poet’s writings we find the life and passion of New England, to a verity, and the best thought of our people at large. For, when I say that he is a type of American culture, I mean of republican culture, and nothing more or less. Those who hold to the republican idea believe that its value is to be found in its leveling tendency; by which I do not mean a general reduction to the lowest caste, but the gradual elevation of a multitude to the standard which individuals have reached,—among them so many of the writing craft, from Franklin’s generation to our own. In this respect I do not, of course, mention Mr. Lowell’s position as distinctive,—the names of other scholars and writers instantly come to mind,—nor have our men of culture been confined to any guild or profession. Marshall and Story, Pinkney, Wirt, Winthrop, Sumner and Bayard, jurists, orators, and statesmen,—soldiers, merchants, artisans, Americans of every class,—have shown that culture is a plant that thrives in a republic no less than under royal care. Their number is increasing; the average grade is advanced. If this were not so, republicanism would be a failure: in this matter it is on trial no less than in its ability to promote the establishment of first-class museums, libraries, academies, even without governmental aid.

We count Mr. Lowell, among others, as a specimen of home-culture, not of foreign, and especially of our Eastern type. His life shows what the New England culture, not always so fortunate, can do for a man of genius. And thus, even aside from his writings, he is a person of note. The tributes frequently paid him would of themselves keep his name before us. But it is natural for him to shun publicity, and the movements of authors greatly beneath him are more zealously chronicled than his own; nor is he, I think, so commonly read as a few other poets of his standing. Yet many of his sayings, like those of Emerson, are a portion of our usual discourse and reference, and the people have taken some of his lyrics faithfully to heart. He has written one work which bids fair to become a classic. Whether as a poet and critic, or as a man of affairs, of rare breeding and the healthiest moral tone, Mr. Lowell is one of whom it may be affirmed, in the words applied to another, that a thing derives more weight from the fact that he has said it. Are we conscious, then, of having in view a man better than his best writings? But this may be said of many authors, and there must be, at all events, a live personality behind good work.

Lowell’s sense of this, and of the strength and fullness of existence, keep him void of [Pg 98]conceit. He often has seemed impatient of his art, half-ready to cry out upon it, lest it lead him from green fields and forests, from the delight of life itself. He is not swift to magnify his office above the heroic action of other men. This catholicity is rare among poets and artists, whose dearest failing is a lack of concern for people or things not associated with their own pursuits. On the other hand, poetry is the choicest expression of human life, and the poet who does not revere his art and believe in its sovereignty is not born to wear the purple. Lowell, in fortunate seasons, goes back from life to song with new vigor and wisdom, and with a loyalty strengthened by experiences. After all, the man dies, while his imaginative works may survive even the record of his name. Therefore the work is the essential thing; and Mr. Lowell’s work, above all, is so imbued with his individuality, that none can overlook the relations of the one to the other, or fail, in comprehending his poetry, to enter into the make and spirit of the poet himself.

Mr. Underwood has given some account of Lowell’s ancestry, and of the conditions which led to the birth and breeding of a poet. We have a picture of the Cambridge manor, Elmwood,—a home not wanting in the relics of an old-time family,—portraits, books, and things of art. Mr. Lowell’s father, and his father’s father, were clergymen, orthodox, well-read, bearing honored names; his mother, a gifted woman, the mistress of various languages, and loving the old English songs and ballads,—no wonder that three of her children came to be authors, and this one, the youngest, a famous citizen and poet. It is not hard to fill in these outlines with something of the circumstance that, as I pointed out in the case of Mrs. Browning, fore-ordains the training of a genius; that supplies, I repeat, the means of its self-training, since the imagination derives its sustenance like a plant, selecting and assimilating for itself. All it needs is food, atmosphere, a place to grow. In these Lowell was exceptionally favored, under the influence of local and family traditions, the home-culture, the method of his father, and the taste of the mother from whom he inherited his bent toward letters and song.

His college course made little change in this way of growth. He might fail of advantages to be gained from drill and drudgery; but was sure to extend his reading in the direction of his natural tastes, until acquainted with many literatures. His subsequent study of the law probably added the logical discipline that enables one to formulate ideas. But any voice that would restrict him to his profession must have fallen “vainlier than the hen’s to her false chickens in the pool.” Instinct, judgment, everything, pointed to letters as his calling. The period of his start, and his father’s literary tastes, are indicated by his avowal that he was brought up “in the old superstition” that Pope “was the greatest poet that ever lived.” This would account for his escape to the renaissance of beauty and romance; just as the repression of an orthodox training may have had much to do with his early liberalism in politics and theology.

It seems that the light-hearted Cambridge student was eager for all books except those of the curriculum, and troubled himself little as to mathematics and other prosaic branches. This was quite in accordance with precedent, teste Landor or Shelley, yet I doubt not that he was more than once sorry for it in after years. And I suspect that he passed for what he was, or promised to be, with the Faculty, and became something of an oracle among his mates. There was more eagerness then, at Harvard, than now; the young fellows were not ashamed to wear their hearts upon their sleeves. The gospel of indifferentism had not been preached. The words “clever” and “well-equipped” now seem to express our highest good; we avoid sentimentalism, but nourish less that genius which thrives in youth upon hopefully garnished food.

Lowell wrote the Class Poem, and took leave to print it, being under discipline at the time appointed for its delivery. Mr. Sanborn neatly points out that it abounded in conventional satire of the new-fangled reformers whom the poet was soon to join. As a law graduate, he shortly clouded his professional chances by writing for the Boston “Miscellany,” and issuing a little book of verse. A writer’s first venture is apt to be a novel or poem. Should he grow in station, it becomes rare, or valued for its indications. The thin, pretty volume, “A Year’s Life,” does show traits of its author’s after-work, but not so distinctly as many books of the kind. Three years later he termed its contents,

But three years are a long time in the twenties. There are a few ideal passages in this book, and some that suggest his forming tendencies. It was inscribed to “Una,” whom he aptly might have called Egeria, for she was already both the inspirer and the sharer of his best imaginings. A few well-chosen pieces are [Pg 99]retained in the opening division of Mr. Lowell’s standard collection. Of these, “Threnodia” is a good specimen of his early manner. The simple and natural lines “With a Pressed Flower” are in contrast with vaguer portions of the first book, and have a characteristic thought in the closing stanza, where he says of flowers, that

The cullings from “A Year’s Life,” with various and riper odes, lyrics, and sonnets, make up the “Early Poems” of his latest edition, showing his range at the date of their production.

Some of the longer pieces lack compactness, and betray an imagination still somewhat nebulous. “The Sirens,” “Irené,” “My Love,” “Rosaline,” are like the first poems of Tennyson, then a risen star. There is a trace of Shelley in the lines “To Perdita, Singing,” and “The Moon.” “Allegra” is sweet, direct, original. The sonnets upon reading Wordsworth, a sonnet to Spenser (in “A Year’s Life”), and one to Keats, afford hints of the poet’s healthy tastes. Those to Phillips and Giddings prove that he was no laggard in the unpopular antislavery movement. As to other reforms, it is plain that he began to have convictions,—or, at least, to have a conviction that he had convictions. “The Heritage” and “A Rich Man’s Son” were taken up by the press, and are still found in our school-readers. Lowell’s voice was for independence, human rights, the dignity of labor. Some of the love-poetry is exquisite. Its serenity declares that no other word than happiness is needed for the history of the time between the dates of his first and second books. To be sure, he set himself to edit “The Pioneer,” the conditions being so adverse that poets and essayists who now should make the fortune of a magazine could not prolong its short existence. But we think of Lowell as enjoying to the full those three zestful years,—a briefless barrister, perhaps, yet guarded by the Muse, and having the refined companionship of the girl whose love he sought and won. In the year of his marriage to Maria White, he published a second volume, whose contents, with other verse composed before “Sir Launfal,” exhibit his poetic genius in its fresh maturity.

“The Legend of Brittany,” an artistic and legendary poem, was, for that time, quite a significant production, so much so that Poe said it was “the noblest poem yet written by an American.” It commended itself to him because, unlike some of Lowell’s verse, it was designed for poetry and nothing else—it is not in the least didactic. And that Poe said this, and meant it, shows how few were the longer poems of merit we then had produced. The Legend is a sweet, flowing tale, in the ottava rima, after the mode of Keats and up to the standard of Leigh Hunt. It needs dramatic force in the climax, but is simple and delicately finished. A still better piece of artwork is “Rhœcus,” that Greek legend of the wood-nymph and the bee. The poet by chance subjected himself, and not discreditably, to the test of a comparison with the most bewitching of Landor’s Hellenics, “The Hamadryad.” Much might be said, in view of these two idyls, upon the antique and modern handlings of a theme. Landor worked as a Grecian might, giving the tale in chiseled verse, with no curious regard for its teachings. Its beauty is enough for him, and there it stands—a Periclean vase. His instinct became a conscious method. In a letter to Forster he begs him to amend the poem by striking out a bit of “reflection” which a true hamadryad should “cut across”:

Mr. Lowell’s “Rhœcus” is an example of the modern feeling. Passages such as that beginning:

are simple and lovely; the scene where Rhœcus, playing dice, rudely treats the winged messenger, is a picture equaling the best of Landor’s. But the story itself is preceded by a moralizing commentary, and other glosses of the same kind are here and there. The whole is treated as an allegory conveying a lesson. The wood-nymph herself draws one, tenderly and sadly, at the close:

This method confuses the beauty of the poem, though distinct enough in purpose, and characteristic of the New England school.

The poet, in truth, felt himself called upon for secular work. With all his love of beauty, he had a greater dread of dilettanteism. The air was full of “progress,” and he made a general assay of the new thoughts and enthusiasms. Reform-verse came naturally from the young idealist portrayed by his friend Page. The broad collar and high-parted, flowing hair set off a handsome, eager face, with the [Pg 100]look of Keats and the resolve of a Brook-Farmer. But he was wholly himself, incapable of the affectation which—in a time when poetry is not the first choice of readers—markets its wares by posing for the jest and zest of fashion, and brings into contempt the grand old name of poet among those who know poetry only as a name. Affectation and self-seeking in art, as elsewhere, are detestable. Only the genius of Byron, in a romantic period, atoned for his trace of the former. So far as Byron was an actor, he was a great one. It makes no difference whether the affectation be one of virility or of refinement; the self-seeking is apt to be that of the author or artist who devotes one day in the month to work, and all the rest to advertising it. You may see his outward type in the water-fly Osric, of whom Hamlet says that “’tis a vice to know him.” Such creatures and their habits are the breed of special times—men with some bit of talent, gaining their paltry ends, and sure to be duly classified at last. And so Osric, as Hamlet disdainfully perceives, with “many more of the same breed that the drossy age dotes on,” has “only got the tune of the time * * * a kind of yesty collection, which carries them through and through the most fond and winnowed opinions.” But Lowell, I say, was himself alone, wearing his Arcadian garb, yet hasting to throw aside his crook at the sound of the trumpet. His “progressive” verse often was fuller of opinion than beauty, of eloquence than passion. Some of it is in a measure which reformers have seemed to hit upon by an exasperating instinct—the much-abused verse shown at its best in “Locksley Hall.” With the typical radical, it is enough to make a thing wrong that it is accepted by a majority. Lowell found himself with the minority, but the minority then chanced to be the party of a future, and, in essentials, wholly right. If Whittier and himself, like the Lake Poets before them, became didactic through moral earnestness, it none the less aided to inspire them. Their verse advanced a great cause, and, as years went by, grew in quality—perhaps as surely as that of poets who, in youth, reject all but artistic considerations.

Before Lowell’s thought and imagination had gained their richness, he had to contend with a disproportionate flow of language, if using forms that did not of themselves restrict it. “Prometheus,” “Columbus,” “A Glance Behind the Curtain,” are studies upon massive themes, weakened because their matter is not compactly molded. Yet the poet had a terse art of saying things, as when he made Cromwell declare that

and himself said:

or, similarly, spoke up for

His manner often was fine:

His analytic turn early cropped out in the “Studies for Two Heads,” which is all Lowell—as one now would say. The poem “To the Past” is written with more circumstance than Bryant’s, but the latter, in simple grandeur and diction, is the more imaginative. To indicate, finally, the chief reservation of Mr. Lowell’s admirers, I must own that these poems often are marked with technical blemishes, from which even his later verse is not exempt. In trying both to express his conviction and to find a method of his own, he betrayed an irregular ear, and a voice rare in quality, but not wholly to be relied upon. He had a way, moreover, of “dropping” like his own bobolink, of letting down his fine passages with odd conceits, mixed metaphors, and licenses which as a critic he would not overlook in another. To all this add a knack of coining uncouth words for special tints of meaning, when there are good enough counters in the language for any poet’s need. Space can be more agreeably used than by citing examples of these failings, which a reader soon discovers for himself. They have perplexed the poet’s friends and teased his reviewers. Although such defects sometimes bring a man’s work nearer to us, the question is as to their influence upon its permanent value. Verse may be faultily faultless, or may go to the other extreme. We are indebted, as usual, to Mr. Lowell himself for our critical test. Writing of Wordsworth, he says that “the work must surpass the material,” and refers to “that shaping imagination which is the highest criterion of a poet.”

It is a labor that physics pain to recall the verse by which he gained that hold upon his countrymen which strengthens through lengthening years. The public was right in its liking for “The Changeling,” “She Came and Went,” “The First Snow-fall,” than which there are few more touching lyrics of [Pg 101]the affections. “The Shepherd of Admetus” and “An Incident in a Railway Car” are on themes which moved the poet to harmonize his taste and thought. When called upon, as he supposed, to make a choice between Taste and his conception of Duty, Taste sometimes went to the wall. Doubtless, he grew to see that the line of Beauty does not always follow Duty’s follower, and that the surrender of the former itself may be in the nature of a crime. His sense never was more subtle, his taste never more delightful, than in the flawless stanzas on the “Phœbe,” recently printed in this magazine. The public keeps in store for him the adage of the willful songster. That he “can” sing was discovered at the outset. One such piece as “Hebe” decided that point:

It also included his theory of song, and a sound one:

To this lesson of his own experience he recurs again and again:

Like other poets of quality, Mr. Lowell has found the Muse, between her inspirations, a coquette and evader. He forms his rule accordingly:

From a poet who does this, we shall get flavor, and, in any event, the best of himself. Lowell’s career, telling equally of use and song, has proved the wisdom of his admonitions:

To which one may add, without malice, that Mr. Lowell can give even the Muse lessons in the art of flirting; knowing from long practice that, when she once has yielded her heart, she forgives even the infidelities of a favored lover.

There is a beautiful feeling in Lowell’s poems of Nature. Wordsworth has dwelt upon the contrast between the youthful regard for Nature,—the feeling of a healthy and impassioned child,—and that of the philosopher who finds in her a sense “of something far more deeply interfused.” The latter is a gift that makes us grave. It led Bryant to worship and invocation; and now, in the new light of science, we seek for, rather than feel, the soul of things. The charm of Lowell’s outdoor verse lies in its spontaneity; he loves Nature with a child-like joy, her boon companion, finding even in her illusions welcome and relief,—just as one gives himself up to a story or a play, and will not be a doubter. Here he never ages, and he beguiles you and me to share his joy. It does me good to see a poet who knows a bird or flower as one friend knows another, yet loves it for itself alone. He sings among the woods, as Boone hunted, refusing to be edified, and with no wish for improvements. This one section he reserves for life itself:

His manhood shall not make him lose his boyhood; the whiff of the woods, the brook’s voice, the spangle of spring-flowers,—these never fail to stir the old-time thrill; our hearts leap with his, and for once forget to ask the reason why.

Outside the “Pictures from Appledore” there is little of the ocean in his verse: the sea-breeze brings fewer messages to him than to Longfellow and Whittier. His sense of inland nature is all the more alert,—for him the sweet security of meadow-paths and orchard-closes. He has the pioneer heart, to which a homestead farm is dear and familiar, and native woods and waters are an intoxication. The American, impressed at first by the oaks and reaches of an Old-World park, soon wearies of them, and takes like a partridge to the bush. What Lowell loves most in nature [Pg 102]are the trees and their winged habitants, and the flowers that grow untended. “The Indian Summer Reverie” is an early and delightful avowal of his pastoral tastes. His favorite birds and trees, the meadows, river, and marshes, all are there, put in with strokes no modern descriptive poet has excelled. Browning’s capture of the thrush’s song is rivaled by such a touch as this:

The poems “To a Pine-Tree” and “The Birch-Tree,” with their suggestive measures, are companion-pieces that will last. The poet shares the stormy reign of the monarch of Katahdin; yet loves the whisper of the birch in the vale:

Of Lowell’s earlier pieces, the one which shows the finest sense of the poetry of Nature is that addressed “To the Dandelion.” The opening phrase ranks with the selectest of Wordsworth and Keats, to whom imaginative diction came intuitively,—

and both thought and language are felicitous throughout:

This poem contains many of its author’s peculiar beauties and none of his faults; it was the outcome of the mood that can summon a rare spirit of art to express the gladdest thought and most elusive feeling.

I think, also, that “The Vision of Sir Launfal” owed its success quite as much to a presentation of Nature as to its misty legend. It really is a landscape-poem, of which the lovely passage, “And what is so rare as a day in June?” and the wintry prelude to Part Second, are the specific features. Like the Legend of Brittany, it was a return to poetry as poetry, and a sign that the author was groping for a theme equal to his reserved strength. The Vinland fragment hints at a wider range of experiment. Thus far, in fact, no positively new notes. Lowell had shown his art and insight, a brave purpose, absolute sympathy with Nature. The ferment of his youth had worked itself clear. “Occasional” pieces, the stanzas to Kossuth, the poem on the English graves at Concord, came from definite convictions and a strong hand. He was a man, well girded, who had not found his best occasion; who needed the pressure of imminent events to bring out his resources and make his work enduring. The question, “How can I make a real addition to literature?” often must have come to one so penetrative. Possibly he was hampered, also, by his own culture. The Dervish’s ointment may be too freely applied to the eyes; too close a knowledge of the verities may check ideal effort,—too just a balance of faculties produces indecision. Practical success in art must come from every-day ambition and experiment.

But creative results are apt to follow upon the gift to look at things from without. If Lowell had not utilized his surroundings, he was none the less aware of them. The solution of his problem came when least expected, and as a confirmation of his theory of the Unsought. The clew was not in ancestral or Arthurian legends, but in his own time and at his door-stone. It was woven of the homeliest, the most ungainly, material. It led to something so fresh and unique that its value, like that of other positively new work, at first hardly could have been manifest, even to the poet himself.

The “Biglow Papers” ended all question of Mr. Lowell’s originality. They are a master-work, in which his ripe genius fastened the spirit of its region and period. Their strength lies in qualities which, as here combined, were no man’s save his own. They declare the faith of a sincere and intelligent party with respect to war,—a sentiment called out by the invasion of Mexico, unjust in itself, but now seen to be a historical factor in the world’s progress. This was a minority faith, held in vulgar contempt, and there was boldness in declaring it. Again, the “Biglow Papers” were the first, and are the best, metrical presentation of Yankee character in its thought, dialect, manners, and singular mixture of coarseness and shrewdness with the fundamental sense of beauty and right. Never sprang the flower of art from a more unpromising soil; yet these are eclogues as true [Pg 103]as those of Theocritus or Burns. Finally, they are not merely objective studies, but charged with the poet’s own passion, and bearing the marks of a scholar’s hand.

The work plainly shows its manner of growth. The first lyric struck the vein, the poet’s mind took fire by its own friction, and one effort inspired another. The “Papers” made an immediate “hit”; the public instinctively passed a judgment upon them, in which critics were able to concur after the poet had made an opus of the collected series. Here was now seen that maturity of genius, of which Humor is a flower revealing the sound kind man within the poet. Such a work is, also, an illustration and defense of the tenure of Wit in the field of art. Verse made only as satire belongs to a lower order. Of such there are various didactic specimens. But Wit has an imaginative side, and Humor springs like Iris—all smiles and tears. The wit of poets often has been the faculty that ripened last, the overflow of their strength and experience. In the “Biglow Papers,” wit and humor are united as in a composition of high grade. The jesting is far removed from that clownish gabble which, if it still increases, will shortly add another to the list of offenses that make killing no murder.

Mr. Lowell was under thirty at this time, and fairly may be reckoned among poets who have done great work in youth. His leap from provincialism is seen in the accessory divisions of his completed satire. The “Notices of an Independent Press” are a polygonal mirror in which journalism saw all its sins reflected, and wherewith he scanned not others’ follies only, but his own, mocking our spread-eagleism, anglophobia, and the weaker phases of movements in which himself had joined. He burlesqued in mock Latin the venerable pomp of college-catalogues and Down-East genealogies. Then followed a clever analysis of the Yankee dialect, extended and made authoritative in a prefix to his second series. In the very first contribution of Mr. Biglow, the native Yankee is immortally portrayed. The ludicrous realism of the transcript is without parallel:

How the poet must have enjoyed that stanza! What rollicking delight! But he quickly recalls the inborn pride and patriotism, the sacred wrath, of the true New England, and cries out from a wounded spirit:

His rejection of the popular ideal of Webster, his branding ridicule of Robinson, Cushing, Palfrey, and his scorn of trimmers, vitalized the “Biglow Papers” and make their hits proverbial. The first series was a protest not only against the slave-holders’ invasion of Mexico, but against war itself. Twenty-five years later a greater war arose, a mortal struggle to repress the wrong that caused the first. To such a conflict even Lowell could not say nay; his kinsmen freely gave their blood, and bereavement after bereavement came fast upon him. In the second series of the “Biglow Papers” the humor is more grim, the general feeling more intense. Still they are not Tyrtæan strains, but chiefly called out by political episodes,—like the Mason and Slidell affair,—and constantly the poet seeks a relief from the tension of the hour. One feels this in reading the dialogue, between the Bridge and Monument at Concord, suggested by Burns’s “Twa Briggs,”—the return to “Sunthin’ in the Pastoral Line,” or, most of all, “The Courtin’.” This bucolic idyl is without a counterpart; no richer juice can be pressed from the wild-grape of the Yankee soil. Of the epistles, the tenth has the most pathetic under-tone. It was composed, seemingly at a heat, in answer to a request for

Mr. Biglow justifies the tone of his new series by avowing the immeasurable anguish and perplexity of the time:

His heart is full with its own sorrows; he half-despises himself “for rhymin’,” when his young kinsmen have fallen in the fray:

[Pg 104]

He longs for Peace, but invokes her to come,

These final lyrics, less varied and sparkling than their predecessors, are, in not unfrequent passages, more poetical. The author’s statement of the causes and method of his work is more suggestive than Poe’s whimsical analysis of “The Raven,” and not open to the suspicion of being written for effect.

The “Biglow Papers,” as we now have them, form a strongly proportioned work, and are a positive addition to the serio-comic literature of the world. They are almost apart from criticism; there is no prototype by which to test them. Lowell has been compared to Butler, but “Hudibras,” whether as poetry or historical satire, is vastly below the master-work of the New England idyllist. The titles of a few great books, each of which has no fellow, come to mind as we think of its possible rank and duration, and I observe that Mr. Sanborn does not fear to mention the highest. It is a point in favor of transatlantic judgment that the “Biglow Papers” first gave Mr. Lowell the standing, with those who make opinion in England, which his choicest poems of art and nature had failed to procure for him. From that time their interest in himself and his work has been apparent. Their university degrees, their estimates of his genius and character, declare him to be one whom the mother-land delights to honor, and have made more distinct the position which, as I have said, he holds among our men of letters.

His literary satire, “A Fable for Critics,” was a good-natured tilt at the bards of Griswold’s “Parnassus,”—a piece of uneven merit, but far from being open to the charge—that of malevolence—which Poe brought against it. The estimate of Poe is not unfair, and other sketches—such as those of Bryant, Hawthorne, and Dwight—are deftly made. Nor could one put a surer finger upon Lowell’s short-comings than his own in the lines upon himself. The allegory of the fable is trite. Its sections are loosely united, the language and rhythm are at hap-hazard, and, on the whole, it is a careless production, however true to the time and tribe it celebrates. It is hard to conceive why Mr. Lowell should permit his editions to retain the extravaganza of “Dr. Knott,” so little above the grade of the hackney verse in which poor Hood punned and rhymed, not as the poet he was, but under grim compulsion.

A poet of intellectual scope will not content himself with verse, as the sole outlet of his thought and feeling. Mr. Lowell’s essays display his genius in free activity, and have added greatly, and justly, to his authority and standing. I could not select better illustrations of the union of the critical and artistic faculties, or of the distinctions and analogies between the verse and prose of a poet.

It is to be noted that Lowell’s political and moral convictions appear chiefly in his verse. His prose appertains to literature, and, with the exception of some graceful sketch-work, bits of travel and reminiscence, has been restricted to criticism. His earliest prose volume was of this kind, in the form of “Conversations” on the old poets and dramatists. These are the ardent generalizations of a young poet, appreciative rather than searching. They are superseded by his maturer survey of their field, but had a stimulating influence in their time. Many who were students then remember the glow which they felt when Lowell’s early lectures and essays directed them to a sense of what is best in English song. Young enthusiasts, at Cambridge, found him an ideal teacher and professor of belles-lettres. As years went on, his critical pen was rarely idle. A good fate determined that he should be subjected to the demands of journalistic routine—that he should carry the “Atlantic Monthly” to a sure foot-hold, advancing the standard of our magazine literature; and that he should afterward hold for nine years the editorship of the “North American Review.” Such a charge overcomes a writer’s vis inertiæ. He naturally becomes his own best contributor, and it was, in a measure, to the spur of his engagements that we owe a notable series of literary essays, many of which first appeared in the review I have named. Publishers have not found his study a reservoir into which they might insert their taps at pleasure. But one must spend time in gathering knowledge to give it out richly, and few comprehend what goes to a page of Lowell’s manuscript. The page itself, were it a letter or press-report, could be written in a quarter-hour; but suppose it represents, as in one of his greater essays, the result of prolonged studies—the reading, indexing, formulating works in many languages, upon his shelves or in the Harvard library? Of all this he gives the ultimate quintessence, a distillation fragrant with his own genius. Who can estimate the toil of such work? What can adequately [Pg 105]pay for it? There are two guerdons that raise the spirit to scorn delights and live laborious days: Milton sings of one—but the surer is the “exceeding great reward” of the work itself.

Mr. Lowell’s important reviews and studies, selected with excellent discretion, are contained in “My Study Windows,” and in the first and second series of “Among My Books.” These, with the “Fireside Travels,” make up the collection, in four volumes, of his prose works. His style is marked by individuality. Mr. Underwood suggests that “the distinctive prose of a poet is necessarily quite removed from general apprehension.” The word “distinctive” seems the one qualification that justifies the remark. And how is a poet’s prose distinctive? Not in rhythmic undulations, if he be a true poet and artist. Such a writer does not lend the semblance of verse to his prose. To do this, he must produce something inferior to either. Few metrical cadences in the prose of Milton, Goldsmith, Coleridge, Byron, Landor, or Bryant. Its strength and beauty are of another kind. Many of Dickens’s passages, we know, can be assorted into lengths of semi-metrical verse; but Dickens, when he tried to make poems, had no great success. Thackeray, whose prose is prose, was, within his range, a charming poet. Longfellow’s “Hyperion” is exceptional—written as a “prose-poem” by a young artist fresh from the sentiment of German mystics and romances. As for Carlyle, he was a poet, as Lowell says, “without the gift of song.” He invented a special kind of prose as his form of poetic expression. I infer that a poet’s prose is not removed from general apprehension by its technique; all things considered, I expect to find it as clear and unadulterate as that of any layman—not more illogical, not more dependent on the reader’s intuition to fill out its lapses. A poet’s instinct is constructive, little given to omissions in prose syntax. If his prose is hard to understand, it may be that he is a learned thinker, whose thoughts and references do not come at once within popular apprehension.

It is because a poet is more original, not more erratic, than many laymen, that his prose often is so individual. Mr. Lowell’s is clear enough to those familiar with the choicest literature. In critical exploits that bring out his resources, he is not a writer for dullards, and to read him enjoyably is a point in evidence of a liberal education. His manner, in fact, is Protean, adjusted to his topic, and has a flexibility that well expresses his racy wit and freshness: combined with this, peculiarities that irritate the most catholic minds. Outspoken reviewers have subjected it to minute analysis, and declared their sense of its short-comings. Their statement that it is not creative, but critical, is true in the ordinary meaning; yet I doubt if “creative” criticism and that which is truly critical differ like the experimental and analytic chemistries. Certainly Lowell is a most suggestive essayist. He sets us a-thinking, and, after a stretch of comment, halts in by-paths, or enlivens us with his sudden wit. He has the intellect, held to be a mark of greatness, that “puts in motion the intellect of others.” But he is charged with querulousness, inconsistency of judgment, contempt for unity, and with the habit of becoming entangled in expression. Attention is directed to the conceits, the whimsical diction and recondite instances, to be found in these essays. Verse, not prose, is declared by a few to be his proper vehicle. The indictment has some foundation, but to what extent does it affect his general merits? Things bad in themselves are often part of an author’s essential quality. It seems to me that there is a close analogy between the styles of Mr. Lowell’s verse and prose, distinct as the two forms are,—an analogy to be observed, if I had space to point it out, in the verse and prose of other poets, and inevitable from an author’s habits of mind. I cannot better state the matter than by saying that the beauties and faults of the one are those of the other; both are open to the criticisms already made, and to which I may refer again; but each is sustained by a spirit which makes the reader forgive and forget. Under the drift and stubble that float on the surface is the strong, deep current which bears them along, or throws them to the side, and keeps a central channel clear.

Mr. Lowell’s lighter touches have the grace that is always modern. The “Fireside Travels” make his censors withhold their arrows of the chase, pleased with the landscape and the guide. However exquisite the art of our latest sketch-writers, who is better company than Lowell in Old-World loiterings or more deft in wood-craft and garden-craft at home? His other prose volumes have sturdier characteristics. Here are the companion-pieces on Lessing and Rousseau; the series—a labor of years—upon the great English masters, from Chaucer to Keats and Carlyle; the elaborate study of Dante; the off-hand portraits of Josiah Quincy, Lincoln, Thoreau; no common subjects these,—who grapples them must do his best, or suffer a fall. Other essays, too, that are not soon forgotten: “Witchcraft in New England,” the famous treatise “On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners,” and two papers—“My Garden Acquaintance,” and “A Good Word for Winter,”—outdoor studies that would have delighted [Pg 106]the man of Selborne. The style of the critical prose certainly is not modeled upon Addison and his school; it is scarcely what Lowell himself describes as “that exquisite something called Style, which makes itself felt by the skill with which it effaces itself, and masters us at last with a sense of indefinable completeness.” To some it may seem a stumbling-block; but to most, I fancy, it is the self-expression of a versatile, learned, original man. When over-freighted with words from other languages, new and old, the polyglotism implies so close a familiarity with many literatures that he cannot avoid drawing on them for his purpose. A pedant quotes for the sake of a display of learning; Lowell, because he has mastered everything connected with his theme. His style, as I have hinted, sometimes is quaintly influenced by his topic and its associations. “Witchcraft” revives here and there the manner of more than one seventeenth-century homilist. The English proper of this curious and learned essay, with all its auroral qualities, is less simple and strong than that of the critic’s noble discourse of Dryden, whose very Latinism seems to befit the spirit of its hero. It should be noted that Lowell’s polysyllables—and few writers have more—do not weigh down the page; they are accelerative, galloping, even charging, in leap on leap, from section to section. His word-coining is less venial, for he does not lack taste, and at times exercises it rigidly. But his humor, learning, and caprice audaciously put it by, with a “Go thy ways till I need thee!” His comments on Spenser’s innovations should be self-applied, and especially the words culled from Bellay, who bids his poet “Fear not to innovate somewhat * * * with modesty, however, with analogy, and judgment of ear.” His linguistic arsenal serves him well: nor does he fail of fine exordiums and perorations, and sentences whose “beauty and majesty,” as he says of Spenser’s, he refuses to endanger by “experiments of this kind.” But we should miss something if we held him to his own formula of the best writing, that in which the “component parts” of English “are most exquisitely proportioned one to the other.”

Authors who do lay-work for a living, and pursue their art in hours which are the breathing-time of other men, are permitted few of the common pleasures for which they needs must crave. Their manuscripts are written in their blood, and the ink grows pale apace. Even the delight of reading, that at once stimulates and draws upon the brain, is forbidden to one who is harnessed in the van of a professional career. But Lowell, I suspect, has been shy of any harness from which he could not bolt at will. His book-feeding has been unstinted, omnivorous: he was born among books, reared upon them, and has taken from them that which enriches him yet leaves them none the poorer. Of all writing-men, he who can read without stint is to be envied. Take the essay on Chaucer; it is the result of perfect equipment for a literary task. It is a spring-time brew of philological comment and poetic induction: it reeks with fact, flavored by originality. Here is a rare elucidation of both the letter and the spirit of Chaucer’s song; no mere scholar could so illumine the process, and no poet who was not a scholar would venture upon it. Lowell is the contratype of Poe, who made a flourish of scholarship, and was sure of little for which he did not cram. Poe’s humor, moreover, was a heavy lance, awkwardly and maliciously couched; Lowell holds his weapon with grace and courtesy, and has a sword of wit in reserve, should affairs grow serious. His faculty of scholarly assimilation and reproduction resembles Montaigne’s. What he thoroughly enjoys is work like his review of the “Library of Old Authors.” This paper opens with a talk upon books, pleasant as Lamb’s gossip and with latter-day thought and criticism beneath the winning style; then follow swift but searching etymological tests of early authors and modern editors, from which the latter come out with some loss of luster. Lowell’s idea of translation is free reproduction by a man of genius. He values Chapman, and declares that Keats, of all men, was the one to have translated Homer. One would like to see a translation from his own hand, say of Aristophanes: should the text halt, the commentary alone would repay us, and the freest versions by Lowell might be something “more original than his originals.” His wit inclines him to condense professional truths in expressions that stick in the memory. The monograph on Spenser sparkles with clever, pointed sayings: “Chaucer had been in his grave one hundred and fifty years ere England had secreted choice material enough for the making of another great poet.” Of ancient poetasters, it cannot be said “that their works have perished because they were written in an obsolete dialect; for it is the poem that keeps the language alive, and not the language that buoys up the poem.” * * * “The complaints one sometimes hears of the neglect of our older literature are the regrets of archæologists rather than of critics. One does not need to advertise the squirrels” (this sentence is like Landor) “where the nut-trees are, nor could any amount of lecturing persuade them to spend their teeth on a [Pg 107]hollow nut.” * * * “Any verse that makes you and me foreigners is not only not great poetry, but no poetry at all.” Speaking of Dunbar’s works, “Whoso is national enough to like thistles may browse there to his heart’s content. I am inclined for other pasture, having long ago satisfied myself by a good deal of dogged reading that every generation is sure of its own share of bores without borrowing from the past.” And in “Witchcraft” he says that Sidney “seems to have divined the fact that there is but one kind of English that is always appropriate and never obsolete, namely, the very best.” With all this point and wisdom, he often cannot refrain from unleashing conceits that fly without “stamping” their imagery. In a single page he compares Chaucer’s style to a river and a precious vintage, and contrasts it with the froth of champagne and the folly of Milo. In relation to Shakspere’s birth, we have astrology, vinous processes, and alembic projection, following upon one another as illustrations of the coming nativity. Afterward, while censuring language that is “literary, so that there is a gap between the speech of books and that of life,” Mr. Lowell tells us that “a mind in itself essentially original becomes in the use of such a medium of utterance unconsciously reminiscential and reflective, lunar and not solar, in expression and even in thought!” Passages of this sort not unnaturally move other critics, in their turn, to fling a de te fabula at the writer. An author, in truth, “should consider how largely the art of writing consists in knowing what to leave in the inkstand.” But Mr. Lowell is not unconscious of these things: he toys with licenses, as if to prove that, next to Chapman, “he has the longest wind * * * without being long-winded,” of all authors. Nor have we any writer whose imagery is oftener strong and exquisite: as in the description of a snowy winter landscape, or at the close of his “Milton,” or where, in “Spenser,” he glorifies the handiwork of “the witch, Imagination.”

Lowell’s scrutiny is sure, and his tests are apt and instant. He is a detective to be dreaded by pretenders. He wastes no reverence upon traditional errors, but no man is more impatient of sham-reform, less afraid of odia, whether theological, scientific, or æsthetic. As a comparative critic, there are few so well served by memory and reading. In the essay on Milton he treats with novel discrimination the respective modes of Shakspere, Milton, and Tasso. Writing of Wordsworth, Swinburne, and others, he uses the comparative method to good purpose. No one is a better judge of what is original. Most things have been said more than once, and he knows by whom. His standard is the manner of saying. “In the parliament of the present,” he declares, “every man represents a constituency of the past”; and again, “Writers who have no past are pretty sure of having no future”; and “It is the man behind the words that gives them value.” He names Chaucer, Shakspere, Dryden, in evidence of the truth that “It is not the finding of a thing, but the making something of it after it is found, that is of consequence.” In his paper on Wordsworth, he draws a distinction between originality and eccentricity which, I fear, will not soon become obsolete for want of cases in illustration. Striking points are frequent in his critical prose. It is Lowell who says, of Shakspere, that the manner of a first-class poet is incommunicable, and therefore he never can found a school. His essay on Carlyle, undertaken at a time when few ventured to dispute the old Norseman’s autocracy, is, on the whole, as just as it is independent; that on Lincoln could only have been written by one whose convictions rendered him prophetic. Lowell’s analogical gift is seen in his comparison of Lincoln to Henry IV.—made before the President’s assassination had completed the parallel. His declaration, in “Spenser,” of the qualities of voice that “define a man as a poet,” is not to be gainsaid, and he also gives us a clever test of the worth of allegory,—it must be that which the reader “helps to make out of his own experience.” It is true that his verdicts are not always such as we agree with, nor do they always agree among themselves. Being a poet, he is prone to express his immediate feeling without submitting it to the principles that, in fact, govern his final judgment. This imparts life to a writer, but subjects him to the charge of inconsistency, especially if it is not his habit to revise past work. Mr. Lowell scarcely does justice to Wordsworth’s imagination, though keenly alive to the bard’s puerilities and want of humor. His essay on Dryden, as a presentation of the man and poet, is the best of its length, and contains some of the writer’s finest apothegms; that on Pope is inferior,—the critic being so out of personal liking for the figure-head of his youth, as to treat him—not without fairness and discrimination, but I think inadequately. He possibly overrates Clough, as a signal representative of modern feeling, yet may be forgiven for this, as he knew and loved him, and was joined with him in the freemasonry of comrades and poets. He has touched very lightly, once and again, on Emerson, but with precision and truth. His analysis of Thoreau is sharply criticised as being narrow, but it did expose the defective [Pg 108]side of a unique character, and, all things considered, is the subtlest of his minor reviews.

Mr. Lowell rightly holds the highest imagination to be, not so much that which “gathers into the intense focus of passionate phrase,” as “the faculty that shapes and gives unity of design and balanced gravitation of parts.” His work, as we have seen, at times displays the former kind, rather than the latter. It is in dwelling on special traits, with praise or censure, that he seems discursive. Thus, while his “Shakspere Once More” includes a masterly exposition of the dramatist’s style, it is fragmentary—even more than need be—in the special touches that follow. Other papers fall short in construction; they are not sustained upon the scales indicated at commencement. This lack of balance, I am sure, is due quite as much to circumstances as to the critic’s temperament, and largely to the limits of the periodicals for which he has written. His mind seizes upon a great theme, in mass and in detail, and he begins as if to cover it thoroughly. “Lessing” opens with a broad view of the German intellect and literature; “Chaucer” with a survey of the Troubadour period; and the analogous introductions to Spenser, Dryden, Pope, are of the utmost value. But to complete an essay upon this plan a book must be written. We are none the less grateful for Lowell’s noble vestibules, even though we find them too large for the structures. Surplusage is a regal fault. We see that he can be an artist at will, though constantly setting the law of his nature above all laws. Some of the greater essays are both various and complete. That upon Dante is a superb example; one need not be a Dantean scholar to comprehend the scope and strength of this prolonged, cumulative, coherent analysis of the Florentine’s career—fortified by citations, and enriched with a knowledge of Italian history, literature, atmosphere, at the close of the thirteenth century, such as few living men possess.

Have I not indicated that the unfailing value of Mr. Lowell’s prose work consists in freedom and variety that are the true reflex of the man himself? His resources make him prodigal, and he has the brave impatience of a skilled performer who trusts his ear and is none too careful of the written score. We seem to have his first notes, and find them better than the revised drafts of other men. It is a fellow-feeling which leads him to say of Dryden, that “one of the charms of his best writing is that everything seems struck off at a heat, as by a superior man in the best mood of his talk.” This transfer of his own nature is delightful. He will be free, and his censors should rate his freedom at its worth, and not hold him too rigidly to conventionalities which he understands, yet chooses to forego. Even the arrangement of his essays seems to be a chance one, but there is an art in the chance. He has given us a series of literary monographs in which Americans may take just pride, for his genius has imparted new light and freshness to the greatest themes. To these he might add equally notable studies of Cervantes, Molière, and Goethe. No living man could venture with less presumption to summon up once more the spirits of those masters. But already the wealth of his critical product is surprising. I think that a selection of apothegms and maxims could be made from it, which, for original thoughts and wise teaching of the author’s art, would be worth more to the literary neophyte, and afford more satisfaction to veteran readers, than a digest of the English prose of any other writer since Landor in his prime.

Mr. Lowell’s prose diversions, so wide in range, could not have been made without some lapse of fealty to the Muse of Song. When, in 1868, the volume “Under the Willows” appeared, a note stated that the poems mostly had been written at intervals during many years. There is, none the less, an air of afternoon about them. They are the songs of a man who in truth has gelebt und geliebet—to revive the motto of his juvenile book—and who has lived to love again. Their thought is subtler, their subjectivity that of one who reads the hearts of others in his own. The title-piece is a most refreshing stretch of pastoral verse. Here and elsewhere his sympathy with birds and trees continues, and much resembles Landor’s:

The close recalls the very feeling of the “Thalysia” of Theocritus, yet escapes the parallel displayed in certain idyls of Tennyson. The opening gives us a finer rhapsody of June, though less apt to catch the popular ear, than the one in “Sir Launfal.” No common musician can touch so variously a well-worn theme.

I do not read these later poems without remembering the moods to which Arthur Clough was subject, and which also affect the verse of another with whom his too brief life was associated. “Auf Wiedersehen” and its [Pg 109]“Palinode”—delicate, brooding, dithyrambic—might seem the work of either Clough or Matthew Arnold, and “A Mood” and “The Fountain of Youth” are quite in sympathy with that of the last-named poet. Mr. Arnold, like Lowell, delights in “accidentals” and in haunting measures, often admirably rendered. But I think few of his lines are both so suggestive and so vibratory as these from Lowell’s exquisite fantasy, “In the Twilight”:

Between verse like this, and that of Mr. Hosea Biglow, each definite in flavor, the range is phenomenal. To extend a comparison made for the sole purpose of illustrating Lowell’s bent, I will say that in a former review I extolled the beauty of Arnold’s objective verse—a kind to which his early preface would restrict the modern poet. But with reference to his occasional hardness of touch, and to the mental conflicts revealed by Clough and himself, I scarcely did full justice to a suggestive class of his poems, in a form peculiarly his own,—poems which grow upon the reader and stand the test of years,—and of these I will name, as good examples, “The Buried Life” and “A Summer Night.” Lowell and Arnold, poets nearly equal in years, both scholars, both original thinkers, occupy representative positions,—the one in Old England and the other in the New,—which are singularly correspondent. Two things, however, are to be noted. The American has the freer hand and wider range as a poet. Humor, dialect-verse, and familiar epistles come from him as naturally as his stateliest odes. Again, while both poets feel the perplexities of the time, Arnold’s difficulties are the more restrictive of his poetic glow; with him the impediments are spiritual, with Lowell they are material and to be overcome. Mr. Lowell at times has found himself restricted by our local conditions, set forth in my recent articles. Like Mr. Arnold, he also feels the questioning spirit of our age of Unrest; but his nature is too various and healthy to be depressed by it. The cloud rests more durably on Arnold. Lowell always has one refuge,—to which, also, the poet of the Highland “Bothie” did not resort in vain. Give him a touch of Mother Earth, a breath of free air, one flash of sunshine, and he is no longer a bookman and a brooder; his blood runs riot with the Spring; this inborn, poetic elasticity is the best gift of the gods. Faith and joy are the ascensive forces of song. Lowell trusts in Nature and she gladdens him. How free and unjaded the spirit of “Al Fresco,” and of the sprayey “Pictures from Appledore”! At times he places you

Men are no less near to him. Like Thoreau,—who knew the world, having “traveled” many years in Concord,—he believes that

His rustics act and speak for themselves. Some of his lyrics are as dramatic, in their way, as those of Browning,—a poet whose erratic temper, also, is not unlike his own.

It is worth the consideration of those who deplore the effect of “over-culture” upon our poets, that the verse of Lowell and Emerson seems the product of their instant moods. The highest culture has learned to unlearn, and Mr. Lowell, when he wrote “A Winter Hymn to my Fire,” had surely reached its freehold. A masterly, unstinted improvisation—the freshness of youth, with the off-hand ease of an accomplished workman—the mellow thought and rich imagination of a poet in his prime. Lowell’s culture has not bred in him an undue respect for polish, and for established ways and forms. Precisely the opposite. Much learning and a fertile mind incline him to express minute shades of his fancy by a most iconoclastic use of words and prefixes. This trait lessened the dignity of his blank-verse poem, “The Cathedral,” admired for its noble passages and justly censured for things that jar and seem out of place. It is not so much [Pg 110]a stately pile, conforming to itself, that has risen “like an exhalation,” as a structure builded part by part, and at different periods of grandeur or grotesqueness. Contrast the imposing finale—the dome of the edifice—with the whimsical by-play of the tourists airing their French. A sensitive reader, himself a poet and critic, not long ago said to me that he never could wholly forgive Mr. Lowell for using the word “undisprivacied” in this elevated poem. But I do not know in what other production the changeful thoughts of a mind swiftly considering the most complex modern problems, are caught so naturally, and as if on the instant by some phrenographic process. “A Familiar Epistle,” without the extreme finish of Mr. Dobson’s work, adds no less to the raciness of Swift or Gay a poet’s blood and fire. It has been said that Lowell’s verse and prose are marked by a manner, rather than by style, in the modern sense,—which latter I take to be an airy, elusive perfection of language and syntax, that of itself wins the reader, and upon which writers of a new school have built up reputations. The thought, the purpose,—these are the main ends with Lowell, though prose or meter suffer for it, and there is no doubt that his manner exactly repeats his habit of mind; and so in this case, as ever, the style is again the man. My own explanation of things which annoy us in his loftier pieces, is that his every-day genius is that of wit and humor. His familiar and satiric writings are consistent works of art. It is upon his serious and exalted moods that these things seem to intrude, like the whisperings of the Black Man in the ears of a Puritan at prayers.

Where he has bravely exorcised his annoyer is in the lyric efforts that hold a poet responsible, not only to himself, but also to the needs of great occasions. In these there is nothing erratic or perverse. The handiwork is unequal, but not seldom the vigorous intellect and throbbing heart of the man lift him to the airiest heights of a nation’s song. I refer, of course, to his odes, delivered since the close of our civil war.

Of these the first, and strongest, is the “Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration.” The poet was fresh from the woes and exaltations of the war. He had an occasion that comes but once in a life-time. The day, the place, the memories of inexorable events, his heart wrung with its own losses and sharing the proud grief of his Alma Mater,—these all united to call forth Mr. Lowell’s highest powers. Another poet would have composed a less unequal ode; no American could have glorified it with braver passages, with whiter heat, with language and imagery so befitting impassioned thought. Tried by the rule that a true poet is at his best with the greatest theme, Lowell’s strength is indisputable. The ode is no smooth-cut block from Pentelicus, but a mass of rugged quartz, beautified with prismatic crystals, and deep-veined here and there with virgin gold. The early strophes, though opening with a fine abrupt line, “Weak-winged is song,” are scarcely firm and incisive. Lowell had to work up to his theme. In the third division, “Many loved Truth, and lavished life’s best oil,” he struck upon a new and musical intonation of the tenderest thoughts. The quaver of this melodious interlude carries the ode along, until the great strophe is reached,

in which the man, Abraham Lincoln, whose death had but just closed the national tragedy, is delineated in a manner that gives this poet a preëminence, among those who capture likeness in enduring verse, that we award to Velasquez among those who fasten it upon the canvas. “One of Plutarch’s men” is before us, face to face: an historic character whom Lowell fully comprehended, and to whose height he reached in this great strophe. Scarcely less fine is his tearful, yet transfiguring, Avete to the sacred dead of the Commemoration. The weaker divisions of the production furnish a background to these passages, and at the close the poet rises with the invocation,

—a strain which shows that when Lowell determinedly sets his mouth to the trumpet, the blast is that of Roncesvalles. Three other heroic odes were composed, it is just to repeat, “after he had precluded himself,” by the Harvard poem, “from many of the natural outlets of thought and feeling.” That upon Washington, delivered “Under the Old Elm,” is the longest and most imposing. Despite its form, it is too long for an ode, and Mr. Lowell has more fitly entitled it a poem. The characterization of Washington is less bold and sympathetic than that of Lincoln. Better the superb tribute to the Mother of Presidents,

which ends the poem with forty unbroken lines that again bring us to the height of Lowell’s power. The closing strophes of the Centennial Ode—“Flawless his hand,” and “They steered by stars the elder shipmen [Pg 111]knew”—are quite as notable. Mr. Underwood has well called the three odes an Alpine group,—yet each in its length and unevenness brings to mind a Rocky Mountain chain, in which snow-clad, sunlit peaks arise, connected by vaguely outlined ridges of the Sierra.

In a passage of the last-named ode there is food for thought between the lines:

But the second-sight of age has been always, I have said, a portion of Lowell’s strength and disability. One thing, perhaps, is needed to make his career ideal: some adequate theme, and mode of treatment, for a work of pure poetry, that shall be, through its imaginative beauty, the rival and contratype of his serio-comic masterpiece. “Fitz-Adam’s Story,” a portion of the long-projected “Nooning,” indicates one direction in which he has felt his way; but he has not followed up the clew with the unhasting, unresting purpose that distinguishes Longfellow. Even now, and after his more heroic flights, it might be a diversion to his later years, and certainly would revive an interest in American verse, if he would go back and complete “The Nooning,” making it, as he can, the most charming of New England’s idyllic poems.

Lowell, then, is a poet who seems to represent New England more variously than either of his comrades. We find in his work, as in theirs, her loyalty and moral purpose. She has been at cost for his training, and he, in turn, has read her whole heart, honoring her as a mother before the world, and seeing beauty in her common garb and speech. To him, the Eastern States are what the fathers, as he has said, desired to found,—no New Jerusalem, but a new England, and, if it might be, a better one. His poetry has the strength, the tenderness, and the defects of the Down-East temper. His doctrines and reflections, in the midst of an ethereal distillation, betimes act like the single drop of prose which, as he reports a saying of Landor to Wordsworth, precipitates the whole. But again he is all poet, and the blithest, most unstudied songster on the old Bay Shore. He is, just as truly, an American of the Americans, alive to the idea and movement of the whole country, singularly independent in his tests of its men and products—from whatever section, or in however unpromising form, they chance to appear. Many have found him the surest to detect and welcome, at the time when welcome was needed and lesser men held back, what there might be in them of worth. He is an artist who recognizes things outside of art, and would not rate the knack of writing lines to a lady’s girdle above all other wonders of the age. In default of the motive for a sustained and purely ideal work, he has awaited the visits of the Muse, and acted on the moment at her bidding; none of our poets, indeed, has so thrown the responsibility on a monitor whom no industry can placate, who is deaf to entreaty, but gives without stint at her own will. He will sing when she bids him, or not at all. But this is in the nature of genius, and thus brings me to a conclusion. The world readily perceives the genius that is set off by an eccentric or turbid life. Taking advantage of this, false Amphitryons often vaunt themselves for a while. But let a true poet be born to culture and position, and have a share of things which constitute good fortune, and his rarer gift has no romantic aid to bring it into notice: its recognition comes solely through its product, and not fully until “after some time be past.” And if Lowell be not, first of all, an original genius, I know not where to look for one. Judged by his personal bearing, who is brighter, more persuasive, more equal to the occasion and himself,—less open to Doudan’s stricture upon writers who hoard and store up their thoughts for the betterment of their printed works? Lowell’s treasury can stand the drafts of both speech and composition. Judged by his works, as a poet in the end must be, he is one who might gain by revision and compression. But think, as is his due, upon the high-water marks of his abundant tide, and see how enviable the record of a poet who is our most brilliant and learned critic, and who has given us our best native idyl, our best and most complete work in dialectic verse, and the noblest heroic ode that America has produced,—each and all ranking with the first of their kinds in English literature of the modern time.

Edmund Clarence Stedman.

[Pg 112]

NEW ENGLAND’S CHEVY-CHASE.

XVI.

Bartley stood for a moment, and then went out and wandered aimlessly about till night-fall. He went out shocked and frightened at what he had done, and ready for any reparation. But this mood wore away, and he came back sullenly determined to let her make the advances toward reconciliation, if there was to be one. Her love had already made his peace, and she met him in the dimly lighted little hall with a kiss of silent penitence and forgiveness. She had on her hat and shawl, as if she had been waiting for him to come and take her out to tea; and on their way to the restaurant, she asked him of his adventure among the newspapers. He told her briefly, and when they sat down at their table he took out the precious order and showed it to her. But its magic was gone; it was only an order for twenty-five dollars, now; and two hours ago it had been success, rapture, a common hope and a common joy. They scarcely spoke of it, but talked soberly of indifferent things.

She could not recur to her father’s visit at once, and he would not be the first to mention it. He did nothing to betray his knowledge of her intention, as she approached the subject through those feints that women use, and when they stood again in their little attic room she was obliged to be explicit.

“What hurt me, Bartley,” she said, “was that you should think for an instant that I would let father ask me to leave you, or that he would ask such a thing. He only came to tell me to be good to you, and help you, and trust you; and not worry you with my silliness and—and—jealousy. And I don’t ever mean to. And I know he will be good friends with you yet. He praised you for working so hard;”—she pushed it a little beyond the bare fact;—“he always did that; and I know he’s only waiting for a good chance to make it up with you.”

She lifted her eyes, glistening with tears, and it touched his peculiar sense of humor to find her offering him reparation, when he had felt himself so outrageously to blame; but he would not be outdone in magnanimity, if it came to that.

“It’s all right, Marsh. I was a furious idiot, or I should have let you explain at once. But you see I had only one thought in my mind, and that was my luck, which I wanted to share with you; and when your father seemed to have come in between us again——”

“Oh, yes, yes!” she answered. “I understand.” And she clung to him in the joy of this perfect intelligence, which she was sure could never be obscured again.

When Bartley’s article came out, she read it with a fond admiration which all her praises seemed to leave unsaid. She bought a scrapbook, and pasted the article into it, and said that she was going to keep everything he wrote.

“What are you going to write the next thing?” she asked.

“Well, that’s what I don’t know,” he answered. “I can’t find another subject like that, so easily.”

“Why, if people care to read about a logging-camp, I should think they would read about almost anything. Nothing could be too common for them. You might even write about the trouble of getting cheap enough rooms in Boston.”

“Marcia,” cried Bartley, “you’re a treasure! I’ll write about that very thing! I know the ‘Chronicle-Abstract’ will be glad to get it.”

She thought he was joking till he came to her after a while for some figures which he did not remember. He had the true newspaper instinct, and went to work with a motive that was as different as possible from the literary motive. He wrote for the effect which he was to make, and not from any artistic pleasure in the treatment. He did not attempt to give it form, to imagine a young couple like himself and Marcia coming down from the country to place themselves in the city; he made no effort to throw about it the poetry of their ignorance and their poverty, or the pathetic humor of their dismay at the disproportion of the prices to their means. He set about getting all the facts he could, and he priced a great many lodgings in different parts of the city; then he went to a number of real-estate agents, and, giving himself out as a reporter of the [Pg 115]“Chronicle-Abstract,” he interviewed them as to house-rents, past and present. Upon these bottom facts, as he called them, he based a “spicy” sketch, which had also largely the character of an exposé. There is nothing the public enjoys so much as an exposé; it seems to be made in the reader’s own interest; it somehow constitutes him a party to the attack upon the abuse, and its effectiveness redounds to the credit of all the newspaper’s subscribers. After a week’s stay in Boston, Bartley was able to assume the feelings of a native who sees his city falling into decay through the rapacity of its landladies. In the heading of ten or fifteen lines which he gave his sketch, the greater number were devoted to this feature of it; though the space actually allotted to it in the text was comparatively small. He called his report “Boston’s Boarding-Houses,” and he spent a paragraph upon the relation of boarding-houses to civilization, before detailing his own experience and observation. This part had many of those strokes of crude picturesqueness and humor which he knew how to give, and was really entertaining; but it was when he came to contrast the rates of house-rent and the cost of provisions with the landladies’

“PERPENDICULAR PRICES”

that Bartley showed all the virtue of a born reporter. The sentences were vivid and telling; the ensemble was very alarming; and the conclusion was inevitable that, unless this abuse could somehow be reached, we should lose a large and valuable portion of our population; especially those young married people of small means with whom the city’s future prosperity so largely rested, and who must drift away to find homes in rival communities if the present exorbitant demands were maintained.

As Bartley had foretold, he had not the least trouble in selling this sketch to the “Chronicle-Abstract.” The editor probably understood its essential cheapness perfectly well; but he also saw how thoroughly readable it was. He did not grumble at the increased price which Bartley put upon his work; it was still very far from dear; and he liked the young Downeaster’s enterprise. He gave him as cordial a welcome as an overworked man may venture to offer when Bartley came in with his copy, and he felt like doing him a pleasure. Some things out of the logging-camp sketch had been copied, and people had spoken to the editor about it, which was a still better sign that it was a hit.

“Don’t you want to come round to our club to-night?” asked the editor, as he handed Bartley the order for his money across the table. “We have a bad dinner, and we try to have a good time. We’re all newspaper men together.”

“Why, thank you,” said Bartley, “I guess I should like to go.”

“Well, come round at half-past five, and go with me.”

Bartley walked homeward rather soberly. He had meant, if he sold this article, to make amends for the disappointment they had both suffered before, and to have a commemorative supper with Marcia at Parker’s; he had ignored a little hint of hers about his never having taken her there yet, because he was waiting for this chance to do it in style. He resolved that, if she did not seem to like his going to the club, he would go back and withdraw his acceptance. But when he told her he had been invited,—he thought he would put the fact in this tentative way,—she said: “I hope you accepted!”

“Would you have liked me to?” he asked, with relief.

“Why, of course! It’s a great honor. You’ll get acquainted with all those editors, and perhaps some of them will want to give you a regular place.”

A salaried employment was their common ideal of a provision for their future.

“Well, that’s what I was thinking myself,” said Bartley.

“Go and accept at once,” she pursued.

“Oh, that isn’t necessary. If I get round there by half-past five, I can go,” he answered.

His lurking regret ceased when he came into the reception-room, where the members of the club were constantly arriving, and putting off their hats and overcoats, and then falling into groups for talk. His friend of the “Chronicle-Abstract” introduced him lavishly, as our American custom is. Bartley had a little strangeness, but no bashfulness, and, with his essentially slight opinion of people, he was promptly at his ease. These men liked his handsome face, his winning voice, the good-fellowship of his instant readiness to joke; he could see that they liked him, and that his friend Ricker was proud of the impression he made; before the evening was over he kept himself with difficulty from patronizing Ricker a little.

The club has grown into something much more splendid and expensive; but it was then content with a dinner certainly as bad as Ricker promised, but fabulously modest in price, at an old-fashioned hotel, whose site was long ago devoured by a dry-goods palace. The drink was commonly water or beer; occasionally, if a great actor or other distinguished guest honored the board, some [Pg 116]spendthrift ordered champagne. But no one thought fit to go to this ruinous extreme for Bartley. Ricker offered him his choice of beer or claret, and Bartley temperately preferred water to either; he could see that this raised him in Ricker’s esteem.

No company of men can fail to have a good time at a public dinner, and the good time began at once with these journalists, whose overworked week ended in this Saturday-evening jollity. They were mostly young men, who found sufficient compensation in the excitement and adventure of their underpaid labors, and in the vague hope of advancement; there were grizzled beards among them, for whom neither the novelty nor the expectation continued, but who loved the life for its own sake, and would hardly have exchanged it for prosperity. Here and there was an old fellow, for whom probably all illusion was gone; but he was proud of his vocation, proud even of the changes that left him somewhat superannuated in his tastes and methods. None, indeed, who have ever known it, can wholly forget the generous rage with which journalism inspires its followers. To each of those young men, beginning the strangely fascinating life as reporters and correspondents, his paper was as dear as his king once was to a French noble; to serve it night and day, to wear himself out for its sake, to merge himself in its glory, and to live in its triumphs without personal recognition from the public, was the loyal devotion which each expected his sovereign newspaper to accept as its simple right. They went and came, with the prompt and passive obedience of soldiers, wherever they were sent, and they struggled each to “get in ahead” of all the others with the individual zeal of heroes. They expanded to the utmost limits of occasion, and they submitted with an anguish that was silent to the editorial excision, compression, and mutilation of reports that were vitally dear to them. What becomes of these ardent young spirits, the inner history of journalism in any great city might pathetically show; but the outside world only knows them in the fine frenzy of interviewing, or of recording the midnight ravages of what they call the devouring element, or of working up horrible murders or tragical accidents, or of tracking criminals who have baffled all the detectives. Hearing their talk, Bartley began to realize that journalism might be a very different thing from what he had imagined it in a country printing-office, and that it might not be altogether wise to consider it merely as a stepping-stone to the law.

With the American eagerness to recognize talent, numbers of good fellows spoke to him about his logging sketch; even those who had not read it seemed to know about it as a hit. They were delighted to be able to say, “Ricker tells me that you offered it to old Witherby, and he wouldn’t look at it!” He found that this fact, which he had doubtfully confided to Ricker, was not offensive to some of the “Events” people who were there; one of them got him aside, and darkly owned to him that Witherby was doing everything that any one man could to kill the “Events,” and that in fact the counting-room was running the paper.

All the club united in abusing the dinner, which in his rustic ignorance Bartley had not found so infamous; but they ate it with perfect appetite and with mounting good spirits. The president brewed punch in a great bowl before him, and, rising with a glass of it in his hand, opened a free parliament of speaking, story-telling, and singing. Whoever recollected a song or a story that he liked called upon the owner of it to sing it or tell it; and it appeared not to matter how old the fun or the music was: the company was resolved to be happy; it roared and clapped till the glasses rang. “You will like this song,” Bartley’s neighbors to right and left of him prophesied: or, “Just listen to this story of Mason’s,—it’s capital,”—as one or another rose in response to a general clamor. When they went back to the reception-room they carried the punch-bowl with them, and there, amid a thick cloud of smoke, two clever amateurs took their places at the piano, and sang and played to their hearts’ content, while the rest, glass in hand, talked and laughed, or listened, as they chose. Bartley had not been called upon, but he was burning to try that song in which he had failed so dismally in the logging-camp. When the pianist rose at last, he slipped down into the chair, and, striking the chords of the accompaniment, he gave his piece with brilliant audacity. The room silenced itself, and then burst into a roar of applause, and cries of “Encore!” There could be no doubt of the success.

“Look here, Ricker,” said a leading man, at the end of the repetition, “your friend must be one of us!”—and, rapping on the table, he proposed Bartley’s name.

In that simple time the club voted viva voce on proposed members, and Bartley found himself elected by acclamation, and in the act of paying over his initiation fee to the treasurer, before he had well realized the honor done him. Everybody near him shook his hand, and offered to be of service to him. Much of this cordiality was merely collective good-feeling; something of it might justly be attributed to the punch; but the greater part was [Pg 117]honest. In this civilization of ours, grotesque and unequal and imperfect as it is in many things, we are bound together in a brotherly sympathy unknown to any other. We new men have all had our hard rubs, but we do not so much remember them in soreness or resentment as in the wish to help forward any other who is presently feeling them. If he will but help himself too, a hundred hands are stretched out to him.

Bartley had kept his head clear of the punch, but he left the club drunk with joy and pride, and so impatient to be with Marcia and tell her of his triumphs, that he could hardly wait to read the proof of his boarding-house article, which Ricker had put in hand at once for the Sunday edition. He found Marcia sitting up for him, and she listened with a shining face while he hastily ran over the most flattering facts of the evening. She was not so much surprised at the honors done him as he had expected: but she was happier, and she made him repeat it all and give her the last details. He was afraid she would ask him what his initiation had cost; but she seemed to have no idea that it had cost anything, and though it had swept away a third of the money he had received for his sketch, he still resolved that she should have that supper at Parker’s.

“I consider my future made,” he said aloud, at the end of his swift cogitation on this point.

“Oh, yes!” she responded, rapturously. “We needn’t have a moment’s anxiety. But we must be very saving still till you get a place.”

“Oh, certainly,” said Bartley.

During several months that followed, Bartley’s work consisted of interviewing, of special reporting in all its branches, of correspondence by mail and telegraph from points to which he was sent; his leisure he spent in studying subjects which could be treated like that of the boarding-houses. Marcia entered into his affairs with the keen half-intelligence which characterizes a woman’s participation in business; whatever could be divined, she was quickly mistress of; she vividly sympathized with his difficulties and his triumphs; she failed to follow him in matters of political detail or of general effect; she could not be dispassionate or impartial; his relation to any enterprise was always more important than anything else about it. On some of his missions he took her with him, and then they made it a pleasure excursion; and if they came home late with the material still unwritten, she helped him with his notes, wrote from his dictation, and enabled him to give a fuller report than his rivals. She caught up with amusing aptness the technical terms of the profession, and was voluble about getting in ahead of the “Events” and the other papers, and she was indignant if any part of his report was cut out or garbled, or any feature was spoiled.

He made a “card” of grouping and treating with picturesque freshness the spring openings of the milliners and dry-goods people; and when he brought his article to Ricker, the editor ran it over, and said,

“Guess you took your wife with you, Hubbard.”

“Yes, I did,” Bartley owned. He was always proud of her looks, and it flattered him that Ricker should see the evidences of her feminine taste and knowledge in his account of the bonnets and dress-goods. “You don’t suppose I could get at all these things by inspiration, do you?”

Marcia was already known to some of his friends whom he had introduced to her in casual encounters. They were mostly unmarried, or, if married, they lived at a distance, and they did not visit the Hubbards at their lodgings. Marcia was a little shy, and did not quite know whether they ought to call without being asked, or whether she ought to ask them; besides, Mrs. Nash’s reception-room was not always at her disposal, and she would not have liked to take them all the way up to her own room. Her social life was, therefore, confined to the public places where she met these friends of her husband’s. They sometimes happened together at a restaurant, or saw one another between the acts at the theater, or on coming out of a concert. Marcia was not so much admired for her conversation by her acquaintance, as for her beauty and her style; a rustic reluctance still lingered in her; she was thin and dry in her talk with any one but Bartley, and she could not help letting even men perceive that she was uneasy when they interested him in matters foreign to her.

Bartley did not see why they could not have some of these fellows up in their room for tea; but Marcia told him it was impossible. In fact, although she willingly lived this irregular life with him, she was at heart not at all a Bohemian. She did not like being in lodgings or dining at restaurants; on their horse-car excursions into the suburbs, when the spring opened, she was always choosing this or that little house as the place where she would like to live, and wondering if it were within their means. She said she would gladly [Pg 118]do the work herself; she hated to be idle so much as she now must. The city’s novelty wore off for her sooner than for him: the concerts, the lectures, the theaters, had already lost their zest for her, and she went because he wished her to go, or in order to be able to help him with what he was always writing about such things.

As the spring advanced, Bartley conceived the plan of a local study, something in the manner of the boarding-house article, but on a much vaster scale: he proposed to Ricker a timely series on the easily accessible hot-weather resorts, to be called “Boston’s Breathing-Places,” and to relate mainly to the sea-side hotels and their surroundings. His idea was encouraged, and he took Marcia with him on most of his expeditions for its realization. These were largely made before the regular season had well begun; but the boats were already running, and the hotels were open, and they were treated with the hospitality which a knowledge of Bartley’s mission must invoke. As he said, it was a matter of business, give and take on both sides, and the landlords took more than they gave in any such trade.

On her part, Marcia regarded dead-heading as a just and legitimate privilege of the press, if not one of its chief attributes; and these passes on boats and trains, this system of paying hotel bills by the presentation of a card, constituted distinguished and honorable recognition from the public. To her simple experience, when Bartley told how magnificently the reporters had been accommodated, at some civic or commercial or professional banquet, with a table of their own, where they were served with all the wines and courses, he seemed to have been one of the principal guests, and her fear was that his head should be turned by his honors. But, at the bottom of her heart, though she enjoyed the brilliancy of his present life, she did not think his occupation comparable to the law in dignity. Bartley called himself a journalist, now, but his newspaper connection still identified him in her mind with those country editors of whom she had always heard her father speak with such contempt: men dedicated to poverty and the despite of the local notables who used them. She could not shake off the old feeling of degradation, even when she heard Bartley and some of his fellow-journalists talking in their boastfulest vein of the sovereign character of journalism; and she secretly resolved never to relinquish her purpose of having him a lawyer. Till he was fairly this, in regular and prosperous practice, she knew that she should not have shown her father that she was right in marrying Bartley.

In the meantime their life went ignorantly on in the obscure channels where their isolation from society kept it longer than was natural. Three or four months after they came to Boston, they were still country people, with scarcely any knowledge of the distinctions and differences so important to the various worlds of any city. So far from knowing that they must not walk in the Common, they used to sit down on a bench there, in the pleasant weather, and watch the opening of the spring, among the lovers whose passion had a publicity that neither surprised nor shocked them. After they were a little more enlightened, they resorted to the Public Garden, where they admired the bridge, and the rock-work, and the statues. Bartley, who was already beginning to get up a taste for art, boldly stopped and praised the Venus, in the presence of the gardeners planting tulip-bulbs.

They went sometimes to the Museum of Fine Arts, where they found a pleasure in the worst things which the best never afterward gave them; and where she became as hungry and tired as if it were the Vatican. They had a pride in taking books out of the Public Library, where they walked about on tiptoe with bated breath; and they thought it a divine treat to hear the great organ play at noon. As they sat there in the Music Hall, and let the mighty instrument bellow over their strong young nerves, Bartley whispered Marcia the jokes he had heard about the organ; and then, upon the wave of aristocratic sensation from this experience, they went out and dined at Copeland’s, or Webber’s, or Fera’s, or even at Parker’s: they had long since forsaken the humble restaurant with its doilies and its ponderous crockery, and they had so mastered the art of ordering that they could manage a dinner as cheaply at these finer places as anywhere, especially if Marcia pretended not to care much for her half of the portion, and connived at its transfer to Bartley’s plate.

In his hours of leisure, they were so perpetually together that it became a joke with the men who knew them to say, when asked if Bartley were married, “Very much married.” It was not wholly their inseparableness that gave the impression of this extreme conjugality; as I said, Marcia’s uneasiness when others interested Bartley in things alien to her, made itself felt even by men. She struggled against it because she did not wish to put him to shame before them, and often with an aching sense of desolation she sent him off with them to talk apart, or left him with them if they met on the street, and walked home alone rather than let any one [Pg 119]say that she kept her husband tied to her apron-strings. His club, after the first sense of its splendor and usefulness wore away, was an ordeal; she had failed to conceal that she thought the initiation and annual fees extortionate. She knew no other bliss like having Bartley sit down in their own room with her; it did not matter whether they talked; if he were busy, she would as lief sit and sew, or sit and silently look at him as he wrote. In these moments she liked to feign that she had lost him, that they had never been married, and then come back with a rush of joy to the reality. But on his club nights she heroically sent him off, and spent the evening with Mrs. Nash. Sometimes she went out by day with the landlady, who had a passion for auctions and cemeteries, and who led Marcia to an intimate acquaintance with such pleasures. At Mount Auburn, Marcia liked the marble lambs, and the emblematic hands pointing upward with the dexter finger, and the infants carved in stone, and the angels with folded wings and lifted eyes, better than the casts which Bartley said were from the antique, in the Museum. On this side her mind was as wholly dormant as that of Mrs. Nash herself. She always came home feeling as if she had not seen Bartley for a year, and fearful that something had happened to him. The hardest thing about their irregular life was that he must sometimes be gone two or three days at a time, when he could not take her with him. Then it seemed to her that she could not draw a full breath in his absence; and once he found her almost wild on his return: she had begun to fancy that he was never coming back again. He laughed at her when she betrayed her secret, but she was not ashamed; and when he asked her, “Well, what if I hadn’t come back?” she answered passionately, “It wouldn’t have made much difference to me: I should not have lived.”

The uncertainty of his income was another cause of anguish to her. At times he earned forty or fifty dollars a week: oftener he earned ten; there was now and then a week when everything that he put his hand to failed, and he earned nothing at all. Then Marcia despaired; her frugality became a mania, and they had quarrels about what she called his extravagance. She imbittered his daily bread by blaming him for what he spent on it; she wore her oldest dresses, and would have had him go shabby in token of their adversity. Her economies were frantic child’s-play,—methodless, inexperienced, fitful: and they were apt to be followed by remorse in which she abetted him in some wanton excess.

The future of any heroic action is difficult to manage; and the sublime sacrifice of her pride and all the conventional proprieties which Marcia had made in giving herself to Bartley was inevitably tried by the same sordid tests that every married life is put to.

That salaried place which he was always seeking on the staff of some newspaper, proved not so easy to get as he had imagined in the flush of his first successes. Ricker willingly included him among the “Chronicle-Abstract’s” own correspondents and special reporters; and he held the same off-and-on relation to several other papers; but he remained without a more definite position. He earned perhaps more money than a salary would have given him, and in their way of living he and Marcia laid up something out of what he earned. But it did not seem to her that he exerted himself to get a salaried place; she was sure that, if so many others who could not write half so well had places, he might get one if he only kept trying. Bartley laughed at these business-turns of Marcia’s, as he called them; but sometimes they enraged him, and he had days of sullen resentment when he resisted all her advances toward reconciliation. But he kept hard at work, and he always owned at last how disinterested her most ridiculous alarm had been.

Once, when they had been talking as usual about that permanent place on some newspaper, she said,

“But I should only want that to be temporary, if you got it. I want you should go on with the law, Bartley! I’ve been thinking about that. I don’t want you should always be a journalist.”

Bartley smiled.

“What could I do for a living, I should like to know, while I was studying law?”

“You could do some newspaper work,—enough to support us,—while you were studying. You said when we first came to Boston that you should settle down to the law.”

“I hadn’t got my eyes open, then. I’ve got a good deal longer row to hoe than I supposed, before I can settle down to the law.”

“Father said you didn’t need to study but a little more.”

“Not if I were going into the practice at Equity. But it’s a very different thing, I can tell you, in Boston; I should have to go in for a course in the Harvard Law School, just for a little start-off.”

Marcia was silenced, but she asked, after a moment:

“Then you’re going to give up the law, altogether?”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do; I’m going to do the best I can for the present, and [Pg 120]trust to luck. I don’t like special reporting, for a finality; but I shouldn’t like shystering, either.”

“What’s shystering?” asked Marcia.

“It’s pettifogging in the city courts. Wait till I can get my basis,—till I have a fixed amount of money for a fixed amount of work,—and then I’ll talk to you about taking up the law again. I’m willing to do it whenever it seems the right thing. I guess I should like it, though I don’t see why it’s any better than journalism, and I don’t believe it has any more prizes.”

“But you’ve been a long time trying to get your basis on a newspaper,” she reasoned. “Why don’t you try to get it in some other way? Why don’t you try to get a clerk’s place with some lawyer?”

“Well, suppose I was willing to starve along in that way, how should I go about to get such a place?” demanded Bartley, with impatience.

“Why don’t you go to that Mr. Halleck you visited here? You used to tell me he was going to be a lawyer.”

“Well, if you remember so distinctly what I said about going into the law when I first came to Boston,” said her husband, angrily, “perhaps you’ll remember that I said I shouldn’t go to Halleck until I didn’t need his help. I shall not go to him for his help.”

Marcia gave way to spiteful tears.

“It seems as you were ashamed to let them know that you were in town. Are you afraid I shall want to get acquainted with them? Do you suppose I shall want to go to their parties, and disgrace you?”

Bartley took his cigar out of his mouth, and looked blackly at her.

“So, that’s what you’ve been thinking, is it?”

She threw herself upon his neck.

“No! no, it isn’t!” she cried, hysterically. “You know that I never thought it till this instant; you know I didn’t think it at all; I just said it. My nerves are all gone; I don’t know what I’m saying half the time, and you’re as strict with me as if I were as well as ever! I may as well take off my things,—I’m not well enough to go with you, to-day, Bartley.”

She had been dressing while they talked for an entertainment which Bartley was going to report for the “Chronicle-Abstract,” and now she made a feint of wishing to remove her hat. He would not let her. He said that if she did not go, he should not; he reproached her with not wishing to go with him any more; he coaxed her laughingly and fondly.

“It’s only because I’m not so strong, now,” she said, in a whisper that ended in a kiss on his cheek. “You must walk very slowly, and not hurry me.”

The entertainment was to be given in aid of the Indigent Children’s Surf-Bathing Society, and it was at the end of June, rather late in the season. But the Society itself was an after-thought, not conceived till a great many people had left town on whose assistance such a charity must largely depend. Strenuous appeals had been made, however: it was represented that ten thousand poor children could be transported to Nantasket Beach, and there, as one of the ladies on the committee said, bathed, clam-baked, and lemonaded three times during the summer at a cost so small that it was a saving to spend the money. Class Day falling about the same time, many exiles at Newport and on the North Shore came up and down; and the affair promised to be one of social distinction, if not pecuniary success. The entertainment was to be varied: a distinguished poet was to read an old poem of his, and a distinguished poetess was to read a new poem of hers; some professional people were to follow with comic singing; an elocutionist was to give impressions of noted public speakers; and a number of vocal and instrumental amateurs were to contribute their talent.

Bartley had instructions from Ricker to see that his report was very full socially. “We want something lively, and, at the same time, nice and tasteful, about the whole thing, and I guess you’re the man to do it. Get Mrs. Hubbard to go with you, and keep you from making a fool of yourself about the costumes.” He gave Bartley two tickets. “Mighty hard to get, I can tell you, for love or money,—especially love,” he said; and Bartley made much of this difficulty in impressing Marcia’s imagination with the uncommon character of the occasion. She had put on a new dress which she had just finished for herself, and which was a marvel not only of cheapness, but of elegance; she had plagiarized the idea from the costume of a lady with whom she stopped to look in at a milliner’s window where she formed the notion of her bonnet. But Marcia had imagined the things anew in relation to herself, and made them her own; when Bartley first saw her in them, though he had witnessed their growth from the germ, he said that he was afraid of her, she was so splendid, and he did not quite know whether he felt acquainted. When they were seated at the concert, and had time to look about them, he whispered, “Well, Marsh, I don’t see anything here that comes near you in style,” and she flung a little corner of her drapery out over his hand so that she could squeeze it: she was quite happy again.

After the concert, Bartley left her for a moment, and went up to a group of the committee [Pg 121]near the platform, to get some points for his report. He spoke to one of the gentlemen, note-book and pencil in hand, and the gentleman referred him to one of the ladies of the committee, who, after a moment of hesitation, demanded in a rich tone of injury and surprise, “Why! Isn’t this Mr. Hubbard?” and, indignantly answering herself, “Of course it is!” gave her hand with a sort of dramatic cordiality, and flooded him with questions: “When did you come to Boston? Are you at the Hallecks’? Did you come—Or no, you’re not Harvard. You’re not living in Boston? And what in the world are you getting items for? Mr. Hubbard, Mr. Atherton.”

She introduced him in a breathless climax to the gentleman to whom he had first spoken, and who had listened to her attack on Bartley with a smile which he was at no trouble to hide from her. “Which question are you going to answer first, Mr. Hubbard?” he asked quietly, while his eyes searched Bartley’s for an instant with inquiry which was at once kind and keen. His face had the distinction which comes of being clean-shaven in our bearded times.

“Oh, the last,” said Bartley. “I’m reporting the concert for the ’Chronicle-Abstract,’ and I want to interview some one in authority about it.”

“Then interview me, Mr. Hubbard,” cried the young lady. “I’m in authority about this affair,—it’s my own invention, as the White Knight says,—and then I’ll interview you afterward. And you’ve gone into journalism, like all the Harvard men! So glad it’s you, for you can be a perfect godsend to the cause if you will. The entertainment hasn’t given us all the money we shall want, by any means, and we shall need all the help the press can give us. Ask me any questions you please, Mr. Hubbard: there isn’t a friend here that I wouldn’t sacrifice to the last personal particular if the press will only do its duty in return. You’ve no idea how we’ve been working during the last fortnight since this Old Man of the Sea-Bathing sprang upon us. I was sitting quietly at home, thinking of anything else in the world, I can assure you, when this atrocious idea occurred to me.” She ran on to give a full sketch of the inception and history of the scheme up to the present time. Suddenly she arrested herself and Bartley’s flying pencil: “Why, you’re not putting all that nonsense down?”

“Certainly I am,” said Bartley, while Mr. Atherton, with a laugh, turned and walked away to talk with some other ladies. “It’s the very thing I want. I shall get in ahead of all the other papers on this; they haven’t had anything like it, yet.”

She looked at him for a moment in horror. Then:

“Well, go on; I would do anything for the cause!” she cried.

“Tell me who’s been here, then,” said Bartley.

She recoiled a little.

“I don’t like giving names.”

“But I can’t say who the people were unless you do.”

“That’s true,” said the young lady thoughtfully. She prided herself on her thoughtfulness, which sometimes came before and sometimes after the fact. “You’re not obliged to say who told you?”

“Of course not.”

She ran over a list of historical and distinguished names, and he slyly asked if this and that lady were not dressed so and so, and worked in the costumes from her unconsciously elaborate answers; she was afterward astonished that he should have known what people had on. Lastly he asked what the committee expected to do next, and was enabled to enrich his report with many authoritative expressions and intimations. The lady became all zeal in these confidences to the public; at last, she told everything she knew, and a great deal that she merely hoped.

“And now come into the committee-room and have a cup of coffee; I know you must be faint with all this talking,” she concluded. “I want to ask you something about yourself.” She was not older than Bartley, but she addressed him with the freedom we use in encouraging younger people.

“Thank you,” he said coolly; “I can’t very well. I must go back to my wife, and hurry up this report.”

“Oh, is Mrs. Hubbard here?” asked the young lady, with well-controlled surprise. “Present me to her!” she cried, with that fearlessness of social consequences for which she was noted; she believed there were ways of getting rid of undesirable people without treating them rudely.

The audience had got out of the hall, and Marcia stood alone near one of the doors waiting for Bartley. He glanced proudly toward her, and said: “I shall be very glad.”

Miss Kingsbury drifted by his side across the intervening space, and was ready to take Marcia impressively by the hand when she reached her; she had decided her to be very beautiful and elegantly simple in dress, but she found her smaller than she had looked at a distance. Miss Kingsbury was herself rather large,—sometimes, she thought, rather too large: certainly too large if she had not had such perfect command of every [Pg 122]inch of herself. In complexion she was richly blonde, with beautiful fair hair roughed over her forehead, as if by a breeze, and apt to escape in sunny tendrils over the peachy tints of her temples. Her features were massive rather than fine; and though she thoroughly admired her chin and respected her mouth, she had doubts about her nose which she frankly referred to friends for solution: had it not too much of a knob at the end? She seemed to tower over Marcia as she took her hand at Bartley’s introduction, and expressed her pleasure at meeting her.

“I don’t know why it need be such a surprise to find one’s gentlemen friends married, but it always is, somehow. I don’t think Mr. Hubbard would have known me if I hadn’t insisted upon his recognizing me; I can’t blame him: it’s three years since we met. Do you help him with his reports? I know you do! You must make him lenient to our entertainment,—the cause is so good! How long have you been in Boston? Though I don’t know why I should ask that,—you may have always been in Boston! One used to know everybody; but the place is so large, now. I should like to come and see you; but I’m going out of town to-morrow, for the summer. I’m not really here now, except ex officio; I ought to have been away weeks ago, but this Indigent Surf-Bathing has kept me. You’ve no idea what such an undertaking is. But you must let me have your address, and as soon as I get back to town in the fall, I shall insist upon looking you up. Good-bye! I must run away now, and leave you; there are a thousand things for me to look after yet to-day.”

She took Marcia again by the hand, and superadded some bows and nods and smiles of parting, after she released her, but she did not ask her to come into the committee-room and have some coffee; and Bartley took his wife’s hand under his arm and went out of the hall.

“Well,” he said, with a man’s simple pleasure in Miss Kingsbury’s friendliness to his wife, “that’s the girl I used to tell you about,—the rich one with the money in her own right, whom I met at the Hallecks’. She seemed to think you were about the thing, Marsh! I saw her eyes open as she came up, and I felt awfully proud of you: you never looked half so well. But why didn’t you say something?”

“She didn’t give me any chance,” said Marcia, “and I had nothing to say, any way. I thought she was very disagreeable.”

“Disagreeable!” repeated Bartley, in amaze.

Miss Kingsbury went back to the committee-room, where one of the amateurs had been lecturing upon her.

“Clara Kingsbury can say and do, from the best heart in the world, more offensive things in ten minutes than malice could invent in a week. Somebody ought to go out and drag her away from that reporter by main force. But I presume it’s too late already; she’s had time to destroy us all. You’ll see that there won’t be a shred left of us in his paper, at any rate. Really, I wonder that, in a city full of nervous and exasperated people like Boston, Clara Kingsbury has been suffered to live. She throws her whole soul into everything she undertakes, and she has gone so en masse into this Indigent Bathing, and splashed about in it so, that I can’t understand how we got anybody to come to-day. Why, I haven’t the least doubt that she’s offered that poor man a ticket to go down to Nantasket and bathe with the other Indigents; she’s treated me as if I ought to be personally surf-bathed for the last fortnight; and if there’s any chance for us left by her tactlessness, you may be sure she’s gone at it with her conscience, and simply swept it off the face of the earth.”

One hot day in August, when Bartley had been doing nothing for a week, and Marcia was gloomily forecasting the future, when they would have to begin living upon the money they had put into the savings-bank, she reverted to the question of his taking up the law again. She was apt to recur to this in any moment of discouragement, and she urged him now to give up his newspaper work, with that wearisome persistence with which women can torment the men they love.

“My newspaper work seems to have given me up, my dear,” said Bartley. “It’s like asking a fellow not to marry a girl that won’t have him.” He laughed and then whistled; and Marcia burst into fretful, futile tears, which he did not attempt to assuage.

They had been all summer in town; the country would have been no change to them; and they knew nothing of the sea-side, except the crowded, noisy, expensive resorts near the city. Bartley wished her to go to one of these for a week or two, at any rate, but she would not; and in fact neither of them had the born citizen’s conception of the value of a summer vacation. But they had found their attic intolerable; and, the single gentlemen having given up their rooms by this time, Mrs. Nash let Marcia have one lower down, where they sat looking out on the hot street.

“Well,” cried Marcia at last, “you don’t [Pg 123]care for my feelings, or you would take up the law again.”

Her husband rose with a sigh that was half a curse, and went out. After what she had said, he would not give her the satisfaction of knowing what he meant to do; but he had it in his head to go to that Mr. Atherton to whom Miss Kingsbury had introduced him, and ask his advice; he had found out that Mr. Atherton was a lawyer, and he believed that he would tell him what to do. He could at least give him some authoritative discouragement which he might use in these discussions with Marcia.

Mr. Atherton had his office in the “Events” building, and Bartley was on his way thither when he met Ricker.

“Seen Witherby?” asked his friend. “He was round looking for you.”

“What does Witherby want with me?” asked Bartley, with a certain resentment.

“Wants to give you the managing-editorship of the ‘Events,’” said Ricker, jocosely.

“Pshaw! Well, he knows where to find me, if he wants me very badly.”

“Perhaps he doesn’t,” suggested Ricker. “In that case, you’d better look him up.”

“Why, you don’t advise——”

“Oh, I don’t advise anything! But if he can let by-gones be by-gones, I guess you can afford to! I don’t know just what he wants with you, but if he offers you anything like a basis, you’d better take it.”

Bartley’s basis had come to be a sort of by-word between them; Ricker usually met him with some such demand as, “Well, what about the basis?” or “How’s your poor basis?” Bartley’s ardor for a salaried position amused him, and he often tried to argue him out of it. “You’re much better off as a free lance. You make as much money as most of the fellows in places, and you lead a pleasanter life. If you were on any one paper, you’d have to be on duty about fifteen hours out of the twenty-four; you’d be out every night till three or four o’clock; you’d have to do fires, and murders, and all sorts of police business; and now you work mostly on fancy jobs: something you suggest yourself, or something you’re specially asked to do. That’s a kind of a compliment, and it gives you scope.”

Nevertheless, if Bartley had his heart set upon a basis, Ricker wanted him to have it. “Of course,” he said, “I was only joking about the basis. But if Witherby should have anything to offer, don’t quarrel with your bread and butter, and don’t hold yourself too cheap. Witherby’s going to get all he can, for as little as he can, every time.”

Ricker was a newspaper man in every breath. His great interest in life was the “Chronicle-Abstract,” which paid him poorly and worked him hard. To get in ahead of the other papers was the object for which he toiled with unremitting zeal; but after that he liked to see a good fellow prosper, and he had for Bartley that feeling of comradery which comes out among journalists when their rivalries are off. He would hate to lose Bartley from the “Chronicle-Abstract”; if Witherby meant business, Bartley and he might be excoriating each other before a week passed, in sarcastic references to “our esteemed contemporary of the ‘Events,’” and “our esteemed contemporary of the ‘Chronicle-Abstract’”; but he heartily wished him luck, and hoped it might be some sort of inside work.

When Ricker left him, Bartley hesitated. He was half minded to go home and wait for Witherby to look him up, as the most dignified and perhaps the most prudent course. But he was curious and impatient, and he was afraid of letting the chance, whatever it might be, slip through his fingers. He suddenly resolved upon a little ruse, which would still oblige Witherby to make the advance, and yet would risk nothing by delay. He mounted to Witherby’s room in the “Events” building, and pushed open the door. Then he drew back embarrassed, as if he had made a mistake.

“Excuse me,” he said, “isn’t Mr. Atherton’s office on this floor?”

Witherby looked up from the papers on his desk, and cleared his throat. Ever since he refused Bartley’s paper on the logging-camp, he had accused him in his heart of fraud because he had sold his rejected sketch to another paper, and anticipated his own tardy enterprise in the same direction. Each little success that Bartley made added to Witherby’s dislike; and whilst Bartley had written for all the other papers, he had never got any work from the “Events.” Witherby had the guilty sense of having hated him as he looked up, and Bartley on his part was uneasily sensible of some mocking paragraphs of a more or less personal cast, which he had written in the “Chronicle-Abstract,” about the enterprise of the “Events.”

“Mr. Atherton is on the floor above,” said Witherby. “But I’m very glad you happened to look in, Mr. Hubbard. I—I was just thinking about you. I—wont you take a chair?”

“Thanks,” said Bartley, non-committally; but he sat down.

Witherby fumbled about among the things on his desk before he resumed his own seat.

“I hope you have been well since I saw you?”

[Pg 124]

“Oh, yes, I’m always well. How have you been?”

Bartley wondered whither this exchange of civilities tended; but he believed he could keep it up as long as old Witherby could.

“Why, I have not been very well,” said Witherby, getting into his chair at last, and taking up a paper-weight to assist him in conversation. “The fact is, Mr. Hubbard, I find that I have been working too hard. I have undertaken to manage the editorial department of the ‘Events’ in addition to looking after its business, and the care has been too great. It has told upon me. I flatter myself that I have not allowed either department to suffer——”

He referred this point so directly to him that Bartley made a murmur of assent, and Witherby resumed.

“But the care has told upon me. I am not so well as I could wish. I need rest, and I need help,” he added.

Bartley had by this time made up his mind that, if Witherby had anything to say to him, he should say it unaided.

Witherby put down the paper-weight, and gave his attention for a moment to a paper-cutter.

“I don’t know whether you have heard that Mr. Clayton is going to leave us?”

“No,” Bartley said, “I hadn’t heard that.”

“Yes, he is going to leave us. Mr. Clayton and I have not agreed upon some points, and we have both judged it best that we should part.” Witherby paused again, and changed the positions of his inkstand and mucilage-bottle. “Mr. Clayton has failed me, as I may say, at the last moment, and we have been compelled to part. I found Mr. Clayton—unpractical.”

He looked again at Bartley, who said,

“Yes?”

“Yes. I found Mr. Clayton so much at variance in his views with—with my own views—that I could do nothing with him. He has used language to me which I am sure he will regret. But that is neither here nor there; he is going. I have had my eye on you, Mr. Hubbard, ever since you came to Boston, and have watched your career with interest. But I thought of Mr. Clayton, in the first instance, because he was already attached to the ‘Events,’ and I wished to promote him. Office during good behavior, and promotion in the direct line: I’m that much of a civil-service reformer,” said Mr. Witherby.

“Certainly,” said Bartley.

“But, of course, my idea in starting the ‘Events’ was to make money.”

“Of course.”

“I hold that the first duty of a public journal is to make money for the owner; all the rest follows naturally.”

“You’re quite right, Mr. Witherby,” said Bartley. “Unless it makes money, there can be no enterprise about it, no independence,—nothing. That was the way I did with my little paper down in Maine. The first thing—I told the committee when I took hold of the paper—is to keep it from losing money; the next is to make money with it. First peaceable, then pure: that’s what I told them.”

“Precisely so!” cried Witherby.

He was now so much at his ease with Bartley that he left off tormenting the things on his desk, and used his hands in gesticulating.

“Look at the churches themselves! No church can do any good till it’s on a paying basis. As long as a church is in debt, it can’t secure the best talent for the pulpit or the choir, and the members go about feeling discouraged and out of heart. It’s just so with a newspaper. I say that a paper does no good till it pays; it has no influence, its motives are always suspected, and you’ve got to make it pay by hook or by crook before you can hope to—to—forward any good cause by it. That’s what I say. Of course,” he added, in a large, smooth way, “I’m not going to contend that a newspaper should be run solely in the interest of the counting-room. Not at all! But I do contend that when the counting-room protests against a certain course the editorial-room is taking, it ought to be respectfully listened to. There are always two sides to every question. Suppose all the newspapers pitch in—as they sometimes do—and denounce a certain public enterprise: a projected scheme of railroad legislation, or a peculiar system of banking, or a coöperative mining interest, and the counting-room sends up word that the company advertises heavily with us; shall we go and join indiscriminately in that hue and cry, or shall we give our friends the benefit of the doubt?”

“Give them the benefit of the doubt,” said Bartley. “That’s what I say.”

“And so would any other practical man!” cried Witherby. “And that’s just where Mr. Clayton and I differed. Well, I needn’t allude to him any more,” he added, leniently. “What I wish to say is this, Mr. Hubbard: I am overworked, and I feel the need of some sort of relief. I know that I have started the ‘Events’ in the right line at last,—the only line in which it can be made a great, useful, and respectable journal, efficient in every good cause,—and what I want now is some sort of assistant in the management who shall be in full sympathy with my own ideas. I don’t want a mere slave,—a tool; but I do want an independent, right-minded [Pg 125]man, who shall be with me for the success of the paper the whole time and every time, and shall not be continually setting up his will against mine on all sorts of doctrinaire points. That was the trouble with Mr. Clayton. I have nothing against Mr. Clayton personally; he is an excellent young man in very many respects; but he was all wrong about journalism, all wrong, Mr. Hubbard. I talked with him a great deal, and tried to make him see where his interest lay. He had been on the paper as a reporter from the start, and I wished very much to promote him to this position; which he could have made the best position in the country. The ‘Events’ is an evening paper; there is no night-work; and the whole thing is already thoroughly systematized. Mr. Clayton had plenty of talent, and all he had to do was to step in under my direction and put his hand on the helm. But, no! I should have been glad to keep him in a subordinate capacity; but I had to let him go. He said that he would not report the conflagration of a peanut-stand for a paper conducted on the principles I had developed to him. Now, that is no way to talk. It’s absurd.”

“Perfectly.” Bartley laughed his rich, caressing laugh, in which there was the insinuation of all worldly-wise contempt for Clayton and all worldly-wise sympathy for Witherby. It made Witherby feel good, better, perhaps, than he had felt at any time since his talk with Mr. Clayton.

“Well, now, what do you say, Mr. Hubbard? Can’t we make some arrangement with you?” he asked, with a burst of frankness.

“I guess you can,” said Bartley. The fact that Witherby needed him was so plain that he did not care to practice any finesse about the matter.

“What are your present engagements?”

“I haven’t any.”

“Then you can take hold at once?”

“Yes.”

“That’s good.”

Witherby now entered at large into the nature of the position which he offered Bartley. They talked a long time, and in becoming better acquainted with each other’s views, as they called them, they became better friends. Bartley began to respect Witherby’s business ideas, and Witherby, in recognizing all the admirable qualities of this clear-sighted and level-headed young man, began to feel that he had secretly liked him from the first, and had only waited a suitable occasion to unmask his affection. It was arranged that Bartley should come on as Witherby’s assistant, and should do whatever he was asked to do in the management of the paper; he was to write on topics as they occurred to him, or as they were suggested to him. “I don’t say whether this will lead to anything more, Mr. Hubbard, or not; but I do say that you will be in the direct line of promotion.”

“Yes, I understand that,” said Bartley.

“And now as to terms,” continued Witherby, a little tremulously.

“And now as to terms,” repeated Bartley to himself; but he said nothing aloud. He felt that Witherby had cut out a great deal of work for him, and work of a kind that he could not easily find another man both willing and able to do. He reflected also that in developing his ideas of journalism, Witherby had in some degree put himself into his power. He resolved that he would have all that his service was worth.

“What should you think of twenty dollars a week?” asked Witherby.

“I shouldn’t think it was enough,” said Bartley, amazed at his own audacity, but enjoying it, and thinking how he had left Marcia with the intention of offering himself to Mr. Atherton as a clerk for ten dollars a week. “There is a great deal of labor in what you propose, and you command my whole time. You would not like to have me do any work outside of the ‘Events.’”

“No,” Witherby assented. “Would twenty-five be nearer the mark?” he inquired soberly.

“It would be nearer, certainly,” said Bartley. “But I guess you better make it thirty.” He kept a quiet face, but his heart throbbed.

“Well, say thirty, then,” replied Witherby, so promptly that Bartley perceived with a pang that he might as easily have got forty from him. But it was now too late, and a salary of fifteen hundred a year passed the wildest hopes he had cherished half an hour before.

“All right,” he said quietly. “I suppose you want me to take hold at once?”

“Yes, on Monday. Oh, by the way,” said Witherby, “there is one little piece of outside work which I should like you to finish up for us; and we’ll agree upon something extra for it, if you wish. I mean our ‘Solid Men’ series. I don’t know whether you’ve noticed the series in the ‘Events’?”

“Yes,” said Bartley, “I have.”

“Well, then, you know what they are. They consist of interviews—guarded and inoffensive as respects the sanctity of private life—with our leading manufacturers and merchant princes at their places of business and their residences, and include a description of these, and some account of the lives of the different subjects.”

[Pg 126]

“Yes, I have seen them,” said Bartley. “I’ve noticed the general plan.”

“You know that Mr. Clayton has been doing them. He made them a popular feature. The parties themselves were very much pleased with them.”

“Oh, people are always tickled to be interviewed,” said Bartley. “I know they put on airs about it, and go round complaining to each other about the violation of confidence, and so on; but they all like it. You know I reported that Indigent Surf-Bathing entertainment, in June, for the ‘Chronicle-Abstract.’ I knew the lady who got it up, and I interviewed her after the entertainment.”

“Miss Kingsbury?”

“Yes.” Mr. Witherby made an inarticulate murmur of respect for Bartley in his throat, and involuntarily changed toward him, but not so subtly that Bartley’s finer instinct did not take note of the change. “She was a fresh subject, and she told me everything. Of course I printed it all. She was awfully shocked—or pretended to be—and wrote me a very Oh-dear-how-could-you note about it. But I went round to the office the next day, and I found that nearly every lady mentioned in the interview had ordered half a dozen copies of that issue sent to her sea-side address, and the office had been full of Beacon-street swells the whole morning buying ‘Chronicle-Abstracts’—‘the one with the report of the concert in it.’” These low views of high society, coupled with an apparent familiarity with it, modified Mr. Witherby more and more. He began to see that he had got a prize. “The way to do with such fellows as your ‘Solid Men,’” continued Bartley, “is to submit a proof to ’em. They never know exactly what to do about it, and so you print the interview with their approval, and make ’em particeps criminis. I’ll finish up the series for you, and I wont make any very heavy extra charge.”

“I should wish to pay you whatever the work was worth,” said Mr. Witherby, not to be outdone in nobleness.

“All right; we sha’n’t quarrel about that, at any rate.”

Bartley was getting toward the door, for he was eager to be gone now to Marcia, but Witherby followed him up as if willing to detain him.

“My wife,” he said, “knows Miss Kingsbury. They have been on the same charities together.”

“I met her a good while ago, when I was visiting a chum of mine at his father’s house here. I didn’t suppose she’d know me; but she did at once, and began to ask me if I was at the Hallecks’,—as if I had never gone away.”

“Mr. Ezra B. Halleck?” inquired Witherby reverently. “Leather trade?”

“Yes,” said Bartley. “I believe his first name was Ezra. Ben Halleck was my friend. Do you know the family?” asked Bartley.

“Yes, we have met them—in society. I hope you’re pleasantly situated where you are, Mr. Hubbard? Should be glad to have you call at the house.”

“Thank you,” said Bartley; “my wife will be glad to have Mrs. Witherby call.”

“Oh!” cried Witherby. “I didn’t know you were married! That’s good! There’s nothing like marriage, Mr. Hubbard, to keep a man going in the right direction. But you’ve begun pretty young.”

“Nothing like taking a thing in time,” answered Bartley. “But I haven’t been married a great while; and I’m not so young as I look. Well, good-afternoon, Mr. Witherby.”

“What did you say was your address?” asked Witherby, taking out his note-book. “My wife will certainly call. She’s down at Nantasket now, but she’ll be up the first part of September, and then she’ll call. Good-afternoon.”

They shook hands at last, and Bartley ran home to Marcia. He burst into the room with a glowing face.

“Well, Marcia,” he shouted, “I’ve got my basis!”

“Hush! No! Don’t be so loud! You haven’t!” she answered, springing to her feet. “I don’t believe it! How hot you are!”

“I’ve been running almost—all the way from the ‘Events’ office. I’ve got a place on the ‘Events,’—assistant managing-editor,—thirty dollars a week,” he panted.

“I knew you would succeed yet—I knew you would, if I could only have a little patience. I’ve been scolding myself ever since you went. I thought you were going to do something desperate, and I had driven you to it. But Bartley, Bartley! It can’t be true, is it? Here, here! Do take this fan. Or no, I’ll fan you, if you’ll let me sit on your knee! O poor thing, how hot you are! But I thought you wouldn’t write for the ‘Events’; I thought you hated that old Witherby, who acted so ugly to you when we first came.”

“Oh, Witherby is a pretty good old fellow,” said Bartley, who had begun to get his breath again. He gave her a full history of the affair, and they rejoiced together over it, and were as happy as if Bartley had been celebrating a high and honorable good fortune. She was too ignorant to feel the disgrace, if there were any, in the compact which Bartley had closed, and he had no [Pg 127]principles, no traditions by which to perceive it. To them it meant unlimited prosperity; it meant provision for the future, which was to bring a new responsibility and a new care.

“We will take the parlor with the alcove, now,” said Bartley. “Don’t excite yourself,” he added, with tender warning.

“No, no,” she said, pillowing her head on his shoulder, and shedding peaceful tears.

“It doesn’t seem as if we should ever quarrel again, does it?”

“No, no! We never shall,” she murmured. “It has always come from my worrying you about the law, and I shall never do that any more. If you like journalism better, I shall not urge you any more to leave it, now you’ve got your basis.”

“But I’m going on with the law, now, for that very reason. I shall read law all my leisure time. I feel independent, and I shall not be anxious about the time I give, because I shall know that I can afford it.”

“Well, only you mustn’t overdo.” She put her lips against his cheek. “You’re more to me than anything you can do for me.”

“Oh, Marcia!”

(To be continued.)

In Great Britain there is no organized system of lecturing such as exists in America; no bureau, no lyceums, no habitual lecture-attending community. In this respect, as in many others, Old England is far behind this lusty, forward child of hers on the western side of the Atlantic. She has, indeed, a few organized lecture courses in her principal cities, such as those of the Royal Society and the London Institute in the metropolis, the Philosophical Institution in Edinburgh, and the Athenæum in Glasgow; and here and there a casual mechanics’ institute may have a strictly local course; but there is no organized lecture machinery. When, after the Russo-Turkish war, I thought of taking to the stump, we searched in vain for precedents that would furnish some guide. There were the lecture tours of Thackeray and the reading tours of Dickens; but then Thackeray and Dickens were giants and I was but a pygmy. They had commanded audiences by the greatness of their reputations as well as by their genius; whereas I had but earned some casual prestige in perhaps the most precarious and ephemeral of all the fields of fame. Since the days of those Titans the lecture path had been deserted, and its very trail was overgrown. The manager with whom I was in treaty is a theatrical man, and he, in default of any sign-post, obeyed his theatrical instincts. I was to storm the country as if I had been a strong theatrical combination, condensed into the person of a very shy and mediocre man. There was to be an advance agent to secure the halls and bill the towns; another advance agent, a little later, to see that all the arrangements were in trim, and to talk to the newspaper men. I was to be “personally conducted” by a smart manager, who took with him his own detachment of money-takers and ushers. The campaign began, and the auguries seemed favorable. The houses were always good, and for the most part crowded. After a fortnight of the country, I made a rush up to London. A friend had written to me of an eligible investment; and I was eager to embark in it some portion, at least, of the lecture-plunder. I hurried to the manager’s office, in the full assurance that I should carry away a large check. The books had been duly made up, and the balance sheet on the fortnight’s business showed: “Mr. Forbes, Dr. £5 6s. 9d.”!

This was not wholly satisfactory. Large as had been the receipts, the expenses had more than eaten them up. Men who have a “mission” are no doubt glad to lecture for nothing, and treat it as immaterial that they should even be a trifle out of pocket. “Apostles” take with them neither staff nor scrip, and dollars would only disturb their rapt absorption in æsthetic dreams. But I am not an “apostle”; I have no particular “mission,” except to amuse, and, frankly, it seemed to me that, if I could lecture only at a loss, I would much rather not lecture at all. So the advance agents and the rest of the costly machinery were suppressed; circulars were sent out to local people, naming definite terms; and the tour was continued under much more favorable conditions. It lasted for six months; and after the Zulu War, I pillaged the country for six months longer. Then I came to America, and now I am zigzagging toward Australia.

[Pg 128]

The varying strains of an Æolian harp, the cats’-paws that wind-flurries make on calm water, the moods of a child—all these are monotonous in comparison with the varieties in the behavior of lecture audiences. In Great Britain, audiences are fairly demonstrative; often almost boisterously so. If at the commencement something happens to catch their fancy, they will applaud clear through, and sometimes, indeed, embarrass the lecturer by applauding him in places where he wonders what on earth they find to be demonstrative about. American audiences are, for the most part, much more self-restrained and critical. They are silentest, perhaps, in New England. Almost the first time I spoke in America was in Worcester, Mass. I toiled on for half an hour, doing my best, but the audience gave no sign. When I looked out over it, I saw only a sea of cold, attentive faces, immobile alike to my efforts at pathos and at humor. Then I began to feel mean. “You are a poor stick,” I said to myself, “and it is sheer impudence for you to stand upon a platform and pretend to be a lecturer. They have found you out to be a fraud; only they are too civil to hiss you, or to get up and go away!” Well, I know I very nearly went away myself. But I hardened my heart and got through somehow, the whole audience remaining to the bitter end. There was scarcely a hand-clap when I ended, and I quailed to encounter the secretary of the committee. But he was quite satisfied. “Our people are not demonstrative,” he observed,—no, faith, I was well aware of that,—“but you held them to the last, and we shall all be glad to have you back again next year!” Very soon I learned that the criterion of an American audience’s satisfaction is whether it goes away in the middle or remains to the end. For the American is a free man, and does not at all understand why he should sit out a performance that fails to interest him. But some American towns are quite lavish in their cordiality; and, what is strange, you will find two places, not ten miles apart, whereof the audience in one will be as cold as a stone, the other as warm as a live coal; so that local idiosyncrasy can have nothing to do with the matter. A Boston audience has the reputation of being the most coldly critical in the republic; but my personal experience is quite the contrary of this. Baltimore is exceptionally warm; so is Charleston, S. C.; so is Hartford, Conn., and warmest and most appreciative of all is Cincinnati. It is less trying for the lecturer to see before him coldly critical faces, than stolidly bewildered faces. The former may thaw into appreciation; at least, he is being followed with intelligence, if not with sympathy. But the stolid faces are reflexes of the mind within, heavily asking the questions: “What in creation is the man talking about? Who was Sedan? Is Plevna a member of Congress? Is Ignatieff a town?” And then the dull ray of intelligence when Bismarck is mentioned, because the listener happens to know a town by that name up in Dakota!

Before setting out on my lecture campaign in America, I found a gentleman who bore to me a remarkable resemblance, and promptly engaged him as traveling agent to accompany me. The number of times that good man has been interviewed as Mr. Forbes! He understood the business thoroughly, having, indeed, once been an interviewer himself; he had no perceptible American accent, and I think he spent his spare moments in inventing pretty stories wherewith to fill the note-books of the omnivorous interviewer. In the personal resemblance there was a pleasant sense of the fitness of things that substitutes do not always afford. During a recent tour which Dr. William Howard Russell made in America with the Duke of Sutherland, I have heard that the famous war correspondent of the London “Times” sometimes saved his Grace from the interviewer by confronting that personage himself. But this gave rise to confusion. There are regions of America where it is implicitly believed that his Grace of Sutherland is a dapper little clean-shaved man, with an iron-gray mustache and hair to match, and with a very pronounced Irish accent. This is not, to say the least, wholly accurate. The Duke is a tall man, with a huge brown beard, and a very marked English pronunciation.

The loyalty of the Canadians to the British Crown is beautifully fervent; they would rather, I am sure, be torn limb from limb than suffer annexation to the United States. Indeed, I have some idea that, deep down in the Canadian heart, there lurks the notion of, one of these fine mornings, annexing the United States to Canada. A little Canadian town will fly more loyal bunting on the Queen’s birthday than you can see, on the same auspicious occasion, in the whole of the mother country. In the provincial regions of Canada, it is the practice to conclude all public gatherings with singing “God save the Queen.” In every community there is a champion vocalist, for whose powers this practice gives scope; and he springs to the chance as if he had found a nugget. But occasionally the champion vocalist is not on hand; he may be “under the weather,” or behind the bars, or may not have a taste for the performance of the evening. Probably the latter cause had kept away the champion on one occasion which I remember. The chairman had duly [Pg 129]made the stereotyped announcement, “The audience will disperse, singing ‘God save the Queen,’” but there was no response. There was no one present who dared to initiate the vocal performance. Here was a predicament! Obviously, the loyalty of the place would be compromised if the audience should disperse without fulfilling the behest! In despair, the chairman, isolated on the platform as he was, himself essayed to set the ball a-rolling. But, in the first place, he could not sing; in the second place, he didn’t know the words; in the third place, as I learned afterward, he was not popular, and the audience rather enjoyed his discomfiture. Valiantly he plunged into the breach. “God save our precious Queen!” came from him in an inharmonious strain; but he never got any further, and nobody would help him. He tried it again, but with the same untoward result; and then he turned and left the platform, “a sadder and a wiser man.”

I remember a curious incident that happened in Canada in connection with the British national anthem. In one of my lectures I describe the pathetic abandonment of state ceremony at Sandringham, while the Prince of Wales lay sick there of what threatened so formidably to be a fatal illness. The audience listened spellbound. I uttered the sentence: “The Queen strolled up and down in front of the house, unattended, in the brief interval she allowed herself from the sick-room.” Suddenly came an interruption. A tall, gaunt figure in the crowd uprose, and, pointing at me a long finger on the end of a long arm, uttered the word “Stop!” Then, facing the audience, he exclaimed: “Ladies and gentlemen! This loyal audience will now sing ‘God save the Queen’!” The audience promptly stood up and obeyed with genuine fervor, I meanwhile patiently waiting the finale of the interlude. When it had finished, I proceeded with my narrative, and, as a contrast to the sorrow of Sandringham, depicted the happy pageant in St. Paul’s Cathedral on the thanksgiving-day for the Prince’s recovery. It is the custom in Canada to propose a vote of thanks to the lecturer, and the chairman rose and uttered the usual formula. Again the tall, gaunt figure was on its legs. “Ladies and gentlemen,” said he, “I rise to propose an amendment to the motion. I move that the lecturer be requested to repeat the portion of the lecture referring to our gracious sovereign.” And repeat it I did.

Lecturing all over the habitable globe, one has often strange meetings, which go to prove how small a place, after all, this world of ours is. Up in Minnesota, a man came to me, after the lecture, and told me that he had once given me a thrashing in the old school-days—a cheerful episode, which he succeeded in recalling to my somewhat reluctant memory. Once, in Canada, an old woman came to me, and told me that she had been my nurse in childhood, in the quiet rural parsonage in the old country. I also remember being received at the depot of an important American town by two gentlemen, one of whom told me that he was its mayor, and, further, that he had lived with me under my parental roof when we were both boys. To the latter statement I demurred. He must be in error, I said, for no one had ever lived with us except brothers and sisters. He re-asserted the statement, and I had no alternative but to repudiate it, for I believed that the recollection was of some one else. He had clearly been rather boasting to his companion of the familiarity; and, now that I was denying the statement, it was comic to note the disparaging air of suspicion with which his friend was coming to regard the worthy mayor. It was all sufficiently embarrassing to me, who was sure the man was wrong, and who, although I felt for him, could not assist him out of his dilemma. Finally, he snatched a moment, while his friend was looking the other way, to whisper to me behind his hand: “Mon, dinna ye mind me? I was the herd-laddie.” A flood of revelation poured in on me, and next moment we had clasped hands. All was clear. He had not cared to tell his friend of the capacity in which he had, in truth, been an inmate of our homestead; but it was rather too much to expect me, in middle age, to carry about with me the memory of every member of a long succession of “herd-laddies.”

In 1874, an emigrant ship was burned, on her voyage from England to New Zealand, and all on board perished, with the exception of the third mate and two seamen, who had kept alive, through long exposure in an open boat, by the terrible expedient of subsisting on the bodies of their comrades. I met the trio, on their return to England, and gathered from the lips of Macdonald, the mate, the full details of the ghastly story. I gave the poor wretch a sum of money for his information, and otherwise was of some service to him. He drifted away, and soon, in the turmoil of a campaign in Spain, I had forgotten altogether about the man who had told me that he had lived for ten days on human flesh, and owned, in his Scottish accent, that it “was no bad eatin’, when once ye had gotten a bit used to it.” Three or four years afterward, I chanced to be lecturing in Dundee. As I was leaving the hall, a man accosted me. “Mr. Forbes, ye’ll no mind me?” I had to confess that I could not remember [Pg 130]him. He moved from one leg to the other in a curiously unsettled way, as if he were discussing to himself exactly in what relation he should recall himself; and, at length, in a hollow, gloomy voice, he said: “Mon, I’m the cannibal!”

A chairman is a very valuable strengthener of the lecturer’s position; he gives him countenance and also confidence, in which latter quality you may have observed that most lecturers are very deficient. A chairman “bosses the show” generally, and furnishes the requisite finish to the tout ensemble. But there are chairmen and chairmen. It is not exactly agreeable, for instance, to be taken aside, by the gentleman to whom you have just been introduced as your chairman, and to listen to something like the following: “I have got to say a few words of introduction, you know; and I’m rather ashamed to say that I never heard of you before to-night. Just give me a little summary of your antecedents, will you? I’ve a vague notion you were in some war or other. Let me see, was it at Waterloo you were, or in the Crimea?” Then, there is the chairman who has a list of the season’s course handed to him, and mistakes you for some other lecturer named therein. For instance, once, in New England, a chairman solemnly arose by my side, and said: “Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present to you the lecturer of the evening, the Hon. Charles Bradlaugh, the celebrated English free-thinker and orator. It is possible that you may not agree with all he may utter, but I think I can promise him, from a New England audience, at least an attentive and patient hearing!”

But there are more terrible chairmen than even such a man as this. Once I was lecturing in a large town in the north of Ireland. My chairman was one of those civic knights with whom Ireland so much abounds—a comfortable, portly man of rotund exterior and pleasant manners. I had dined with him, and he had dined well and drunk well. He introduced me, and the lecture proceeded favorably. I was plowing away, right in the heart of my most pathetic passage,—a passage with the rendering of which I never was satisfied unless it made the audience weep, and in which I never felt I had achieved complete success unless it caused a lady or two to faint,—when, suddenly, I heard a titter, which presently swelled into a general guffaw. What! did the audience mean, then, deliberately to insult me? I paused in speechless indignation, and the laughter ceased, too. I recommenced, and still the tittering went on. This was too much. I again halted, and was turning to appeal to the chairman, when there fell on my ears the strange sound of a prolonged and placid snore. My portly chairman was sound asleep! I, too, had to simulate amusement, and, thirsting for his blood, I smiled blandly as I went and stirred him up. He awoke, and smiled sweetly up in my face. “Where am I?” he asked, as Mr. Pickwick did in the wheelbarrow. Well, I recommenced, and so did he! Long before I had reached my next pathetic passage he was asleep again, and softly snoring. Pathos was wasted on this slumbrous gentleman, and I spent the rest of the hour, for the most part, in poking him up, amid the unrestrained laughter of the audience. If I knew a lecturer who was starting out with a comic lecture, about the success of which he had some doubt, I should advise him to secure a sleepy-headed chairman.

I may, perhaps, venture here to tell a little story about a lecturing experience of Mr. Stanley, the African explorer. When he had returned to England from that wonderful journey of his across the continent of Africa, and while he was writing his book, I suggested to a theatrical manager that he should propose to Mr. Stanley to make a lecturing tour through England, and tell the people of that country of his wonderful adventures. Stanley consented, and sallied forth. The tour was fairly successful. After some weeks’ absence from London, Mr. Stanley returned for a few days, and his manager went to see him and ask him how the lecturing flourished. “Very well,” said Stanley, “in a financial sense. The halls are always crowded when I begin; but, as I go on, the people go trickling out, till, at the end, I am left with only half an audience, and I don’t like it. It seems to me they come to stare at me as if I were a gorilla, and, when they have stared their fill, they rise and go, not pretending to take any interest in what I am telling them.” The manager suggested that, perhaps, he was too monotonous; that he ought to diversify his serious parts with some play of humor. But Stanley objected that there was no humor in his composition, which was quite true. “I’m not like Mark Twain or Artemus Ward,” said he. “There is no fun in me, but only dead earnest.” (This puts me in mind of the remark a Scotch ex-editor once made about the man who had succeeded him. “Aye,” said he, candidly, “the new man is a much better man than me. It is true I can joke, but I joke with difficulty, whereas he jokes just spontaneous.” Well, Stanley can’t joke, either spontaneous or with difficulty.) Just then the manager heard a hideous howling, proceeding from the lower regions of the house.

“What, in the name of Cæsar, is that noise?” asked the manager.

[Pg 131]

“Oh,” said Stanley, “it’s only my black boy, Kalulu, that I brought from the interior of Africa, you know. He’s singing one of his confounded war-songs while he polishes my boots.”

A bright thought occurred to the manager.

“Have him up,” he exclaimed, “and let us hear him.”

Kalulu was summoned, and, nothing loath, gave his war-song and its accompanying wild dance, in their native, blood-curdling horror. In fact, he wanted to go on war-dancing and war-singing all day, and was with difficulty suppressed, after breaking most of the furniture, and was sent back to his boots.

“Now,” said the manager, with the acumen of a showman, “here is your chance for the introduction of a diversion. About the middle of your lecture lead up to and introduce one of Kalulu’s war-dances and songs, and say that the lecture will conclude with another exhibition!”

Stanley agreed, and the necessary intimation was duly given in the advertisements. Some weeks later, Stanley returned again to London, and the manager went to see him.

“Oh, yes,” said Stanley, “the audiences stop right through to the end. By the way, you’d better alter that advertisement. It runs now: ‘Lecture by Mr. Stanley on South Africa, with War-dance and Song by his Native Boy, Kalulu, in the middle and again at the conclusion.’ You had better have it changed to this, I think: ‘A South-African Concert by Kalulu, Mr. H. M. Stanley’s Black Boy, accompanied by War-dances, with an Introduction and some Explanations by Mr. Stanley.’ You see,” continued Stanley, moodily, “the crowd keeps on encoring Kalulu’s first performance till the time comes for the second; when I try to get a little show, they wont have me, but put me down with wild shouts for ‘Kalulu! Kalulu!’”—which evidence of bad taste hurt Stanley’s sense of self-esteem, and he felt quite jealous of poor Kalulu, who, however, soon died, partly of over-zeal for his war-dancing and singing, partly because he was too fond of rum.

A somewhat similar experience once befell myself. I was duly engaged to lecture in a small town in the western part of New York State. On the journey I happened to notice, occupying a seat in the same car with me, a very handsome woman, rather of the Spanish type of beauty. When I reached my destination, she appeared to have reached hers also. We got out together. The local secretary introduced himself to me on the platform, giving his name as my correspondent, and we seated ourselves together in the hotel-omnibus. The lady followed, with rather a bewildered aspect, and presently, addressing the secretary, said: “Mr. ——, I am Madame Serena.” It was an awkward moment for the secretary. I was on my right date in the local lecture course, and the lady, who was a well-known pianiste, had been secured for the succeeding entertainment; but in writing to her, the secretary had heedlessly assigned to her my date. So here she was, with his letter in her hand to prove that the error was not hers; and here I was, too, iron-clad in my contract. What was to be done? The committee held a meeting, and the secretary came to me, and asked whether I would have any objections that the lady should play for a quarter of an hour before I began to lecture, that I should make an interval of a quarter of an hour in the middle, which she should fill up, the evening to conclude with a final quarter of an hour of piano-forte music. Of course, I consented, but to this day that New York town has not heard the latter half of that lecture! It endured me, as I thought with some reluctance, after the musical overture; but it would have none of me after the interlude. The gifted pianiste had to prolong her interlude till it merged in her finale; and I am quite sure I enjoyed listening to her more than talking myself. Only it would have done the audience good to have heard the latter half of that lecture!

It is bad enough to realize that you are a failure; but it is quite too harrowing to be told so to your face, and all the more harrowing when your informant does not know whom he is addressing. Once, long ago, I gave an isolated lecture in Manchester, on the Carlist war in Spain, from which I had recently returned. It was a poor subject, it was a bad lecture, and it was a worse lecturer. I felt rather miserable as I stood in the auditorium, trying to converse with the secretary while the fag end of the audience slowly dispersed. A young gentleman sauntered up and, not recognizing me as the lecturer, addressed the secretary. “Infernally poor lecture,” this friendly creature observed. “Don’t you think so?” he asked of the secretary. That official remained dumb in embarrassment. “Don’t you think so, sir?” said he, addressing me. “I quite agree with you,” was my reply, made in sad truth. “Of course it was,” he continued. “We all know the fellow can write first-rate; but he ought to stick to his pen, and not try to lecture, for he can’t lecture worth a blank! Isn’t that so, sir?” again addressing me, as a previous sympathizer. Again I expressed agreement with him, and he was proceeding with detailed criticism of an emphatic character, when the [Pg 132]secretary, in a cold perspiration, clutched hold of him, dragged him to one side, and whispered something to him. The next thing I saw of the frank and ingenuous critic was his fluttering coat-tails, as he dashed headlong from the hall. He could not rally himself even to apologize; and, besides, what had he to apologize for?

Law-suits are unpleasant things, and I would counsel every one to shun them as he would a snake. I have had but one in my life, and that was about a lecture. Can any one tell exactly how long a lecture ought to last? Very few people know that there is a legal decision on this important point; that decision was given in the course of this law-suit in which I was involved. The trouble occurred in the town of Newport, in Monmouthshire, England. I was to lecture there, as it might be to-night, and I had promised Mrs. M——, the wife of the famous painter, to be present at the marriage of her daughter to an old Zulu-war comrade of mine, on the following morning in a church in the west end of London. I could only accomplish this by leaving Newport, after the lecture, by a train stopping at that place at 9:35 P. M. The lecture-hour was eight, the lecture would last an hour and a half, and I would have just five minutes to drive to the station and catch the train. Now, in South Wales punctuality is not a virtue with audiences; the chairman has a habit of making a speech when introducing the lecturer, and when the lecture is finished there is a vote of thanks to the lecturer and then to the chairman, all of which prolongs the performance to two hours. My plan was to begin at eight, tell the chairman to make no speech, and escape before the votes of thanks. I sent an intimation to the local agent to advertise punctual commencement, explaining my object. I reached Newport, dressed, and was sitting, waiting for the time to go to the hall, when my secretary rushed in with the tidings that the local agent would not consent to the arrangement I had suggested, and had told him he would not pay the fee unless the full ordinary programme was leisurely gone through. I at once went across, told the agent the lecture was advertised punctually for eight; that I would begin at that hour, would speak for an hour and a half, and that then I would have done my part and would go. He replied that in that case he would not pay the fee. Now, I should have carried out my programme, and so put him in the wrong; but I lost my temper for the moment, quietly said, “Then in that case I shall not lecture,” and left the place.

When I drove up to the depot, an hour and a half later, an angry mob occupied the platform, and the local agent was haranguing it and denouncing me. I got the most plenteous abuse. I had outraged the people of Newport, was bellowed at me, and there were threats of lynching me. Fists were flourished in my face, and every moment I expected to be attacked. When the train came up and I entered the carriage, a shower of mud and small stones broke the window and bespattered me. I duly attended the marriage, and, feeling that I had not acted with full consideration for my audience, I telegraphed the mayor of Newport that I would give a free lecture for the benefit of the local charities, which offer was accepted. A good sum was realized for the town infirmary, and I was reinstated in the good graces of Newport.

But the local agent went to law with me. He sued me for his expenses out of pocket, and concluded, besides, for one hundred pounds in the name of lost profits. The trial came off at the next South Wales assizes. His contention was that he was acting in the interests of the Newport people in prohibiting the curtailment of the lecture. Mine was that the lecture hour was eight, and that my lecture was only an hour and a half long; when the proceedings were protracted, it was because of unpunctuality and other people’s oratory. In proof of my assertion I offered to read my lecture to the court, but the jury visibly shuddered, and the judge said life was too short for this kind of evidence. However, he summed up in my favor, and the jury followed his lead; so that I won my only law-suit. The plaintiff appealed to a higher court in London, and the case came on before Lord Coleridge, who made very short work of the matter.

“It is acknowledged,” said he, “by the defendant that his lecture is an hour and a half long, and it seems the plaintiff wanted it longer. Now I hold,” he continued, “that any lecture is a common nuisance that lasts longer than an hour, and so I dismiss the appeal.”

At Newport I was threatened with violence because I had not lectured. Once, at Cork, in the south of Ireland, I was threatened with personal violence if I dared to lecture. Years before, when poor John Mitchell came back from America as the member-elect for Tipperary, and when the election was declared void because Mitchell was still under the sentence of felony, I had visited Ireland in a journalistic capacity. The scenes I witnessed were so full of humor that I could not refrain from describing them in my newspaper in a strain of badinage, and as Irishmen—who like nothing so well as to make jokes at [Pg 133]other people’s expense—do not relish fun made of themselves, I became the temporary object of popular indignation. But I had thought all this interlude of nonsense had long been forgotten, and I journeyed serenely to Cork to lecture in its theater. On arriving, I found the dead-walls beplastered with the placard: “Men of Cork! The traducer of John Mitchell is among you to-night. You know how to receive him!” This did not greatly scare me, because I had no idea it was meant seriously, and, at the appointed hour, I betook myself to the theater. Long before I reached the stage-door, I heard the clamor inside. Behind, I found panic and demoralization raging. There was nobody to receive me, and only one old fellow in charge of the stage. I prevailed on him to find a table and a chair; then he and I pulled up the curtain, and I walked out from the wing upon the stage, alone and unbefriended. The crowd in the front had been amusing themselves by singing a doggerel ditty containing unpleasant allusions to myself, and by yelling their anxiety that England should be relegated to an unpleasantly warm region. My appearance was the signal for a howl that made the roof tremble. I bowed, pretending to mistake the clamor for a greeting of vociferous friendliness, and, opening my manuscript, essayed to commence. I never got beyond the first three words. The place became a bedlam of din; so I bowed and sat down, looking out blandly on the turmoil. The people in the stalls and the dress circle, who were friendly to me, were clapping their hands vigorously. The pit and the gallery were yelling down this demonstration, and yelling me down as well, with a fervor that did credit to their lungs. After twenty minutes of this turmoil there was a lull of exhaustion, of which I took advantage to stand up and try to begin again. But it had not been exhaustion—only temporary cessation. The moment I rose, the din recommenced worse than ever. I stood silent for a while, till some eggs began to whiz past my ears. It occurred to me that I had given the enterprise a fair trial, and that the eggs were rather a polite hint that it was time to go and own myself foiled. So I made a polite bow and leisurely withdrew, followed by a howl of triumph to which the previous noises had been child’s play. I found chaos raging behind the scenes. The directors of the theater had turned up by this time, mad with impotent fury. “Bedad,” cried one, “I’ll have the place cleared at the point of the bayonet!” “Why,” replied I, “the people have broken no law. They are only expressing their sentiments, which they have a perfect right to do.” But, all the same, he sent for the lieutenant of police, and requested him to clear the building. The lieutenant took my view, and declined to act. Then it was proposed that the manager should go on and appeal to the audience to be reasonable. I ventured to express my opinion that such an appeal would have no effect, and that it might as well be accepted at once that a continuation was not possible. The manager’s wife was on hand, and she flung herself around her husband in an excess of frantic terror. “Oh, S——, S——!” she shrieked, “sure ye mustn’t face the blagyuards. They’ll kill my S——! They’ll massacree yees, and tear ye limb from limb!” But, nevertheless, the manager went on, only to return very pale, with one rotten egg on his hat, and another in the bosom of his shirt. Then I went away. A young gentleman with a revolver in his hand offered to escort me. I declined the escort, and bade him put up his weapon. I know the Irish people; they bear no malice, and they become good-humored when they have gained their point. I walked out through the throng in the lobby, quite alone; and, so far from being molested, I was actually cheered. In Cork, they like a man to show that he is not afraid of them. There was a crowd at the depot when I left, two hours later, and as I drove up alone, the throng was quite demonstrative in its sudden friendliness. I might have lectured in Cork the following evening without encountering a single hiss.

There is in America a considerable proportion of colored population; but the “cullured folk” are not in any appreciable number among lecture audiences; indeed, I do not remember ever to have noticed a colored listener. On one occasion, however, I had reason to anticipate this pleasure. Arriving one afternoon at the station of a little town in Pennsylvania, I handed my valise to a colored man who offered to take it, and told him I would walk up to the hotel. I was standing at the hotel counter, talking with the local agent, when he arrived with the valise.

“What shall I give you, George?” was my question.

“D’know, boss,” said he, in a bashful, winning way, “I’d like a ticket to the leckchaw to-night pow’ful!”

This was indeed a touching compliment, and at my request the local agent gave him a pass. I was so full of complacency that I asked the man whether he had a wife.

“Wife? Yes, boss, I’se got a wife, an’ I’m sho’ she’d like a ticket too!”

A ticket was handed him for the wife, and he departed, grateful; but when lecture-time came, I searched the audience in vain for a [Pg 134]colored man or a colored woman. Next morning, George duly turned up to carry my valise down to the station.

“I didn’t see you at the lecture last night,” I ventured to observe.

“Leckchaw!” retorted George, with undisguised contempt. “Psha! I don’t shin around no leckchaws! Why, I traded off them ’ere tickets for twenty-fi’ cents!”

And away he tramped with the valise, mumbling depreciatory comments in reference to “leckchaws.”

Archibald Forbes.

THE STREET OF THE HYACINTH.

BY CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON,

Author of “Rodman the Keeper,” “Anne,” etc.

IN TWO PARTS:—I.

It was a street in Rome, narrow, winding, not over-clean. Two vehicles, meeting there, could pass only by grazing the doors and windows on either side, after the usual excited whip-cracking and shouts which make the new-comer imagine, for his first day or two, that he is proceeding at a perilous speed through the sacred city of the soul.

But two vehicles did not often meet in the street of the Hyacinth. It was not a thoroughfare, not even a convenient connecting link; it skirted the back of the Pantheon, the old buildings on either side rising so high against the blue that the sun never came down lower than the fifth line of windows, and looking up from the pavement was like looking up from the bottom of a well. There was no foot-walk, of course; even if there had been one no one would have used it, owing to the easy custom of throwing from the windows a few ashes, and other light trifles, for the city refuse-carts, instead of carrying them down the long stairs to the door below. They must be in the street at an appointed hour, must they not? Very well, then—there they were; no one but an unreasonable foreigner would dream of objecting.

But unreasonable foreigners seldom entered the street of the Hyacinth. There were, however, two who lived there, one winter not long ago; and upon a certain morning in the January of that winter a third came to see these two. At least he asked for them, and gave two cards to the Italian maid who answered his ring; but when, before he had time to even seat himself, the little curtain over the parlor door was raised again, and Miss Macks entered, she came alone. Her mother did not appear. The visitor was not disturbed by being obliged to begin conversation immediately; he was an old Roman sojourner, and had stopped fully three minutes at the end of the fourth flight of stairs to regain his breath, before he mounted the fifth and last to ring Miss Macks’s bell. Her card was tacked upon the door: “Miss Ettie F. Macks.” He surveyed it with disfavor, while the little, loose-hung bell rang a small but exceedingly shrill and ill-tempered peal, like the barking of a small cur. “Why in the world doesn’t she put her mother’s card here, instead of her own?” he said to himself. “Or, if her own, why not simply ‘Miss Macks,’ without that nickname?”

But Miss Macks’s mother had never possessed a visiting-card in her life. Miss Macks was the visiting member of the family; and this was so well understood at home, that she had forgotten that it might not be the same abroad. As to the “Ettie,” having been called so always, it had not occurred to her to make a change. Her name was Ethelinda Faith, Mrs. Macks having thus combined euphony and filial respect—the first title being her tribute to æsthetics, the second her tribute to the memory of her mother.

“I am so very glad to see you, Mr. Noel,” said Miss Macks, greeting her visitor with much cordial directness of voice and eyes. “I have been expecting you. But you have waited so long—three days!”

Raymond Noel, who thought that, under the circumstances, he had been unusually courteous and prompt, was rather surprised to find himself thus put at once upon the defensive.

“We are not always able to carry out [Pg 135]our wishes immediately, Miss Macks,” he replied, smiling a little. “I was hampered by several previously made engagements.”

“Yes; but this was a little different, wasn’t it? This was something important—not like an invitation to lunch or dinner, or the usual idle society talk.”

He looked at her; she was quite in earnest.

“I suppose it to be different,” he answered. “You must remember how little you have told me.”

“I thought I told you a good deal! However, the atmosphere of a reception is no place for such subjects, and I can understand that you did not take it in. That is the reason I asked you to come and see me, here. Shall I begin at once? It seems rather abrupt.”

“I enjoy abruptness; I have not heard any for a long time.”

“That I can understand, too; I suppose the society here is all finished off—there are no rough ends.”

“There are ends. If not rough, they are often sharp.”

But Miss Macks did not stop to analyze this; she was too much occupied with her own subject.

“I will begin immediately, then,” she said. “It will be rather long; but, if you are to understand me, you ought of course to know the whole.”

“My chair is very comfortable,” replied Noel, placing his hat and gloves on the sofa near him, and taking an easy position with his head back.

Miss Macks thought that he ought to have said, “The longer it is, the more interesting,” or something of that sort. She had already described him to her mother as “not over-polite. Not rude in the least, you know—as far as possible from that; wonderfully smooth-spoken; but yet, somehow—awfully indifferent.” However, he was Raymond Noel; and that, not his politeness or impoliteness, was her point.

“To begin with, then, Mr. Noel, a year ago I had never read one word you have written; I had never even heard of you. I suppose you think it strange that I should tell you this so frankly; but, in the first place, it will give you a better idea of my point of view; and, in the second, I feel a friendly interest in your taking measures to introduce your writings into the community where I lived. It is a very intelligent community. Naturally, a writer wants his articles read. What else does he write them for?”

“Perhaps a little for his own entertainment,” suggested her listener.

“Oh, no! He would never take so much trouble just for that.”

“On the contrary, many would take any amount, just for that. Successfully to entertain oneself—that is one of the great successes of life.”

Miss Macks gazed at him; she had a very direct gaze.

“This is just mere talk,” she said, not impatiently, but in a business-like tone. “We shall never get anywhere if you take me up so. It is not that your remarks are not very cultivated and interesting, and all that; but simply that I have so much to tell you.”

“Perhaps I can be cultivated and interesting dumbly. I will try.”

“You are afraid I am going to be diffuse; I see that. So many women are diffuse! But I shall not be, because I have been thinking for six months just what I should say to you. It was very lucky that I went with Mrs. Lawrence to that reception where I met you. But, if it had not happened as it did, I should have found you out all the same. I should have looked for your address at all the bankers’, and, if it was not there, I should have inquired at all the hotels. But it was delightful luck getting hold of you in this way, almost the very minute I enter Rome!”

She spoke so simply and earnestly that Noel did not say that he was immensely honored, and so forth, but merely bowed his acknowledgments.

“To go back. I shall give you simply heads,” pursued Miss Macks. “If you want details, ask, and I will fill them in. I come from the West. Tuscolee Falls is the name of our town. We had a farm there, but we did not do well with it after Mr. Spurr’s death, so we rented it out. That is how I come to have so much leisure. I have always had a great deal of ambition; by that I mean that I did not see why things that had once been done could not be done again. It seemed to me that the point was—just determination. And then, of course, I always had the talent. I made pictures when I was a very little girl. Mother has them still, and I can show them to you. It is just like all the biographies, you know. They always begin in childhood, and astonish the family. Well, I had my first lessons from a drawing-teacher who spent a summer in Tuscolee. I can show you what I did while with him. Then I attended, for four years, the Young Ladies’ Seminary in the county-town, and took lessons while there. I may as well be perfectly frank and tell the whole, which is that everybody was astonished at my progress, and that I was myself. All sorts of things are prophesied out there about my future. You see, the neighborhood is a very generous-spirited one, and they like to think they have discovered a genius [Pg 136]at their own doors. My telling you all this sounds, I know, rather conceited, Mr. Noel. But if you could see my motive, and how entirely without conceit my idea of myself really is, you would hold me free from that charge. It is only that I want you to know absolutely the whole.”

“I quite understand,” answered her visitor.

“Well—I hope you do. I went on at home, after that, by myself, and I did a good deal. I work pretty rapidly, you see. Then came my last lessons, from a third teacher. He was a young man from New York. He had consumption, poor fellow! and cannot last long. He wasn’t of much use to me in actual work. His ideas were completely different from those of my other teachers, and, indeed, from my own. He was unreliable, too, and his temper was uneven. However, I had a good deal of respect for his opinion, and he told me to get your art-articles and read them. It wasn’t easy. Some of them are scattered about in the magazines and papers, you know. However, I am pretty determined, and I kept at it until I got them all. Well, they made a great impression upon me. You see, they were new.” She paused. “But I doubt, Mr. Noel, whether we should ever entirely agree,” she added, looking at him reflectively.

“That is very probable, Miss Macks.”

Miss Macks thought this an odd reply. “He is so queer, with all his smoothness!” she said to her mother afterward. “He never says what you think he will say. Now, any one would suppose that he would have answered that he would try to make me agree, or something like that. Instead, he just gave it right up, without trying! But I expect he sees how independent I am, and that I don’t intend to reflect any one.”

“Well, they made a great impression,” she resumed. “And as you seemed to think, Mr. Noel, that no one could do well in painting who had not seen and studied the old pictures over here, I made up my mind to come over at any cost, if it was a possible thing to bring it about. It wasn’t easy, but—here we are. In the lives of all—almost all—artists, I have noticed—haven’t you?—that there comes a time when they have to live on hope and their own pluck, more than upon anything tangible that the present has to offer. They have to take that risk. Well, I have taken it; I took it when we left America. And now I will tell you what it is I want from you. I haven’t any hesitation in asking, because I am sure you will feel interested in a case like mine, and because it was your writings really that brought me here, you know. And so, then, first: I would like your opinion of all that I have done, so far. I have brought everything with me to show you. Second: I want your advice as to the best teacher; I suppose there is a great choice in Rome. Third: I should be glad if you would give a general oversight to all I do, for the next year. And last, if you would be so kind, I should much enjoy making visits with you to all the galleries and hearing your opinions again by word of mouth, because that is always so much more vivid, you know, than the printed page.”

“My dear Miss Macks! you altogether overestimate my powers,” said Noel, astounded by these far-reaching demands, so calmly and confidently made.

“Yes, I know. Of course it strikes you so—strikes you as a great compliment that I should wish to put myself so entirely in your hands,” answered Miss Macks, smiling. “But you must give up thinking of me as the usual young lady; you must not think of me in that way any more than I shall think of you as the usual young gentleman. You will never meet me at a reception again; now that I have found you, I shall devote myself entirely to my work.”

“An alarming girl!” said Noel to himself. But, even as he said it, he knew that, in the ordinary acceptation of the term at least, Miss Macks was not alarming.

She was twenty-two; in some respects she looked older, in others much younger, than most girls of that age. She was tall, slender, erect, but not especially graceful. Her hands were small and finely shaped, but thin. Her features were well cut; her face oval. Her gray eyes had a clear directness in their glance, which, combined with the other expressions of her face, told the experienced observer at once that she knew little of what is called “the world.” For, although calm, it was a deeply confident glance; it showed that the girl was sure that she could take care of herself, and even several others, also, through any contingencies that might arise. She had little color; but her smooth complexion was not pale—it was slightly brown. Her mouth was small, her teeth small, and very white. Her light-brown hair was drawn back smoothly from her forehead, and drawn up smoothly behind, its thickness braided in a close knot on the top of her head. This compact coiffure, at a time when most feminine foreheads in Rome and elsewhere were shaded almost to the eyebrows by curling locks, and when the arched outline of the head was left unbroken, the hair being coiled in a low knot behind, made Miss Macks look somewhat peculiar. But she was not observant of fashion’s changes. That had been the mode in Tuscolee; she had grown [Pg 137]accustomed to it; and, as her mind was full of other things, she had not considered this one. One or two persons, who noticed her on the voyage over, said to themselves, “If that girl had more color, and if she was graceful, and if she was a little more womanly,—that is, if she would not look at everything in such a direct, calm, impartial, impersonal sort of way,—she would be almost pretty.”

But Miss Macks continued without color and without grace, and went on looking at things as impersonally and impartially as ever.

“I shall be most happy, of course, to do anything that I can,” Noel had answered. Then to make a diversion, “Shall I not have the pleasure of seeing Mrs. Macks?” he asked.

“Mrs. Macks? Oh, you mean mother. My mother’s name is Spurr—Mrs. Spurr. My father died when I was a baby, and, some years afterward, she married Mr. Spurr. She is now again a widow. Her health is not good, and she sees almost no one, thank you.”

“I suppose you are much pleased with the picturesqueness of Roman life, and—ah—your apartment?” he went on.

“Pleased?” said Miss Macks, looking at him in wonder. “With our apartment? We get along with it because we must; there seems to be no other way to live, in Rome. The idea of having only a story of a house, and not a whole house to ourselves, is dreadful to mother; she cannot get used to it. And, with so many families below us,—we have a clock-mender, a dress-maker, an engraver, a print-seller, and a cobbler,—and only one pair of stairs, it does seem to me dreadfully public.”

“You must look upon the stair-way as a street,” said Noel. “You have established yourselves in a very short time.”

“Oh, yes. I got an agent, and looked at thirty places the very first day. I speak Italian a little, so I can manage the housekeeping; I began to study it as soon as we thought of coming, and I studied hard. But all this is of secondary importance; the real thing is to get to work. Will you look at my paintings now?” she said, rising as if to go for them.

“Thanks; I fear I have hardly time today,” said Noel. He was thinking whether it would be better to decline clearly and in so many words the office she had thrust upon him, or trust to time to effect the same without an open refusal. He decided upon the latter course; it seemed the easier, and also the kinder to her.

“Well,—another day, then,” said Miss Macks, cheerfully, taking her seat again. “But about a teacher?”

“I hardly know——”

“Oh, Mr. Noel! you must know.”

And, in truth, he did know. It came into his mind to give her the name of a good teacher, and then put all further responsibilities upon him.

Miss Macks wrote down the name in a clear, ornamental handwriting.

“I am glad it isn’t a foreigner,” she said. “I don’t believe I should get on with a foreigner.”

“But it is a foreigner.”

“Why, it’s an English name, isn’t it? Jackson.”

“Yes, he is an Englishman. But isn’t an Englishman a foreigner in Rome?”

“Oh, you take that view? Now, to me, America and—well, yes, perhaps England, too, are the nations. Everything else is foreign.”

“The English would be very much obliged to you,” said Noel, laughing.

“Yes, I know I am more liberal than most Americans; I really like the English,” said Miss Macks, calmly. “But we keep getting off the track. Let me see—Oh, yes. As I shall go to see this Mr. Jackson this afternoon, and as it is not likely that he will be ready to begin to-morrow, will you come then and look at my pictures? Or would you rather commence with a visit to one of the galleries?”

Raymond Noel was beginning to be amused. If she had shown the faintest indication of knowing how much she was asking,—if she had betrayed the smallest sign of a desire to secure his attention as Raymond Noel personally, and not simply the art-authority upon whom she had pinned her faith,—his disrelish for various other things about her would have been heightened into utter dislike, and it is probable that he would never have entered the street of the Hyacinth again. But she was so unaware of any intrusion, or any exorbitance in her demands, probably so ignorant of—certainly so indifferent to—the degree of perfection (perfection of the most quiet kind, however) visible in the general appearance and manner of the gentleman before her, that (he said to himself) he might as well have been one of her own Tuscolee farmers, for all she knew to the contrary. The whole affair was unusual; and Noel rather liked the unusual, if it was not loud—and Miss Macks was, at least, not loud; she was dressed plainly in black, and she had the gift of a sweet voice, which, although very clear, was low-toned. Noel was an observer of voices, and he had noticed hers the first time he heard her speak. While these thoughts were passing through his mind, he was answering that he feared his engagements for the next day would, unfortunately, keep him from putting himself at her service.

Her face fell; she looked much disappointed.

[Pg 138]

“Is it going to be like this all the time?” she asked, anxiously. “Are you always engaged?”

“In Rome, in the winter, one generally has small leisure. It will be the same with you, Miss Macks, when you have been here a while longer; you will see. As to the galleries, Mr. Jackson has a class, I think, and probably the pupils will visit them all, under his charge; you will find that very satisfactory.”

“But I don’t want Mr. Jackson for the galleries; I want you,” said Miss Macks. “I have studied your art-criticisms until I know them by heart, and I have a thousand questions to ask about every picture you have mentioned. Why, Mr. Noel, I came to Europe to see you!”

Raymond Noel was rather at a loss what to answer to this statement, made by a girl who looked at him so soberly and earnestly with clear gray eyes. It would be of no avail again to assure her that his opinions would be of small use to her; as she had said herself, she was very determined, and she had made up her mind that they would be of great use, instead of small. Her idea must wear itself out by degrees. He would try to make the degrees easy. He decided that he would have a little private talk with Jackson, who was a very honest fellow; and, for the present, he would simply take leave.

“You are very kind,” he said, rising. “I appreciate it, I assure you. It has made me stay an unconscionable time. I hope you will find Rome all you expected, and I am sure you will; all people of imagination like Rome. As to the galleries, yes, certainly; a—ah—little later. You must not forget the various small precautions necessary here as regards the fever, you know.”

“Rome will not be at all what I expected if you desert me,” answered Miss Macks, paying no attention to his other phrases. She had risen, also, and was now confronting him at a distance of less than two feet; as she was tall, her eyes were not much below the level of his own.

“How can a man desert when he has never enlisted?” thought Noel, humorously. But he kept his thought to himself, and merely replied, as he took his hat: “Probably you will desert me; you will find out how useless I am. You must not be too hard upon us, Miss Macks; we Americans lose much of our native energy if we stay long over here.”

“Hard?” she answered,—“hard? Why, Mr. Noel, I am absolutely at your feet!”

He looked at her, slightly startled, although his face showed nothing of it; was she, after all, going to——? But no; her sentence had been as impersonal as those which had preceded it.

“All I said about having contrary opinions, and all that, amounts to nothing,” she went on, thereby relieving him from the necessity of making reply. “I desire but one thing, and that is to have you guide me. And I don’t believe you are really going to refuse. You haven’t an unkind face, although you have got such a cold way! Why, think of it: here I have come all this long distance, bringing mother, too, just to study, and to see you. I shall study hard; I have a good deal of perseverance. It took a good deal to get here in the first place, for we are poor. But I don’t mind that at all; the only thing I should mind, the only thing that would take my courage away, would be to have you desert me. In all the troubles that I thought might happen, I assure you, I never once thought of that, Mr. Noel. I thought of course you would be interested. Why, in your books you are all interest. Are you different from your books?”

“I fear, Miss Macks, that writers are seldom good illustrations of their own doctrines,” replied Noel.

“That would make them hypocrites. I don’t believe you are a hypocrite. I expect you have a habit of running yourself down. Many gentlemen do that, and then they think they will be cried up. I don’t believe you are going to be unkind; you will look at the pictures I have brought with me, wont you?”

“Mr. Jackson’s opinion is worth a hundred of mine, Miss Macks; my knowledge is not technical. But, of course, if you wish it, I shall take pleasure in obeying.” He added several conventional remarks as filling-up, and then, leaving his compliments for “your mother,”—he could not recall the name she had given,—he went toward the little curtained door.

She had brightened over his promise.

“You will come Monday, then, to see them, wont you?—as you cannot come to-morrow,” she said, smiling happily.

When she smiled (and she did not smile often), showing her little white, child-like teeth, she looked very young. He was fairly caught, and answered, “Yes.” But he immediately qualified it with a “That is, if it is possible.”

“Oh, make it possible,” she answered, still smiling and going with him herself to the outer door, instead of summoning the maid. The last he saw of her she was standing in the open door-way, her face bright and contented, watching him as he went down. He did not go to see her pictures on the following Monday; he sent a note of excuse.

[Pg 139]

Some days later he met her.

“Ah, you are taking one of the delightful walks?” he said. “I envy you your first impressions of Rome.”

“I am not taking a walk—that is, for pleasure,” she answered. “I am trying to find some vegetables that mother can eat; the vegetables here are so foreign! You don’t know how disappointed I was, Mr. Noel, when I got your note. It was such a setback! Why couldn’t you come right home with me now—that is, after I have got the vegetables—and see the pictures? It wouldn’t take you fifteen minutes.”

It was only nine o’clock, and a beautiful morning. He thought her such a novelty, with her urgent invitations, her earnest eyes, and her basket on her arm, that he felt the impulse to walk beside her a while through the old streets of Rome; he was very fond of the old streets, and was curious to see whether she would notice the colors and outlines that made their picturesqueness. She noticed nothing but the vegetable-stalls, and talked of nothing but her pictures.

He still went on with her, however, amused by the questions she put to the vegetable-dealers (questions compiled from the phrase-books), and the calm contempt with which she surveyed the Roman artichokes they offered. At last, she secured some beans, but of sadly Italian aspect, and Noel took the basket. He was much entertained by the prospect of carrying it home. He remarked to himself that, of all the various things he had done in Rome, this was the freshest. They reached the street of the Hyacinth and walked down its dark center.

“I see you have the sun,” he said, looking up.

“Yes; that is the reason we took the top floor. We will go right up. Everything is ready.”

He excused himself.

“Some other time.”

They had entered the dusky hall-way. She looked at him without replying; then held out her hand for the basket. He gave it to her.

“I suppose you have seen Mr. Jackson?” he said, before taking leave.

She nodded, but did not speak. Then he saw two tears rise in her eyes.

“My dear young lady, you have been doing too much! You are tired. Don’t you know that that is very dangerous in Rome?”

“It is nothing. Mother has been sick, and I have been up with her two nights. Then, as she did not like our servant, I dismissed her, and as we have not got any one else yet, I have had a good deal to do. But I don’t mind that at all, beyond being a little tired; it was only your refusing to come up, when it seemed so easy. But, never mind; you will come another day.” And, repressing the tears, she smiled faintly, and held out her hand for good-by.

“I will come now,” said Noel. He took the basket again, and went up the stairs. He was touched by the two tears, but, at the same time, vexed with himself for being there at all. There was not one chance in five hundred that her work was worth anything; and, in the four hundred and ninety-nine, pray what was he to say?

She brought him everything. They were all in the four hundred and ninety-nine. In his opinion, they were all extremely and essentially bad.

It was one of Raymond Noel’s beliefs that, where women were concerned, a certain amount of falsity was sometimes indispensable. There were occasions when a man could no more tell the bare truth to a woman than he could strike her; the effect would be the same as a blow. He was an excellent evader when he chose to exert himself, and he finally got away from the little high-up apartment without disheartening or offending its young mistress, and without any very black record of direct untruth—what is more, without any positive promise as to the exact date of his next visit. But all this was a good deal of trouble to take for a girl he did not know or care for.

Soon afterward he met, at a small party, Mrs. Lawrence.

“Tell me a little, please, about the young lady to whom you presented me at Mrs. Dudley’s reception—Miss Macks,” he said, after some conversation.

“A little is all I can tell,” replied Mrs. Lawrence. “She brought a letter of introduction to me from a far-away cousin of mine, who lives out West somewhere, and whom I have not seen for twenty years; my home, you know, is in New Jersey. How they learned I was in Rome I cannot imagine; but, knowing it, I suppose they thought that Miss Macks and I would meet, as necessarily as we should if together in their own village. The letter assures me that the girl is a great genius; that all she needs is an opportunity. They even take the ground that it will be a privilege for me to know her! But I am mortally tired of young geniuses; we have so many here in Rome! So, I told her at once that I knew nothing of modern art,—in fact, detested it,—but that, in any other way, I should be delighted to be of use. And I took her to Mrs. Dudley’s omnium gatherum.”

[Pg 140]

“Then you have not been to see her?”

“No; she came to see me. I sent cards, of course; I seldom call. What did you think of her?”

“I thought her charming,” replied Noel, remembering the night-vigils, the vegetables, the dismissed servant, and the two tears of the young stranger,—remembering, also, her extremely bad pictures.

“I am glad she has found a friend in you,” replied Mrs. Lawrence. “She was very anxious to meet you; she looks upon you as a great authority. If she really has talent—of course you would know—you must tell me. It is not talent I am so tired of, but the pretense of it. She struck me, although wofully unformed and awkward, of course, as rather intelligent.”

“She is intelligence personified,” replied Noel, qualifying it mentally with “intelligence without cultivation.” He perceived that the young stranger would have no help from Mrs. Lawrence, and he added to himself: “And totally inexperienced purity alone in Rome.” To be sure, there was the mother; but he had a presentiment that this lady, as guardian, would not be of much avail.

The next day he went down to Naples for a week, with some friends. Upon his return he stopped at Horace Jackson’s studio one afternoon, as he happened to be passing. His time was really much occupied; he was a favorite in Rome. To his surprise, Jackson seemed to think that Miss Macks had talent. Her work was very crude, of course; she had been brutally taught; teachers of that sort should simply be put out of existence with the bowstring. He had turned her back to the alphabet; and, in time, in time, they—would see what she could do.

Horace Jackson was English by birth, but he had lived in Italy almost all his life. He was a man of forty-five—short, muscular, his thick, rather shaggy, beard and hair mixed with gray; there was a permanent frown over his keen eyes, and his rugged face had marked lines. He was a man of strong individuality. He had the reputation of being the most incorruptibly honest teacher in Rome. Noel had known him a long time, and liked him, ill-tempered though he was. Jackson, however, had not shown any especial signs of a liking for Noel in return. Perhaps he thought that, in the nature of things, there could not be much in common between a middle-aged, morose teacher, who worked hard, who knew nothing of society, and did not want to know, and a man like Raymond Noel. True, Noel was also an artist—that is, a literary one. But he had been highly successful in his own field, and it was understood, also, that he had an income of his own by inheritance, which, if not opulence, was yet sufficiently large to lift him quite above the usual res angusta of his brethren in the craft. In addition, Jackson considered Noel a fashionable man; and that would have been a barrier, even if there had been no other.

As the Englishman seemed to have some belief in Miss Macks, Noel did not say all he had intended to say; he did, however, mention that the young lady had a mistaken idea regarding any use he could be to her; he should be glad if she could be undeceived.

“I think she will be,” said Jackson, with a grim smile, giving his guest a glance of general survey that took him in from head to foot; “she isn’t dull.”

Noel understood the glance, and smiled at Jackson’s idea of him.

“She is not dull, certainly,” he answered. “But she is rather—inexperienced.” He dismissed the subject, went home, dressed and went out to dinner.

One morning, a week later, he was strolling through the Doria gallery. He was in a bad humor. There were many people in the gallery that day, but he was not noticing them; he detested a crowd. After a while, some one touched his coat-sleeve from behind. He turned, with his calmest expression upon his face; when he was in an ill-humor he was impassively calm. It was Miss Macks, her eyes eager, her face flushed with pleasure.

“Oh, what good luck!” she said. “And to think that I almost went to the Borghese, and might have missed you! I am so delighted that I don’t know what to do. I am actually trembling.” And she was. “I have so longed to see these pictures with you,” she went on. “I have had a real aching disappointment about it, Mr. Noel.”

Again Noel felt himself slightly touched by her earnestness. She looked prettier than usual, too, on account of the color.

“I always feel a self-reproach when with you, Miss Macks,” he answered—“you so entirely overestimate me.”

“Well, if I do, live up to it,” she said, brightly.

“Only an archangel could do that.”

“An archangel who knows about Art! I have been looking at the Caraccis; what do you think of them?”

“Never mind the Caraccis; there are better things to look at here.” And then he made the circuit of the gallery with her slowly, pointing out the best pictures. During this circuit, he talked to her as he would have talked to an intelligent child who had been put in his charge in order to learn something of the paintings; he used the simplest [Pg 141]terms, mentioned the marked characteristics, and those only of the different schools, and spoke a few words of unshaded condemnation here and there. All he said was in broad, plain outlines. His companion listened earnestly. She gave him a close attention, almost always a comprehension, but seldom agreement. Her disagreement she did not express in words, but he could read it in her eyes. When they had seen everything,—and it took some time,—

“Now,” he said, “I want you to tell me frankly, and without reference to anything I have said, your real opinion of several pictures I shall name—that is, if you can remember?”

“I remember everything. I always remember.”

“Very well. What do you think, then, of the Raphael double portrait?”

“I think it very ugly.”

“And the portrait of Andrea Doria, by Sebastian del Piombo?”

“Uglier still.”

“And the Velasquez?”

“Ugliest of all.”

“And the two large Claude Lorraines?”

“Rather pretty; but insipid. There isn’t any reality or meaning in them.”

“The Memling?”

“Oh, that is absolutely hideous, Mr. Noel; it hasn’t a redeeming point.”

Raymond Noel laughed with real amusement, and almost forgot his ill-humor.

“When you have found anything you really admire in the galleries here, Miss Macks, will you tell me?”

“Of course I will. I should wish to do so in any case, because, if you are to help me, you ought to thoroughly understand me. There is one thing more I should like to ask,” she added, as they turned toward the door, “and that is that you would not call me Miss Macks. I am not used to it, and it sounds strangely; no one ever called me that in Tuscolee.”

“What did they call you in Tuscolee?”

“They called me Miss Ettie; my name is Ethelinda Faith. But my friends and older people called me just ‘Ettie’; I wish you would, too.”

“I am certainly older,” replied Noel, gravely (he was thirty-three); “but I do not like Ettie. With your permission, I will call you Faith.”

“Do you like it? It’s so old-fashioned! It was my grandmother’s name.”

“I like it immensely,” he answered, leading the way down-stairs.

“You can’t think how I’ve enjoyed it,” she said, warmly, at the door.

“Yet you do not agree with my opinions?”

“Not yet. But all the same it was perfectly delightful. Good-by.”

He had signaled for a carriage, as he had, as usual, an engagement. She preferred to walk. He drove off, and did not see her for ten days.

Then he came upon her again, and again in the Doria gallery. He was fond of the Doria, and often went there, but he had no expectation of meeting Miss Macks this time; he fancied that she followed a system, going through her list of galleries in regular order, one by one, and in that case she would hardly have reached the Doria on a second round. Her list was a liberal one; it included twenty. Noel had supposed that there were but nine in Rome.

This time she did not see him; she had some sheets of manuscript in her hand, and was alternately reading from them and looking at one of the pictures. She was much absorbed. After a while he went up.

“Good morning, Miss Macks.”

She started; her face changed, and the color rose. She was as delighted as before. She immediately showed him her manuscript. There he beheld, written out in her clear handwriting, all he had said of the Doria pictures, page after page of it; she had actually reproduced from memory his entire discourse of an hour.

There were two blank spaces left.

“There, I could not exactly remember,” said Miss Macks, apologetically. “If you would tell me, I should be so glad; then it would be quite complete.”

“I shall never speak again. I am frightened,” said Noel. He had taken the manuscript, and was looking it over with inward wonder.

“Oh, please do.”

“Why do you care for my opinions, Miss Macks, when you do not agree with them?” he asked, his eyes still on the pages.

“You said you would call me Faith. Why do I care? Because they are yours, of course.”

“Then you think I know?”

“I am sure you do.”

“But it follows, then, that you do not.”

“Yes; and there is where my work comes in; I have got to study up to you. I am afraid it will take a long time, wont it?”

“That depends upon you. It would take very little if you would simply accept non-combatively.”

“Without being convinced? That I could never do.”

“You want to be convinced against your will?”

[Pg 142]

“No; my will itself must be convinced to its lowest depths.”

“This manuscript wont help you.”

“Indeed, it has helped me greatly already. I have been here twice with it. I wrote it out the evening after I saw you. I only wish I had one for each of the galleries! But I feel differently now about asking you to go.”

“I told you you would desert me.”

“No, it is not that. But Mr. Jackson says you are much taken up with the fashionable society here, and that I must not expect you to give me so much of your time as I had hoped for. He says, too, that your art-articles will do me quite as much good as you yourself, and more; because you have a way, he says, like all society men, of talking as if you had no real convictions at all, and that would unsettle me.”

“Jackson is an excellent fellow,” replied Noel; “I like him extremely. And when would you like to go to the Borghese?”

“Oh, will you take me?” she said, joyfully. “Any time. To-morrow.”

“Perhaps Mrs.—your mother, will go, also,” he suggested, still unable to recall the name; he could think of nothing but “stirrup,” and of course it was not that.

“I don’t believe she would care about it,” answered the daughter.

“She might. You know we make more of mothers here than we do in America,” he ventured to remark.

“That is impossible,” said Miss Macks, calmly. Evidently she thought his remark frivolous.

He abandoned the subject, and did not take it up again. It was not his duty to instruct Miss Macks in foreign customs. In addition, she was not only not “in society,” but she was an art-student, and art-students had, or took, privileges of their own in Rome.

“At what hour shall I come for you?” he said.

“It will be out of your way to come for me; I will meet you at the gallery,” she answered, radiant at the prospect.

He hesitated, then accepted her arrangement of things. He would take her way, not his own. The next morning he went to the Borghese Palace ten minutes before the appointed time. But she was already there.

“Mother thought she would not come out—the galleries tire her so,” she said; “but she was pleased to be remembered.”

They spent an hour and a half among the pictures. She listened to all he said with the same earnest attention.

Within the next five weeks Raymond Noel met Miss Macks at other galleries. It was always very business-like,—they talked of nothing but the pictures; in truth, her systematic industry kept him strictly down to the subject in hand. He learned that she made the same manuscript copies of all he said, and, when he was not with her, she went alone, armed with these documents, and worked hard. Her memory was remarkable; she soon knew the names and the order of all the pictures in all the galleries, and had made herself acquainted with an outline, at least, of the lives of all the artists who had painted them. During this time she was, of course, going on with her lessons; but, as he had not been again to see Jackson, or to the street of the Hyacinth, he knew nothing of her progress. He did not want to know; she was in Jackson’s hands, and Jackson was quite competent to attend to her.

In these five weeks he gave to Miss Macks only the odd hours of his leisure. He made her no promises; but, when he found that he should have a morning or half-morning unoccupied, he sent a note to the street of the Hyacinth, naming a gallery and an hour. She was always promptly there, and so pleased, that there was a sort of fresh aroma floating through the time he spent with her, after all,—but a mild one.

To give the proper position to the place the young art-student’s light figure occupied on the canvas of Raymond Noel’s winter, it should be mentioned that he was much interested in a French lady, who was spending some months in Rome. He had known her and admired her for a long time; but this winter he was seeing more of her, some barriers which had heretofore stood in the way being down. Madame B—— was a charming product of the effects of finished cultivation and fashionable life upon a natural foundation of grace, wit, and beauty of the French kind. She was not artificial, because she was art itself. Real art is as real as real nature is natural. Raymond Noel had a highly artistic nature. He admired art. This did not prevent him from taking up occasionally, as a contrast to this lady, the society of the young girl he called “Faith.” Most men of imagination, artistic or not, do the same thing once in a while; it seems a necessity. With Noel it was not the contrast alone. The French lady led him an uneasy life, and now and then he took an hour of Faith, as a gentle soothing-draught of safe quality. She believed in him so perfectly! Now Madame appeared to believe in him not at all.

It must be added that, in his conversations with Miss Macks, he had dropped entirely even the very small amount of conventional gallantry that he had bestowed [Pg 143]upon her in the beginning. He talked to her not as though she was a boy, exactly, or an old woman, but as though he himself was a relative of mature age—say an uncle of benevolent disposition and a taste for art.

February gave way to March. And now, owing to a new position of his own affairs, Noel saw no more of Faith Macks. She had been a contrast, and he did not now wish for a contrast; or a soothing-draught, and a soothing-draught was not at present required. He simply forgot all about her.

In April, he decided rather suddenly to leave Rome. This was because Madame B—— had gone to Paris, and had not forbidden her American suitor to follow her, a few days later. He made his preparations for departure, and these, of course, included farewell calls. Then he remembered Faith Macks; he had not seen her for six weeks. He drove to the street of the Hyacinth, and went up the dark stairs. Miss Macks was at home, and came in without delay; apparently, in her trim neatness, she was always ready for visitors.

She was very glad to see him; but did not, as he expected, ask why he had not come before. This he thought a great advance; evidently she was learning. When she heard that he had come to say good-by, her face fell.

“I am so very sorry; please sit as long as you can, then,” she said, simply. “I suppose it will be six months before I see you again; you will hardly return to Rome before October.” That he would come at that time she did not question.

“My plans are uncertain,” replied Noel. “But probably I shall come back. One always comes back to Rome. And you—where do you go? To Switzerland?”

“Why—we go nowhere, of course; we stay here. That is what we came for, and we are all settled.”

He made some allusion to the heat and unhealthiness.

“I am not afraid,” replied Miss Macks. “Plenty of people stay; Mr. Jackson says so. It is only the rich who go away, and we are not rich. We have been through hot summers in Tuscolee, I can tell you!” Then, without asking leave this time, as if she was determined to have an opinion from him before he departed, she took from a portfolio some of the work she had done under Mr. Jackson’s instruction.

Noel saw at once that the Englishman had not kept his word. He had not put her back upon the alphabet, or, if he had done so, he had soon released her, and allowed her to pursue her own way again. The original faults were as marked as ever. In his opinion all was essentially bad.

He looked in silence. But she talked on hopefully, explaining, comparing, pointing out.

“What does Mr. Jackson think of this?” he said, selecting the one he thought the worst.

“He admires the idea greatly; he thinks it very original. He says that my strongest point is originality,” she answered, with her confident frankness.

“He means—ah—originality of subject?”

“Oh, yes; my execution is not much yet. But that will come in time. Of course, the subject, the idea, is the important thing; the execution is secondary.” Here she paused; something seemed to come into her mind. “I know you do not think so,” she added, thoughtfully, “because, you know, you said,”—and here she quoted a page from one of his art-articles with her clear accuracy. “I have never understood what you meant by that, Mr. Noel; or why you wrote it.”

She looked at him questioningly. He did not reply; his eyes were upon one of the sketches.

“It would be dreadful for me if you were right!” she added, with slow conviction.

“I thought you believed that I was always right,” he said, smiling, as he placed the sketches on the table.

But she remained very serious.

“You are—in everything but that.”

He made some unimportant reply, and turned the conversation. But she came back to it.

“It would be dreadful,” she repeated, earnestly, with the utmost gravity in her gray eyes.

“I hope the long summer will not tire you,” he answered, irrelevantly. “Shall I not have the pleasure of saying good-by—although that, of course, is not a pleasure—to Mrs.—to your mother?”

He should have made the speech in any case, as it was the proper one to make; but as he sat there, he had thought that he really would like to have a look at the one guardian this young girl was to have during her long, lonely summer in Rome.

“I will tell her. Perhaps when she hears that you are going away, she will feel like coming in,” said Miss Macks.

She came back after some delay, and with her appeared a matron of noticeable aspect.

“My mother,” she said, introducing her (evidently Noel was never to get the name); “this is Mr. Noel, mother.”

“And very glad I am to see you, sir, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Spurr, extending her hand with much cordiality. “I said to Ettie that I’d come in, seeing as ’twas you, though I don’t often see strangers nowadays on account of poor health for a long time past; rheumatism and asthma. But I feel beholden to [Pg 144]you, Mr. No-ul, because you’ve been so good to Ettie. You’ve been real kind.”

Ettie’s mother was a very portly matron of fifty-five, with a broad face, indistinct features, very high color, and a breathless, panting voice. Her high color—it really was her most noticeable feature—was surmounted by an imposing cap, adorned with large bows of scarlet ribbon; a worsted shawl, of the hue known as “solferino,” decked her shoulders; under her low-necked collar reposed a bright blue necktie, its ends embroidered in red and yellow; and her gown was of a vivid dark green. But although her colors swore at each other, she seemed amiable. She was also voluble.

Noel, while shaking hands, was considering, mentally, with some retrospective amusement, his condition of mind if this lady had accepted his invitations to visit the galleries.

“You must sit down, mother,” said Miss Macks, bringing forward an easy chair. “She has not been so well as usual, lately,” she said, explanatorily, to Noel, as she stood for a moment beside her mother’s chair.

“It’s this queer Eye-talian air,” said Mrs. Spurr. “You see I aint used to it. Not but what I aint glad to be here on Ettie’s account—real glad. It’s just what she needs and oughter have.”

The girl put her hand on her mother’s shoulder with a little caressing touch. Then she left the room.

“Yes, I do feel beholden to you, Mr. No-ul. But then, she’ll be a credit to you, to whatever you’ve done for her,” said Mrs. Spurr when they were left alone. “Her talunts are very remarkable. She was the head scholar of the Young Ladies’ Seminary through four whole years, and all the teachers took a lot of pride in her. And then her paintings, too! I’m sorry you’re going off so soon. You see, she sorter depends upon your opinion.”

Noel felt a little stir at the edges of his conscience; he knew perfectly that his opinion was that Miss Macks, as an artist, would never do anything worth the materials she used.

“I leave her in good hands,” he said.

After all, it was Jackson’s responsibility, not his.

“Yes, Mr. Jackson thinks a deal of her. I can see that plain!” answered Mrs. Spurr, proudly.

Here the daughter returned, bringing a little note-book and pencil.

“Do you know what these are for?” she said. “I want you to write down a list of the best books for me to read this summer, while you are gone. I am going to work hard; but if I have books, too, the time won’t seem so long.”

Noel considered a moment. In one way her affairs were certainly none of his business; in another way they were, because she had thrust them upon him.

“I will not give you a list, Miss Macks; probably you would not be able to find the books here. But I will send you, from Paris or London, some things that are rather good, if you will permit me to do so.”

She said he was very kind. Her face brightened.

“If she has appreciation enough to comprehend what I send her,” he thought, “perhaps in the end she will have a different opinion about my ‘kindness’!”

Soon afterward he took leave. The next day he went to Paris.

(To be continued.)

The President and the Supreme Court.

It was hardly to be expected that the action of the President in nominating Mr. Conkling to the Supreme Bench would be followed by universal approval of the act. The selection for such a place of any man known chiefly as an active politician inevitably exposed the motives which led to the choice, as well as the choice itself, to severe criticism; but in Mr. Conkling’s case the President went a step farther than this. He took a man whose reputation has been that of a bitter partisan, a member of a faction to which he himself, until he reached the White House, had always belonged. It was only natural that the choice of such a candidate should be regarded by the opposite faction with jealousy and distrust, and a striking illustration of this sort of temper was afforded by the criticism of the nomination which appeared in what would a year ago have been termed a leading “Half-breed” newspaper, that ‘Guiteau had made a Supreme Judge as well as a President.’

Curious enough, the Stalwart organs did not seem to be overjoyed at the event either, the feeling among them evidently being precisely what Mr. Conkling’s probably was, that he was too great a man for the place, and that, as it was in large measure to Mr. Conkling’s favor that the President owed his political consequence, it was a case of the creature rewarding his creator with something which each of them, in his secret soul, would smile at as the prize of a great political ambition. It must be said that there was a good deal in this view. A judge of the Supreme Court has no patronage, cannot reward friends or punish enemies, and has consequently no control over conventions or nominations. He can only administer law and dispense justice, and if he does this well, his only reward is gaining the reputation of a good judge. To nominate Mr. Conkling was in a certain sense to shelve him, and looking at it in this way, no Stalwart could really feel that it was the act of a faithful political friend. All Stalwart politicians have an antique and simple way of looking at the art of government as only a more public branch of the struggle for existence, and, in their eyes, the President complimented his too close friend with a seat on the bench much as, in other countries and more barbarous times, he might have sent him a bowstring or signed his death-warrant.

The only class in the community which said nothing about the nomination was the bar—a singular fact, upon which we have seen no comment whatever. A small number of Senators were found ready to vote against Mr. Conkling, and Mr. Hoar, in a very deliberate speech, declared that the nomination was unfit to be made. The unfitness chiefly consisted of a total lack of professional qualifications. His unjudicial, or, to put it more accurately, his fiercely partisan, temper may be passed over, because there is no doubt that the exercise of judicial functions, the imperative necessity of listening to both sides, and the habit of weighing evidence, always tend to diminish this defect, and often in time to do away with it altogether. Bitter partisans, after being made judges, have grown out of their partisanship in a wonderful way. But a more fundamental difficulty was the doubt as to whether Mr. Conkling had that experience and learning as a lawyer which brought him within the class from which judges of the Supreme Court have been hitherto drawn. This was a doubt on which the bar might have been expected to throw some light. If, as his friends maintained, Mr. Conkling was really one of the first lawyers of the country, in the enjoyment of a professional practice which placed him in the same rank with the other prominent candidates for the place, it would seem to have been very easy for them to establish the fact. A man cannot occupy such a position in secret; those, at least, who meet him in court must know how powerful he is as an advocate, how learned he is as a lawyer. On the other hand, if he had no practice at all, the nomination was manifestly one in which the bar had such a direct interest as to make some remonstrance almost imperative. The bar, however, remained absolutely silent. Confirmation was treated, from the first, as a foregone conclusion, and the Senators who opposed it were left to record their futile protest without any support. Such inaction in a similar case in the last generation would have been impossible; although, indeed, there were then enough lawyers of the first rank in the Senate itself to have settled any question of the professional standing of a candidate for the Supreme Court, from their own knowledge of the leaders of the bar. The divorce between “politics” and the bar, which has been effected to so great an extent since the war, never had a more curious illustration than in the total silence with which this nomination was received by the whole profession.

The investigation which the bar refused to make into the professional standing of Mr. Conkling was, however, pretty thoroughly made by the press, and the facts of his career as a lawyer were, at the time of his selection, accessible to any one who had the slightest desire to know what they were. He had undoubtedly had some practice. As a young man he had been a rural district-attorney for a short time, and this office had given him a sort of experience that must have been useful in familiarizing him with the ordinary routine of the trial of criminal cases—a branch of the law which would, of course, be of little use to him on the Supreme Bench. At an early age he left the regular practice of the law, and went into politics with a zeal and fervor such as have been displayed by few other men in our time, and in twenty years he became a complete master of the art of management through patronage. He had, however, so devoted himself to this, that he had seldom found time to speak in the Senate on any important measure, and never had made himself an authority in that body on matters of law. His system of politics, indeed, compelled him to devote so much [Pg 146]time and attention to men, that he had but little left to spare for measures at all. Occasionally he appeared with a brief in the Supreme Court, retained, as Senators often are retained, chiefly on account of his position. This, however, was of more real value to him in a professional point of view in the Departments, where he sometimes argued points of law before judges who felt that the retention of their places depended, in a measure, on reaching conclusions which might commend themselves to powerful Senators like himself. When he retired from politics last year, it was loudly asserted by his friends that he was “returning” to a lucrative practice at the bar, and stories were published by them with regard to his prospective income which brought a smile to the lips of every lawyer who knows what “returning” to the bar after an absence of twenty years means. That these stories should have been believed at all, shows what a strange effect public position of any kind has on the imagination. It was almost a matter of mathematical demonstration that Mr. Conkling was not “returning” to any practice whatever.

That a politician with a legal career of this sort should have been nominated to the Supreme Bench twice, first as a chief-justice of the United States,—a position held by Marshall and Taney,—and then as associate-justice, and in both cases should have declined the place, almost as beneath his notice, will one of these days be looked upon as a bit of politico-legal burlesque—to which the finishing touch was given by the fact that, in the second instance, the President who selected him was himself a lawyer from his own State, presumably having a full knowledge of his lack of qualification, and who had just shown his appreciation of the qualities really needed in a judge by his selection for another vacancy on the same bench of the chief-justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court—a lawyer pure and simple, selected solely as such, and having no political backing of any kind. The refusal of Mr. Conkling to take the place does not absolve the President for the part played by him in the farce. The most charitable explanation of his action possible is that he felt sure in advance that the gift would be declined. But it is hardly less a degradation of the nominating power, and hardly less an indication of contempt for the Supreme Court, to make use of judicial patronage for the purpose of complimenting broken-down and discredited partisans, than it would be to pack the bench with them.

It must be said, however, that this explanation has been generally suggested, and that the President is enjoying the benefit of it. If he has made one singularly bad nomination, he has offset it by two singularly good ones. The refusal of Mr. Conkling was followed by the appointment of Judge Blatchford, a lawyer of high standing and long judicial experience, and having almost as little political influence behind him as Judge Gray. The President is, on the whole, more likely to be remembered in connection with the Court for the strength which he has infused into it, than for the harm which he seemed at one time willing to do it. The indignation of the country will, no doubt, prevent the Conkling episode from taking rank as a precedent. Indeed, a repetition may be regarded as impossible, for the country will probably never produce another Conkling.

No better proof could be offered of the quiet and pacific condition of politics, since the change of administration, than the good humor with which the exposure of the wonderful diplomatic feats performed in the course of our attempt to mediate between Chili and Peru have been received by the public. When it was discovered some years since that General Schenck, as our minister to London, had made use of his position in connection with a mining venture, the scandal created an uproar from one end of the country to the other. But the Schenck scandal, in magnitude, was a mere bagatelle to the Peruvian scandal. The outline of the chief events which gave rise to it are worth recalling.

The Chilians engaged in a war with Peru, in which we had no earthly interest except as spectators, and as being generally friends of peace. During the Hayes administration, following the usual course in such matters, the State Department offered the mediation of the United States, which, however was not accepted. Chili then prosecuted the war to a successful termination, conquered Peru and her ally Bolivia, occupied the conquered territory, seized the capital, declared martial law, and—the Peruvians having, with one of their rapid constitutional changes, set up a new government under a politician named Calderon—seized Calderon and sent him off to Chili. Under the laws of war which the United States and all other modern countries have been in the habit of acting upon, there was no objection to these proceedings. The right of conquest confers an absolute right upon the conqueror to take such measures for preserving order in the conquered territory as he thinks best. And martial law means nothing more nor less than the will of the commanding general. The conqueror, too, has the right not only to preserve order, but to indemnify himself for the expenses of the war, and the expenditure of blood and treasure, by the annexation of such part of the conquered territory as he considers necessary. We did so after the Mexican war, and the Germans did so after their victory over France, ten years ago. Undoubtedly the Chilians would have now proceeded to annex an important part of Peru, had not new and strange forces appeared on the scene to thwart their designs.

The accession of General Garfield to the presidency brought Mr. Blaine to the State Department, and one of his first acts was to recall our minister to Peru, Mr. Christiancy, a lawyer of experience and capacity, and put in his place General Hurlbut, a politician who had done work for Mr. Blaine, or Mr. Blaine’s friends, on the stump. The fitness of General Hurlbut for that or any other post under Government may be inferred from his military career. During the war he was in charge of the Department of the Gulf, and made use of his position to fill his pockets with bribes for passing cotton through the lines. His administration of his command was investigated toward the close of the war by a special commission, of which General W. F. Smith and the late James T. Brady were members, and they reported him guilty of this and other serious offenses. Since then the matter has come up in the courts, and, within a few months, the Supreme Court of the United States has decided that General [Pg 147]Hurlbut was guilty of corruption in a very glaring case, in which the cotton was entitled to pass without any action by him, but was stopped in order that toll might be levied on it.

Just before the arrival of this diplomat in Peru, the government of the dictator Pierola had crumbled to pieces, and, partly by the aid of the Chilians, the new Calderon government had been set up in its place. This government was, however, a mere shell, and was not officially recognized by the ministers of the European governments at Lima as a de facto government. Suddenly, without any apparent reason, Mr. Blaine sent word to Mr. Christiancy that, if Calderon represented the “character and intelligence” of Peru, his government might be recognized—instructions which Mr. Christiancy thought were equivalent to a direction to recognize him, not so much because he regarded him as representing any “character and intelligence” at all, as because he had been taking a good deal of pains to explain, in his dispatches to Mr. Blaine, that he did not think there were any “character and intelligence” worth mentioning in Peru. The peculiarity of the instruction lay in the fact that it applied an absolutely novel test to determine the existence of a government. When one country “recognizes” a foreign government, what it does is simply to admit that a certain fact exists; what is called a de facto government is simply one which, apart from all question of right and authority, preserves order, administers justice, levies and collects taxes throughout a definite extent of territory. It must have physical force behind it, but whether it represents “character” or “intelligence” is no more to the purpose than whether it is a monarchy or a republic.

Mr. Hurlbut now arrived on the scene, and Calderon having been recognized as carrying on a government “based” on character and intelligence, our new minister proceeded to issue proclamations, in the shape of dispatches not unlike the pronunciamentos of South American statesmen, in which he announced the hitherto unheard-of principle of international law, that a conquering nation in the position of Chili could not annex the territory of a conquered country like Peru, unless it were first proved impossible for the conquered country to pay a money indemnity. While Mr. Hurlbut was setting forth this principle to the Chilians, the latter, who had declared martial law in Peru, suddenly seized Calderon himself, and brought his government to an abrupt termination by carrying him off to Chili.

Martial law being what it is, and having been declared by the Chilians, our government had as little to do with the arrest of Calderon as it had previously with the disappearance of Pierola. His incarceration really simplified the situation, because it left the Chilian commander the only government in existence. Nevertheless, this treatment of Calderon was bitterly resented by Mr. Blaine, one of whose last acts was to dispatch an envoy to demand an explanation, under instructions which, if executed by Mr. Trescott, would have led Chili and the United States to the verge of, if not into, war. Fortunately, the departure of Mr. Blaine from the State Department led to a modification of the instructions.

Now for the explanation of all this diplomacy. Peru is bankrupt, and has two sets of creditors—one in Europe, and the other in the United States. The first are mainly bona fide creditors—bond-holders; the second are speculators, who have bought up claims against Peru, growing out of alleged discoveries of guano and nitrates a generation ago, swollen them to fabulous amounts, and tried to get the State Department to press them against Peru. French bankers represented the one; an adventurer of our own, named Shipherd, the other. The most valuable assets of Peru consist of the guano deposits and the nitrate beds. Consequently, these speculators and creditors, fearing that Chili would take them, went to work to get the United States to mediate between the two countries, and arrange terms of peace which would secure them against loss. For this purpose the French creditors got up a company, known as the “Crédit Industriel,” which undertook to perform the work of mediation on reasonable terms, part of which was to be the concession of the agency for the sale of the guano and nitrate deposits to an American house; and, to advance this project, it entered into a contract with an American house, the chief member of which was the American minister to Paris, by which his pecuniary returns were dependent on his government’s carrying the scheme through. Meanwhile, Shipherd appeared in a corporate form as the Peruvian Company, and in this, apparently, Mr. Hurlbut, our minister to Peru, was to be made interested. At any rate, there was some hitherto unexplained connection between this scheme and the indignation expressed over the arrest of Calderon.

Such is the present condition of the Peruvian scandal, the detailed investigation of which has been taken up by Congress. An extraordinary thing in connection with it is the remarkable number of governments, corporations, and individuals who have first and last interfered in the interest of peace of South America, and the very slight effect they have thus far had on the settlement of the quarrel, when compared with the wide-spread scandal of all kinds that their efforts have produced. The United States, Mr. Blaine, Mr. Christiancy, General Hurlbut, Mr. Shipherd, the Peruvian Company, the “Crédit Industriel,” Mr. Levi P. Morton, have all “taken a hand” in arranging the terms of peace; yet the peace is actually being settled by Chili herself, while it leaves us, who were originally disinterested spectators, with a Secretary of State and two foreign ministers under a cloud, and a Congressional committee in session to investigate what is already one of the most extensive and curious, and threatens to be one of the most prolific, diplomatic scandals of modern times.

The clergy have had to take not a little admonition of late respecting their political duties. They deserve it, and they ought to profit by it. Ministers are not too nice to bear the ordinary burdens of citizenship; they ought to ask no exemptions, and to shirk no obligations. A consecration that ignores the heaviest responsibilities is a snare.

Happily, those who preach this doctrine to the preachers are not without shining examples of the salutary influence of clergymen upon politics. The [Pg 148]kind of work that may be done by men of this profession has been illustrated by Leonard Bacon and Theodore D. Woolsey, and Julius H. Seelye, and James Freeman Clarke, and others like them—clergymen who have maintained the closest relations with the political life of their day, and have often brought the light of a sound morality to bear upon pending issues. This is a kind of work that always needs doing; and if the clergyman has any special function in politics it would seem to be that of standing up for truth and righteousness and a large patriotism, against the trickery and jobbery and paltry partisanship that often infest political organizations.

Now and then, however, we witness the irruption into politics of a member of the clerical profession who, on entering political life, appears to leave his morals where the Mussulman leaves his shoes—outside the door; who seems to suppose that his usefulness in that sphere depends on forgetting the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount, and on going down into the dirt with the dirtiest of partisans. It is notorious that the most unscrupulous men who have ever appeared in political life have had clergymen among their stanch adherents. Quite a body-guard of clerical retainers have attached themselves to the fortune of Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts; and even Jim Fisk had his ministerial eulogist.

We should be sorry to class the Rev. Dr. Newman, of this city, among political parsons without conscience. But the short speech made by this gentleman at the late dinner of the Lincoln Club was a most surprising performance, and should be carefully read by clergymen who wish to learn how not to go into politics. “I am proud,” said this orator, “to belong to that section of the party known as Stalwarts. I do so from religious principle and from intellectual principle.” Precisely what this “section of the party” stands for, the reverend doctor does not stop to tell us, but his subsequent remarks throw some light upon the question. Stalwartism, as Dr. Newman understands it, consists in the worship of Roscoe Conkling. “The names of Washington, Lincoln, and Grant have been mentioned,” proceeds our Stalwart apostle. “I want to speak another name,—a name that will live when the bronze has melted, and the marble crumbled—a name that will live while the stars shine, and that name is Roscoe Conkling. A majestic model of a man; a man of more than Attic eloquence, of more than Roman logic; a man who can hold up his hand as did Aristides of old, and say there is no stain of bribe there; a man who preferred to go down and out of sight rather than sacrifice a principle.”

Something of this is matter of opinion, and more is matter of taste. Dr. Newman may be right in his prediction that the name of Conkling will outlast the bronzes and the marbles; so, for that matter, will the names of Turveydrop and Chadband. That Mr. Conkling is a “majestic model of a man” is a truth concerning which no one who enters into Mr. Conkling’s consciousness as intimately as Dr. Newman does could be in doubt; and the panegyric upon this great man’s eloquence and logic need not be too sharply challenged. We may cheerfully admit, also, that Mr. Conkling is not suspected of taking money-bribes: is this virtue so rare as to set its possessor on a pinnacle above all other men?

There is, however, a word or two to be said in this connection, to which we beg leave to call the attention of this clerical expounder of political morality. Mr. Conkling may have received no bribes; is he guiltless of bestowing them? The candidate for Congress who takes out his pocket-book and pays a man ten dollars to vote for him is guilty of bribery. The candidate for Congress who says to his friend, “Get me nominated and elected, and I will secure you the post-office in your town, or a clerkship in the Treasury Department, worth eighteen hundred dollars a year,” is equally guilty of bribery. That is a corrupt consideration. And even though there is no express bargain, if the corrupt consideration, suggested or expected, is allowed to influence the political action of the candidate’s friend, the moral quality of the transaction is precisely the same. “Bribery,” says a high authority, “is the administration of a bribe or reward that it may be a motive in the performance of functions for which the proper motive ought to be a conscientious sense of duty.” Whenever offices are distributed in such a way as to reward political workers for personal services, the essence of the transaction is bribery. And it is a meaner and more immoral transaction to bribe a man with a Government office, than to bribe him with your own money. Now, this is a kind of transaction to which Mr. Conkling has devoted the best part of his life. He is not alone in it, but he is one of the most conspicuous of those who have been addicted to it. In view of this fact, a judicious teacher of morality would omit the comparison to Aristides.

Dr. Newman further glorifies his ideal statesman by describing him as “a man who preferred to go down and out of sight rather than sacrifice a principle.” We might ask whether Mr. Conkling’s prolonged and shameless efforts at Albany to get himself back into the United States Senate were a part of his going down and out. But instead we shall ask what is the “principle,” allegiance to which, on the part of Mr. Conkling, kindles all this ardor in the breast of a clergyman? It is the “principle” known as “the courtesy of the Senate.” It is the “principle” by which the Administration Senators claim the right of controlling all the appointments made by the President in their several States. The Constitution directs the President to make certain appointments: Mr. Conkling’s “principle” takes this power out of his hands. It was for the defense of this gross and outrageous usurpation that Mr. Conkling was willing (?) to “go down and out of sight”—for this, and nothing else. And here is a minister of the gospel applauding him for this monstrous assumption, and finding in it the crowning proof of his greatness!

There is one other exhibition of “principle” which may have inflamed the enthusiasm of Mr. Conkling’s clerical eulogist. The man who, in the Chicago Convention, exhausted the adjectives in expressing his detestation of “bolters,” goes to Albany and organizes a bolt in his own interest, seeking an alliance with the Democrats to defeat the majority of his own party. The egotism, the babyism, and the inconsistency of this transaction have no parallel on any page of our political history. Mr. Conkling did indeed “go down [Pg 149]and out of sight.” From the pity and the scorn of his countrymen he did well to hide himself, even though the hiding was delayed till after he had been well beaten in the senatorial contest. The President who picked him up to place him in the highest judicial position in the land gave a rude shock to those who had begun to believe in Mr. Arthur’s discretion; and the clergyman who has ornamented him with tinsel eulogy has not adorned his own sacred calling.

Prejudices often survive the reason for their existence, like some ill weeds that grow again after they have been uprooted. In the Middle Ages, the Jews were believed to be an accursed race of deicides. The guilt of Herod and of the chief priests of Pilate’s time was supposed to have diffused itself, by a transfer and transmission understood only by the speculative theologian, to the whole Jewish race. It was, therefore, considered most meritorious and well-pleasing to God to make their lives as wretched as possible, in atonement for the suffering of Christ. According to law, distinctive badges were worn by these heirs of perdition, that nobody might mistake them for Christians, and they were required to dwell in separate quarters, that they might not by any chance associate with so-called Christians—an arrangement which, no doubt, saved the Jews from a great deal of bad company.

In some countries, laws were made to keep them from increasing; in others, they were occasionally thinned out by persecution and massacre. When any great drought or other scourge befell a nation, the anger of heaven was appeased by a crusade against the Jews, who were banished or put to death for the sins of high-priest Ananias, as in like manner the Puritans in Boston sought to turn away the wrath of God, disclosed in Philip’s War, by fresh severities against the Quakers. There was not much encouragement to people situated as the Jews were to keep visible property, and hence they came to be dealers in money—the financiers of Europe; and since the Jew was destined to perdition anyhow,—damned ex officio,—he alone in England was permitted to receive usury for his money.

To justify all this outrage, prejudice easily invented charges against the Jews more injurious than that of taking exorbitant interest. It would have been wonderful, indeed, if the Jew, badgered, beaten, and banished from land to land, did not in turn lay up a store of hatred on his own side that would now and then break out in words and acts. But the wildest stories were set a-going, of children carried off by Jews to be circumcised and even to be crucified. It was under the stimulus of such slanders that, at the close of the thirteenth century, the Jews, after suffering outrage and robbery, were exiled from England, many of them being plundered and pitched into the sea on their passage to the Continent by mariners zealous to promote Christianity.

Not all of Christendom has come out of barbarism yet. There are regions where the Jews still suffer from the folly and fanaticism of their neighbors. In Russia to-day, as in England five hundred years ago, the irresponsible despotism and blind fanaticism that bear so heavily upon the Jews seek to justify themselves by recounting wrongs, real and imaginary, wrought by the Jew. But all the rest of Christendom has long since found out that the simple remedy for all the wrongs, real or imaginary, wrought by the Jews is the admission of Jews to stand before the law on the same level with other human beings. The Jews are not worse than other people. The rascally Jew is not more villainous than the rascally Christian. The race furnishes, by all account, a larger proportion of eminent men than any other. Dr. Guthrie, the Scotch divine, was accustomed to say that the best brains of modern times were in the heads of Jews. Those who cling tenaciously to a prejudice against the Jewish race will none the less follow the political lead of Disraeli, or the theological leadership of Neander, or admire the philosophy of Spinoza and of Moses Mendelssohn, the poetry of Heine, the music of Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, and in a hundred ways will come under the influence of the Jewish intellect, which plays so large a part in human thought and human affairs.

The greatest paradox of history is the fact that Christendom reveres more than all other literature that which came from the pen of Jews, believing that to them was given a closer communion with God than to other people, while this same Christendom is ready to believe all slanders against the race that gave birth to that greatest of ancient poets—the author of the book of Job, as well as to Isaiah, to Daniel, to John, and to Paul—not to mention a name more deeply reverenced than all. It is never safe to accept the account given of the downtrodden by those who oppress them. Oppression no doubt degrades the oppressed, as it certainly does the oppressor, but it will not do to take the word of the tyrant for the character of the slave under his heel.

At the last meeting of the New York State Medical Society, a most important change was effected in the ethics of medical practice. This consisted in the adoption of a new code for the guidance of the faculty, virtually permitting a physician of the “old school” to consult with any physician of the other schools in good standing he may choose. This is a wise and timely measure, and must result in a great improvement in the tone of the profession, raising it in the respect of every one, and divesting it of much that is discreditable. In the eyes of the law, both schools have the same privileges and standing; there are well-conducted State homeopathic as well as allopathic asylums and hospitals; there are regularly chartered colleges of both schools; and it is high time that arbitrary distinctions should be at an end.

The action of the State Society at Albany has naturally drawn forth the adverse criticism of men whose ideas are as narrow and illiberal as those of the most bigoted theologians. It has even been insinuated by one Philadelphia medical journal that the new code was suggested by the specialists of the regular school in New York City, who, knowing that a large number of rich and influential people in that city employed homeopathists, wished for a change that would permit them to meet their “irregular” brethren in consultation. [Pg 150]Equally silly and hastily formed opinions have been expressed by other non-progressive critics, who seem to cling as fondly to the traditional blue laws of their school as the venerable Puritan clung to his iron-bound Bible with one hand, while with the other he piled fagots upon the fire built to consume the unfortunate witch.

After all, the duty of the physician is to relieve human suffering, and whether he does so by the use of the heroic measures of Bishop Berkeley’s tar-water, or the infinitesimal doses of the Lilliputs, it matters not. The clever and successful practitioner seizes the best remedy that presents itself, and does not stop to inquire whether he violates any code in so doing. The old school are making daily use of the remedies of the “homeopaths,” while the latter do not hesitate to administer remedies not included in their pharmacopœia. In America, Doctor Henry G. Piffard, of New York, and in England, Doctor Sidney Ringer, were among the first of “allopaths” to call attention to the value of the homeopathic use of certain drugs.

What is really needed in medicine is a putting away of the “pathies” which belong to the quacks, to the creatures who thrive on printing-ink and “testimonials,” and who prey upon the credulity and superstition of the general public. If such an amalgamation as will probably follow the passage of the new code does occur, it will mark an era in medical progress that must carry with it a more scientific exactness. The weaker men in both schools must be crowded to the wall, and at the bedside of the patient there will be a practical and fair application of what is good in each system.

Under the new régime, the public ought to be able to judge more clearly of the character and ability of their physicians. The question will not be so much of the school as of the honorable standing of the individual among his comrades of both schools. When he is called hard names by his fellows, it ought hereafter to mean something more than a difference of opinion on matters of theory. Let the public now be on its guard against supposedly “regular” physicians, who are known among their brethren as “commercial doctors.” These men, with the indorsement of titles, or a membership in some respectable medical society, prostitute their learning by indulgence in “clap-trap,” by the recommendation of “cures,” and by useless and unnecessary operations, performed on every occasion and upon every patient, no matter what may be his disease. One will discover that some particular part of the body is the seat of a morbid process, and will proceed to remove it by a mysterious operation; while another will prescribe a remedy which can be procured only at a certain place, and can be taken only in a certain position. A more matter-of-fact practitioner will suggest the extent and value of his practice by means of a pile of bank-notes of large denominations exposed upon his desk. With these men no code of ethics is of the slightest use, and their more honest and plodding fellow-physicians must bear the disgrace thus brought upon their calling. But if the profession itself finds it difficult to deal technically with such men, the public, as we have said, ought to be better able to discern them now that the allopaths are disposed, in their public attitude and private conversation, to reserve their harsh criticisms for real offenders.

A great many Englishmen visit America, but a great many more would come over annually if it were not for the English Channel. The general belief of English people who have not crossed the ocean is that, in its effects upon the human system and the human mind, the voyage is just what the effect of the Channel crossing would be if the latter were prolonged for as many days as it is hours. In other words, they look upon the Atlantic Ocean as a larger and more pestilent Channel, and very naturally they refuse to venture upon it. The ingenuity of nature in the production of human misery was never more completely matched by the lack of ingenuity on the part of man to overcome it than in this matter of the Channel crossing. It is not necessary to enter into details concerning a subject which either experience, oral narrative, or literature has made familiar to every intelligent reader.

Of late, however, the scheme has been revived of a submarine tunnel, which, if successful, would effectually and forever abolish what may be said to be one of the greatest evils of civilized life. But along with the news of the revived project—news of the deepest personal interest to every traveling American (and what American does not travel?)—comes the intelligence of an opposition to the scheme, based upon military grounds. It seems that if the tunnel is built—presto! the tight little island is no longer an island! Should both ends of the tunnel, by delay, mismanagement, or chance of any kind, fall into the hands of the enemy, and remain therein a single day, the Continental hosts, to the number of one hundred thousand in the twenty-four hours, may pass dry-shod, like the Israelites of old! Then—exit England!

Now, what we have to say is that if this opposition should be successful—if the fear of war should prevent the abatement of this gigantic nuisance—if every tribute paid to Neptune by every Englishman who crosses the Channel is, in reality, a tribute paid to Cæsar, then Cæsar, then war, is doomed! But we do not believe the opposition will be successful. Both England and America are largely ruled by the imagination, but there is something else that has still more power over these kindred nations, and that is common sense. The common sense of America is in favor of the building of a canal to unite the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, by any one who is able to build it, and the country cannot be frightened out of the idea by the fears of imagined wars. If the specter of war is to be called up to oppose such steps in the march of human progress as the Channel Tunnel and the Isthmus Canal, then the military idea is destined to receive a check such as no peace convention has ever yet been able to administer to it. Already the idea of international arbitration is taking firm hold of the minds of men. It will take many a long year, and perhaps more than a single century, for this idea to become a fixed policy—and, still more important, a fixed habit—among nations; but that the time is gradually and surely approaching, there can be no doubt. We do not know who there will be to regret [Pg 151]the advent of the era of peace, unless it be the poets, who will not like to say:

Yet the poets, with the rest of us, must look the facts in the face, and prepare to bid good-by to the soldier type of hero. War has played a great part in human civilization—it has helped along religion, as well as art; but its days of usefulness as an element in human progress are nearly numbered. The world does not yet quite see how it can get along without it. But the world has given up other ideas as firmly held. For many centuries, the Holy Roman Empire and its allied idea of the Papacy seemed the very rocks and foundations of social order and spiritual happiness and progress, but the former has utterly disappeared, and the latter no longer appeals to the human mind as it once did. And still the world moves. It will be found, too, that the world will move when there are no longer armaments, by sea or land, and when every battle will be considered murder in the first degree. We shall then have our inter-oceanic canals and our submarine tunnels wherever and whenever they are needed, and the poet will still, it is hoped, not lack for heroes. The unbuilt Isthmus canals have already had their heroic victims,—numerous as in battle,—and the engineer who builds the Channel tunnel will require all the pluck, all the resources and energy of a general who conducts a great campaign against a powerful foe.

To the Editor of the Century Magazine.

Sir: In the letter which you did me the favor to insert in the March Century, calling attention to the “weak point in Mormonism,” your types would have been justified in crediting me with having enjoyed excellent opportunities for judging of the “point” in question, but went quite beyond the truth in giving me an “experience of several years in Utah.” The curtailment made necessary by your lack of space explains the source of an error, the correction of which will serve the public little, but fact and myself much.

Yours truly,
Charles R. Bliss.

Boston, Mass.

Morley’s “Life of Cobden.”⁠[16]⁠

Mr. Morley’s volume would have been more interesting, though not, perhaps, so permanently valuable, had it been shorter. The political and economic career of Cobden furnishes little material in the way of biographical incident, and the story is a tolerably familiar one. The history of the agitation for the repeal of the Corn Laws, and the negotiation of the commercial treaty with France, which constitute the two great successes of his life, and take up a large number of Mr. Morley’s pages, are trite, though Mr. Morley manages, by a sort of tour de force, to give even these worn topics a fresh life in allowing us to see them through the glowing atmosphere of Cobden’s enthusiasm. The importance of the rest of Cobden’s political work Mr. Morley a good deal exaggerates by the detail in which he deals with it. It is, perhaps, yet too early to attempt to estimate the position which the doctrines of the “Manchester school” will take in history; but Cobden’s opposition to the Crimean war, and his dream of universal peace through the progress of true economic ideas, had these alone been his title to public recollection, would never have made his name known throughout the civilized world. He was essentially an economic reformer, and, as he seems to have cared little for forms of government provided the work of economic reform was not allowed to lag, so he held in very slight esteem the ordinary political impulses of his day. He has been blamed for his indifference to the moral questions involved in the rise and establishment of the Second Empire in France. How, it was said at the time, could a man filled with the enthusiasm of humanity sit calmly down with a usurper whose hands were still dripping with the blood of his enslaved fellow-countrymen, to discuss the tariff on iron? For precisely the same reason that he wasted years in opposing the settled policy of Palmerston and the entire country, when he knew that opposition was fruitless—because his interest in economical principles, and his view of war as the enemy of economic progress, blinded him to all other considerations. He was no statesman, for the simple reason that statesmanship precludes the idea of an exclusive attention to any one set of political considerations.

His life was, publicly, a splendid success; privately, the impression left by Mr. Morley’s account—and it is obvious that he has drawn the picture with as light a hand as possible—is that of a failure. With great talents for business and the certainty of fortune before him, his devotion to the public cause which he took up made a wreck of his worldly affairs, and compelled him, in advanced life, to become the beneficiary of his political following. A buoyant disposition enabled him to face what seemed like ruin with cheerfulness, and, to the reader of Mr. Morley’s volume, there is nothing more curious than the fact that he should have suffered so little from what, to most men, would be the torture involved in deliberately shutting his eyes to the wreck he was making of his future for the sake of devoting himself to the advancement [Pg 152]of a remote public end. Nothing but a somewhat irrational optimism could explain the phenomenon.

The mind of Cobden was anything but commonplace, but it is impossible to deny that the tendency of his career of agitation was to make it one-sided. To the end, however, he retained as an orator the great gift of being able to excite the interest, arouse the imagination, and stir the hearts of his audience. He was never dull; the vivacity of his mind shines through his driest statistics. To the generality of mankind there is nothing more tiresome than political economy; Cobden managed to make it interesting.

Cobden’s speeches contain a valuable moral lesson, for they show how false is the impression that, for popular oratory, it is necessary to make base appeals to passion and prejudice. Cobden used all the arts, and even the tricks, of rhetoric; he made the most powerful appeals to the emotions of his hearers; but it was to their reason that he always addressed himself in the end, and the sincerity of his rhetoric was, perhaps, its greatest source of strength. His eloquence was a natural gift, and a gift of such great force that it is difficult to repress a regret that the subjects upon which it was employed were so often of a local and temporary character. Perhaps there is no better test of oratorical power than its use in fields to which it seems conventionally ill-adapted. The heroism of self-sacrifice on the battle-field has been, from the time of Isocrates, a favorite oratorical theme; but that of the silent self-sacrifices of philanthropy and religion was, we believe, never presented in a way to stir the blood before Cobden’s illustration, drawn from the history of the Irish famine. Impassioned as it is, it was written, and not spoken by him. Mr. Morley refers to it as “one of the most striking passages in English prose, not only for the truth of its feeling, but for the energy, simplicity, and noble pathos of its expression.” At the same time, does not the climax—

“And who were these brave men? To what gallant corps did they belong? Were they of the horse, foot, or artillery force? They were Quakers from Clapham and Kingston! If you would know what heroic actions they performed, you must inquire from those who witnessed them. You will not find them recorded in the volumes of reports published by themselves,—for Quakers write no bulletins of their victories”

—does not this climax suggest one of the permanent difficulties of philanthropic eloquence—that the passions, and emotions, and sentiments to which eloquence usually appeals do not include that sentiment of self-devotion to the good of others which religion teaches us as a command of God, and which, in the philosophic jargon of the day, is known as altruism? Rhetoric seems essentially foreign to those deeds of silent benevolence, the doing of which by the right hand is concealed from the left. Perhaps to the natural man the appearance of the Quaker hero may suggest even the possibility of an anticlimax; but, for these very reasons, the passage may fairly be regarded as, in its own line, marking a level which no one in our time but Cobden could have reached. And who could possibly have rivaled the following passage, written not far from fifty years ago, and which the crumbling ruin of the Turkish empire now shows us to have been something much more than a mere illusion of the fancy:

“Constantinople, outrivaling New York, may be painted, with a million of free citizens, as the focus of all the trade of Eastern Europe. Let us conjure up the thousands of miles of railroads, carrying to the very extremities of this empire—not the sanguinary satrap, but the merchandise and the busy traders of a free state, conveying—not the firman of a ferocious Sultan, armed with death to the trembling slave, but the millions of newspapers and letters which stimulate the enterprise and excite the patriotism of an enlightened people. Let us imagine the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmora swarming with steam-boats, connecting the European and Asiatic continents by hourly departures and arrivals; or issuing from the Dardanelles, to re-animate once more with life and fertility the hundred islands of the Archipelago; or conceive the rich shores of the Black Sea in the power of the New-Englander, and the Danube pouring down its produce on the plains of Moldavia and Wallachia, now subject to the plow of the hardy Kentuckian. Let us picture the Carolinians, the Virginians, and the Georgians transplanted to the coast of Asia Minor, and behold its hundreds of cities again bursting from the tomb of ages, to recall religion and civilization to the spot from whence they first issued forth upon the world. Alas! that this should only be an illusion of the fancy.”

Cobden had the zeal of a religious enthusiast, and this, as is commonly the case, grew upon him with age. He had to deal with a stubborn and perverse generation, though the repeal of the Corn Laws seemed to place him for the time being at the head of a triumphant popular movement. But the success of the League was really won through the Irish famine, and it is easy to see now that, had not that accident brought matters to a crisis, the agitation for free trade might have gone on for many years without producing any decisive effect on legislation. The entire landed interest was as bitterly opposed to it as ever, and it needed the pressure of an actual famine to convince Parliament that the carefully devised sliding scale was a national curse instead of being a national blessing. We have witnessed in our day the experiment of a free-trade agitation in this country, and have seen how little, in the face of great national prosperity and comfort, the arguments of economists affect the popular mind, even with a tariff as grotesque and barbarous as ours. When Cobden came to extend his principles to France, he found the protectionist sentiment of that country so strong that free trade had to be introduced, against the will of the country, by the arbitrary determination of a despotic sovereign.

Cobden and Bright will always be the names associated with the great movement which ended in the repeal of the Corn Laws, and it is a curious illustration of the religious self-devotion of the two leaders to the work that they should have pledged themselves to the cause by a vow, solemnly taken on the occasion of a bitter domestic grief. An interesting and instructive parallel might be drawn between the subsequent careers of the two men. Both were reformers, and both had remarkable gifts of eloquence. Bright, however, was interested primarily in reform by an enlargement of political liberty; like so many other men of the time, he believed in the elevation of the people through the suffrage. To Cobden, on the other [Pg 153]hand, changes in the political machinery, except as engines in the work of economic reform, were meaningless. To get the Corn Laws repealed, he was ready to urge the manufacture of voters by the thousands. But in a general extension of the basis of the suffrage he took little or no interest. But while they started from different points, their aims led them, in the practical questions of their time, to a general unanimity of feeling and opinion. For a long period, during the Crimean war, as Palmerston accurately said, there was on one side the English people and himself, and on the other, “Bright, Cobden & Co.” Had Cobden lived longer, he would have seen the ideas of Bright as to the suffrage triumph as his own with reference to the Corn Laws had triumphed, though the immediate agents in the change in the two cases were very different men. The repeal of the Corn Laws was the work of an extremely conscientious politician, to whom observation and argument had actually brought conviction against his will. The popularization of the suffrage was a clever trick of Disraeli, who was equally ready to contract or extend it, as might best serve the interests of his party.

A large part of Mr. Morley’s volume is taken up with extracts from Cobden’s correspondence, much of which consists of letters from the various countries in which he traveled. Early in life he came to the United States, and the account of his trip is of some interest, as it confirms all the others belonging to the same period on the subject of the traits of character and practical peculiarities then developed here. It is all so far away now, that it is difficult to believe that we ever could have been so puffed up with our own conceit, and so absurdly aggressive toward Englishmen.

The garden here described is the kind of which we have a vast deal in America and of which they have very little in England, but toward which, apparently, the English are turning with genuine longing—namely, the unkempt garden of Nature,—the garden of which Emerson sings:

the garden that includes the woods, the groves, the swamps, the ditches, hedge-rows, fence-corners, meadows, and barren fields. The Englishman is getting surfeited with his trim borders and flower-plots, and is studying how to make the waste places more attractive without marring their natural wildness and freedom. His plan is to introduce the hardy wild plants and flowers of other countries; to sow their seed or set their roots and bulbs in suitable habitats, and to await for their ultimate naturalization.

In the matter of purely wild flowers—flowers that flee from rather than toward cultivation—England, judging from this work, is much poorer off than America. Her wild flowers are rather stragglers from the garden; at least, they appear to have little of the shy, delicate, woodsy character of our native and more characteristic flora. Hence, in planting his wild garden John Bull will do well to study our fields and woods much more closely than he has yet done. Europe, or the Old World, has largely stocked both our vegetable and flower gardens, but when it comes to a wild garden, to the garden of the gods, they must borrow of us. Mr. Robinson recommends a score or more of American plants as suitable for English woods and hedge-rows, but leaves out many of our most charming and prolific. The plants and flowers named are poke, golden-rod, the white trillium, trailing arbutus, blood-root, the asters, bee-balm, spider-wort, pond-lily, bird’s-foot violet, Canada violet, milkweed or silkweed (Asclepias), birthwort, Virginia creeper, dwarf cornel, moccasin flower, American cowslip (Dodecatheon), eupatorium, thalictrum, cardinal flower, dog’s-tooth violet, and a few others. Our white pond-lily (Nymphæa odorata) the author says is quite as fine as the British species. It is, in fact, much finer, being deliciously fragrant, while the European species is odorless. He also speaks of our Canada violet as being without fragrance, when the truth is it has a sweet perfume. Our earliest and most charming spring flower, the hepatica, which is so well suited to the borders of English woods and the shade of English hedge-rows, is not mentioned. The sharp-lobed species, Hepatica acutiloba, is very often sweet-scented, and the rank, dense clusters of them, white and blue and purple, make gay the little sunny knolls as soon as the April snows are gone. Our columbine, too,—“the rock-loving columbine,”—what can be more hardy and beautiful, springing up as by magic on the bare, mossy rocks, and tossing its gold and crimson bells and its delicate foliage in the breeze! There is apparently no rock-flower in Britain that compares with it. As an early field-flower for moist, low meadows, producing broad and beautiful effects, we recommend our early flea-bane (Erigeron bellidifolium). It will tinge a field with blue and purple, as the daisy and buttercup will make it white and golden a month later. Or our wild geranium; cold, moist meadows, that are a stranger to the plow, are sometimes completely tinged with its soft, delicate bloom. Does not our wild-gardener know the American dogwood (Cornus florida), giving such a dash of snow-white here and there to our under-woods, just as the leaves are unfolding? Or our laurel and our azalea, our meadow-lilies, spotting the July meadows with fire; our hawkweed, rivaling the dandelion in color and richness of effect; our matchless fringed gentian, looking regal amid the coarse September weeds; or our impatiens, hanging its golden jewels by the brook-side? Our large yellow gerardia is a handsome midsummer flower, to be grown in oak woods. The only species of our milkweed (Asclepias) that we would recommend for the wild garden are the swamp milkweed (A. incarnata), the four-leaved milkweed (A. quadrifolia), and the butterfly weed (A. tuberosa). None of the above-named flowers are matched in kind in the European flora, and the English wild garden is incomplete without them.

Mr. Parsons’s illustrations must have been charming in the original, but they are not engraved with the necessary delicacy.

Notes on Reading.

Mr. Edward Everett Hale tells us that he once knew a young man, who afterward became insane, who was so impressed with his own ignorance that he went to the college librarian and asked him at which end of the library it was customary for students to begin. And Mr. Charles Dudley Warner tells us that a college professor not long ago informed him “that a freshman came to him, after he had been recommending certain books in the literature class, and said he had never read a book in his life. This was literally true. Except his text-books, he had never read a book. He had passed a fair examination, but of reading he knew no more than a Kaffir.”

The first thing one notices is that very few people read, in the exact sense of the word. “Reading and writing come by nature” is as true of the one as it is of the other; and while an enormous proportion of the people of these United States are capable of the physical act of reading, and do, indeed, practice it now and then, so far as to read the market reports or the deaths and marriages, only a few are habitual readers. And even of these, how many are there who read anything besides cheap fiction—cheap, I mean, in quality,—the ready-made literature turned out by the fiction-mills? In the public libraries, seventy per cent. of the books taken out in the course of a year is cheap fiction; and the cheap fiction which gets itself between the covers of a book and upon the shelves of a library is not one-half of that which runs its course in the columns of some weekly story-paper. Now it is not right to call the consumers of stuff like this readers. Charles Lamb speaks of books which are not books, so these are readers who are not readers. They read with the eye alone, while the brain is inert.

This class is far harder to deal with than the still larger class which, like the collegians Mr. Hale and Mr. Warner tell us about, have never made any use of the power of reading which was hammered into them in the primary school. The man who has rarely opened a book may be induced to do so; and he may be so gratified with his discovery of the pleasure and profit which he found in reading that he will never give it up. Those who do not read can only be got to read by giving them something which will interest them sufficiently to make them want to read it through when they have once begun. And what will interest a man depends altogether on the man. In literature, as in dietetics, what is one man’s meat is another man’s poison. One thing may be said most emphatically: never give any “improving books” to a man who does not read; to do so is to waste your effort and his. When the reading habit is once formed, you may, perhaps, get him interested in a tract or in a religious biography of the ordinary Sunday-school type. But no such book will ever tempt him to go on reading for its own sake.

The rule is simple: study the man or the woman or the child, and put before him or her the book he or she is most likely to begin, and having begun, most likely to finish. In all probability, the firemen around the corner, whose little library you are trying to increase and improve, will not take so kindly to Shakspere; but Tom Hughes’s “Alfred the Great,” and Higginson’s “Young Folk’s History of America,”—the best little book of its kind I ever saw,—and Nordhoff’s “Politics for Young Americans,” and a good collection of miscellaneous poems—these are the books they are likely to look at, and in all probability to read. You cannot cure a boy of reading the “Bold Brigand of the Dead Gulch” by giving him the “Student’s Hume,”—one of the driest books which ever made a boy thirsty,—or any of the ordinary old-fashioned text-books of history. But you might get him to give up “Lone-eyed Jim, the Boy Scout,” to read one of Mayne Reid’s stories; and from those the transition is easy to the sea-tales of Cooper and Marryat—two salt-water romancers far healthier than most of the rose-water novelists of to-day. And after you have got the boy interested in these sea-fighters of fiction, let him have Southey’s “Life of Nelson,” a good biography of Paul Jones, and, if the size of it does not frighten him, Cooper’s “History of the American Navy.”

The one essential thing to do, when you are trying to change a man who does not read into a man who does read, is to put yourself in his place. What is his business? What are his tastes? What are his surroundings? The answers to these questions suggest the weak points in his indifference. If he is an artisan who gives his evenings to the reading of a weekly story-paper, and so has the freshness taken out of his mind by its cheap fiction, suggest his trying Charles Reade’s “Put Yourself in his Place”; and if this story of strikes interest him, lend him Reade’s other novels, most of which are so manly, and touch so closely on questions of history and politics, that the reader is tempted to learn more about what the novelist has thus enticingly alluded to. If a lady has a strong taste for the theater, suggest her reading Dr. Doran’s “Their Majesties’ Servants,”—the most amusing as it is the most authoritative of stage-histories,—and insist on her reading Lewes’s “Actors and Acting,” the one good book on a difficult subject. If she like these, then she may begin on the grand line of English histrionic biographies which begins with Colley Cibber’s “Apology,” and comes down to Macready’s “Reminiscences.”

A course of reading is like an encyclopedia; it is meant to take in everything. Now, anybody who believes that he can take in everything will be “taken in” himself. The mass of accumulated knowledge is now enormous, and to take even a cursory view of it all is only possible for a very well-educated man. To know something of everything is getting, day by day, to be a harder task. But to know almost everything about something is more nearly within everybody’s reach. To know absolutely everything on a given subject is not possible even to the specialist, but to get a good grasp of a subject, be it scientific, or historical, or literary, to know what is best worth knowing about it—this can [Pg 155]be done by almost anybody with good will and a little perseverance. Now, the way to master a subject is to begin at the beginning. Suppose you want to know about Greek literature. You have noted one of Macaulay’s or Matthew Arnold’s glowing tributes to the noble simplicity of Grecian writing, and you want to read about it. Get Jebb’s “Primer of Greek Literature,” which is almost as good as Stopford Brooke’s “Primer of English Literature”—as high praise as one can give any book of the kind. This will tell you the conditions under which the Greeks worked. Then if you are attracted toward any other writer, and want to know more about him, get the volume in which he and his works are discussed at length in the series of “Ancient Classics for English Readers.” By the time you have read that, you will know whether you really want to study this Greek author or not, whether you are capable of appreciating him, and, therefore, whether your time and attention can be given to him with advantage.

As soon as the taste for reading is formed, that taste begins to improve, and its improvement should be sedulously cultivated. Every man who has read a great deal will tell you that he has left far behind him the books he admired when he began. What he admired at twenty is far inferior to what he admires at thirty or forty. He is constantly going up a literary ladder. Now, it makes little matter on what round of the ladder the reader begins, so long as he climbs. It is the act of climbing which is beneficial, not the elevation attained. If you are a boy, and you read for excitement, for adventure, and for this reason take a story-paper, give it up, and try one of Mr. Towle’s series of books about the “Heroes of History,” or one of Dr. Eggleston’s “Lives of Famous Indians.” If Mr. Towle’s “Pizarro” attracts you, go from that to Prescott’s narrative of the conquest of Peru; and from that you may be led to his other histories of the Spanish dominion in America, and Prescott may thus introduce you to Irving and to Motley. And when you have got so far, the whole field of European history is open before you. Get the best—the best, that is, that you can read with satisfaction, and then go onward and upward. One caution may be thrown out here. When you want to know about any man or period and seek a history to tell you, do not take a school-book; they are only too often dry and colorless.

And this brings us to those who know what to read, but desire advice as to how to get the best results from their reading. Having formed the habit of reading, and having thus got your foot on the ladder of literary culture, how are you to get the best result from these? First of all, always think over a book when you have finished it. Criticise it. Form your own opinion of it. If you liked it, ask yourself why you liked it. If you disliked it, ask yourself why you did not like it. See if the fault was in the book or in you. If you were greatly interested, try to find out whether this was due to the author or to the subject. Then if you can find somebody else who has read the book, talk it over; exchange your impression for his impression; and see whether, on sober second thought, he is more nearly right than you. If you have been reading a great author, see what the great critics have been saying of him. If you have been reading an essay on a great author or a biography of him, take up his own works next, that you may gain the benefit of the interest around about him. If you have been reading any special history, try to see how it fits into the general history of the world: and for this purpose, I know no books to be compared with Mr. Freeman’s “Primer of European History,” and his “First Sketch of History.” These begin at the beginning and tell the march of events to our generation.

Then, as you are reading a book, it is well to mark important passages. If the book is your own, make a light mark with a hard pencil in the margin of the passage. If the book is not yours, put in a slip of paper. When you have ended the book, read over the marked passages, and index those which on this second reading seem worthy of it, or likely in any way to be of use to you. If the book is yours, turn to the blank page at the end and give a hint of the passage and the page it is on; thus:

• John Brown, p. 21,
• Shaksperean quotation, p. 47,
• Anecdote of a wise dog, p. 93,

and so on. If the book is not yours, take a page in a note-book, or a sheet of note-paper, and make your index on that, heading it with the title of the book.

The Rev. Joseph Cook tells us that he marks important passages with a line in the outer margin of the book he is reading, more important with two lines, and most important with three; while passages that he disagrees with or disapproves of, are marked in like manner with one, two, or three lines on the inner margin. He advises the committing to memory of the passages marked with three lines on the outside margin. The reader should also strenuously cultivate the habit of searching diligently in dictionaries and encyclopedias and gazetteers, and in whatever books of reference he can get access to. He should let no allusion pass without an effort to find out what it means. Macaulay bristles with allusions, but there are scarcely any that a quick reader cannot dig out of an encyclopedia in a few minutes. And “when found make a note on,”—as Cap’n Cuttle tells us.

Arthur Penn.

Progress in Smoke Abatement.

The necessity of getting rid of the clouds of black smoke that overhang all towns where bituminous coal is used in domestic fires, has led to the invention of a large number of new stoves and fire-places. In all these inventions the aim is to prevent the formation of smoke by a more complete combustion of the fuel. Smoke is simply a fine dust composed of [Pg 156]carbon. This carbon dust will burn, and the whole art of preventing the formation of the dust is to insure the complete combustion of the fuel. To accomplish this, inventors have tried two apparently different methods. One way is to make a fire-place in which fresh coal may be added in such a way that it may be “cooked” or prepared for burning before it is wholly consumed. As such fire-places are made on the principle of the gas retort, they may be called coking stoves. The other method is called the regenerative system. The idea here is to heat the air needed to maintain the fire, and thus to secure a better combustion of the fuel. A number of these smoke-preventing stoves and furnaces have already been described in this department. One of these inventions on the regenerative plan has proved to be a commercial success, and it has been introduced into a great number of places. At the Smoke Abatement Exhibition, recently held in England, a number of new smoke-preventing appliances were shown. In one stove and open grate there is a small trough at the front of the grate, into which the fresh coal is put, and from this place, when it has been partly coked, it may be passed by means of a small scraper into the fire, and under the coals already burning. In another grate, two Archimedean screws are used to raise the fresh coal into the fire from a holder, or coal-box, under the grate. In another grate, a gridiron, or rake, under the grate-bars rises, and lifts the whole bed of live coals. This makes a small space or cave under the fire, into which fresh coal may be placed. The iron rake is then withdrawn, letting the live coals down on the raw fuel under it. Another invention puts fresh coal under the fire by means of a pivoted box under the grate-bars. This box may be turned on its pivoted support so as to bring it out in front of the fire. In this position a slide covers an opening in the center of the grate. The box is filled with coal, and is returned to its position under the fire. The slide is withdrawn by the same movement, and by means of a false bottom in the box, the coal is lifted through the opening in the grate, into the fire. Another grate is made in the form of a cylinder (already described here), supported on its axis. It is filled with fuel, and when this is partly lighted the grate is turned over, bringing the fire on top. The fire then burns downward till a part of the fuel is consumed, when it is refilled and turned over again. Besides these grates, there is a new shovel in the form of a wedge-shaped box. When filled with coal, the shovel is pushed into the fire, sliding on the grate-bars, and lifting the live coals. When it is fairly under the hot fuel, a lever is moved, the box is opened and the fresh coal pushed out, when the shovel may be withdrawn, leaving the coal under the fire. In other new fire-places, the fresh coal is pushed into the fire from the back or sides by various appliances, so that the fresh coal is exposed to the heat, and is thus coked before it takes fire.

In the other class of smoke-preventing appliances, the unburned carbon that escapes from the fire is met just beyond the grate by streams of highly heated air, and in this hot air it will take fire and burn. Smoke is formed because there is not sufficient air to enable it to burn, and if the smoke, immediately after it has left the fire, meets a fresh supply of air, some of it will burn. If this fresh air is highly heated it will burn all the more readily, and if the apparatus is properly designed and constructed, all the smoke will be consumed. Among the new appliances shown at the Exhibition, was a grate having hollow grate-bars open at the front end to the air, and communicating with pipes that open into the flue just behind the fire-place. Fresh air is drawn through these hollow grate-bars and is highly heated. It meets the products of combustion, and the unburned gas and smoke take fire and burn with great heat at the ends of the pipes. Various inventions were also shown, wherein the same thing is accomplished by drawing fresh air through sinuous passages at the sides of the fire-place. All these inventions are more or less close imitations of a well-known regenerative furnace for steam-boilers, invented in the United States several years ago, and now in successful operation in many parts of the country.

In the first class of grates and stoves, where the fresh fuel is coked or placed under the live coals, the smoke is burned by passing through or over the hot fuel already burning. There is in all these stoves more or less waste of heat from the escape of the unburned and invisible products of combustion, and for this reason the regenerative plan must be regarded as decidedly the best.

Another apparatus on the regenerative system consists of a steam injector. This is simply two pipes, one within the other, and placed directly over the fire in a steam boiler. The smaller pipe, placed within the larger pipe, is for steam, and the larger pipe is for air. The blast from the steam causes a suction through the larger pipe, and throws a stream of mingled air and steam into the furnace just beyond the fire. The air is heated by the fire and the steam, and assists combustion precisely as in the case of those furnaces where hot air is mingled with the products of combustion, in the regenerative furnaces already described. The use of the steam is, of course, a loss, but in the case of this apparatus it is said to be a loss of only one per cent., whereas the gain of heat from the more complete combustion of the gas and smoke is said to be as high as twenty-five per cent. It must be said, however, that the use of steam in this way appears to be generally regarded as a doubtful economy.

Experiments have been made, both here and in Europe, with celluloid as a material for types, and the material has been found to have some advantages over type-metal and wood. It takes clear and sharp impressions under the influence of heat and pressure, and will keep its shape under the hardest usage. The celluloid is used in the form of thin sheets or plates, and is intended to be backed by wood. In nature-printing, as in copying leaves, mosses, laces, and all kinds of raised fabrics, the leaf or fabric is laid on the sheet of celluloid and submitted to heat under considerable pressure. The material will be pressed into the celluloid, and when finished the plate will exhibit the minutest veining or threads of the fabric or leaf. By cutting away the edges of the plate, the leaf may be brought into relief and used as a stereotype plate. These celluloid plates have so far been applied [Pg 157]to the manufacture of large types only, such as are now made of wood, and to the making of small plates containing short notices or advertisements for newspapers. The advantages of the celluloid types and plates consist in their lightness, which saves storage and postage, and in their durability and cheapness. The types resist the action of acids and do not affect the colors of the inks used on them. This makes it possible to use the same type for many colors, which is a great advantage in printing-offices where wood type is used.

The radiometer bulb, with its white and blackened vanes, is a familiar object in the windows of opticians, but, while it has been the means of making important experiments in physics, it does not appear to have proved of much value in the arts. It has been suggested recently that it can be used as a photometer in testing the power of different lights. The radiometer bulb is placed in a square metallic box having openings opposite the bulb on opposite sides, and closed with glass. The box is filled with water that is raised, by means of a lamp, or other appliance, to a temperature about one hundred degrees higher than the heat that may be given by the two lights to be examined. The beam of light from the candle, or other standard, is then allowed to fall on the vanes of the radiometer through one of the openings in the box. The light to be tested is allowed to fall on the vanes, through the opening on the opposite side. If the two lights are of equal power, the action of the lights on the vanes will balance, and the vanes will stand with one face toward one light and the other toward the other. If the power of the lights is unequal, the stronger light will displace the vanes or cause them to revolve. To measure the photometric power of the light to be tested, it must be moved farther away or nearer to the bulb till the balance is set up. The distance of the lights from the bulb will then give the value of the light, as in any of the photometers now in use. The observation of the action of the vanes is studied through the openings on the opposite sides of the case in which the radiometer is placed.

A novel form of dispatch-tube for transmitting letters and packages under rivers or harbors has been made the subject of experiment. The plan is the same as in the dispatch-tubes already in use in cities, where light carriers containing letters are blown or drawn through metal pipes by a powerful current of air, except that water is used instead of air. The tube is of thin lead, bound with wire on the outside to give it strength, and covered with tarred hemp to resist the action of the water. The pipe is simply laid on the bottom of the river, the shore ends being placed in a trench for safety. To obtain power, a reservoir is placed at each end of the pipe at a sufficient height to insure a good head of water. The reservoir is connected, by a pipe of equal diameter with the tube, with the top of a box at the shore end. The tube enters the lower side of this box, and there are valves at the end of each pipe, and a water-tight door at the side of the box. The carrier consists of a wire cylinder covered with rubber and closed by a water-tight cap. The messages are placed in the carrier and it is put in the box with others, and the door is closed. The valves are opened and the water, under the pressure from the reservoir, sweeps or floats the train of carriers through the tube at a speed corresponding with the pressure. At the receiving end the water is discharged through a branch pipe into an open box or sieve, through which the water escapes, while the carriers are caught. The transmitting and receiving apparatus are the same at each end of the tube, and by reversing the current, messages may be sent either way. The chief advantage of such a hydraulic system of transmission will probably be found in the greater distance to which the carriers can be sent. As they float in this tube, there will be less friction than in pneumatic tubes, while leakage in the tube will be of less consequence. The commercial value of the system will depend on the relative cost of pumping air or pumping water through such a dispatch-tube.

The experiments that were begun some time ago in this country, in the use of electricity on railroads, have been renewed recently upon a greatly enlarged scale. A new narrow-gauge railroad has been laid down on precisely the same conditions in regard to grade and curvature as would be found on ordinary railroads in the United States. A new locomotor with one car, of the ordinary single-horse pattern used on street railways, has been provided, and it is proposed to run the motor and the car continuously under all weathers for a year, in order thoroughly to test the system under every condition of the weather and the seasons.

The direct motive power is a stationary steam-engine located at the top of a hill, about a thousand meters from the nearest point of the railroad. Three dynamo machines are driven by belting from the engine, and these give the current for operating the road. These machines may be used in one of two ways. They may be joined to the wire to give a current that will cause the locomotor to move at a high rate of speed, or with power at a slower rate. If the current from one dynamo is sent into the next, and so on, in series, the current made available for work gives speed. If the current from each machine is sent direct to the wire, the combined currents give intensity or power. At the time the road was examined they were arranged in this way, as the track was new and a trifle rough. From the central station where the dynamo machines are placed, the wires are laid under-ground to the road. The insulation is secured by inclosing the wires in a wooden box filled with an insulating compound, poured in the box and over the wires while liquid. The track consists of square wooden ties and a light rail, laid in the usual manner. To secure insulation, the ends of each tie are painted with an insulating liquid that, when dry and hard, makes a good non-conductor. In placing the ties on the road-bed, care is taken to leave the ends of the ties exposed, so that the rail will not touch the ground between them. The rails are also painted with or dipped in the insulating compound up to the lower side of the tread. This gives the rails the appearance of being painted black [Pg 158]at the sides and bottom. The sides of each rail at the ends are also filed or brightened so as to leave a clean surface, and when they are in place on the track, short bars of copper are laid from rail to rail across the joint. Each bar bears against this bright or bare spot on the rail, and is securely held in this position by the fish-plates. A little solder is also applied, to insure good electrical connection from rail to rail through these copper bars. To assist the insulation, there is also a small piece of insulating material placed on the tie under the rail. On this is also laid another insulator wherever the heads of the spikes rest on the rail. With such a track the loss of electricity by escape into the ground, per mile of track, is found to be very small. The cables from the central station are connected directly with the track, one to each rail, and at a point near one end of the road. This is, however, not a matter of much consequence, as the central station may be at the middle of the road or at either end, while the cable may be carried under a river or across a hill or valley.

The motor consists essentially of a single dynamo machine, of precisely the same pattern as those used to furnish the current. It is laid down horizontally with the armature at the forward end over the driving-wheel. The motor is supported on four wheels, one pair forward being the drivers, while a trailing pair is placed behind under the cab. There are no trucks, as the motor is supported on a rigid frame-work. As the whole machine is small, the wheel-base is about the same as in the horse-car, and it will pass ordinary curves with ease. Motors of a larger size, and carrying two or more dynamo machines, would be arranged differently, perhaps, with two driving-wheels and one trailing truck. The armature of the magnet is secured to a horizontal shaft at the front of the motor, and from this shaft is a belt to a counter-shaft at the rear under the cab. The counter-shaft carries a friction clutch, controlled by a hand-lever in the cab. From the counter-shaft is taken another belt to the axle of the driving-wheel, and over this belt is a belt-tightener, controlled by a hand-screw in the cab. The four wheels are made of iron, in two parts, with a backing of wood, somewhat after the manner of paper car-wheels. The wood serves as an insulator, and prevents the current that flows from the track into the wheels from taking a short circuit through the axles from rail to rail. On each wheel are fastened brass arms, arranged to support a round brass disk opposite the center of the wheel, but not touching it. On this disk rest copper brushes, supported by a brass rod, that communicates with an insulated wire that connects with the magnet. The current from one rail passes through the tread of the wheels on that side, then through the brass arms to the copper brush, and thence by the wire to the magnet. In like manner the current returns to the rail on the other side. In this way, the motor becomes a bridge or short circuit on the rail that is continually changing its position while in motion. This is precisely the same as in those electric block signals (already described in this department) where the current is made to pass from rail to rail through the first or last axle of a train moving in the block. In such signal systems, the moving train is merely an electric shunt or switch, and it receives no direct benefit from the current. In this motor the current passing through the apparatus does useful work in moving the train. All the switches for sending the current through the magnet in either direction, or for stopping, starting, and reversing the machine, are placed in the cab, and the whole work of control consists in moving these simple hand-levers, in moving the friction-clutch lever and the belt-tightener. There is also a hand brake.

At the time the road was inspected, the motor pushed the car containing several people, and dragged behind a small flat-car loaded with gravel and carrying two men. The motor was controlled by one engineer and one assistant. In starting, the switch was turned to admit the current to the magnet. The armature, turning idly before, began to revolve swiftly, and in a few seconds was moving at a high speed with a slight whirring sound. On applying the friction clutch, the motor started ahead easily, and in silence. On applying the belt-tightener a good speed was at once attained, and the train ran swiftly over the road for more than a mile without stopping. On taking off the flat-car load, the return trip was made at good speed, and apparently without effort. No attempt was made to display the highest speed possible, but enough was done to show that the motor could be handled with the greatest ease, and with entire precision. When used alone, the motor ran backward and forward, stopped, and started as readily as any locomotive, and without noise, dust, or smoke. While this road has been built for experimental purposes, enough has already been done to prove that it is a practical success. Such a road and motor will, no doubt, prove of great value wherever ordinary locomotives are objectionable, as in mines, tunnels, and city elevated roads. Short spurs or feeders to regular railroads, particularly where water-power is available, could be built on this system to advantage, and there seems no reason why it may not prove of great value. In point of simplicity and directness of means to ends, the motor and its road appear to be superior to the electrical railways already in use.

The chain-pumps, so extensively used in some parts of the country, always had the defect of great wastefulness, both in time and power. The metal buttons used for buckets in the chain tube were too small, and allowed the water to run back too freely. An improved rubber bucket, in the form of an inverted cup, has been introduced, that appears to remedy the defects of this otherwise useful form of pump. The buckets fit the tube closely, and prevent the water from falling back.

Forfeits.

De danger’s ober when de Shanghai crow.

De pig aint much on ’rifmetic, but he knows de nighes’ way to de branch.

Heap o’ good folks gits sassy in cat-fish time.

De wus’ thing ’bout chills is dat too many folks knows how to cure ’em.

Better not try to out-jump a flyin’-squ’el.

You can’t clam to Heben by de chu’ch-steeple.

Settin’ on a hornit is a poo’ way to git ’ligion.

A man stan’s a chance to ketch a ’possum while he’s coon-huntin’.

De rabbit’s mighty sorry for de neighbors when de turnup-crap fail.

Nex’ week is gin’ully gwine to be mighty busy time.

De lead steer gits de mos’ whippin’.

De June-apple tree is mighty easy to clam at de right time o’ year.

Old times was too good to be true.

When all de half-bushels gits de same size, you may look out for de Millennicum.

You can’t tell de weight ob a cotton-bale by lookin’ at it.

Ef eb’ry corn-stalk had a big ear, ’twouldn’t be no nubbins for de ca’fs.

Folks ought to talk ’bout de neighbors like de tombstones.

You can’t sell kerrysene ile to a lightnin’-bug.

De morkin’-bird don’t ’sturb hisse’f ’bout de price o’ music.

De old cow dat jumps de draw-bars too much is practersin’ for de tan-yard.

Don’t ’buse de jay-bird’s chune, long as he don’t brag on it.

A mule ain’t plum broke tell he’s been dead a whole day.

Somehow, it ’pears like de ’possum-dorg ought to vote.

Las’ ’ear’s sins wa’n’t killed by de fros’.

Folks lub to run down dis ’ear’s crap.

Old hen can’t keep fum tellin’ whar her nes’ is.

Old Satan nebber likes to miss a camp-meetin’.

’Taint no use o’ tryin’ to make yourse’f too comfertubble in dis wul’; you got to change cars at de grabe-yard.

A mouse is a fus’-rate hand to tell a cat-track.

Too much shakin’ will fotch down green ’simmons.

A bull-dorg is better’n a law-book sometimes.

A feller dat’s ’fraid o’ de sun in de day-time is too ap’ to be ’fraid o’ de moon at night.

De safety o’ de turnup-patch ’pends mo’ on de size ob de turnups dan on de tallness ob de fence.

De wild goose totes his sign-pos’ wid him.

De back-lorg an’ de banjer-picker make a mighty good team.

Lots o’ hens los’ deir aigs by braggin’ on ’em too loud.

A man’s raisin’ will show itse’f in de dark.

Some folks medger distunce by deir own roomatiz’.

Old times always hab a big repertation.

A mud-turkle kin clam a pine-tree arter it done fell on de groun’.

J. A. Macon.

Moose Factory, Hudson’s Bay.
Via Lake Temiscamingue, Ottawa River, Canada.
December 12th, 1881.

To the Editor of The Century.

Sir: Apropos of the notice of Mr. Harris’s “Uncle Remus” stories in your magazine for April [1881], and especially of the comparison of “How Mr. Rabbit lost his fine bushy Tail” with the Norse version of the same fable, it may be of interest to your readers to know that the inclosed similar story is told by the Objibaway Indians. For the last few years I have been in the habit of collecting Indian stories and folk-lore of all kinds, my position as surgeon to this factory giving me a better chance than most enjoy. Of these I may make use on my return to England next year. The period which has elapsed since the publication of your magazine and my note is great, and is due to the fact that in this out-of-the-way part of the world we only get two packets a year.

Yours truly,
Walter Haydan.

A fox was fishing one day, in the depth of winter, through a hole in the ice, using his tail for bait, by which means he caught a great number at first, but as the day went on he was not so successful. His tail becoming numbed, he did not perceive it getting frozen in. By and by, thinking he had got a bite, he gave a smart pull and broke his tail off short, at which he began to weep. The Manitou, coming along, asked him why he wept. The fox told him, and begged to have his tail restored. The Manitou told him he could have it back if he could discover an animal as stupid as himself. The fox started for home, with the result of his sport in his mouth. On the road he met a bear, who asked him how he had managed to catch so many fish. The fox told him it was the easiest thing in the world; all he had to do was to use the same means he had done, which the bear begged to be taught. The fox, nothing loath, took Bruin on the ice, cut a hole for him, and told him to put his tail through and not to pull it out until he called to him, and then to take it out as quickly as possible. The fox waited until he saw it well frozen in, and shouted “Pull!” and snap went the tail. The fox’s tail was restored to him, but the bear lost his forever, and this is the reason the bear has a stumpy tail to this day.

[If the readers of The Century who have heard, in concerts or elsewhere, the vocal gymnastics known as the “Swiss Warble,” can imagine the volume as well as the melody of that performance increased a thousand-fold, they will be able to form some idea of the thrilling effect of the italicized halloo in the refrain stanzas of the “Hog-Feeder’s Song,” herewith appended. Harbert, a hog-feeder on the Turner Plantation, in Putnam County, Georgia, could make every inflection of his voice heard at a distance of three miles, but this was not even considered remarkable in a region where the dusky captain of the corn-pile was in the habit of lifting his right hand to his ear, and conveying a most musical invitation to the hands on plantations five miles away.]

I.
HOG-FEEDER’S SONG.

II.
A NEGRO LOVE-SONG.

Joel Chandler Harris (“Uncle Remus”).

The Message of the Rose.

HE.

SHE.

Bessie Chandler.